Later this afternoon we may get that 150W lightbulb moment, but it seems quite dull now. It is also very cold. At 8am I think it was closer to 2° C than the forecast 3° C. The worst thing is that the temperature could fall further before rising to an awe inspiring (in the strength of it's freezingfullness) 4° C. Maybe that assumes that we will be getting sunny spells soon, although the sky looks more like it could snow than let any sunshine through. Tomorrow could feature full sunshine all day, but the ends of the day will be below zero, and the peak temperature just 3° C. 50 miles from here, along the Kent coast, it is reported that snow is forecast !

   Yesterday was most definitely a horrible day on several levels. Nearly all of it can be blamed on the weather, but there were other reasons, including my own lack of discipline and a steadfast spine (or whatever it was called in historic books). Even my morning shower was nearly a disaster when I set the water temperature too low, and only had a tepid shower.

  I knew that going out was almost foolhardy yesterday, but it had to be done because I wanted to have my regular couple of pints of Guinness, served by Ayse, my favourite barmaid, in The Jolly Farmers. There was the potential for more than 2 pints because there was a chance I would be joined by Kevin, but I think he may have overslept, or sensibly decided to stay in the warm and dry.
  I think my thermometer said it was 12° C when I left home. I made the stupid assumption that my hooded but not padded/insulated coat would be the correct choice. It was a very wrong choice. Once I walked out my front door I was confronted with strong wind, and maybe some light drizzle. As I walked to the station that drizzle turned to light rain, and by the time I got to the station it was bucketing down with icy cold rain. The picture above shows it to be grey and damp, but does not show the intensity of the rain, although the mistiness up the line was just solid water rather than actual mist.
  This picture shows some good puddles, and a very wet train, and it looks fairly gloomy. The weather was so bad that SouthEastern seemed not to be letting their new class 707 trains out in it ! This was my train to Ladywell, and I was very glad to get on it for 2 minutes respite from the cold rain. My coat was keeping me dry from the waist up, but it still felt very cold and wet. It was almost like the cold rain was falling on my bare skin despite there being a few mm of water proof material between me and the rain.
  I can't recall seeing a wagtail on Ladywell station before, or indeed anywhere in Ladywell, but there were two of them on the opposite platform when I got off the train. It is a completely lousy picture, but it was taken through falling rain, using maximum zoom (x14 for my Canon Powershot SX210 camera), and in quite poor light. I think I am pleased to have even got a picture that is recognisable as a very small, and very fast moving bird.

  I didn't stop to take any pictures as I walked through the park, or on the path behind St Mary's church. There were a few damp looking squirrels I could have tried to snap, but the light was just terrible for such pictures. Mostly I just wanted to hurry along and get into the warmth of the pub.

  There was good and bad news when I got to the pub. The initial bad news is that Ayse, my favourite barmaid was not working yesterday, and Maria may be as helpful (she did bring my pint across to my table), but she is dull by comparison. The good news is that the pub had plenty of fresh Guinness available. It would have made a bad lunchtime even worse if there had been no Guinness.

  I don't think The Metro was published yesterday, and so I did take along my emergency, but hardly used, if at all, book of crosswords. I never did bother to get it out because I got into conversation with an old boy whose table I often share because he normally leaves within a half hour or so of my arriving. This time we spent a lot of time talking about doctors, nurses, heart attacks, and other medical stuff that we have both experienced.

  I thought there might be a chance that Kevin would turn up before I was left on my own, but neither happened. In one way that was a bit annoying - I had lugged a Xmas present for Kevin of 5 bottles of beer all the way from home, and I would later lug it home again. I ended up having just two pints of Guinness, and a double Jameson whiskey to help keep warm on the way home. I timed my exit so I would not have long to wait before the next train.

  By that time the heavy rain had reduced to medium, or even light rain, and the galeforce winds had calmed down to little more than a mild breeze. Unfortunately the air temperature had gone right down to just 6 or maybe 7° C. I wasn't exactly shivering when I got home, but I was still feeling very cold, and while my top was dry, my jeans were soaked. I felt a cold soggy mess, and that would have consequences.

  My original plan was that I would just have a snack of 4 cold sausages when I got home. I wanted something hot, and I put those sausage in a bowl, poured on pea and bacon soup, and microwaved it until it was boiling hot. Once I had changed into dry clothes that soup, with sausages, went down rather well, and for a short time I felt warm inside (the heater was struggling to get the room warm again).

  I ended up leaving the heater on full blast until it was time to get into bed, and even when I was maybe feeling a little too warm after more warm and spicy food. I may have had my first hot food at 3pm, and by 4pm I was thinking of more. I was thinking along the lines of a nice bowl of very low calorie and sugar Tesco cream of chicken soup, but what I actually had was some Heinz lentil curry,

  The pouch of lentil curry I heated up was 3 or 4 years after it's best before date, but still seemed to be in perfect condition (as I expected it would be). The main bad thing is that the sugar content looked like it was fairly high, and that is the reason it, and two more of the same, had been left untouched for so long. I really must double check one of the other pouches. It is possible the high sugar content is possibly per 100gm, or at least the full pouch rather than the more typical of per half a can as most soups are marked.

  Another hour passed and I felt the desire (but probably not the need) for more hot food. This time I cooked (for 9-0 seconds in the microwave) a pouch of Aldi's own brand Mexican beans - red beans and lentil and stuff in a spicy sauce. It tasted to be an identical recipe to the curried lentils, but with the addition of the red/kidney beans. It too suggested a high sugar content.

  After that I stopped eating hot food, but while watching a slightly boring Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, I got peckish again, and I had some thick sliced ham, cut into small squares to go on small rice crackers. At least that meal was probably fairly healthy, although... It was more likely the beans and lentils, but I was sure my pee seemed to smell of ham for the next few hours.

  I didn't bother to watch Star Trek: Voyager because the synopsis of the plot sounded very tedious in the electronic programme guide. What I did instead was to do more work on my health spreadsheets for this year.  The tedious bit would have been typing in the day of the week plus date for every day of every month on three of the spreadsheets (my weight spreadsheet is only a single reading per day, and I just made a chart of day number of the month in the left hand column, and columns for each month of the year. Apart from leap years, nothing changes from year to year, and I can copy and past one year to the next.

  Spreadsheets for other readings use the full date of the month, with different pages for each month. The new thing this year was that I suddenly realised that if I checked earlier months or tears I could find a column starting with the correct day of the week for the 1st of the month. I could copy those other, and do a simple find and replace for the correct month and year. I still haven't fully finished the job, but I have the correct dates up to the end of June, and so I can finish the year at any time in the next 6 months.

  I did some of that job, plus reading and looking at some stuff on the internet after attempting to get to sleep by 8.30pm, but failing. I had much better success when I tried for sleep at about 9.30pm. After a few moment of thinking it would never happen, I suddenly realised around 2 hours had passed, and I was waking up for the first pee of the night. I did seem to pee a lot in the night, as in quantity rather than in frequency. That worried me because it suggested yet another high blood glucose set of readings this morning.

  I remember having some long rambling dreams last night, but only one seems to have left any memory, and it was probably about 5 dreams that seemed to be one. It started with me walking with some one who looked like an older version of an old girl friend. It was obviously a very laid back relationship because I think our only motive was to find a shop that sold cream buns!

  Along the way we passed a shop of a type that I am sure no longer exists. It was a shop selling surplus electronic and some mechanical parts - very frequently as part of larger assemblies that needed stripping to get the good bits. This caught my attention, and I guess I almost ignored the girlfriend. I noticed that a small screwdriver I had in my top pocket had fallen out, somewhere in a pile of boxes full of old "junk". I asked the shop keeper if it would be OK if I emptied every box to try and find my screwdriver.

  The shop keeper said go ahead, but stack it all up afterwards. He also had a rummage, and came up with a pair of glasses, and claimed I had lost them there years ago. They were really filthy and stained, and I asked him if I could run them under a tap before trying them on. He said no because the shop didn't have a tap, but beckoned me to follow him, and we went next door where there was a motorboke shop, and a motorbike being hosed down with soapy water. Apart from no clean rinse water, and no way to get the soapy water off my hands, I cleaned the glasses and tried them on. As far as I could see they just had plain glass in them like stage props - no use to me at all.

  I then hurried after the old girlfriend, and I could see her ahead, but couldn't catch her up. I saw her enter a big building, and it turned out to be a gig venue with two theatres in it. I went in, and saw that the band were one I had seen many times playing pubs. I looked around until I found the promoter, and said I wanted my money back. he was reluctant, but asked to see my ticket. I remember only paying £22 for it, but he remarked it was a £50 ticket, and so maybe he might refund me. Before that he suggested I could go into the second theatre instead, and not have to pay any more money for a very expensive, very posh, classical performance. I made derogatory comments about brass and string instruments, and he reluctantly gave me my £50 back (for the ticket I seemed to have only paid £22 for).

  There was another lon and muddled dream I remember having, but the details seem to have leaked from my brain when I got up. I was probably too worried about what I would find when I checked my health readings. As usual, the first thing after getting up, and out of bed, is to go to the toilet. This morning it was another big pee, but no poo, and even a fart was not the jet engine sounding, lentil powered fart I was expecting. After that the scales read that I had put on 500gm after all my excess eating yesterday.

  To my surprise, my blood glucose readings were not a complete disaster, or even any type of disaster. They couldn't described as that good, but they were not bad either. The Contour meter read 8.5mmol/l, and that was spot on my old target until I went through a better phase and changed my target to 7.5mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read a bit higher at 8.8mmol/l, and the Sinocare went a bit higher still at 8.9mmol/l. All these figures are neither good nor bad, but just sort of boring in a "could be better" sort of way.  My blood pressure is again a bit higher than my typical best, but 109/46 is still very good, and that is all that matters.

  It is now 11am as I write this, and the sunny spells have finally started. The sunshine doesn't seem to be carrying much warmth, and the outside temperature has barely moved from 3° C, but it looks so much nicer. I doubt I will be going out to enjoy any sunshine. I need no shopping, or at least nothing in particular. If I went to Poundstretcher I could probably fill a small shopping bag with odds and sods, but I think I will be staying in, and hoping the sunshine coming through my front room windows will warm the rooms up a bit.

  The main thing on the agenda today is the dangerous (for my eating discipline) beer tasting session this afternoon. I think both Jodie and Michael will be here, and there is a good chance that we, or at least I will be consuming some strong winter/Xmas beers again. If I have any sense left, I'll stick to just a couple f cans of soup for my dinner tonight, but I may make a big, bap sized, roll with beef and horseradish source in it for a pre-drinking lunch.