08:42 BST

  Even the latest revision to the weather forecast still shows it should be sunny now, but the sky remains grey, a semi light, semi dark grey.  Since putting the full stop at the end of the last sentence, the sun has come out ! There still seems to be a lot of cloud to the east, and so it may not stay out long. Another error in the forecast is that it is a couple of degrees warmer than forecast as I write this. Today should stay dry, although it might rain at midnight, and the temperature should peak at 28° C, and possibly higher. Tomorrow is where it gets interesting, The day may start with heavy rain, and then from 11am until 5pm there could be thundery showers. That will hold the temperature down to just 23° C, but the last three hours of daylight may feature full sunshine !

  Yesterday should probably be judged as a bad day, but some bits of the day were quite good. I quite enjoyed some boozing, and it was the consequences of that which was responsible for yesterday being a bad day ! Oh well, it could have been worse. It could have been a boring day.

  With hindsight it is possible that my breakfast set a negative trend. Once again it was a double helping of instant noodles, but both were slightly larger packets than usual. One packet was of curry flavour noodles, and I seem to think it had a slightly high sugar content. The other was tomato flavour, and it was my fault it had a higher sugar content - I added a big squirt of tomato purée to it to make it extra tomatoey. Tomatoes contain quite a lot of sugar, and it is concentrated in purée form.

  I kept out of trouble for quite some time after that as I wrote nearly 3000 words for yesterday's electronic diary (what you are reading now). It didn't seem to take that long as I was writing it, but I noticed the time was a lot later than I thought when I had finished. I had expected that I might go shopping in Aldi yesterday, but while I did have plenty of time, it felt too much like it would be a mad rush.

  There is a better reason why I didn't go to Aldi. Firstly I looked out the window and it seemed depressingly grey outside. Then I looked in the fridge and realised I had no room in it for more stuff - although some of the space was taken up by cans of beer that had overflowed from the two beer fridges in the dining room. Some of them would be drunk before the day was over, and some food would also be eaten as well.

  By the time I had had my morning shower it was almost midday. Twenty minutes later it felt like it should be lunch time. I would be drinking in three or four hours time, and so I wanted to line my stomach before I started. What I had for lunch seemed fairly safe - at the time, but with hindsight maybe not as safe as hoped. I ate a lot of pâté scooped up with crispy cheese and garlic flatbreads. The latter seem to be fairly safe, but it does seem that every time I eat a lot of them I seem to raise my blood glucose a lot.

  Jodie arrived soon after 3pm, and we started the beer tasting session. I must admit I had opened a can of lager before she arrived, but I made that can last a long time. One reason for that is that I paused drinking it several times to have a taste of what Jodie was drinking. Initially that was a few quite low alcohol Radlers (beer brewed with lemons).  I am not a great fan of Radlers, but one of them was almost very nice.

  As soon as we started drinking I sent a text to Michael to remind him. He soon replied with his usual negative "he would join us if he were able". He has been very negative for weeks and maybe months now, but always turns up. Yesterday he turned up nearly an hour earlier than usual. The reason was a desperate need of conversation with someone other than his dementia suffering wife. He feels she has not long to live now. I suspect she will survive a lot longer than he expects or even hopes for. I expect he will totally go to pieces when she does die, but if he can recover from that it will be the best thing for him.

  I have to admit it is getting harder to keep some semi cheerful conversation going with Michael, and I am beginning to think it is encouraging me to drink more than I might otherwise do. It is a bit sad that I enjoy boozing less now, and it is quite rare that I drink at any other time than Wednesdays when I have my two pints of Guinness, and Thursdays and Sundays when I drink beer at home with Jodie, and Michael (but he only on Thursdays - so far).

  Most of the beers I was drinking were not much more than 4%, and some a lot less. I had always intended that I would finish off on something a lot stronger, and indeed I did. I didn't drink the whole 330ml can, but that last beer was 14.8%, and that is about as strong as most beers can be brewed ! After that was finished Jodie and Michael left, and I seemed to feel almost sober.

  I was certainly sober enough to be careful about my dinner, or at least the first course of it. I had a chicken salad made from a ready made Tesco "simple salad" fortified with a couple of extra baby plum tomatoes, and some cornichons. The chicken was a ready cooked and sliced BBQ flavour. It was dressed with some balsamic dressing. I enjoyed it, although it didn't seem very filling. I think I had a dessert of some ice cream. Eating ice cream that late was probably one of the biggest reasons for high blood glucose this morning.

  I watched a bit of TV last night, but I think I attempted to sleep from after 9pm. I did seem tired enough to go to sleep, but maybe only for an hour. There were several reasons why it was almost impossible to get back to sleep after waking from that short sleep. One thing that is easy to explain - it was a very muggy night. I was damp with sweat, but that made it feel really chilly when I aimed the fan at me. it was a struggle to find a good compromise.

  The worse reason for not being able to sleep was another attack of heartburn...although I am not sure it was just heartburn. Sometimes there were hints that some angina pain was mixed in, but that was probably more because the heartburn was so bad. Several doses of antacids did calm most of it down, but I was belching a lot. My stomach must have blown up like a balloon. I am sort of surprised I didn't vomit. I don't think there was any time when it seemed like I might even possibly vomit.

  The other very negative thing about all this is that I was deprived of the chance to sleep through any hangover, and so I had hangover symptoms to contend with. I am unsure when I first got back to sleep, a rather poor sleep. I think it was gone 2am, and more like 3am before I was getting some good sleep. I still woke up at around 6am as if it was time to get up, but I forced myself to try for more sleep. I was in bed until just before 8am, but I may have only slept for half that 2 hours extra in bed.

  I only remember one detail from one dream last night, and I am unsure when in the night it was. I dreamed I was on my bed, and the bed was pushed right up to what was an empty window frame that was about the size of a typical door turned on it's side. It meant that I could potential roll out of bed straight into a 20ft drop to the ground outside. In the dream I was watching a couple of workmen who had dug up what looked like a large transformer on the other side of the road. As they talked I could see then gesturing to something to the left. I had to put up a hand to the top of the window frame to stop myself falling out while I leaned outwards to see what was up the road. I saw something, but I think I woke up before I could tell what it was.

  When I finally got up I had to go for a rather large pee. I thought that was a good thing, and was definitely not expecting to see the scales say I had put on 1.6kg apparently overnight. That amount in 24 hours should be impossible ! To make it seem even worse it seems that my water retaining left leg seems a lot less swollen. I had been relying on that swollen leg as a reason for my weight not being as low as I had got it at the start of this month.

  There was even more bad news when I checked my blood glucose. It had gone from good (albeit not excellent) to really terrible. The Contour meter read 8.2mmol/l, and that would have been good enough, but it was the other two meters, the GlucoRX  and Contour Plus meters that really let me down. Both agreed my blood glucose was 9.2mmol/l. That is still the right side of the red line, but a hell of a jump since the day before.

  Even my blood pressure is up, but only by a little this morning. The blood pressure meter still diagnoses the reading of 127/52 as "normal", and it is still well under what one of my doctors said would be perfectly acceptable. Therefore I shan't worry about it. I do worry about my weight gain and my high blood glucose. I made a decision to skip breakfast, but my stomach is already starting to growl, and I may have a light breakfast (possible a single small helping of instant noodles) for elevenses.

  I really should try and get out today while the weather is good. Tomorrow is going to be a case of "batten down the hatches and weather the storm", and I very much doubt I would even go out in such weather. On the other hand, if it was a lot cooler I could flirt with insanity, and go out to some clear ground in the middle of a thunderstorm in the hope of getting some good picture. I very much doubt I would actually do that.

  Back to today and ideally I would attempt a three mile walk. I am not sure why, but I don't fancy that. I could still go just to Aldi, but I don't think I will do that either. One of the main reason for going to Aldi would be to hopefully get a few of the specials that had, like instant noodles and a hot chilli sauce before both are never seen in there again. That might still tempt me, but on the other hand I really don't want any temptations today.