This morning hasn't got off to a good start. It is dull, and we have have a mix of drizzle and light rain. The light rain may not finish until 1pm, and from 2pm we might get sunny spells until sunset. The afternoon should see a high of 21° C. Warmer days may be on their way. Tomorrow may see 25° C in the afternoon, but it seems the day will be mostly dull with just a scattering of sunny spells. By Thursday we could see 27° C, and 29° C on Friday.

  Yesterday must have been better than I thought when I saw my health readings this morning, but maybe only in one specialist way. I don't recall much of yesterday being all that good, but then again it is hard to list anything bad about it. I guess that made it a fairly typical day for me.

  After I finished writing yesterday I had my usual rest and relaxation before having a shower. It was a fairly cool breeze coming through the slightly open bathroom window, and the hot water was no more than tepid. It was almost a cold shower.....well maybe not cold as in frigid, but it certainly was more fitted for a hot summers day.

  After my shower I could have gone out shopping, but it was a bit later than ideal for that, and to be honest it would only have been to buy some stuff that seemed like it might be nice instead of being essential. What was more essential was clearing a backlog of washing up in the kitchen sink, and a general wipe down of the kitchen work surfaces. In fact it was not essential because Jodie didn't need to prepare and cook her lunch when she arrived for beer tasting a bit later. I think she ate her lunch cold.

  While Jodie was not using the kitchen to prepare and cook food, I did. I had a very large sweet potato that I scraped clean, and then diced into large chunks before boiling it in a casserole dish in the microwave. After 20 minutes or so I drained the water from the sweet potato, and then mashed it with a good chunk of butter, plus salt and pepper. It was a lot bigger than I thought, and I would end up only using half of it for my dinner.

  Jodie arrived a bit later than expected - it was gone 4pm if I recall correctly. She has started a new "game" ! Although passionately disinterested about football, she discovered she could earn badges (completely worthless, and I am not even sure they have any bragging rights) on her favourite web site - untappd dot com - the site for beer enthusiasts to log the beer they have drunk, and how they rate them.

  The current thing on untappd is earning a badge for every beer drunk that is brewed in the countries taking part in the football World Cup. That meant checking all the beers in the fridges for anything that might earn her another badge. We found about 3 I think. but I am under orders to to order more beer, and I have a list of the countries needed. It is one job I will do today, and maybe the beers will be delivered in time for Thursday's beer tastings session.

  By the way, I don't buy all the beer for our sessions. Jodie buys a fair bit, but can only bring it here a few cans at a time (she has no transport of her own). I can order it, and get 24, and sometimes more, cans/bottles dumped on my doorstep. Apart from the diversion of the need of beers from many diverse countries - including such places as Saudia Arabia, and other mostly Muslim countries, who almost certainly do not have any breweries - it was a fairly normal and often boring beer tastings session.

  I must admit I was very glad when it ended - mainly because I was looking forward to my dinner. I had skipped breakfast, but I did have enough lunch to line my stomach. I think I had a pasta based "salad" bought from Tesco, and maybe a couple of hot Pepperami sticks. My dinner consisted of some of the mashed sweet potato I had prepared earlier, plus a small tin of sugar free baked beans,, and two salmon fishcakes I had found on the reduced price shelf when I was in Tesco last.

  I have to confess that my dinner was rather nice. It seemed fairly filling without being bloating. I did have a small amount of roasted pistachio ice cream as a dessert.

  The trouble with Sunday is that it is part of the weekend, and the weekend is when all the casinos and other wallet emptying companies start really heavy advertising on U+Dave and some other cheap channels. My desire to while away the rest of the evening watching TV came to an early end after one too many adverts for Betfair Casinos, and the spivs who front the adverts. I would not trust that lot to tell me the right time !

  Turning off the TV (in disgust) early did have the positive effect of giving me more time to read in bed. Since I retired I don't really need to follow any rules about when to go to bed, and when to get up, but old habits dies hard (or maybe slowly). By 11pm, and I must admit I was paying so little to the time that it could have been 10pm, it seemed like time for sleep. I put the book down, turned out the light, and I think I may have been fast asleep in about 5 minutes.

  My night's sleep was uneventful - I probably got up a few times to pee, and I probably had one or more dreams, but I can't remember anything of them now. Maybe the only notable thing was a feeling that maybe I got up too early. I definitely went for a pee when I got up, and I either had a poo then, or just a bit later. I weighed myself and I had lost a little bit of weight, but before I ate breakfast I went to the to the toilet again. This second time I did another, and quite large poo, plus a bit more pee. When I weighed myself after that I found I was a very satisfactory 800gm lighter than yesterday morning. It does seem that my intention to try and diet the old fashioned way, without using Mounjaro, still works - when I can keep it up !

  Mounjaro is still very useful to keep my blood glucose under control, but the last dose was just over a week ago, and the effects are wearing thin now. However, this morning I scored my lowest blood glucose readings in ages. I got readings of 7.2, 6.8, and 7.9mmol/l. Any reading starting with 7 I regard as very good. Readings starting with a 6 are very rare, and extremely good ! My last sixes were in April. There were none in May, and this morning was the first this month. The odd thing is that these low readings were after an evening drinking beer - although only one beer may have had a lot of sugar in it, but the lagers would have had some as well.

  Today I had a plan to go out train photographing, but two things have put me off it. One thing is that the service I was hoping to get may have only been a brief temporary diversion. Last week, or maybe the week before, the Thameslink trains coming from Rainham (Kent) were calling at Lewisham. I thought that maybe it was a new service, but when I checked it is not the case now. That is an annoyance, albeit a minor one.

  I could still go out with my camera to get some shots of unusual trains (unusual compared to my local trains), but the main confounding thing now is the weather. As I write this is looks fairly bright outside (but not bright enough for a sunny spell), and it is dry, but.... The sky looks very dirty and grey, and the weather forecast, showing lots of mostly light rain, may not be too wrong. I just don't fancy taking photos in the rain.

  I have little idea of what I may do today. One possibility, maybe even probability, is a shopping trip to Aldi. It is very far from urgent, but a new 9 pack of toilet paper would be a good idea, and there is other stuff it would be good to have in the fridge and cupboards. After last night's dinner I think I could make use of more sweet potatoes. The name "sweet" suggests they are not good for me, but it seems they have very little sugar in them, and lots of fibre. I'll have to see how the weather looks for a shopping trip later. An occasional light shower may not be enough to put me off shopping. I think I will most likely make up today as it happens.