Today's forecast says it will be very dull until 11am, and it certainly is very dull as I write this. What is more worrying is the the barometers in my thermometers all say the pressure is dropping, and rain should be expected. If it does rain, contrary to the forecast, that rain is going to fall as snow ! It is just 1° C now, and maybe it will warm up to 3° C by 1pm. A few hours later it will slowly go back down to just 1° C again - and all that assumes we will have sunny spells at first, and then bright sunshine for the afternoon. Tomorrow may be a little warmer - a peak of 5° C is predicted. There could be some sunny spells for a lot of the very few daylight hours we are getting at this time of year, but it will still be pretty miserable, like today.

  Yesterday was one of those good and bad days, and it was mostly because I was waiting in for another box of beers to be delivered, and I had no idea when it would arrive. I hoped it would be at about the same time as the delivery the day before, but it was much later, and that messed up my day.

  Once again I wrote an awful lots of words yesterday (2898 according to the word count function in Libre Office writer), but I seemed to finish writing not too long after 10am...or maybe it was closer to 11am, but it was enough time to have a short rest before doing anything else. If it wasn't for the fear of the beer delivery man turning up in the middle of it, I would have time to have a shave, wash my hair, and have a shower before getting dressed to go to the pub for my usual Wednesday lunchtime Guinness and crosswords.

  Had my beers turned up before midday I might still have had just a quick shower, and gone out with greasy hair, and unshaved. In reality that would not have mattered too much - it was only a drinking session, and not a date. Unfortunately the beer did not arrive until just after 1.30pm, and I thought that was too late. I guess it wasn't really. I was not meeting anybody, and having my Guinness 2 or 3 hours late would not make a big difference, apart from I would end up going home in the dark.

  Once the beers had arrived, and it was just 5 bottles of Oatmeal Stout, and the third box as part of what turned out to be three boxes in total of my order from The Chiltern Brewery. I'm unsure why they didn't put them in the same box as the Barley Wines - I am sure there was room in the box for both. Anyway, once the beer was safely in, and I had a rest to get over the stress of waiting, my thoughts returned to the bathroom.

 It seemed slightly weird doing it in the middle of the afternoon when I wasn't intending to go out, see anyone, or doing anything really, but I had a nice wet shave. Then I washed and conditioned my hair. Finally I had a good scrub (figuratively speaking) under the shower. It seems my luck was with me for this procedure. For one thing there was no problem with the drain pipe from just the bathtub being frozen up as has happened during some past periods of intense cold.

  It is possible that had I had my shower at, for instance, 8am, the drain pipe could have been blocked with ice. It had been cold enough for it, but it was just over 3 degrees when I used the shower, and any ice would have melted - or so I hoped. The other good luck was that I managed to get the water temperature ideal for washing my hair and showering, and most importantly it stayed the same from beginning to end.

  About 5 years ago I put up a couple of selfies showing what I think was freshly washed hair. I came away with the idea my hair had deteriorated a lot since becoming 5 years older. There has certainly been a bit of a change, but I think the selfie I took (on the left) just after I had blown dry, and brushed my hair didn't look that bad. It would have looked a fraction better if I had managed to brush my hair in such a way as to make it look symmetrical. I'm sure it was in the mirror, but evidently not to my phone camera.

  09:08 A quick aside... I will have no stress about waiting for the delivery of my other order of beers from Beers Of Europe (dot com). I've just had an email from DHL to say expect the delivery between 10:20 and 11:20. Sometimes DHL even manage to deliver 10 or 15 minutes before the earliest estimate, but I think I will be happy if it is as late as 11:20am.

  Back to the narrative... After I was washed and dry I could have got dressed, and even gone to the pub, but I did have an idea I might put on my thick, hooded, orange winter coat. I thought that under the bright sunshine the similar blue version might have got too hot under the sun. I realise now that was probably a stupid idea. I considered going to Poundland for some more sugar free biscuits, and other stuff, but then realised that was a stupid idea as well.

  I did actually go out a few times, but each time was only to the recycling bin. I had a heap of old newspapers to recycle, plus some cut up boxes from previous deliveries of stuff (or beer) to put in the bin, as well as the contents of my recycling bin in the kitchen - mostly drinks bottles and cans. I found that even in the brilliant sunshine, which usually warms up the porch in the coldest of weathers, the wind made it feel really, really cold out there, and just a few minutes exposure to that wind was enough to chill to the bone.

  In describing all this I have partly lost track of time. I remember I wanted to have something hot for lunch, but I am sure I had it before I started going out to put stuff in the recycling bin. It would certainly have made me feel even more strongly about hot food for lunch. I know I was going to have a can or two of hot soup, but at the last moment I changed my mind, and decided that a hot bowl of instant noodles would be just as warming.

   I didn't do anything memorable for the rest of the afternoon. I think I spent a lot of it just reading, and I may have even had a short (or long !) snooze. Eventually dinner time approached, and I considered my options. One option was probably not a great idea, but was so tempting, and it was to go for a three noodles day - noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was thinking of a nice Singapore Fried Noodles from the Noodle House in Catford.

  Fortunately the ghost of Scrooge took over and I dismissed the idea of being a waste of money. I thought up a far better meal, and it should have been very nice. I had a pack of diced lamb in the fridge that needed using before it got too old, and I grilled/roasted it along with some sprouts. It is only with hindsight that I realised my mistake when cooking it. I was using frozen sprouts, and of course they needed a lot more cooking than fresh, unfrozen, sprouts. The cooking time was so long that the lamb got badly overcooked, and while still far from being burnt, it was dry and chewy.

  As usual I ate my dinner while watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It seemed a very convoluted plot that was hard to follow while eating, checking email, reading a few things on the internet etc etc. At least Star Trek:Voyager was a semi good episode. Then it was the usual TV off for an hour, and then on again to watch QI. That finished at 10pm and I went straight to bed.  I read for a while, and then, if I remember correctly, I had no trouble getting to sleep well before 11pm.

  The only bit of sleep I got that was not good was when my bedroom had cooled off a lot by about 4am, and I turned the heater up full. I thought that after a while I could get my bedroom warm enough to partly discard the duvet - another really stupid idea. Even after the heater was running flat out for about 3 hours it was still feeling a bit cool when moving around my bedroom in just underpants !

  I did have a good, or sort of good dream last night, and I expected to describe it all this morning, but the only memory I seem to have was about how the dream appeared, rather than what was in it. I do remember very distinctly thinking the ream was like reading something like an instruction manual. It was almost like a series of illustrations showing something like a story, and I was definitely not in the story, but just observing as a series of still pictures, or maybe plain black and white drawings would be closer to the truth. What I cannot remember is what that story was about !

  I can't remember any discomfort, but nor can I remember having a poo yesterday. It was with great satisfaction that I had an extra large poo when I had my morning poo this morning. Thanks to that double lost of stuff that weighed something, I had definitely lost weight when I got on the scales. It may have only been 400gm less than yesterday morning, but it takes me a lot closer to the day when hopefully I'll see the units digit of my weight (in kilograms) drop another whole unit.  That still wont be as low as a couple of very exceptional days this year, but I might even achieve that too if I am patient, and can keep losing just small amounts every day. The only flaw in that idea is that it is also getting to the point where I could get very sloppy about trying to regulate my appetite until I see an upward blip and panic.

  My blood glucose readings were both "OK" and terrible - the terrible being thanks to the seemingly terrible Exactive, cheap Chinese meter. The Contour meter read 8.7mmol/l, or just slightly above my old target. The GlucoRX meter read an identical 8.7mmol/l, and that suggests that was my real blood glucose level. It is a safe reading, but a reading starting with a "7" would be more satisfying. The Exactive meter went right over the top with a truly terrible reading of 10.4mmol/l - exactly the same as yesterday. Actually all this morning's readings were almost the same as yesterday. If there is any chance that the Exactive meter was correct, which I strongly doubt, I would be in big trouble now.

  My blood pressure seems to be slightly high this morning. I had to so a second reading because I sneezed in the middle of the first. If I felt a bit warmer, and had managed to relax a bit more I might have got a better reading than 112/47 - not that that is bad. It is still diagnosed in the meter as "optimum" and that is better than "normal", but it is another blip on my spreadsheet that spoils the boring monotony of a whole column of near identical figures.

  The next thing that should happen is the delivery of my box of beers. It could potentially happen very soon now, but possibly as late as an hour and 20 minutes time. I look forward to seeing what I have got - part of it was an unlisted box of Xmas beers.  Before finishing on the subject of beers... I did taste on of the bottles of Oatmeal Stout that arrived yesterday. There was no nasty taint of bleach, and that was a very good thing. Unfortunately I didn't really like it. The problem was that it seemed quite watery instead of creamy as you expect a stout to be. That still made it quite drinkable, but I could only give it 5 or 6 out of 10.

  Even if the delivery happens at the last minute, I should still have plenty of time to have a quick rinse under the shower, and then got out to get a few groceries in. I can't decided whether I will go to Aldi of Tesco. Both ideas have their pros and cons. Then later this afternoon, typically around 3.30pm, if the trains are behaving, Jodie will be over to help me drink some of the beers. We will probably be joined my Michael as well.