It seems brighter this morning, and the idea of sunny spells later does seem very possible. It might even be a semi nice day, although an afternoon temperature of just 9° C could be improved on ! Tomorrow could see a high of 11° C, but it will be mildly dull, and later in the afternoon, very windy.

   This morning I took "just another 5 minutes" to extremes - hence the very late start. Back to yesterday and it was a fairly good day, although I did take some of my last words yesterday morning, that I might take a small holiday from my most diligent eating control, to extremes too !

  Yesterday seemed to be a fairly relaxed sort of day, and it was gone 11am when I had had my post writing rest, and had a shower. Once dried I got dressed ready to go out. I was heading to Savers, and then Poundstretcher. In Savers I bought spare tubes of toothpaste, a few vitamins, and some shower gel. I also bought one of my favourite candles - chocolate and honey that smells more like patchouli and vanilla to my nose.

  It was lucky that at the last minute I remembered exactly why I thought I needed to go to Poundstretcher - for the ever useful, if not exactly eco friendly, paper plates. I got some nice silver ones that would probably go poof if put in the microwave, but don't go soggy when used for freshly washed fruit. There was other stuff I bought, but the only thing of real significance was a large bag of Jalapeño flavoured crinkly crisps.

  I still had plenty of hours free until Jodie came over for some beer tasting. I used some of that time in scoffing the whole big bag of crisps I had just bought. That most definitely was not good for me, but it was one of those times when there were sufficient distraction to stop me counting, and I just kept stuffing them in. I was sort of surprised when I found I had eaten the whole bag.
  I also used the time to get back to my photo editor, and start going through the pictures I had taken on Saturday night. I was quite relieved to find that not all of them were terrible, although extremely few could honestly be called good. This picture of MT Pockets drummer is one that was OK-ish - it is theoretically all there, sharp with semi decent contrast, but still does not look right.
  This picture wouldn't look so bad if Mick, the 2nd guitar player, had been looking towards the camera. Ideally I would stepped a yard or two to the right, but it was The Partridge pub, and the rules seem to state that there will always be someone in the way.
  Dan, the only member of the band I definitely know his name, and has been in the band since I first saw them 10 or more years ago, always pulls nice poses with his guitar - but only when the angles are right to capture them. In this crowded area of the pub I could not get the best position, and the mic stand would probably cut across the picture if I was in the ideal position.
  To get this shot I think I used my fisheye lens held as high as possible over everyone's head, and then heavily cropped the final image. It would have been improved, and probably many of the other pictures would be, if I had turned up my flash gun power.
  If the bass player was not squinting, and I don't think it was from my flash gun because I was bouncing that off the ceiling, this might have been a good picture. At this point I was about halfway through the pictures. Maybe there are some better (or worse) ones to come, but I had to stop because beer time was getting close. I hope I will finish all the pictures today.

  I had all the Xmas lights on, all the beer glasses polished, and was ready for a good session when Jodie messaged me to say she had missed the train, and was on the bus. It is slower, but the bus stop is only 30 seconds from Aldi, and she went in there to buy some ingredients for her dinner/lunch or whatever she calls her late afternoon meal. If she had got the train she would have possibly spent a long time walking around Catford to buy similar stuff from any of several places.

  I had started with a pint of basic English ale before I got the message from Jodie, and I think I was possibly halfway through my second before she arrived. The good, and bad thing was that a lot of the beers we had were from the delivery she had sent to my house, and which I think arrived on Xmas eve. Many of them were very strong, but I think there may have been some low or zero alcohol cans among them.

  I think we only had medium to strong beers (one was very strong - 12% !!!). At least one was delicious, and one that might have been bad, a fruit sour, was not too sour to almost enjoy. I'm not sure how it came about, but I happened to mention that I had come across some old gig photos I had taken back in 2013. In those days my best camera was still not good enough for gig photography under uncertain light. However, there were a couple of pictures taken with my camera, but by Jo (from Chain) and they were better than the pictures I had taken.
  They were all taken on my Canon Powershot SX210 that I had bought new in 2011. Now it just so happened that I remembered that I had left it dangling on it's strap behind a coat on a hook on the back of the dining room door. I could not remember when I left it there, but it most have been quite a few months before. I also had no idea whn I last charged the battery in it, but it seemed to have at least a half charge yesterday.
  This is the untouched but shrunken picture I took of Jodie during our beer session yesterday. I think she is looking up, and almost smiling, because was not expecting the camera to still work. She once had one, and the zoom button had completely failed, and she may have thrown it away. That would be a shame because the zoom button could potentially have been fixed, and they are still a very good camera when used within their limits.

  Soon after I took this picture Mark arrived. He would be driving Jodie to Carlshalton to meet Alan, and possibly others for more drinking. By this time I had probably drunk enough, and so it was handy that Jodie was taken away before we were tempted to open another can of insane strength beer. I would definitely have drunk one if we had !

  I think I felt I should have been more drunk than I really was, but later on there do seem to be big chunks of memory I can't recall. I do remember making up another chicken burger using some quite smelly, in a garlic sort of way, ready cooked chicken burger fillets. This time I heated up the so called burger in the mini oven, and sliced it into two thinner halves before putting it in a wholemeal bap with iceberg lettuce and some mayonnaise. It was an improvement on the one I had the day before, but still not quite "exciting".

  One important detail I can't remember was whether I found anything to watch on TV while I was eating. I do remember that while might have been watching TV, I had even more to eat. It was "thin sliced Spanish meats", in rather generous portions, on dry cream crackers. By itself it would be OK, but over the day I think I was enacting death by a thousand cuts - lots of small eating errors adding to one big one !

  I seemed to feel OK when I went to bed to read quite early, and I felt OK while reading. After putting the book down, and turning out the lights, I am sure I fell asleep, or maybe I was in that half and half region of almost, but not quite asleep. All I definitely know is that it was a shock when my phone bleeped. At first I thought it must be Angela, but it turned out to be Kevin. He said he had been recently grounded after doing his back in while changing a light bulb, but expected he would finally meet me for our Xmas drink this coming Wednesday when I expect to be in The Jolly Farmers for my regular Wednesday lunchtime Guinness - if they have any Guinness during this world wide shortage.

  After dealing with the message on my phone I tried to get comfortable again so I could get back to sleep. I am sure I tried laying on my left and right sides, and it maybe the twisting and turning that did it, but I suddenly started to get a small burning pain of acid indigestion - like a little ball of fire in my chest. It did feel different to usual, but a dose of antacid seemed to give enough relief that I thought I would get to sleep again. I didn't.

  It was another night when I was still awake past midnight, and when that happens it has a sort of momentum of it's own. I had got up and started looking at stuff on the internet, and not only did that make me feel more awake, and less likely to get back to sleep, but one thing lead to another (almost like just now when I wanted one quote about the shortage of Guinness, and a quick internet search found plenty of pages I could use, but also links to other possibly interesting stuff). To cut a long story short, it was close on 3am when I finally got to sleep.

  Once asleep I seemed to sleep well, or at least I fell asleep quickly and easily after getting up for 2 or 3 pees. I definitely remember dreaming, but my memory is mainly of fragmented bits of dreams, and nothing solid to describe now. What wasn't a dream was waking up just after 6am, and thinking "just 5 minutes more would be nice". I couldn't go back to sleep straight away because I definitely needed a pee, and maybe I thought that after I was back in bed. It would be nearly 3 hours later, and my longest lie in for ages and ages, decades maybe, before I finally got up near to 9am.

  Once up the truth was slowly revealed. I had managed to put on a whole 600gm since yesterday morning. On top of that, I had ruined my really good blood glucose results from yesterday. This morning the Contour meter read 8.8mmol/l, and I guess that is not too bad. Both the GlucoRX and Sinocare meters reading 9.0mmol/l is slightly bad, but I guess if I can manage to be extra careful today, not too bad.  At least my blood pressure is still fine this morning with a reading of 106/53.
 
  There are two things I plan to do today, and I think they take precedence over going for a walk in the sunny spells (that have now started, and are looking good). The first thing is to get back to the pictures I took at the MT Pockets gig on Saturday night. Once they are finished I want to go to Aldi. There is nothing I desperately need, but several things it would be good to buy, including another 9 pack of toilet paper. In some ways, the later I do it the less chance there is of being tempted to buy and eat things that I should be avoiding today.