The forecast says thick cloud all day, but this morning has started with a semi clear sky and sunshine ! The sky still looks clear enough that it could last for at least an hour or two. Out of curiosity I've just check the view out of the back of the house (towards the north), and the sky is also at least 90% clear in that direction. The forecast is actually predicting drizzle as I write this. It make me wonder how accurate the rest of the forecast can be. The temperature should drop soon from 8 to 7° C, but it is barely above 6° C as I write this. Maybe it will rise to 7° C and then stay there for the rest of the day. Maybe there will be rain tonight, and maybe the afternoon will feature thick cloud, but who knows ?  Tomorrow may be 7° C almost all day, and be very cloudy with occasional falls of drizzle.

  I'm not sure how to describe my day, yesterday. It was neither good nor bad, but I guess there was a bias towards the good. It was certainly a day when I watched my food intake more rigidly than recently, and reaped some slight benefit from it.

  After I finished writing yesterday's piece I noticed a lull in the rain. I didn't act on it straight away, and had my usual rest after writing. After that rest, which included some time with my eyes shut, although I don't think I snoozed, but may have done, I looked outside and there seemed to be the same, or perhaps a new lull in the rain. I thought I might make it to Tesco without getting drowned, or blow away.

  Regardless of going to Tesco, I would also be seeing Jodie in the afternoon, and so washing my hair, and having a shower was not wasted. By the time I had finished blow drying my hair, it was teeming down again, and any thoughts of going to Tesco evaporated instantly. That left me plenty of hours to do stuff - if I had stuff to do. One thing I had to do was to finish washing the hand towel I mentioned yesterday.

 I got as far as putting the dry, but still soaped towel into a bucket of hot water, and although the water is now obviously cold, that is where it remains this morning. I'll have to do something about that later.  The only other thing I did was to do a few bits of washing up in the kitchen, and wipe down the work surfaces ready for Jodie to mess them up later when cooking her lunch and dinner for later.

  I said further up the page that I was very meticulous about what I ate yesterday. That is not wholly truly true. I guess it was for elevenses that I scoffed the last bit of the chocolate cake that I had been carefully rationing for the last 3 or 4 days. My lunch, a little later than usual at about 1pm, was to use up the last two little salad pots. One was a chick pea salad, and the other couscous with lentils.

   There are a few problems with those little salad pots. The main one being that some of them can have quite high natural sugar levels in them. I think it might be the chick peas that contain a lot of sugar. Oh well, they are a great source of natural fibres, and so keep you "regular" (although so far this morning that has failed). Apart from eating I was gloriously lazy while waiting for Jodie to arrive.

  Jodie was a bit earlier than usual. By the looks of it she had allowed extra time to get some shopping from one or more shops on the way here. That also mean that she had a lot of raw ingredients to cook to take away with her for dinner sometime last night (or today), but first she had to part stink out the kitchen warming up some home made soup she had brought with her. After that she totally stunk out the kitchen when she cooked an onion, plus a potato and courgette in the microwave. It was the onion that gave off a pungent smell.

  We didn't seem to have many beers yesterday, and none was particularly outstanding. There was one that started off not tasting that good, but got more delicious as the level in the glass went down. Jodie had brought one novelty with her. It was notionally a fruit sour, but was not too sour. It was based on blueberries and other fruits. The colour was enhanced with added E130 (if I recall correctly) - a very potent blue dye. It certainly dyed Jodie's lips and tongue blue, and anecdotes suggested it would dye her poo and/or pee blue. I didn't have enough to put more than a very light stain on my tongue.

  I don't think I was really in a drinking mood yesterday. I was not feeling good. One symptom was that it was easy to induce a lot of brief pain into some muscles. For instance, I reached into the back of the fridge, and I got a short eye watering twinge in the muscle at the top of my right arm. On top of these occasional twinges, I had an overall yucky sort of feeling, and that sometimes included a bit of a drippy nose, and an occasional cough.

  In some ways it was like a mild mix of 'flu and a cold. I guess it could be a very mild strain of 'flu, or even a very mild covid-19 variant. The latter was prophesied in the early days of covid-19 when many virologist said it would weaken to then point of joining all the other viruses that are collectively described as the common cold, or just an inconvenience rather than deadly to a few individual with poor immune systems.

  Jodie left at 6pm to get the 6:12 train to Clockhouse where she would meet Alan in The Three Hounds bar. I got my dinner together. I was thinking of having soup again, but maybe I was also off my food (a tiny bit) and didn't fancy soup. I just had 12 (being one quarter of a packet) rice crackers and some extra mature Red Leicestershire cheese. Possibly a bit more cheese than was ideal, but that extra mature cheese is crumbly, and it is hard to cut thin slices.

  I would have eaten my dinner while watching some TV, but I couldn't find anything on that appealed to me. The best thing on offer was a recording of a Shadows reunion gig, and I did watch a minute or two of it, and just listened to a couple of tunes while reading stuff from the internet.  Once I had finished eating I didn't really have any distractions, and because I was still feeling a bit off colour, and also cold (which might have been fever, but wasn't) I brushed my teeth, and went to bed.

  It was only 7.30pm when I got comfortable (as I could) in bed. That was very early even for me, and unsurprisingly I couldn't get to sleep.....although a whole hour seemed to flash by, and I suspect I might have slipped in and out of some sleep without noticing it. Even an hour later I still felt cold, well not exactly cold, but sort of not warm enough. I got out of bed, which didn't seem to make me feel much cooler, and turned the heater on full blast.

  It didn't seem to be long before I felt just about, by a whisker, comfortable enough. I passed the time reading stuff on the internet, although I did consider watching some old TV recording, but I didn't want to tie myself down because I was still looking forward to sleep. I think it was soon after 9pm, more like my normal time, when I went back to bed. I still couldn't seem to fall asleep, and then suddenly I was asleep, and dreaming.

  It was a very different dream to any before, and I guess it was influenced by bits of some recent short stories I had been reading over the last couple of days. I dreamed I was on a Royal Navy ship, and I was actually in the Navy. I am not sure of my rank, but it was something between Captain and raw recruits. My "job" was looking after a load of raw recruits who were special technical recruits, straight out of university, and operating some new specialised equipment. Most of the dream took place in a large room with banks of equipment in it.

  One of the recruits decided to play a prank on the Captain, and while I have no idea what it was, I knew she had done it. I warned her that playing pranks on the Captain was a very dangerous thing to do. The Captain strived to have the reputation as a stern martinet, but I, knowing him for many years, knew it was all just a show. I took him aside and said there were better ways to punish the recruit than some harsh justice.

  I suggested that it would leave a more lasting impression if it was something like having to fill in endless boring forms than the cat 'o nine tails (not that that was an option in the modern navy). I am sure the actual punishment was included in my dream, but I did have the impression that the Captain came away more respected for treating the prank as a prank, and maybe the punishment was also like a prank - something I have seen before in real life = filling in a pile of forms and memos, and then having them ripped up in front of you, and reminded that they could have gone on your permanent record.

  I had other dreams, but a second big one was so fragmented that it is impossible to give any meaningful account of it. I guess I got a fairly good nights sleep last night, and I ended up getting up at just gone 7am - a bit earlier than recently. I did seem to feel a bit better for it, and this morning's unexpected sunshine has improved how I feel. As I write this it is 10:15am, and the clouds are starting to cover the sky, and the sun has only just gone in. There could be another sunny spell, but it does seem that was have had more than our ration of sunshine today - which was a lot better than the forecast offered - a big fat zero !

  As usual I went to the toilet when I got up, but only peed (although I am sure I will be pooing very soon now). Upon getting on the scales I found I weighed exactly the same as yesterday morning. If I had had a poo I may have seen a loss of 100gm or a bit more, but the important thing is that my weight has not gone up. One reason to start feeling bad again is that the sky is looking very grey to the south, although the northern sky still has many areas of blue.
  This was my view to the east at 08:06 this morning. The sun has just about risen, but is so low in the sky that it cannot be seen, but do note that apart from some thin streaks of cloud the sky is generally a pale blue in complete contradiction of what the weather forecasts said (both BBC and Met Office). It seems to be feeling colder already, but the forecast still says the day will be an almost constant 7° C.

  My sort of careful eating yesterday may not ave made any improvements with my weight, but my blood glucose is a bit lower this morning. The Contour meter read 8.1mmol/l, and that is pretty good. The GlucoRX meter read 7.9mmol/l, and that puts it into the rarely achieved lately, light green (colour code used on my spreadsheet), and so extremely good (but could do better). The Sinocare meter typically read a bit higher, but 8.4mmol/l is still just under my old target.

  One thing not so good, but only by a fraction, is my blood pressure. it might be that I was concentrating on the small signs that I may (hopefully) soon need a poo (there has been a lot of gas recently), rather than concentrating on relaxing. A systolic pressure of 115mmHg is still very good, and a diastolic pressure of 49mmHg is very good. Combined they give a machine diagnosis of "Optimum" again. My pulse rate, 52 BPM, is very typical for me, and possibly judged as suitably low by my cardiologists.

  There are a few things I think I need to do today. The first should be to finish washing the hand towel I started the day yesterday. The last thing I did the day before yesterday was, after many rinses, to add detergent to try and go through another cycle to get more grease (from my sweat) out of the towel. I took it out of the detergent at the end of the day, and let it drip dry over the bath overnight. The plan was to finish the job yesterday, but that never happened. It is still in the first, and now freezing cold, rinse water. I am thinking of starting again from scratch with more detergent, and try and do all the rinses before hanging it up to dry before the end of the day.

  The other thing I really should do today is to go shopping, and I am thinking that maybe I should go to Aldi because I haven't been in there for a few weeks. They may have stuff I haven't seen, and may need (such fantasy). Ideally I like to have a proper shower before going out among the filthy public, but I might just have a quick flick around with a damp flannel.

  I might need a proper wash later today in case I go out this evening. I would sort of like to, but I doubt it would happen. There is an open mic in The Partridge (in Bromley) tonight. I am so out of practise of going out in the evening that I might accidently find myself in bed before I should be going down the road to the bus stop. The more I described the more I find my desire to go fades away. If I do get there I will probably have a photo or three to show tomorrow, but don't hold your breath.