The Met Office and BBC weather forecast (BBC shown above) look almost identical, and both have not got off to a good start. We should be having sunny spells now, but there is not a hint of the sun in the sky. Some of the sky looks grey enough for possible rain. The only good thing is that the thick cloud during the night meant it was not so cold this morning. Maybe the sun will break through later, and maybe there will be full sunshine from 3pm, but I feel quite pessimistic about it. The temperature may still reach 20° C, but without the sunshine it won't be any warmer indoors, and my comfort threshold is about 22° C at this time of the year. A colder start, and a lot more sunshine are forecast for tomorrow, but the temperature should still only reach 20° C.

   Yesterday morning I was having fantasies that I might go out for another walk to the top of Blythe Hill Fields, but that idea very quickly evaporated, and barely made it past the time when I finished writing. I did go out, but only as far as Tesco where I bought some good and bad stuff.

  Once I knew I was going shopping, and also I would be seeing Jodie later in the afternoon for some beer tasting, having a shower was an imperative. Unfortunately the water was not much better than tepid. I dare touch the thermostat on the water heater again after the slow leak when I touched it the day before yesterday. I need to learn the correct juggling between water pressure and gas pressure to regulate the water temperature.

  It is silly that all I had to do was to turn the gas up a bit, and didn't need to fiddle with the thermostat. There is good news and imagined better news about that leak from the thermostat control. I originally feared that the bowl I am using to catch the drips would fill up, and possibly overflow overnight, I now predict it would take 24 hours, and possibly a bit longer to fill the bowl. The imagined good news is that I think the drip may be slowing down as the limescale rebuilds around the leak, and will eventually seal it - like it had been for the last 10 or 20 years after last moving the control.

  I thought I survived my Saturday walk rather well yesterday morning - but only up to the time when I walked to Tesco. I guess my legs didn't seem to complain much. It was more a combination of assorted aches and pains. Some of those pains seemed to be typical cold weather aches. When I went to Tesco the day was still warming up, and may have only got as high as 15° C. In full sunshine that should have felt fine, but as mentioned at the top of the page, the sunny spells came a lot earlier than forecast, and there was precious little sunshine in those so called sunny spells.

  Maybe it was because I was feeling a bit cool, and a bit achey, that I headed to the sandwiches in Tesco. I bought two packs so I could have instant gratification when I got home again. I might have resisted, or had something more sensible if it were not the fact I would be boozing later. The real unfortunate thing is that I found, more sandwiches on the reduced price shelf, and bought another two packs.

  Most of the rest of what I bought was sensible. I topped up my stock of low sugar, Tesco own brand, soups, and I got more instant noodles. I had a look to see if Tesco did anything equivalent to Iceland's "My Protein" range, and it seems they do. Tesco calls theirs "Gym Kitchen". On the surface they seem to be low calorie, and hopefully low sugar to. The catch is that they only seemed to have two offerings in that range, and one didn't appeal to me. I bought the chorizo paella, and I'll probably test that tonight.

  I had quite a load to take home. Just the four cams of soup, and 4 x 2 litre bottles of diet coke were quite a weight on their own. Fortunately the instant noodles don't weigh much, and the sandwiches don't weigh much more. It seemed quite a slog walking home. I could have walked a lot more if I had to, but it was great to get home, and put all my shopping down. As soon as I had put the shopping away I ate two packs of sandwiches. I enjoyed them, but I knew they were very unhealthy for me.

  I didn't really have much I needed to do prior to Jodie arrived, and I spend most of the time reading, and snoozing. For some reason I didn't even consider that I was wasting time that I could have used for something else - probably because I could think of nothing else to do. I did consider doing a bit of strimming in the garden, but it seemed so dull outside, and it seemed like it might rain......

  The weather forecast said nothing about rain, but Jodie arrived looking very annoyed because she had just walked through a shower - fortunately under her umbrella, which was most definitely wet when she came in. I had put the heater on low about an hour before Jodie arrived, and she complained it was hot and stuffy in the dining room. I turned the heater off, and opened the window a small amount. Half an hour later I went and changed into a long sleeved, and slightly thicker top. Another half hour and Jodie was putting an extra layer back on, and the window was closed.

  It was a very miserable afternoon in terms of the weather, and that reflected back at the beer tasting session. I did not really enjoy the session that much. Jodie was stuck playing on her phone for a lot of the time, and so was less than good company. The first beers we opened were not very nice in my opinion.

  There was one beer that I told Jodie just to put an inch in my glass as a tester. I expected it to be one of Jodie's preferred fruit sour beers. It was described as rhubarb crumble flavoured beer. I expected it to be thick and very sour, but to my surprise it was very light, and surprisingly drinkable.

  A few more beers tasted almost nasty as if they were contaminated by something, but I believe they were supposed to taste that way because of some weird and (less than) wonderful hops they were using. We had a couple more unremarkable beers (usually just a 330ml can split between the two of us), and then I decied the time had come !

  Jodie was terrified of it, but I insisted I had to taste the beer, or barley wine, pictured on the left. I had bought it a month or more ago, using my own money, and as part of my own selection. Many beers in the fridge are like this. I opened the bottle and poured Jodie just a small taster. It was quite thick, and almost oily looking. Jodie sat scowling at the taster while finishing one of the beers I didn't like. She drank hers very slowly to savour it.

   I took a big mouthful of my 14% English Barley Wine, and declared it to be delicious. For such a strong brew it was dangerously easy to drink. It is probably meant to be drunk slowly so the complex flavours can be savoured, but after the rotten beers I was having great difficulties to restrain myself from glugging it down. If I had a second bottle I could have been a complete fool and open and drank that too !

   It was the last beer we drunk yesterday, and I saw "we" because Jodie did dare to take a sip of her sample of the barley wine. Then she took another sip, and then another. The beer she was terrified of, and not just because of it's strength, turned out to be rather wonderful, and maybe even on par with her beloved Omnipollo strong imperial stouts (some of which are almost as strong).

  Jodie left just after 6.30pm to get her train. I gave the glasses a quick rinse, and thought about dinner for a few minutes. My original plan was to have some very safe soups - probably Tesco cream of chicken soup which contains under one gram of sugar per can. The reality was that I ate the other two packs of sandwiches I had bought in Tesco earlier. They were quick and almost satisfying. Unfortunately they all contained rather a lot of sugar, and quite a few calories.

  I ate while watching something on Sky Arts. I think it was a Rolling Stones gig. I seem to recall it was "good in parts", but it was not gripping enough to watch that much of it. I think it was 8pm when I switched it off and went to read in bed. I think I was fast asleep before 9pm, but I didn't sleep all that well. It was probably around 11pm when I had to get up for a pee. As usual, I was up draining off more of the beer every 2 or 3 hours.

  The temperature overnight (in my bedroom) was right on the limit. It was just cool enough to sleep under the duvet for a time, and it seemed warm enough to kick the duvet aside for a short while. I am not sure, but I think I probably woke up several more times in the night to adjust the amount of duvet I slept under. All the sleeping and waking probably spoiled my dreams, although I did remember the setting of one dream.

  That dream was set in a place a bit like an old telephone exchange. It used the same sort of racks and power distribution, and the same sort of cans that would be used to cover relay sets, but there seemed to be no selectors as used in Strowger telephone exchanges. I am not sure what the purpose of the place was, and I seemed to be there to be taught how to diagnose faults, and to repair them. I can't really remember any more than that.

  I got up soon after 6am this morning. I don't think I had a hangover, but I don't feel that bright this morning. The grey sky is particularly depressing, and I don't feel that I slept well last night. Maybe I just woke up too many times in the night for one reason or another. Fortunately there is a tiny bit of good news this morning. I have just got off the phone to the pharmacy. I got through first time, and my call was answered very quickly. My next repeat prescription is now ordered, and will be ready for collection on Wednesday (probably on my way home from the pub).

 The not so good news is that thanks to those sandwiches I ate yesterday, my weight is exactly the same as yesterday (which is at least better than it going up), and my blood glucose measurements are not all awful.... The Contour meter read 9.6mmol/l, and that is indeed awful, but at least the GlucoRX and Sinocare meters agreed on 8.8mmol/l. That is not good, but also not awful. Maybe it is better than I hoped for after all those sugar laden sandwiches.

  My blood pressure seems it's usual good low readings this morning. To get the best reading of 107/50 I had to take a second reading, but the first reading was not that much higher. The other bit of good news is that it does seem that the sun is trying to punch a hole in the clouds. We have have a few short periods of hazy sunshine now, and maybe (fingers crossed) they are getting close to real sunshine, and hopefully will also last a lot longer than the minute or two of hazy sunny spells seen so far.

  I feel sort of relaxed at the moment. It is as if ordering my repeat prescription was the point of the whole day, and now it is done.....  The only thing I can think of now is to have a shower, and then to wash a few items of clothing. I feel positive I'll have to dry it indoors, but I guess miracles do happen sometimes. I did have almost fantasies about spending some time outside in sunshine today so I wouldn't feel cold - as I do now. I guess I need another layer on until, and if the sun finally blazes through.