So far this morning it has not been that gloomy, but it is now turning that way. The forecast says the clouds will thicken from about now (as I write these words), and before long we can expect some light rain and drizzle. Most of the afternoon, and then the evening, will be very dull, but maybe dry. The small hours of this morning will be very mild with 16° C predicted. Tomorrow may start at 17° C, and by 11pm it could be 19° C - and raining ! There may only be a couple of hours when it rains. From 2pm tomorrow, we may see full sunshine, and the late afternoon reaching 20° C !

  Yesterday was a better day than expected, but maybe only because of one thing. Later in the afternoon we (me and Jodie) had a beer tasting session. That was not very exciting, but probably better than trying to find TV entertainment on a Sunday evening.

  Once upon a time (or a few months back) Cous Cous, the big fluffy cat, jumped off the lower roof, and by way of a part open window, into the spare bedroom. I never saw it happen, but I can imagine him first aiming for the top of the window frame, before leaping off that down to the floor. It seemed that while he was balancing on top of the window frame he did something, and I am not sure what. What he achieved was wedging the window stuck (I should at this point it was an old sash window).

  It looked like the frame of the sash window was bowed, and it was quite a challenge to close the window, and even then I could not force it past a small gap of about a quarter of an inch. This was during the very hot weather, and I came up with a theory that in autumn, when it was a lot cooler, and damp out, the window would free up. Yesterday that turned out to be correct. I suspect it may have happened weeks ago, but yesterday it was definitely easy to open that window, and close it again.

  The significance of being able to fully open the window (just the top part of the two part window) was that I could do some important maintenance to the gutter of the lower roof, and to remove a small jungle of weeds that were growing on the lower roof. Using my special, home made long tool with a small garden trowel fixed to the end of of it, I was able to clean some weeds out of the guttering too. I couldn't quite reach a small clump without leaning out the window, but it felt quite an achievement to do what I did.

  Prior to this I had a shower and washed my hair. That felt good too. I was going to go out a do a bit of shopping, but weeding the roof and gutter seemed more important. I was still just finishing it when Jodie arrived for some beer tasting. I have to admit the beer tasting was not as exciting as the roof weeding !
  Jodie managed about 5 minutes of conversation until her attention was purely on her phone. Sometimes she was checking beers on the Untappd (dot com) website, but more often she was scrolling through pages of what I think was Instagram. On Thursday's it becomes a choice of Jodie ignoring everyone, and Michael's non stop chatter about how the world is a terrible place these days.
  While Jodie was mostly non-communicative, I did have Cous Cous to talk to, and in a limited way he did talk back. As he came in he meowed a lot. I am unsure if he was saying "hello", or where's the cat treats.He had a selection of cat treats, including Dreamies that had catnip in them. I think he looks stoned in this picture.

  The first beer we had yesterday was from The Polly's brewery (the side of the can is just about readable in this picture). It is (I think) a Welsh brewery, and like many modern breweries it makes foul tasting beers using hops that should have been killed at birth - nasty sour and off tasting hops ! As an unspoken protest I opened a big can of Stella Artois. The canned version never seems as good as the draught version served in pubs, but it was infinitely nicer than the Polly's beer.

  Another beer we tried was a smoked beer. Smoked beers can be nice, particularly those made in Germany, but I think Jodie said it was made using a Polish process. It had an intense sooty taste, and it was not nice drinking all my glass (we shared a 500ml bottle between the two of us).

  I must admit I was not on good drinking form because of my lunch. I wanted something to "line my stomach", and I opted for an Aldi, ready to cook, Pizza. I added some extra Cheddar cheese, and maybe that was a mistake because it made it far more greasy. It ended up feeling like if I forced any more beer down it could all come up again !

  Jodie left to get the 6:37 train to Clock House station where she would get a bus a couple of stops to a beer shop/bar where she would meet Alan. Meanwhile, I made some tricky decisions about what I wanted for dinner. I did not want anything too heavy, but after drinking beer I did not want to avoid food.

  I stared off with some fruit, and then added some ice cream. I also had some dry roasted peanuts, and some baked crisp like things. They were mostly air, and hardly filling at all. I seemed to eat my dinner with no bed effects, although maybe I did feel a little full, and didn't want to do anything except read or watch TV. I did some of both, and I think it was 11pm when I was in bed, and turned out the light.

  As usual, I find it hard to say if my sleep was good or bad. I must admit that at one point I thought I was suffering from insomnia, but evidently I wasn't because what seemed like a long time awake, seemed to allow the clock to move forward by many hours with me noticing the hours going past. I remember having a dream, but I can't remember what it was about. I would say that it included ice cream, but I am sure I am confusing that with the night before (which definitely did include ice cream).

  When I got up I felt mildly uncomfortable in a sort of constipation way. It was half an hour or more before it seemed I would be able to relieve that constipation like feeling. I did a good sized poo, and with that done I jumped on the scales again, and this time I was happy to record I had lost a mere 200gm. That is not much, but better than nothing.

  This morning I checked two of my blood glucose readings twice because two of the meters seemed to give very different readings. I finally settled on 7.1mmol/l, good, 6.2mmol/l, really excellent, and 7.3mmol/l, good. That averages out to 6.87mmol/l, and I have not seen an average that low since August. Of course this raises the question "how did I do it ?". I thought I had eaten badly, and then there was the beer on top....

  I am now looking forward to a lie down, and a bit of reading. After that I think I'll have a shower, and after that, if the forecast drizzle doesn't seem too bad, I think I'll go to Tesco for some shopping. It is now essential I do this because I used the last of the hot pepper sauce on my breakfast !!