The wind is coming from the south today, and that is a warm direction, but that warm wind carries a lot of moisture, and so it is raining as I write this. There is not enough rain to be visible, but the road outside is most definitely wet, and there are a couple of rain drops on the window. The rain is forecast to continue until 4pm, and the temperature will slowly rise from about 10° C to 16° C until then. It may stay at 16° C for the rest of the day, and into the small hours of tomorrow morning. 6am tomorrow may see 16° C, but it will also see rain. There may even be an hour of heavy rain at 9am tomorrow, but by 11am it should stop, but it may take a few hours before the sun comes out. Tomorrow afternoon could be very sunny, but only 15° C for a few hours before falling to 14° C.

  Yesterday was possibly one of the better days compared to recent days. The sunshine obviously helped a lot. I did two and a half good/useful things. The half a things was the old story of starting some laundry, and then not completing the job (something I have to do today).

  I felt......actually I am not sure how to describe how I felt yesterday morning. It was sort of tired, but more fatigued than sleepy. I'm not sure even that is correct. After I had finished writing I had a lie down, as I usually do, but it seemed to be more imperative. I am sure I had a snooze that lasted at least half an hour. It was lucky I started writing early yesterday, and so I finished earlier, and I think my snooze only took me to just after midday.

  I must it was with some reluctance that once I had woken from my snooze I went and had a shower. I didn't feel there was enough time to wash my hair, but I don't think that was actually needed. Once showered I got dressed ready to go shopping in Tesco. The sun was out, and I decided I would go out in just t-shirt and shorts. It felt mostly fine, but the wind was a bit chilly, and I probably felt some of the strongest blasts of it.

  My (mostly imaginary) shopping list had cans of soup at the top. I would have preferred Tesco own brand soup because it has a lot less sugar in it, but there was an offer on of 5 cans of Heinz soup for £5. I think that probably matched the Tesco own brand price, and the Heinz selection included some things like Mulligatawny soup that I don't think Tesco make. I bought 5 cans of Heinz soup. Other heavy stuff included 4 two litre bottles of Diet Coke. I was going to buy some beers, but I thought I was going to be carrying quite enough without them.

  One thing I didn't buy, because there were none in the reduced price cabinet, was any sandwiches. That meant when I got home I had to think of an alternative for my lunch. If it were not that I would be drinking a few hours later, I may have not bothered with lunch. What I actually had for lunch was a lamb keema - minced lamb plus peas and diced potato as a ready meal.

  I have been doing my best to ignore Halloween, as I do most years. This year I even decided I would not go to Halloween themed gigs no matter how much I would like to see the band(s).

  As a born again atheist I think it is important not to be influenced by the supernatural.....or something like that........or maybe I just don't like unusual things, and prefer the usual routine.

  However, when Jodie arrived for our beer tasting session she had come via Lidl, which she was checking for any unusual beers. She presented me with the fake bronze candle holder pictured on the left. Candle flames are simulated by LED's, although they don't flicker like real candles do. I accepted it when Jodie said "it's heavy metal and not Halloween" (despite the box it came in clearly saying Halloween).

  It was almost a typical beer tasting session, but a bit more enjoyable on several counts. None of the beers we tried was actually horrible, and a couple were quite pleasant. I am not sure how many we tasted, but I doubt it was more than 5 or 6 cans/bottles.

  Jodie did her normal - after 5 minutes of conversation she disappeared into her mobile phone to read stuff there. Some of it was scanning the Untappd web site to see who had drunk what beer, and where they bought it. The rest of the time I think she was looking for cat videos on Instagram.

  It was not long before we were joined by Cous Cous, the big fluffy cat. I had run out of cat nip flavoured treats for him, but he had a few treat sticks, and some treat nibbles. He also had something extra. I had warmed up a couple of sausages I had left in the mini oven since the evening before. I started eating one as a "beer snack", but it didn't taste good. I would be surprised if it had gone off, but it seems probable that it had. I washed off the tomato sauce, and offered it to Cous Cous. He gave it a sniff, and decided to eat it. It was not easy to get his mouth around a sausage, but he managed it. He seemed to enjoy it, but Jodie said cats can eat pork because they can't digest it, and usually throw up. About 20 minutes later Cous Cous decided he wanted to go out, and he didn't do his usual "kerb drill" at the back door. I wonder if he did throw up, or maybe he just wanted to drink some dirty rain water.

  Jodie left to get the 6:47 train back to Elmers End, and I dished up my dinner that I had put into the oven half an hour earlier. It was more pork in the form of spare ribs with some BBQ sauce. When they were a novelty, these ready to cook in the oven, spare ribs were really wonderful, but sadly, now they are no longer a novelty, they are a bit routine - nice, but not super wonderful.

  I am sure I felt OK during the rest of the evening as I watched the usual stuff on TV. I then read for half an hour before turning out the light, and going to sleep. My sleep was almost not noteworthy, but I did have one dream that it seems was a hint about the future. It was about a toilet I wanted to use. The first very odd thing was there was a second toilet cubical that could only be entered by going through the cubicle I wanted to use. I was just about to start, after first cleaning the dirty toilet seat, when a man came out of the second cubical through the door into mine. There was not enough room to move in there without me standing astride the toilet bowl.

  Somehow the toilet bowl got disconnected, and was over by the door. That was awkward because by then I was quite keen to "go". The dream sort of faded out at that point, and it may have been as I was waking up. Once awake I thought I was constipated. I felt blocked up, and I went to the toilet getting ready to strain a bit. For about a second it was like being constipated, but suddenly the hard bit blocking the way moved. It was followed by the exact opposite to constipation. I turned out I was, and I still am suffering from diarrhoea. I feel all the blame falls squarely on the half a sausage I ate.

  This morning has not been pleasant, and it is not over even now. Maybe my guts are a lot quieter now after the visit to the toilet I just made - the second since I started writing. Prior to that it was all gurglings, and other intestinal noises. It is not all negative news. For instance I have lost some weight, although on the less positive side, it is not the several kilograms I thought I had passed (maybe some was just gas). This morning, after all that effort and unpleasantness, I have lost a mere 100gm. I can only think I ate more yesterday than I thought I had.

  My blood glucose is not too bad, but once again I think I expected it to be a bit lower. The average of all three meters was 8.47mmol/l. That is actually semi good, but it is a little higher than yesterday's 8.23mmol/l. It is lower than many day this month, and so I guess that is good. I did my Ozempic injection this morning, and hopefully that will improve my blood glucose readings for a few days. My blood pressure remains pretty good. Just now it was 118/65 with a heart rate of 78bpm.

  The weather is enough to make me think I have no intention of going out today, although I might possibly chance a quick shopping trip to Aldi - principally to see if they still have any cat nip infused Dreamies for Cous Cous. The better reason for not going out, even to Aldi is that my guts are still in turmoil. They seem more settled every hour that passes, but I definitely would not chance straying more than 30 feet from the toilet at the moment.

  Later on I will probably tweak the dragons tail. My breakfast was a nice and (hopefully) safe couple of Bakewell tart flavour cake slices (quite small, although still enough to have a high sugar content). I think I am going to dare to have some instant noodles for lunch. Maybe I'll have a less spicy flavour, or maybe I'll just say "what the hell" and go for one of my favourite flavours. Once I have finished, and uploaded this to my web server, I will lay down to read, and if I find myself drifting off to sleep, then so much the better !