This morning started cold enough for frost - thanks to a clear sky that is also responsible for golden sunshine coming through my windows. It is just about providing enough warmth to keep the heater off. If the forecast is correct, the sunshine should continue, non stop, until 2pm when we will only get sunny spells. There will be very little wind, no rain, and that should mean it will feel quite pleasant in the sunshine despite the maximum temperature being predicted to 9° C.  Tomorrow may start with almost (or maybe actually) freezing fog, but maybe by 10am the sun will burn it off to give another day of strong sunshine. It still might not warm the day up to any higher than 9° C.

  I think I can sum up yesterday as being a mostly, but not totally, a relaxed day. That made it pleasant, but the evening featured a big depressing event. It was the cause of some very unwise eating, and it was that which made it depressing, and not the other way round.

  My plans for yesterday included a shopping trip to Aldi. That didn't happen because it seemed to be getting a bit late after I had been interrupted by the delivery of a new computer monitor which had to be played with for at least half an hour. After I finished writing I had my usual rest, and maybe that was a bit longer than usual. After resting I washed my hair, and had a shower. At that point I could still have made to Aldi and back before the mid afternoon beer tasting started, but it just felt too much like a rush.

  I was about to say I just continued to laze around after I had washed, but at some point I did have to do some washing up, and getting the dining room ready for some boozing. That included putting some heating on down there. The front of my house was being warmed nicely by the sunshine, but the back of the house still seemed very chilly. The other thing I did was to have some lunch.

  My lunch was not as nice as I hoped. It was two Scotch Eggs (found on the reduced price shelf the last time I went to Tesco. I had some piccalilli with those Scotch Eggs. I can remember reading somewhere that the two went together very well, but on reflection I think it was a satirical piece. back in real life they didn't really compliment each other, but at least they gave some sort of buffer for the incoming beer a bit later......or did they ??

  Jodie came here via Lidl, and so it was maybe a bit past 3.30pm when she arrived. The good thing is that she approved of quite a few of the beers in my latest order. It was a bit annoying that she enjoyed two of them so much that she prolonged the experience by just sipping the beer, and making it last for ages - while I was getting thirstier and thirstier ! I did manage to slip in a couple of beers while I waited for Jodie.

   One of those beers was a 12% "Quadrupal" abbey style beer. I am not sure than hitting the 12% beer near the start of the session was a good idea, but the worst thing was that I didn't really like it. It slipped down easily enough, but it seemed almost flavourless. Maybe that much alcohol was numbing my taste buds. Next to arrive was Michael, and he was typically miserable and angry. Dealing with his dementia suffering wife is taking it's toll on him, and to make matters worse he still does not trust the care home she is in to do more than put a roof over her head.

  A bit later on Mark arrived. He was soon grumbling, and with good reason too. After a hard day at work, and having to drive back to Whitstable before he could rest, he did no appreciate Jodie wanting to use him as a taxi service. She had bought extra stuff in Lidl because she expected to be driven home with it after they had spent a few hours in a pub in Bromley. All Jodie's hoped for taxi services were in the opposite direction to Mark's home.

   Despite all the grumbles we had a fairly good drinking session, and many of my newly bought beers met with approval - even some of the lagers that I hoped Michael would like. It was only mild approval from Michael because he is more than happy with a few cheap supermarket lagers. My troubles started just after they all left. I felt hungry, and I wanted food, and I wanted it NOW !

  It wasn't until I checked the cooking instructions for the Katsu chicken curry, that I had intended to eat, that I realised it was not a simple ready meal that can be cooked in the microwave in 5 minutes. Some of it could be cooked/heated in the microwave, but the chicken had to be prised free of the rice, and cooked in a proper oven for 25 minutes (if I remember correctly).

  I put it back in the fridge unopened, and looked for something else in my freezer. With hindsight I think I missed something in the shelf that mainly has frozen vegetable in it - and frozen chips, which would actually have gone down well after the beer. All I found in the main shelf for ready meals and the like, was an all day breakfast. Once again I checked the cooking instructions. It seemed very complicated - various bits could be cooked in the microwave oven, but for different lengths of time, and other bits needed cooking in a real oven.

  It was far too much like mucking about, and I then opted to some little, so called protein pots. To me they were so smalls as to be like snacks, but two of them might make a decent bite. One was semi OK. It was almost tasty. The other was a few small cubes of chicken (literally no more than half an inch on each side) swimming in a load of very thin gravy with some nasty long bits of noodles.

  It was because I didn't enjoy either, and didn't feel like I had eaten enough (with painful hindsight it was !). I then followed up with salted crackers with cheese and pickled onions. Now that was nice, although it was probably a bit too filling, and maybe the pickled onions were instrumental on some bad heartburn later. The worst thing is that my entire dinner possibly ended up as a whole heap of calories.

  As usual I watched some TV while I ate, and half watched TV for a couple more hours. I think I felt OK when I got into bed just after 9pm. As soon as I felt ready for sleep I got increasing pains from my chest. It was probably mostly heartburn, but spending enough to in the freezing bathroom to pee, and brush my teeth, also brought on angina like pains. I felt very uncomfortable as I tried to sleep.

  Once again it was back to sitting up at my computer taking antacid tablets and pain killers. Neither seemed to be a cure, but both did help. The only real cure was just waiting. Maybe that was no cure at all, but the pain did slowly start to fade away, and I became so tired that I finally could not resist falling asleep. I may have only slept for an hour, maybe 90 minutes, before I had to go out to the still freezing cold (and getting colder) bathroom for a pee. I returned not to my bed, but to my desk chair where I warmed up a bit, and the cold induced angina faded again.

  At least at the start it was quite a miserable night. Maybe fom about 1am I managed to get some good sleep, and I even had a dream that I can remember in parts. It was a dream that I had some technical knowledge about, but I was mainly an observer. It concerned a woman who thought she was being overcharged by BT, and a local MP who she had brought in to try and help her dispute.

  I never did see or speak to the woman, but the MP I knew as someone who had worked in a telephone exchange before going on to university to get a PHD in a technical subject to add to his name. I don't know where I met him, and one other, in the dream, but he announced that we better go to the telephone exchange, one I knew intimately back in the 1980s, and see if he could sort out the problem for the woman.

  He had enough experience to check a few important things, and then sat down to write a hand written letter to the woman. His letter said yes, it was possible that she had been over charged, but then went on to explain that the way charging worked was based on a one second clock pulse. Once the call had been answered it would start counting clock pulses. One thing about this system was that until the first clock pulse was counted the call was free, and so she was possibly being undercharged.

  Once the call was over the counting would stop with the next clock pulse, and he did admit that would possibly over charge her for up to a whole second. He then wrote that he had scrutinised her billing account, and based up her call usage, he thought that sending her a 20p postage stamp would cover the tiny amount she may have been overcharged as a good will offer. I thought it was hilarious, and particularly that he said he was more than happy to repeat it all in court, quoting his technical credentials as an expert, if she wanted to take it further.

  As an aside, when I was working for BT we would have to investigate the occasional complaint of over charging. I think every single time it would turn out to not be an exchange fault, but someone at a customers house using the phone without the bill payers knowledge - most often it was a son or daughter, but on one occasion it was someone from overseas staying there, calling his of her folks back home at major international rates !

  I certainly peed a lot last night, and a fairly big pee, ad a fairly big poo when I got up must have helped to make my weight gain just a notch less than a complete disaster. The scales say I put on an extra 500gm in the last 24 hours. After a long-ish period of moderate stability, it is now three mornings in a row that my weight has gone up. I think I can blame last nights three part dinner, and some of the beer for it.

  Now the odd thing is that my blood glucose is 2/3rds not too bad at all. The Contour meter read 8.2mmol/l, and that is mildly good. The GlucoRX meter almost agreed with a reading of 8.6mmol/l. It was the Sinocare meter, up to it's old tricks, that first produced a silly reading of 10.3mmol/l. I did another reading, using a fresh pinprick in a different finger, and got a better reading of 9.7mmol/l. I have to believe it is this reading is an error. I am wondering if I should open a fresh canister of test strips because the current ones are somehow contaminated of something. I'll give it one more chance tomorrow, and open a fresh canister if it gives a silly reading.

  There are quite a few things I could do today, and one of them was to go shopping in Aldi. My fridge is looking fairly bare at the moment, but on a day after just putting on 500gm, I think it would be wise not to yield to the temptations of a supermarket. What I should do is the try and get out so I can't have any lunch. It is now only half an hour before midday, and it still seems to be just 6° C outside when the forecast says it should be 8° C by now. I was hoping it would get at least a few degress higher than the peak of 9° C forecast.

  The tricky thing going out in this weather is that the air can freeze, but the sun can cook. It is probably a good reason against all my main coats being black. They soak up the heat of any sunshine that falls on them, and inside my body is cooking, but my ears and nose feel like they are about to fall off. Nevertheless, the idea of a walk still feels a good one, but there is other stuff I could and should do.

  One thing I have to do before almost anything else, is to make a web page for March - the 1st March is tomorrow. Fortunately about half of it is cut and paste from this months page. Also important is to check my credit card accounts and see if any need paying off. I think one almost certainly does, and I usually do the other at the end of the month despite the cut off date being some time in the month. One other thing it would be useful to do is a bit of laundry after I have had a shower.