It still looks damp outside, but today is forecast to be a dry day. However, it is also predicted to be very grey all day long except for In the latest revision) the clouds changing from mid grey to white for a single hour at 8pm - when it will be dark, and no one will care. The temperature for the whole afternoon, and a bit beyond, will be just 10° C. Tomorrow may see 12° C, but it will come at the expense of light rain all afternoon. The long range forecasts for 3 and more days ahead keep changing, sometimes radically, and I wonder why they bother, although the trend for slowly increasing temperature may reflect something like the truth.

   The day before yesterday was bright, and tried to be warm. I felt good. Yesterday was all dull grey, wet and miserable, and I was back to feeling crap. I didn't seem to achieve anything except get drunk and cook a couple of meals. I guess having a shave, shampoo, and shower was my greatest achievement yesterday.

  After my shower I put the final things from my laundry basket in to soak. I never found the energy, or enthusiasm, get-up-and-go to finish washing those clothes, and they are still sitting in cold detergent in one of my big builders buckets (or Trugs) in the bath this morning. Finishing it is going to be an unpleasant job for today.

  I did have a couple of minor bursts of activity before mid afternoon. One was just checking the glasses were clean and dry, plus the dining room table ready for a Sunday afternoon beer drinking session with Jodie. I also cooked some lunch. After some very remarkably low blood glucose readings the day after I had had a few boiled baby potatoes with ham and mini peppers for lunch, I decided I would have more of those potatoes for lunch yesterday.

  I had used all the ham, and as a substitute I decided to melt cheese over the boiled potatoes. I guess it was far less healthy in terms of fat contents, but I hoped it would still be fairly sugar free. The big trouble was that it seemed quite small as a lunch, and wasn't as enjoyable as hoped. I think it would have been better to melt the cheese over the potatoes under the grill instead of in the microwave. Sadly it seemed that boiled potatoes for lunch was no magic elixir to keep my blood glucose low, although it is possible they were still fairly neutral, neither raising or lowering my blood glucose.

  Once I had finished microwaving my lunch I started the first stage of cooking my dinner with a 20 minute blast of microwaves. later on there would be another 10 minute blast, and late still another 10 minutes to further cook the meat, and cook the vegetables I had added. After I ate my lunch I had another lie down, and probably a snooze, as I waited for about 3.30pm and Jodie's arrival.

  It seems that our divergent tastes in what passes as beer these days, is getting to the point where Jodie and I rarely both like a beer, and in the worst cases, can't actually bring ourselves to having more than a single mouthful to taste some beers. There is also the problem that these days Jodie has tried more beers than I have ever heard of. I revealed the contents of a beer order I expect to be delivered tomorrow, and it was all "already had it, minging !, had it yesterday........".

  There were a couple of beers I ordered that she has had on draft, and will lower herself to the extent of trying them again from can or bottles to see if they are better or worse, and so she can collect the label if it possible to remove it from the bottle or can. Not only does it feel like I have wasted a lot of money, but the worst thing is that some beers I ordered were specifically to Jodie's nasty, cloudy, and tart taste, and now it seems I will have to drink some myself, and I hate them !

  I did have a couple of stouts yesterday which I liked, and Jodie didn't. The trouble with stouts is that many brewers roast the barley beyond getting it browned, and to the point where some of it is actually charred, and the stout takes on a very nasty coffee like taste. I think my next beer order is going to include a lot more ales - some English and maybe some Belgium ales. Some of them, maybe most of them, will be beers I have drunk before, and as far as my dulled memories goes, previously liked.

  It is all very well looking for the ultimate beer, but maybe some known good ones is better goal in life. On the other hand, novelty has it's attractions too, but some of the modern hipster brewers, with the long beards, and possibly drug addled brains, are producing stuff that might have a beer brewing heritage, but are nothing like what the man on the street would call beer.

  Jodie left to get the 6.29pm train as usual, and I tucked into my dinner. It was another pork stew, but with some sliced baby potatoes, and pak choi instead of bean sprouts. It seemed tasty enough, but maybe I wanted more to help kill the memory of a few mouthfuls of disgusting "beers". I finished dinner with some sugar free biscuits. I was feeling quite mellow at the end of dinner, and was ready to finishing watching an old recording of The Avengers, and go to bed.

  I never did make it to bed as early as maybe was desirable.Before going to bed I heard news that Paul Newham, bass guitarist from Hell On Tap (and other bands plus open mic nights) had suddenly died. I was semi aware that he had some sort of cancer, but I thought he was being treated for it, and his condition was stable, and not very severe. It was a bit of a shock to here he had died only a day or two ago.
  I never really knew Paul, but he seemed friendly when we met at some gigs. What I did have was quite a few pictures of him, and in the worst of last night's growing hangover I sat down to select, and in some cases edit some never before used snaps of him for a sort of memorial post on a famous social media site. In the picture above, Paul is playing his famour green stringed bass with Hell On Tap at Petts Wood Calling.
  Like many bass players he often stayed at the back, or on the side, but on rare occasions he would come forward, and maybe share some musicians joke with Steve Blessing, guitarist for Hell On Tap.
  The appearance is very similar, but I think this shot was taken a year earlier at Chislehurst Rocks
  On a slightly smaller stage at Chattfest. One problem on smaller stages is it is often difficult to get a clear shot of one musician without others getting in the way, and even enthusiastic members of the audience clogging the view. One picture I didn't show here was the picture, taken in the cramped confines of The Swan And Mitre pub, and which Paul used for his profile photo for a while. By trimming it down to the bare essentials all the stuff on the sides, that spoiled it as a good picture to use here, were lost.

  I guess because I didn't know Paul as a friend I was more saddened by the loss of a good guitarist, and plenty more knowledgeable people than me said how his playing was most excellent. There is also the sadness of the (hopefully) temporary loss of Hell On Tap. They were a band who although only a covers band, did seem to have the potential to move up to a professional level. It felt good that I have a pretty good archive of pictures of what will hopefully just be their early stuff, and not their final stuff.

   maybe if I had been in bed an hour or two earlier, and was sleeping deeply, I might have slept through some really annoying chest pain. It was more like, and may indeed have been a sort of acid indigestion pain. It was not a very strong pain, but kept me awake until about 2am this morning. The pain started to fade when I did some serious amounts of burping, and for some really unknown reason, after I did a poo at about 1am.

  It felt like I would never get to sleep, but from about 2am I realised I was having dreams. They were pretty disjointed. One was about feeding a large (but not tiger large) cat. It had to be fed raw meat with the fur still on it. That was not terribly nice. Another dream was about getting a train that terminated in the middle of a heavily polluted place that for some strange reason had a high class restaurant in the middle of it.

  I guess my periods of sleep got longer and longer, and by the end of the night I was pain free, and almost sleeping normally. I say pain free, but I still had a hangover. It was basically pain free, but it, and the lack of sleep made me feel quite groggy, and even slightly wobbly/shaky when I got up. Of course one look out the window at the grey mass of cloud, and damp road, just made me feel awful, albeit mainly mentally awful.

  My blood pressure seemed rather high, but just inside the by a hairs width of the danger level. It has come right down since taking my morning drugs, and a light breakfast. My blood glucose is still back down to "normal", but not as wonderful as yesterday mornings readings. The Contour meter did read 7.8mmol/l, and that was actually very good. The other two read 8.5mmol/l (GlucoRX), and 8.9mmol/l (Sinocare). The latter was in the OK, but.... area.

  The weather makes me feel devoid of enthusiasm today, but I am trying to raise the enthusiasm to skip lunch to see if I can improve those blood glucose readings tomorrow. It is probably unlikely because even weather provoked depression give a very strong impetus for comfort eating. Plus there could be another problem. If I can finish yesterdays laundry, so I can have a shower, I still want to go out and get some shopping - and that includes to Tesco, and all the temptations that implies.

  Later today I should be getting an Amazon delivery. It is nothing terribly exciting, just some blood glucose meter test strips, but I would prefer to be in when the man from Amazon comes knocking at my door. That could be any time from about 1pm at a very unlikely earliest, to 10pm at an incredibly stupidest worst. I could, and maybe will, take a chance of the delivery being around 2 to 3pm, and get to Tesco and back again before that. Hopefully their tracking page will eventually give more information.

  Right now, as I come to the end of today's diary/blog thing, I am feeling like catching up on another hours sleep - and O probably will. That still leaves a slim chance of getting the laundry done, and then showered by around midday - early enough to get out to the shops and back. My potentially wasted beer delivery (wasted in the sense that most of the "beer" will not be liked) should arrive tomorrow with luck, or I'll be having kittens it will interfere with my Wednesday lunchtime drink in The Jolly Farmers.
      







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