This morning is as bright as a cloudy day can be. It feels like the sun may break through at any moment, but bother forecasters I check now say there could be sunny spells this morning. Much gloom and doom is forecast for 6pm onwards. The BBC is very keen to predict thunderstorms. The Met Office say that 6, 7, and 8pm will feature heavy rain, hail, and then back to heavy rain. This morning started off cooler than recently, just 10° C, but it should rise to 16, or even 17° C. Tomorrow could be a nasty sort of day. The BBC say "gusty winds and drizzle", and the Met Office say "overcast changing to sunny intervals by early evening" - literally no more than 2 hours before it gets dark. It will also be cold with the temperature barely rising above 11° C.

   Yesterday was one of those days that was both good and bad. The bad was not really any more than a bad selection of food to eat, and not finishing a late evening phone call until gone 1am, maybe it was nearer 2am. By that time I was drunk, and I had passed the peak of sleepiness, and slept incredibly badly last night.

  I was a bit slow getting ready for it, but once washed and dressed I went shopping in Tesco. Sometimes it was sunny, and sometimes a small cloud would hid the sun, but it seemed to be easily warm enough to go out bare armed without ever feeling more than a bit cool. The coolest point was almost outside the entrance of Tesco. There was some strong winds, and they all seemed to get funnelled down to turn in an extreme gale at that bit of the walk to and from Tesco. Once out in the open the intensity of the wind became a lot less.

  I had intended to not buy too much from Tesco, and in one respect that was true because the money asked for at the checkout was probably the smallest for maybe years. However my shopping basket had quite a few things in it that I should have left on the shelf. On the other hand, there was some stuff that I was cautiously looking forward to trying.
  Two of my purchases are pictured about. After inspecting the drinks shelves I realised that Tesco sell three "own brand" diet/sugar free colas. I think I pictured two of them recently. The third is the bottle on the left in the picture above. It is quite possible it uses the formula that renders it completely undrinkable to my taste buds. On the right is a new version of Coca Cola, Zero Sugar. It is lemon flavour (obvious from the picture). There are several high impact places in the store where it is being intensively pushed. I suspect it might be "OK" for a novelty drink, but will be dropped after a few years - like seems to be the case of the lime flavoured Diet Coke.

  One thing I was suckered into buying by one of those yellow reduced price stickers, was a tub of chicken and bacon pasta in a creamy sauce. It looked like it's sugar content wouldn't be too bad, but once home, I tucked into it as a sort of pre-drinking stodge. I was already shovelling it in when I noticed that the sugar content quoted was for a quarter of the tub. I regarded the whole tub as little more than a snack, but in doing so I ended up consuming four times the sugar I was expecting to eat. That was one of two bad mistakes.

  After my lunch I had a lie down, and read until I put the book down and let my eyes close. I don't think I actually had a snooze, but I guess it came close to it. I was still fine to react instantly when Jodie rang the doorbell. It seems she has now made the transition to British Summer Time, only a week or two late, and arrived here almost early.  She didn't bring any beer over, and so was forced to drink stuff already in my fridge that she has passed over several or more weeks running.

  We had a few beer that were acceptable, and one I thought was quite good, although because our tastes have diverged so much she didn't like, but I did. I ended up drinking most of her share. There was one beer that neither of us could drink, or at least enjoy. That was fed to the sink ! Three of the cans, and I think one of them we poured away instead of drinking it, were from a Northern Irish brewery, and all three were a bit odd in several ways.

  One thing I neglected to do while we were drinking was to prepare my dinner. I did get as far as putting a pack of allegedly posh sausages in the mini oven/grill to cook. When Jodie left to meet Alan in Bromley they were cooked, and just cooling off a bit. I think I intended to eat them with some boiled potatoes, and maybe something like broccoli. I actually went for a very simple solution - sausage sandwiches.

  I used 4 slices of polish, no sugar, sourdough bread, and spread the bread with mustard and low sugar ketchup. I have to say those two sandwiches were delicious. The only downside was that I seemed to be burping sausage flavour well into the night. Another downside is that this morning I suspect that those sausages had a high sugar content. Sugar is sometimes used to draw moisture out of meat for some times of processing.

  It was probably about 7pm when I ate my sausage sandwiches dinner, and not long after cleaning myself up from oozed ketchup , mustard and grease, I received a phone call from a sort of old friend Sue. It may have been because I had a few nips of whisky while speaking to her that I was not on guard, and allowed her to just keep talking and talking. I should have ended the call a lot earlier, but it was gone 1am when I finally managed to say goodbye.

  By that time I had gone through the maximum sleepiness phase, and became increasingly awake. I did try and read a few pages to relax myself, but it feels like I hardly got a wink of sleep all night long. I am fairly certain I did get some sleep, but I doubt it all added up to anything more than 2 hours, and possibly as little as a single hour. I did my best to try and sleep through until about 9am, but I just couldn't seem to get to sleep.

  I was well gone 8am when I gave in, and started to slowly get up. I felt really lousy. Some of it was obviously hangover, but a big portion was just lack of sleep. To slow things down even more I had a notification of a software update for the computer I am using. Being a Linux PC, and not a Windows PC, the update was fairly swift and painless, although it did involve a new Linux kernel (the heart of the operating system), and the only type of update that needs a restart.

  On top of other negative feelings, I was initially constipated. I knew I needed to go, but nothing was moving at first. About half an hour later I went to the toilet again, and at all happened with no fuss at all. The main negative things was my blood glucose measurements. The glucose level was still below the danger line, but very unacceptably high - even worse than yesterday. The Contour meter read 9.3mmol/l, and the Sinocare meter closely agreed with a reading of 9.4mmol/l. Only the GlucoRX meter gave an acceptable figure of 8.7mmol/l, and while acceptable, it is still a bit higher than I like.

  In theory I should be fasting until dinner time, and dinner should be, and maybe will be, something fairly safe. In the meantime I still had a breakfast of two quite small packets of instant noodles made up together in one small bowl. It was in part because I did seem to be feeling very hungry, but also in part because I now like to take my morning pills, as recommended for some, with a meal. The best reason is that the cod liver oil capsule I take every morning can generate horrible fishy burps without some food to hold it down.

  It maybe some sort of luck that today is grey and cold (with heavy rain towards sunset), and it does not entice me out. I need not worry about missing a potential day to go out on a day when I don't really fancy doing anything. I can imagine passing a fair bit of today laying on my bed, reading and snoozing. One thing I have to do, ideally before getting too relaxed, is to finish washing a single small hand towel that I left soaking in Bio detergent after my shower yesterday morning. I have to confess I am not looking forward to it !
      







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