I thought today's forecast had got off to a bad start. It looked as if it would be a sunny morning, but we have just had a moderately heavy shower. It remains to be seen if 8am will feature heavy rain, and if there will be thunder and lightning at 1 and 2pm. I suspect today is another day when the forecasters have thrown random symbols at the weather chart to see what sticks, and they will re-arrange them as the day progresses. The only thing we can be sure of is that the afternoon temperature will briefly touch 19° C. Tomorrow mostly shows light rain for most of the day, and maybe getting heavier towards the evening. Once again the temperature will just touch 19° C.

  I can finally say that yesterday was a good day ! The only bad thing was that I walked through the park wearing a raincoat, and got very hot because I was walking in mostly bright sunshine instead of through a thunderstorm. The weather forecast insisted there was a 60% chance of a thunderstorm right up to the very minute there wasn't one !

  There seemed to be a cheerful ambience even as I was getting up yesterday. To my surprise it didn't even seem to be that cool when I went to the bathroom to shave, shampoo, and shower in preparation to going out to meet Angela later. As I dried my hair, and then got dressed, I kept wondering when the rain would start in it's build up to a midday thunderstorm.

  It was sunny when I went out, but I still thought it prudent to wear a raincoat. All that happened was it felt like I was being cooked by the sunshine falling on that dark raincoat. It didn't help that the sun was behind me, and leaving the front of the raincoat open didn't help.

  On my way to the pub I went via the vaccination centre to check the times when they are open. It is looking like I will have to get up early if I want to be one of the first in to get my Covid booster shot on Monday morning. The only fly in the ointment might be that with Monday being the start of a new issue of the booster vaccine, the place might open a little later. You'll note each day is dated on the poster, and this is the times for this week, not next week. You can't read it on this shrunk down picture, but at the bottom left of the poster it says "High quality care for every patient - every day", but as can be seen on the poster they are not open every day.
  I took a couple of pictures while walking through the park, and because of the lighting neither showed the same colours that my eye could see. I noticed two small patches of little purple flowers that seemed to have no leaves, and were growing where it looked like the leaf litter had been raked, or blown clear. I wondered if they were some kind of orchid, but I have been told they are cyclamen.
  If I made this picture brighter it would be easier to see the pretty purple/red colouration that the leaves of this tree have acquired now it is autumn, but it would also bleach out the texture of the clouds in the background. You can see the shadow of the tree caused by the bright sunshine behind me, but behind the tree it does look sort of grim. I think I was on the dividing line between two types of weather.

  I got to the pub 5 or 10 minutes before Angela because I was a bit early. I expected to see her walk in wearing a coat, probably a rain coat. She may have had something in her bag in case of rain, but all she wore was a something like a white summer blouse, and she looked gorgeous. I don't know if it was me just giving off more welcoming vibes in some mysterious way, or if it was her, but it felt like the warmth that had been missing for a month or two had returned.

  For all that added warmth our chat was hardly intimate. A lot of it was about the cost of energy bills, and how to stay warm this winter. It seemed to be a most pleasant hour, and the best was yet to come. After walking Angela back to her office she held her arms out for a nice warm hug. I haven't had one of those for weeks now, and that made yesterday's that little bit extra special.

  I would like to say I walked home feeling bright and breezy (or some metaphor I can't think of for the moment), but while I was definitely very happy, I wasn't walking on air (the metaphor I think I was looking for). Like a lot recently, my legs ached a bit, and my ankles ached more. I wonder if that is arthritis or gout developing. Maybe, and hopefully, it is because I haven't been exercising to keep the ankles, knees and to a far lesser extent, the hip joints free and easy moving.

  When I got home I didn't take my boots off straight away, and put my feet up. I made a post drinking snack of 4 rice cakes with cheese on them. That should have satisfied me until dinner time, but it didn't. Little more than an hour passed before I had another three rice cakes with ham on them. I also had some salted peanuts later in the afternoon. It feels like I spent at least an hour of the afternoon having a snooze. It is possible it could have been more. I didn't seem to pay much attention to time until 5pm.

  It feels like a waste of time, but I seemed to have go into a new TV watching rut. I have nothing better to do, and so I guess there is no loss in watching an hour of Star Trek: Enterprise, an hour of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and then half an hour of The Simpsons. If I could watch it advert free it would only add up to about 90 minutes - or so it feels. I then frequently turn the TV off until 9pm when Dave shows an episode of QI.

  The funny thing about last night's QI was that it felt like it wasn't long ago that I had watched some of it, while some of it seemed completely new to me. I ended up watching the whole hour (or was this one just 40 minutes ?) before going to bed to read for a while, and it was a short while because it wasn't long before my eyelid were drooping. I think I fell asleep very quickly once I turned the light out.

  I could almost have reported a perfect night's sleep but for two things. The first was rather silly. I think it was 3am when I woke up needing a pee. It may have been the result of more moderate blood glucose, but I didn't seem to need to pee much last night. It may have been the case that I peed more than usual in the afternoon after my 2 pints of Guinness at lunchtime. Anyway, at some time like 3am I got up for a pee, but I couldn't concentrate because big, and heavy sounding moth flew in the bathroom window, and was flying around in a distracting way.

  I had a small pee, and thought that was enough, but evidently it wasn't. I lay in bed thinking I should be able to go to sleep, but I still needed a pee. Half an hour later I went back to the bathroom to finish that pee. Even before I had finished the early pee the moth seemed to have stunned itself by crashing into first the bath, and then the light. I saw it fall down put of the corner of one eye, but I never found where it landed. Having finished my pee properly on the second attempt I went back to bed, and was soon asleep again, but before falling asleep it did feel like my bedroom was cooling down a lot.

  It was as 5am was approaching that my sleep kept getting interrupted by a fight with the duvet as I tried to cover up enough to not feel cold, and not to feel too warm. I was quite surprised to see that I had slept right through to 7am this morning in the end. It was most definitely very cool feeling in my bedroom even though the thermometer said it was 23° C. Maybe it was just me, or maybe 23° C is very cool when you are wearing no more than underpants.

  This morning I made sire I drank a pint of chilled water before checking my blood glucose. Maybe I should have waited a bit longer, or maybe those extra rice cakes, perhaps both, but this morning my blood glucose was up a little to 8.5mmol/l. I was hoping it might be a little lower, but 8.5 is fine. After that reading, and after drinking chilled water,  I had no hesitation about eating a nice hot bowl of tomato flavour instant noodles. Eatin a second bowl of stir fry flavour instant noodles was probably a bad idea, but it was nice, and helped me feel more comfortable without resorting to a woolly jumper, or burning very precious electricity to warm me up.

  This afternoon I should have Jodie here for a beer tasting session. I have several rather nice looking beers in the fridge, although I fear Jodie will say "not today". Oh well, there are others. Before that I hope to go shopping in Aldi - principally for diced meat and green leaf vegetables, but I know I will be buying a lot more than that. Hopefully they will still have the seeded fat balls that the small bids love. If I have the time, energy, and inclination I might do second shopping trip to either Poundstretcher of Savers (maybe both).