The Met Office was a bit more generous with it's sunny spells today, compared to the BBC forecast above. If The met Office are right there could be sunny spells from 10am (which doesn't seem likely at the moment) to 3pm this afternoon. Maybe the BBC is closer to the truth, or maybe today will be like yesterday with sunny spells that were just not shown in the forecast, and some of those sunny spells were long enough to be described as "sunny". Today should be dry, and the afternoon should be 11° C. Tomorrow is currently forecast to be dull but dry until almost midnight, when there could be rain. It should be 10° C, and I guess that is not too bad for mid December.

  There were a few bad things yesterday. Almost enough to call it a bad day, but there were also good things too, to offset the bad things. It was another day when I should have washed my hair, but once again I didn't seem to have the patience or the time.

  The lack of time was mostly an illusion. I wanted to go shopping in Tesco, but I was worried that if I did that too late, and my beer delivery was too early, I might miss the delivery. Had I truly believed the predicted, and as it turned out, the actual time of the delivery, I would have had plenty of time to even go shopping twice if I had felt the need, and the energy to do it.

  One of the things I didn't do before going shopping was to check my fridge/freezer. It was probably a few weeks ago I noticed the motor/compressor was sounding a bit different. It was not a big change, and I did not pay it much attention. The night before last I took a bottle of what should have been chilled water out of the fridge, and although it had not been in there long, it seemed to far from chilled - actually slightly warmer than water straight from the tap at this time of year.

  I had deep suspicions that my fridge/freezer had died. It may have been the case that I was subconsciously thinking that when I went shopping in Tesco. I didn't buy all that much that needed to be kept chilled, and nothing that needed to be kept frozen. Mostly I just bought drinks and what could be called dry goods. I did buy half a ready cooked chicken, but I intended that for my dinner. The only things that would need to be kept chilled were some cheese and a tomato and broccoli quiche, and neither of those would spoil if kept at room temperature for a day or even two.

  When I got home from Tesco I went to put away those things that In would store in the fridge section of the fridge/freezer, and found that instead of being cold it was actually slightly warm in there, and it was also smelly as years of stored smells started to leak out. It was all a bit of a disaster, but I guess 40 years of non stop service was not so bad. I haven't found it yet, but I am very sure that I still have the original receipt for the old fridge, and back in 1983 it had cost just over £100.

  I did some research and found I could buy a Bush fridge/freezer from Argos that would make a good replacement, and it would only be £220, but with delivery, plus disposal fees for the old fridge, it would be £269. That seems a pretty good price. The new fridge would have more storage space in the freezer section, and that would be handy because I have always wanted more freezer space, but it does come at the cost of less larder space.

  Maybe less larder space will not be a handicap. I emptied everything from the larder/fridge part of the old fridge, and it really did not amount to much except for a load of bottles and cans - some not touched for ages. Thanks to not buying too much from Tesco, the only things I wanted to be kept chilled were a lot of cheese, and a quiche. I would later found that they would all fit in the bigger beer fridge (which is a proper fridge that even has a tiny freezer section in one corner), and still leave room for many beers.

  Of course that did rely on drinking some beers with Jodie to make some room, but we seemed to do that OK when she came over for our usually regular Sunday afternoon beer tasting session. It also seemed like a good excuse to drink one or two beers that we could have skipped over in favour of more (possibly) exotic beers. One such was the last beer we drank, and I drank most of it. It was a 12.5% (very strong !!) Baltic porter.

  It was very, very delicious. We opened it shortly before Jodie left to get her train to meet Alan. That is how I managed to get to drink about 90% of the bottle instead of the usual half each. I drank some of it while eating my dinner of the ready roasted, cold half chicken I had bought from Tesco. It seemed to go well with it, and I was able to make that last beer last a lot longer than usual, and savour it better.

  When compared to hot and greasy, southern fried chicken, probably with "fries" too, half a chicken did not seem to be that much, but... It was cold and so a lot more chewy, and the half a breast seemed very dry, plus it seemed to be a bigger chicken than used in fast food places. I felt very full after eating it, and the very strong beer was making me feel like the idea of vomiting might be a possibility.

  I didn't vomit, and in one sense that may have not been good, although in every other way it would not have been nice at all. The downside is that I felt a bit bloated, and I was getting acid indigestion as well. It was not a good feeling when I wanted to sleep it all off. On top of all that, there was something else as well. When I first got up I seemed to be mildly constipated, but shortly before going to Tesco I went to the toilet hoping something might happen - and it did !

  Instead of "plop" it went "splat". It was not diarrhoea as such, but close to it. At the time I thought there could be more of this later, and I was a bit apprehensive when I went to Tesco (doubly so since they closed access to the toilets in the store). Fortunately nothing more happened, and it didn't feel like any more would happen until just after I got in bed and tried to turn over to get to sleep. At first I thought I was just going to fart, but then I thought it might be more than that, and went to the toilet.

  In the handful of seconds it takes to get from my bedroom to toilet it went from "maybe it is just wind" to "I have 2 seconds to doomsday". 23 microseconds after sitting on the toilet it went splattery splat as a sort of continuation of what had happened in the morning, but the morning was mild by comparison.  It was all bad enough that I was back on the toilet 2 minutes after getting off. I didn't believe that would be the end of it, but with hindsight it was.

  I was not in a good way last night. I was expecting another visit to the toilet - possibly at short notice. My gut felt bloated, and I wondered if I would end up vomiting. There was no way I was going to be able to get to sleep like that. It was another night of thrashing around on my bed, and spending hours looking at stuff on my PC. At 3am, when my body temperature would normally, and probably did drop to it's lowest of the night, I felt like I was too hot, and even started sweating.

  It was 4am before I got any good sleep. I think I did manage a few short snooze like naps earlier, but they were so short they hardly counted. I had a good lie in this morning, but I still feel pretty bad. This is a bad state to be in when I have so much to do getting the old fridge ready to be taken away. There is a load of stuff on top of it which includes well over a dozed glasses - glasses that originally had candles in them. It seems sad, but with no real use for them, they are going to end up in the recycling bin.

   Feeling stressed is reflected in my main health indicators. My blood pressure is still in the "Optimum" area, but up one to 117/48. At least that is nothing to worry about - particularly when there is a very concrete (fridge shaped) reason for it. Another outcome of the dead fridge is that I have less control over what I eat at the moment - in particular I have a lot of stuff in the slowly defrosting freezer section that will have to be eaten before it has been thawed for too long. That may affect my weight, although for the last week or more, except for small wiggles of only 100gm, my weight has remained very steady.

  After the delicious, but also sweet(ish) beers yesterday, it is a wonder my blood glucose is not a lot higher. This morning two readings were in the "disappointing" region, but not actually into the danger zone. The Contour meter, for reasons that will remain a mystery, was actually very good with a reading of 7.9mmol/l. The GlucoRX and Sinocare broadly agreed with each other with a reading of 9.0mmol/l, and 9.1mmol/l. They were disappointing readings, but still clear of the danger zone.

  Today I most definitely will have a shower, and will wash my hair. After that I need to apply myself to getting the old fridge ready to be taken away, and also get where the new fridge will stand, as clean as I can get it. The old fridge has not moved since the day it was first turned on 40 years ago. There could be anything behind it ! I can't say I am looking forward to moving it ! In between all this I want at least one long snooze. If I make good enough progress early enough in the day I will order the new fridge. I have no idea how long I will have to wait for delivery. It could be anything from the next day to next year. I just hope that the only delivery slot I am offered is not on Wednesday when I want to go to The Jolly Farmers for my regular Wednesday lunchtime drink.