08:47 GMT

  Yesterday was one of those days when it looked very dull outside, and so I didn't really look outside very often. I may have missed the forecast rain. My feeling is that there was less rain than in the forecast. The afternoon was forecast to be dry, and it most probably was.The temperature reached 16° C for a couple of hours. Much of the day was 14° C, and so possibly mild feeling thanks to there being only mild breezes.   There has been no rain yet, although the sky, as seen out my front windows does look disgustingly grey. The view from the back of the house is or was looking much brighter, and I could see a strip of blue sky in that direction. It may be we are between two weather systems, and it might rain or it might shine depending on which way the wind blows in the upper atmosphere. My weather stations say it is already 16° C, but the two units with barometer functions say it is definitely going to rain today. The afternoon high is shown on the forecast as just 15° C, but if it is already 16° C...... Most hours today are shown with at least a 40% chance of rain, and it seems there is no denying it will be raining sooner or later.  Tomorrow may be a cooler day. Just 13° C is predicted for the afternoon high, but the current forecast for tomorrow says there may be sunny spells for most of the daylight hours.

  Yesterday was probably described best with one, almost meaningless, word - Satisfactory. There was nothing particularly good about it, but there was also nothing bad about it. Staying in all day would have isolated me from a few of the bad things - like some rain, if indeed it did rain while I was not looking !

  I guess yesterday was another day when my brain seemed to be working to British Summer Time despite the change to GMT happening some days (over a week ???) ago. I got up late, wasted some time before I started writing, and finished writing seemingly late, but ultimately it did not matter. I had time for a shower, and I had time to fiddle about with my leaking toilet system.

  This fiddling about was mostly double checking where water was dripping from, and using plastic boxes to catch the drips. It seemed like just two plastic boxes should catch every drip, and they seemed to be filling us so slowly it could be a week or two, and maybe more before I would need to empty them.  I still seem to have a very wet carpet, and I can't decide if it is wet from another less obvious leak, or if it is just taking a long time to dry out.

  I made the decision to not bother flushing the toilet if it was only a bit of pee in it. Later on I told Jodie and Michael that they were free to use the toilet at any time, but please don't attempt to flush it if it is just recycled beer in there ! It is most unfortunate to have to put these rules on guests, but I am sure they understood. On the same subject, I still haven't heard from Ayse about the plumber she recommends and his number.

  The only trouble with my late start was that I didn't have time for my usual post lunch snooze. I was ready to do the washing up, and attend to a few other things in preparation for the Thursday beer tasting session with Jodie, Michael and the fluffy cat. By the time I had done my tasks to ready the place it was almost time for Jodie to arrive, and I didn't even get the chance to just lay down and rest my eyes for a few minutes. I didn't really need to, even if I would have liked to.

  10:31 GMT: A brief real time update. The sun is now shining, but I doubt it will last long because the sky still looks very murky.

  Jodie was the first to arrive, and I think it was at about 3.15pm. She was followed by fluffy cat. I was not sure he was still talking to me because I refused to acknowledge him when he decided to meow at me at about 9.30pm last night when I went down the kitchen to get some chilled water to take to bed with me.

  If there is one thing Fluffy Cat likes it is company. Earlier on I had offered him some chicken paté cat food, and he told me is was complete rubbish and inedible. It was probably the case that one or more neighbours had fed him, and possibly his owner too. When he came to join me and Jodie ha accepted a couple of cat treat sticks with no hesitation ! First he tried to steal my chair, but I picked him up (which he does not object to) and put him in a box on a spare chair.

  That terrible treatment had him squirming on his back, and purring ! I think the rolling on his back was to tempt me to tray and rub his belly. Such an attempt would bring swift retributions from sharp claws and teeth. I sometimes wonder if he has a taste for human flesh. On the other hand, a little while later, when Jodie was eating her lunch, which included melter cheese, he very delicately, now claws at all, walked across my bare knew (I was wearing shorts) in an attempt to walk across the table to see what Jodie was eating. I don't allow him on the table, and he was slightly miffed to be put down onto the floor.

  After we had started the first beer, Jodie ignored me in favour of her phone, but she did hand me a copy of The Metro so I could ignore her while trying to do the crossword. If I recall correctly I was quite close to finishing the crossword, although admittedly I was stuck when Michael arrived and I had to abandon the crossword.

  Michael seemed in better spirits yesterday, but he still had his usual moan about never being able to contact any officialdom because it all has to be done online now....or so he thinks. He had a dozen more reasons to contact the local council than I have, but I do notice that every communication I get from the council (which is actually very, very few) has a telephone number and address on the letter, plus a department name and a reference number.

  Apparently he can't use the telephone because he does not have the patience to wade through the typical press something for this, or something for that, and the end up with a long wait in a queue, but with patience you do get through, and they should be trained to deal with queries from those who can't do stuff online.

  It is my memory, possible faulty because of the booze, that was did not drink that much yesterday, and very few of the beers were strong beers. Maybe the proof of that came out this morning. I think most of the beers we had were acceptable, although a couple were perhaps a bit marginal. There were none that I noted to buy again because they were so good.

  Jodie left first to get a train to Clock House station where she could get a 227 bus a few stops into Penge. Michael left 10 or 15 minutes later. While he was drinking up I put my dinner in the microwaved. It was a beef lasagne. It is not the sort of meal I really like, but it was near it's use by date, and had a 30% sticker on it (Aldi's way of discounting stuff they need to clear from the shelves).

  The lasagne was not as bad as feared, but I still can't say I really like it, although maybe I am growing used to stuff like that. It was marked as a meal for one, and it did seem to satisfy for a while. I am tempted to believe that it was the Mounjaro doing it's alleged stuff to reduce my appetite. It is certainly starting to have some weird effects now the dosage has been increased. An hour or two later I did feel the urge for a small snack, and I had a big slice of garlic sausage.

  I think I may have mentioned yesterday that when I was in the little supermarket on Catford Bridge I could not find any extra strong garlic sausage for Michael. I bought, and yesterday afternoon I offered Michael the ordinary strength garlic sausage, but he was not really interested. I decided to eat it myself. I am not sure that is wise while I am being dosed with Mounjaro.

  I have already mentioned one of the side effects of Mounjaro. It is supposed to slow down the emptying of the stomach. That can give food in it a chance to ferment (or some other thing) and for the last 3 or 4 days I have been getting "eggy burps" - something I had read, or heard about as a well known side effect. This morning it was augmented by garlic flavour as well.

  Mounjaro also affects the speed of food/waste in the digestive tract. That can lead to some extra farting, but also, like this morning, some very audible rumblings from the gut. This was particularly noticeable when I went to the toilet at the same time I noted it was sunny outside (a handful of paragraphs up the page). I passed a firm, rather than hard poo, but from the gurglings and rumbles from my gut I expected to "pebbledash" (as they used to say) the toilet bowl. Maybe that is a "pleasure" I will endure a bit later on.

  There is not much to say about last night. I watched the usual/typical TV programmes I always tend to watch, and then, at 11pm, I went to bed. My sleep didn't get off to a good start because I was too warm under the duvet, and too cool without it. My thermometer suggested it was only very marginally cool, and so it was probably just the after effects of booze and spicy food.

  I think it was around 2am when I woke up, or maybe I was already awake when I realised I seemed to be getting some heartburn. These days I am often not 100% sure it is heartburn or some sort of real heart trouble, but as usually happens, some antacid remedies cured the discomfort, and proved (good enough for me) that the trouble was just heartburn. An hour or more later I was dreaming.

  I thought I could described a few snippits of at least two dreams, but only one seems to have lodged some incomplete info in my brain. The dream was set in Soho, but not for the more obvious reasons. Once upon a time there was a road that had three or four shops selling a mix of government surplus, and other scrap electronics. In the dream, one of the shops was actually transplanted from Deptford. It was a shop where I once found they had some modules that had power transistors for VHF transmitters, and they were very cheap. They ended up in quite a few illegal pirate radio transmitters that were confiscated by the "authorities".

  In the dream I had got word that one of the shops in Soho had some more VHF power transistors, and although I intended to rush over to the shop, I was trying to contact the man who ran the shops to ask if could offer £100 and have him reserve as many as that would buy if I got the money to him in a day or two. I didn't actually remember if I managed to contact him to make the offer. It may have been a separate dream, but I did get to the shop, but was distracted by some mechanical gadget that seemed like the sort of thing I should have despite not knowing a thing about it.

  This morning was different to other recent mornings in one respect. I seemed to get up the first time I woke up, but that was almost 7am. other than that, it was the usual routine with a small extra flourish. I went to the toilet, did a fair pee, but now poo despite passing quite a bit of wind. I then weighed myself, and I was quite disappointed. Shortly before I went to make up my breakfast I went to the toilet again, and this time I did a useful sized poo, and a pee as well.

  I say useful sized poo because that, as well as the pee, dropped my weight from what was a bad gain, to a small weight loss. It was only a loss of 100gm compared to yesterday morning, but that is a much better than the original weight gain of 500gm ! Some times poo never seems to weight that much, but this time it did. It was also helped by passing a bit more pee. On this occasion I did flush the toilet. I would have done anyway despite my reluctance to flush it too often while it is leaking, but all the noises from my gut made me think I would soon be filling the bowl with diarrhoea. Maybe that might still happen, but things seem to be stable at the moment.

  Sometimes I think there is an inverse relationship between my weight and blood glucose. When one goes down the other goes up. My weight is down a tiny bit, and this morning my blood glucose is actually slightly less. The Contour meter read 7.2mmol/l, and that seems quite good. The GlucoRX meter read 6.5mmol/l, and that is very good. The GlocoFix meter read a fraction higher at 6.6mmol/l. On the 2nd of this month I had one reading as low as 6.7mmol/l, but it has taken until today, 5 days later to get another two reading starting with a coveted 6. I am not even sure how I managed it !

  I have no definite plans for today. I doubt I am going out today. The one solitary sunny spell did not last long, and it is back to looking pretty grim outside, although it is still dry despite what the forecasts predict. One thing I may do today is a bit of laundry, but before that I think I am going to have a long lie down, and a snooze - even if midday is only 13 minutes away, and I'll be having a post lunch snooze before lunch.....probably. I think I mostly have conserve my energy because it is my hope that I'll be going to a gig tomorrow night. 










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