The forecast  for rain this morning seemed to start correctly, but as I write this the rain seems to have stopped, and the sun is trying to break through the clouds. Maybe it will never break through because the sky seems to be a very uniform grey colour. Maybe the rain will continue intermittently until 5pm when it is forecast it should stay dry for the rest of the day. This morning started at about 14° C (by my reckoning) and it should peak at 16° C by midday. It looks like the cloud will continue into the night, and that will keep the temperature up a bit. Tomorrow is forecast to start at 11° C. It will probably be like today with light rain or drizzle until 4pm, and then possibly dry until the end of the day. The day should reach just 14° C.

   I guess yesterday was a fairly good day, or perhaps good and bad in equal measure. I don't think I did anything yesterday morning except the usual writing, reading and snoozing. Apart from having a shower, just after midday, there was little I had to do until mid afternoon.

  I had a moderately light lunch of Heinz potato and leak soup. For a Heinz product it had a remarkably low sugar content. I gave the kitchen and dining room a quick clean, and then waited for Jodie to arrive for another beer tasting session. For a while I thought she was not coming, but she arrived late at nearly 4pm.

  We had a fairly good beer drinking session. I had actually started at about the usual time, or 20 to 30 minutes before Jodie actually arrived. I admit it wasn't terribly seasonal, but I started with a St Bernadus special Xmas ale. It was rather nice, although being worried about it's sugar content did slightly spoil the experience.

  Some of thee beers I had with Jodie were fairly good, but inevitably there were a couple that we had very opposite opinions. I did one quite unusual thing during that session. As I have mentioned many time before, Jodie does like to spend ages on her phone ignoring me, and so I brought the book I have been reading down to the dining room, and read it while swilling beer.

  I can't think of any other notable beers we had, but I can say that Jodie did approve of quite a few beers that came in my last recent beer order. We actually had some, and there are some I have been ordered not to touch (!!!) until Jodie is back from her trip to Finland (for beers and music) next Thursday week.  Maybe after arriving late, Jodie left a bit late at gone 6.30pm, although it was timed so she could meet up with Alan.

  I still had a glass of beer left when Jodie left, and I don't think it was a beer I was enjoying that much - at least I seemed to leave about an inch of beer in the bottom when I saw it still on the table this morning. Maybe I was just looking forward to my dinner, and that distracted me.

  It was a very special, or maybe just slightly unusual dinner. It was boiled new potatoes with steamed "Weekend" sausages from Poland. They were ready cooked, but much better when warm. I started off boiling the potatoes in the microwave early in the afternoon. After Jodie left I poured off most of the water, put the three sausages on top of the potatoes, and then gave it all another 5 minutes in the microwave.

  I very nearly made a stupid mistake. When I was in Tesco last week I was already looking forward to this dinner, and I made a point of buying some Tesco low salt and sugar tomato ketchup. I almost walked out of the kitchen without squirting any ketchup on those sausages, but I had put some chilli sauce on them. Maybe a combination of chilli and tomato sauce worked well.

 It was quite a tasty dinner, although without some green stuff it was not a very healthy meal. It was also not good for weight loss either. In fact, together with the beer, I seemed to have put on a lot of weight in the last 24 hours. Some mostly low sugar biscuits as a dessert probably didn't help either.

  My lack of awareness of time last night was probably all to do with being mildly drunk, but very strongly aided by no need to be aware of the time because there was nothing on TV I wanted to watch. After dinner the chilli sauce seemed to be doing a good job of keeping me feeling warm, and I turned off the heater (which I had been using rather generously during the chilly day). It was not all that long before it was more comfortable to read in bed.

  It was probably around 9pm when I put the book down, turned out the light, and tried for sleep. Unfortunately I started suffering from quite mild heartburn as soon as I was no longer distracted by reading, and had turned on my side. As I said, it was quite mild, but still too distracting for sleep. I took some antacid liquid, sat up for almost an hour, and then tried for sleep again. I was then feeling OK and did fall asleep.

   I think I slept mostly OK, but I did wake up for a pee at 3am, and it seemed to be feeling chilly enough to switch the heater on low. I have a feeling, although I can't offer any reason why, that I did sleep better once the room was warmed up a bit. One thing that did spoil my sleep in the early hours of it was the result of the hot chilli sauce on my dinner. That was probably the cause of the heartburn, but it also caused me to sweat a lot in my sleep. At 1 or 2am I woke up to find my pillow wet from sweat. It is odd that I must have slept through it because I had stopped sweating by the time I woke up.

  Most of my dreams in the night seemed to be about going back to the TV repair workshop I worked in for 6 years or so. I think I only went there to say hello to a few friends, but it turned out to be a boring experience. Many people said hello, but then ignored me. I became bored and decided to pick up a small TV and fix it for something to do. In a new sequence the senior engineer called me over and beckoned me to follow him into a part of the warehouse where written of TVs and stuff were being prepared for disposal. He had found a nice Panasonic VHS machine.

  It was one of his favourite machines because the were easy to repair, and made good quality recordings. He decided he was going to add it to his collection. I think I left then, and went to find a route 1 bus to take me part of the way home. I don't recall actually seeing a bus. Then I found myself back at the workshop where I wandered around feeling bored. This time I decided to go home straight home.

  Going home was not so easy. Somehow the workshop was now deep in the countryside, and it seemed to be an endless walk down long lanes, interspersed with a hamlet of two, as I desperately tried to remember the way to a tube station. I did see a bus stop for a country bus service, and assumed I could use my Freedom Pass on such a bus, but none seemed to be running. I woke up after apparently seeing a lot of countryside, but getting nowhere.

  I ended up having my longest sleep in for ages. I evidently needed a lot of sleep. That does seem to fit in with an idea that I am fighting some malady recently, even though there have been no overt symptoms apart from a general feeling of being under the weather - and it may just be the changing weather that is to blame.  After getting up I went to the toilet twice in about 10 minutes. I peed and pooed both times. It didn't help much. I still seemed to have put on a lot of weight in the last 24 hours.

  My blood glucose readings were not that bad this morning. The Contour meter read 8.4mmol/l, and that seemed pretty fair. The GlucoRX read a bit close to the limit with a reading of 8.9mmol/l. The Sinocare meter read just a tiny bit higher, but 9.0mmol/l just slips into the light pink, and so a warning not to eat anything bad today, and after seeing the scales this morning I wonder if I should eat anything at all.

  I needed to eat breakfast this morning to hold down the cod liver oil capsule I took, but I didn't really need to have two small packets of instant noodles - small enough to fit both into one bowl.  This morning my blood pressure is back in the "Optimum" area with slightly higher than usual reading of 111/51.

  I once had plans for today that were advanced enough to charge my Nikon P500 "bridge" camera for some sort of outing. It is a good all rounder camera that usually produced good pictures on automatic if the lighting conditions are reasonable. In today's dull weather it might set itself for a shutter speed that is slightly too long for moving trains, but that is what I was thinking of taking pictures of.

  I had in mind a couple of stations I might visit today. There are several reasons why it would be good to do so. The first is that I have not done much photography lately. The two other good reasons is that being out would mean no temptation to raid the fridge, and no need for any heating on. The reasons against it are that the light, although not as currently dull as I thought it might be, is still not ideal for photography. I am not sure I really want to do it now because I don't feel very dynamic this morning. Also, there are a few things I should do today - including some internet banking and topping up my phone, plus I could also wash a few t-shirts even though I have no choice but to dry them indoors - until maybe next May !