It is quite dull, it was quite dull earlier, and it will apparently be quite dull all day, but it will probably be dry. This morning it is 13° C, and by mid afternoon it will be barely noticeably higher at 15° C. Tomorrow should stay dry, and it should be quite bright with sunny spells, and even a few hours of full sunshine in the early morning. The temperature should hit at least 16° C.

   Yesterday was sort of OK. I can't say the morning was very exciting, but at least it didn't seem to be boring. Late morning I felt sufficiently motivated to have a shower, but not enough to wash my hair - something I feel I must do today.

  Just before I had my shower I put my lunch in the mini oven to cook while I showered, and got dressed. I sent prayers to assorted and unnamed Goddesses that the timer would not stick, and burn my two smoked haddock fishcakes to cinders before I could get to them. Happily the timer worked, and those fishcakes had about 10 minutes to cool off before I came to eat them. I put some tomato sauce on them (low sugar ketchup, obviously) and they seemed nice enough.

  After lunch I laid down for a while to let lunch settle down, but eventually I had to put down the book I was reading while resting, and maybe open my eyes if I had drifted off and was snoozing, and go and do some needed stuff. Mostly that needed stuff was to wipe down the kitchen counters and do some washing up. After that I had a wait of about 20 to 40 minutes before Jodie arrived for some beer tasting.

  We had a few nice beers, a few not so nice beers, and I don't think that any of them were so bad that I had to force them down (in some occasions I give them to the sink to drink !). Jodie didn't seem to have any inhibitions about opening a few quite strong (8+%) beers, but she was very uncommunicative. She must have spent two hours just scrolling through Instagram (I think) looking for squirrel and cat videos.

  Jodie was to get the 6.42 train to go off to meet Alan, and half an hour before she left I put the other two smoked haddock fishcakes in the oven to cook. It made it a rather heavy on fishcakes day, but as I think I explained yesterday, I was tempted to but two packs to save a bit of money via a Tesco Clubcard discount. Being fish, and not even frozen, I didn't want to risk leaving them in the fridge for too long.

  For my evening/dinner fishcakes I used some Thai Chilli sauce on them. It is medium warm, and has some garlic taste. It turned out to be the ideal stuff to go with those fishcakes. I had a single Golden Delicious apple and a chunk of extra mature, "Red Fox" red Leicestershire cheese with the apple. It seemed a fair dinner, and I hoped it would also be a fairly safe sort of dinner - it may have been.

  Both before Jodie arrived, and finishing off while I had dinner, I watched the film I mentioned that I was recording the day before. The film was called "The First Man In Space". The beginning seemed horribly American, and I was wondering just how much they were plagiarising "The Quatermass Experiment" that had been made 5 or 6 years earlier as a live TV production. What I didn't do yesterday was to consult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Man_into_Space.

  The first surprise on reading that Wikipedia page was that it was an Anglo-American production. The first part of the film was shot in America, but a lot of it was stock footage of X-plane experiments. (It was an X, for eXperimental) plane that Chuck Yaegar first broke through the sound barrier in a ROCKET power plane, that doesn't really count.) In the film the aircraft were Y planes.

  As the wikipedia pages admits, "First Man into Space was directly influenced by The Quatermass Xperiment", and now having seen the ending, I know that the two end quite differently. One curious this I saw was in the Electronic Programme Guide, and it was that one actor was named Roger Delgardo. That was the name of the actor known as The Master in the Dr Who series. It turns out that they were one and the same actor, and looking at wikipedia shows that he had a very extensive history as an actor. Wikipedia comes up with some fascination stuff about him, including his rather long full name - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Delgado

  I must admit it was a surprise to see the film was an Anglo-American production, and an even bigger surprise to see that apart from the real stock footage of the planes in action, and maybe a bit of a real American air base, most of the film was shot in and around Hampstead Heath. There is even a road chase where for just a couple of frames an old style English road warning sign could be seen as American cars raced by it.  For a basic SciFi "B" movie, it seemed strangely enjoyable.

  I had intended to be in bed, and probably asleep by about 9pm, but I stayed up to watch an episode of Have I Got news For You - a repeat of a 2017 edition. It had some good guest, and was amusing. When I subsequently tried for sleep I had some mild indigestion, but worse was some odd aches and pains that were mild, but stopped me relaxing enough. I got up and took a couple of Paracetamol, and then tried for sleep about half an hour later. It seemed like those painkillers had made no great difference, but then suddenly I was asleep. Obviously I only knew that when I woke up an hour or two later.

  After all the beer I drank, which could have been as much as 4 pints in total, I rather expected to wake up for a few big pees in the night. What actually happened is I seemed to wake up every 2 hours, or less, and only did small pees. I guess that sort of bothered me - it would have been better to have a few big pees - maybe it was the frequent waking up that means I can't seem to remember any of the numerous dreams I think I dreamed, and also that I believed to be mostly enjoyable. It seems silly to say that when I can't find a single shred of evidence that the dreams happened apart from a belief they did.

  I slept late again this morning, and it was starting to get light when I woke up and got up. With no artificial constraints, like having to go to work, I guess getting up at sunrise is probably very sensible. As always, the first thing I did was to go to the toilet where I did do what seemed to be a big pee, and also what was seen to be a big poo. What I saw on the scales destroyed any idea that my visit to the toilet had been productive. I seemed to have put on a whole 900gm overnight, and after a second visit to the toilet, that did reduce to 600gm, but that is still a big increase.

  That increase should not have been caused by the food I ate, and I reckon that one of my legs still has a few pints of beer in it.....or something. It was yet another case when I had put on weight, and yet my blood glucose measurements were really good. The Contour meter initially read 8.6mmol/l, but I was suspicious about that because I could barely get enough blood out of the first pinprick. I did another pin prick and then used the GlucoRX meter on more freely flowing blood. It read a spot on target 7.5mmol/l. The Sinocare meter roughly agreed with an only very slightly higher 7.6mmol/l. I then rechecked the Contour meter, and this time with a bit more fresh blood it read 7.8mmol/l. That was still higher than the other two, but it was all good enough for three readings in the good light green area.

  On my first, and only (because the first was good enough) blood pressure reading, I got a nice 106/51. That is good enough for me, and good enough for the meter to diagnose it as being in the "Optimum" area. It seems a shame that with good blood glucose, and good blood pressure, also body temperature readings, it was only my weight which was a big disappointment. I guess I feel better than bad, but maybe not better than not bad.

  This morning I sent a message to Angela to send her all my love and best wishes as she starts her first cancer treatment today. I hope that now the knows what to expect, the "mask" (head clamp) does not freak her out too much, and that the staff do something about where it was chafing her the last time she had to wear it. Of course this could all be mute because I think today is chemotherapy to soften up the tumour for the radiotherapy (probably) tomorrow.

  I don't really know what I am doing today, although I think I am sure I am going to wash my hair and have a shower. It is after that when I have no definite ideas. I have contemplated going out on my Freedom Pass for some miles of free railway travel, but the light seems too dull for train photography (that often needs fast shutter speeds). I am now wondering if I can bear to go out for a walk under this cold grey sky. At least photography of stationary things like trees, ideally in the autumn colours, does not need fast shutter speeds. I'll contemplate the idea of a walk, and report back tomorrow, if there is anything to show and tell.