08:55 BST

  Today's forecast looks a lot like yesterday, and so will it be a nicer day than forecast ? We have already had some sunny spells, albeit not lasting that long, but we have also had some showers or generally light rain. I think the warnings of thunderstorms may come to nothing again, but I'm not sure it is a chance worth taking. Once again the temperature will only rise to 20° C. Tomorrow morning is shown as being dull, and the afternoon drizzly. The temperature may briefly touch 22° C.

   Yesterday was a rather a mixed sort of day. Two things that were supposed to happen, didn't, although the second one was more my fault than anything else. It all made for a mostly boring day, and a little bit depressing too. One the other hand, the sunny spells when the forecast said it should be raining, and even a thunderstorms, were quite uplifting.

  What with all the pictures, and the video, plus seeming to have a lot to say, yesterday's 2,939 piece kept me writing for longer. That didn't matter a lot because nothing was expected to happen until early afternoon. One thing that did happen before that was a phone call from Jodie. She had been having trouble with trains the night before, and ended up staying at Alan's place. She still had trouble with trains (one line blocked for engineering work, and no trams to Elmers End), and decided she would not be able to make out afternoon beer tasting session.

  That was both good and bad news. The good news is that after Thursday's session I decided I needed to reduce my booze intake. It was instantly easy to do that with no Jodie here. It is sad to say that Jodie does not provided enough entertainment to distract me from the booze. In fact when she gets lost in her phone I drink more because I am bored. Not drinking at all is the easier option when on my own, and I didn't have a drop of booze last night.

  The other possibly useful thing of Jodie not being here was that I would be more free to see what the film crew were up to 2 minutes down the road from me. There was supposed to be upwards of 25 cast and crew to film about 1 minute of footage during a two slot in the schedule. There was a few hours for setting up, and a few hours for striking the set.  It all strikes me as being an incredibly inefficient way of shooting so little footage. I know it all has to be shot in insanely high resolution, to the standard of an iMax movie, but for TV one man with a camcorder, and one actor could have shot it all in about 20 minutes including rehearsals.

  With no Jodie expected it was less essential, but I still felt I needed a good scrub even if only getting slight close to the film crew. I didn't feel I needed to wash my hair on this occasion, and so I just had a shower, and left it at that. I got fully dressed to go out even though there would be a long wait before I expected to go out. According to the last schedule I had seen, setting up was to take place at 2pm, and so at 2pm I grabbed my biggest camera (The Nikon D610) and a wide angle lens, and took a wander down the road.

  I first walked down the road where all the vehicles were to be parked. One side of the road was lined with traffic cones, but apart from a van full of more traffic cones, and maybe some signs, there was no sign of any crew or equipment vehicles. I carried on walking to the actual bit of road where the filming would take place. I had a good idea of what I would seem and with nothing to distract me it didn't feel good doing that walk.
  Once again I just saw more traffic cones, but I did see a man parking his car. After parking it he opened his boot, and took out a folding chair. I was pretty sure he was something to do with the film crew, and so I approached him. I asked him where everybody was. He said they probably would arrive for ages. He volunteered that his role was "traffic control", and so I asked what was going to happen to the buses that use that bit of road. he said they would have priority to drive through the set.

  The "set" was supposed to include some treatment to make it look like it was frosty (the advert is for showing in winter). I would have liked to see how that was done, but I had a bad feeling about it. I know that there is an awful lot of just waiting around on a film set with apparently nothing going on. I decided I would go home for some lunch, and while I walked the 2 minutes back to home I seemed to decide I could not be bothered to go out again. Maybe the point was hammered home by a brief, but semi heavy downpour just after I got home. It was probably the last of the day.

  My lunch was to be an individual cottage pie. I had cooked it the day before, or I should say I over cooked it the day before. The times got stuck on the mini oven, and instead of 30 minutes it probably got over an hour of cooking ! I ate it cold, and it was not very nice, but not for the obvious reason. I had hoped all that overcooking would have concentrated all the flavours, but it didn't taste special at all. In fact, probably because it was cold, it didn't taste of much at all.

  After lunch I had occasional thoughts of going out again, but I kept coming to the same answer - I couldn't be bothered ! I did consider having one or two quick beers, but I didn't have any. I was generally lightly bored - not bored enough to hit the fridge, but bored enough for a couple of light snacks  - which included some ice cream. I had been looking forward to trying a tub of Tesco "caramel biscuit" flavour ice cream. I knew it's sugar content, while low compared to some, was still high enough to be very bad for me if I didn't restrain myself - which I did.

  Apart from dinner of cold chicken breast with a mixed, ready made, salad, followed by some no sugar choc chip cookies, the rest of my day was just a mix of reading, and almost half watched TV. I could have potentially watched two editions of Have I Got News For You, but the second one featured guests I had never heard of, and I was not even sure who the faintly irritating guest presenter was. I turned off before I had watched half of it, and read in bed for a while.

  Like the day, I had a mostly boring sleep. I don't recall any interesting dreams, and I don't think I got up to pee all that often. My bedroom seemed to have cooled down a lot in the night, and when got up I treated myself to half an hour of the heater on low. It did not need much before I was feeling quite warm enough as I started moving around instead of lying inert, or mostly inert, on my bed.

  The last pee I had, and to a slightly lesser extent the one before, were bigger than those in the night. I had been hoping to have peed a lot last night because it makes my weight seem less. Without a lot of peeing my weight was up, but only by just 300gm, and I am still in a good place to maybe lose more - particularly if I could manage to do some exercise today, but that might be tricky if the weather is as bad as forecast.

  Not peeing much in the night might indicate my blood glucose level was goo this morning. It was not exactly good, but it was a lot better than yesterday. The Contour meter read 7.9mmol/l, and that is just low enough to be colour coded green on my spreadsheet. The GlucoRX meter was not so good, but 8/1mmol/l is not so bad, and it is only just a tiny bit higher than the Contour meter. Once again, after apparently getting off to a good start, the Contour Plus meter gave the highest reading. It was 8.6mmol/l, and that is 0.1 above my old target of 8.5mmol/l. I now strive to reach my new target of 7.5mmol/l.

  My fantasy plan for today is to go out for some train rides within the Freedom Pass zone on the old London, Tilbury & Southend Railway - better known now as C2C. I know they have just 10 class 745 trains on top of their usual class 357 trains. I have photographed some class 745 trains in the greater Anglia area, but I am unsure if I have ever ridden on one. I would like to have a ride on one (just to tick an imaginary box) and to get a photo of one in C2C livery.

  I think the weather puts me off, and there is one other thing that holds me back. I seem to be having another constipation day. It does not feel bad, and it might even feel there could be some movement before the morning is over. To muddy the waters even more....as I type this I can see deep shadows outside while we have a sunny spell, but in my direct eyesight is a huge black cloud ! I think today's weather is going to be highly variable today.

  It would be quite boring, but it would be good for me to go for a walk in the park today, and leave fantasies about train spotting maybe to tomorrow when the weather may be a little less terrible. On the subject of the weather.... Usually out of sight in the spare bedroom, I have another weather station, and this one is a little different in as much as the barometer section actually puts some numbers on the atmospheric pressure.

  Last night, and 9.24pm it was showing a forecast for rain, and that is based on the atmospheric pressure (and possibly the humidity too). It was showing an atmospheric pressure of 999mb - which curiously enough is what the BBC say the pressure should be right now. Until now I have paid little attention to any value of the pressure, but from now on I am going to try and consider it, and what it may mean. I think I have been aware that falling pressure signifies bad weather, and high pressure fine weather, but I had no idea what high and low actually is.

  That same weather station display is saying the pressure has dropped to 997mb. I guess that means bad (or badder !) weather is expected. Maybe we are about to get heavy rain, as the BBC forecast predicts for right now (and the gathering black clouds suggest it is going to happen), and maybe we might even get one of the thunderstorms the BBC love to litter their forecasts with ! Of course all that is the long way to say that maybe I won't be going out today !