There is some patchy thin cloud in the sky at the moment, but I don't think the sunshine has dipped in the last hour or so. The BBC forecast says there should only be sunny spells until midday, but the Met Office says full sunshine until 4pm when it will change to sunny spells. Both forecasters now agree that this afternoon will see 17° C, but the Met Office forecast at 6am said that 3pm would be 18° C. Tomorrow will start with light rain, but the afternoon should be dry with sunny spells, and an afternoon temperature of only 13° C. If the longer range forecast can be believed, the day after tomorrow starts a 9 day run of sunny weather.

  Yesterday was rather a good day. Of course there were also a few negative things, but they didn't seem to spoil the day. They seem to have spoiled this morning a bit, but I'll get to that in due course. The first good thing yesterday was starting to write quite early compared to many days.

  I may not have written all that much at the time I wrote when I started, 8:03am, but a little bit later I was hammering away at the keyboard writing 1,595 words in all. As I wrote sometime in the last couple of weeks, I am a fairly fast, although often inaccurate typist on a PC. On a real typewriter I would be a complete failure because I rely on the back space key, and the ability to over type any mistakes I notice I make (but I miss plenty of mistakes on some days).

  I finished writing about an hour earlier than usual yesterday, and that gave me time to have a nice rest - laying on my bed reading, and I might, or might not, have had a short snooze. Once I became active again I went to the bathroom where I had a wet shave, washed and conditioned my hair, and had a quite hot shower (I must remember to turn the water heater down a bit as the days get warmer).

  I did all that in plenty of time to take a relaxed walk to the station - except I find it hard to do a relaxed walk. Depending on the exact timing of these things, walking a bit faster (although still not exactly fast) gives me an extra minute or two to get my breath back before going up and over the footbridge to the other platform. It is fortunate that I only needed 30 seconds to get my breath back because I realised with just a little effort I could get over the footbridge in time to get the 12:19 train (I usually get the 12:34).

  After getting to Ladywell I had plenty of time to stop and photograph squirrels, but I didn't see many squirrels. I did manage to get a few snaps of small birds, including what might possibly have been a wren. Getting the picture of the wren needed a better camera than my small Nikon. It was quite a dull looking picture - a brown bird against a brown background, and it was very grainy, and slightly blurred. Even worse was that the (possible) wren, and a robin I took a couple of snaps of, were all facing away from me.
  I did get a fair picture of some daffodils in the St Mary's Therapeutic garden. They are coming to the end of their life, and I had to get the shot right to exclude many where the flower heads had turned brown and shrivelled up. I tried to take a picture of a narcissus, but it was not one where the inside petals were orange, and in close up it just looked like a daffodil despite being considerably smaller.
  I also took a picture of a flower whose name I could not remember until I saw the picture again this morning, and instantly thought "Primrose !!".

  When I got to the pub it was a little quiet, but was starting to get busy. I sat down at my favourite table and started to read a few bits from The Metro, but was soon scratching my head over the crosswords. I think I only managed to solve one single cryptic clues. I did better with the quick crossword, but I was stymied by some of those bastard question about soap or movie actors/actresses.

  I think I was just about to finish my first pint of Guinness when my phone chimed. It was a message from Kevin, and he was asking if I was in The Jolly Farmers, and went on to say he had to pick up a prescription from the hospital after 3pm, and would drop in for a swift pint if I was there. Obviously I was there, and Kevin said he would see me shortly. I don't think I realised at that time that he was still at home. It took him nearly half an hour to arrive.

  When I ordered my second pint of Guinness I ordered one for Kevin too, and then waited and waited for him to arrive while trying to drink my pint as slowly as possible so I didn't get too far ahead. Of course when Kevin did arrive it was never going to be a "swift pint". It was two pints, and then he suggested a double Jameson whiskey to round things off. After that we left the pub. Kevin went to the hospital, and I walked to Ladywell station.

   If I had only drunk two pints I might have possibly walked home, with the extra swilling inside me I wanted to get home in good time for my next pee. Fortunately the need for a pee never got too bad, and I felt comfortable to go in the little supermarket on Catford Bridge where I bought loads of stuff. It was a good opportunity to buy some of their (usually) very good fruits, although later on I found the plums were barely ripe - hard and quite tart.

  As well as fruit I bought some other interesting stuff, plus and extra strong garlic sausage for Michael if we see him today. I went to where I had last seen the big packets of no added sugar choc chip cookies, and I also saw something new - sugar free (or no added sugar ?) butter biscuits. I bought a pack of each. I also bought some tasty instant noodles. This morning I had spicy chicken instant noodles for breakfast, and they were deliciously hot and spicy.

  I found the walk back to my house to be tiring, but not exactly painful. I definitely thought that I would not have wanted to walk a lot further - although I probably could if needed. Once I was indoors I rushed up to the toilet to have the pee I started to want while while waiting for the train on Ladywell station. It was possibly a thimbleful less than the critical amount where it could have got very uncomfortable.

  Once I had finished in the toilet I got changed into my slouchy indoor clothes, and then went down to the kitchen to make my lunch. It was two wholemeal rolls with corned beef and mustard pickle. The pickle was a mistake - it seemed like it should go with corned beef, but didn't. I wish I had used horseradish sauce because that and corned beef are a beautiful combination.
 
   The extra booze in the pub, and then the two rolls made me feel extra sleepy, but I had stuff to do. Admittedly it was not important and I could have, and should have gone for a snooze, but I didn't. Instead I transferred all the dozen or more pictures I had taken to my PC. I was very sure that I could not have taken any pictures of trains that I had not taken before. There was one picture of a train that did seem slightly better than the one in my spreadsheet, but I could not find the energy or enthusiasm to do all the editing of the picture and then the editing of the spreadsheet.

  Somehow it seemed to be time to turn the TV on before I could have a rest, but fortunately the episode of Star Trek, from the original series, was one that was just too familiar to need watching, and I did have a lie down and ignored it. As 6pm approached I got my dinner together. It was to be just fruit followed by some of the newly bought sugar free/no added sugar butter biscuits. I could have had several other things for dinner, but for some reason I decided I would go for the lighter option.

  The BBC news was not terribly interesting, but Star Trek: Voyager was one of the better episodes - that's not to say it was actually good ! It ended at 8pm, and I think I somehow I had to mop up a spare hour before watching an edition of Have I Got News For You - either that or Have I Got News For You actually started at 8pm. I can't seem to remember which was which. I think I went to bed at 10pm, and that suggests that I must have done something I can't remember between 8pm and 9pm.

  I was definitely feeling very tired when I went to bed, and I think I fell asleep very quickly. I do remember waking up an hour or two later to go for a pee. I woke with a hint of chest pain, and I decided it was just some mild heartburn. I took a couple of Gaviscon tablets and hoped it would go away. The only trouble was that when I left my warm bedroom, and entered the frigid air in the bathroom, it made everything feel worse. I had my pee and rushed back to my warm bedroom.

  I then sat at my PC, where my eyelids kept drooping, and my eyes were going out of focus. It may have taken over 10 minutes to warm up, and the last remnants of the discomfort to fade away. I'm not sure my head had hit the pillow when I fell asleep. Another hour or two later and the same thing happened, but it was not nearly as bad. It was sort of annoying, maybe only with hindsight, that each pee was small enough that I could have slept for three hours before needing to get up for a bigger pee.

  Sometime in the early hours of this morning I had a seemingly long, and rather strange sort of dream. I guess when it comes down to it, all dreams are pretty strange, but this one seemed strange in a different sort of way.  I dreamed I was moving into a new house, and was being helped by my old friend Ivor. The house had some similarities to the house I used to live in as a kid, but it was more a matter of style than anything exactly the same. One curious thing was that the only furniture I was taking to the new hours was a three seat settee - and somehow we had got that in Ivor's small sports car.

  One novel idea was that I found that half the bottom third of the front door could be detached to reveal a cat door set in a thin bit of the door. Much of the dream was about the house electrics. many of the lights did not seem to work, and I don't know why but I suspected a supply problem rather than a blown bulb. I had no idea where the fuse box was until I spotted it near the front door. It seemed very complex, and included a big meter showing the current consumption in Watts.

  The fusebox itself seemed very rickety, and some fuses were half hanging out, and there were bits of wire sticking out here and there. It looked lethal, but I carefully reseated all the fuses, and I thing more things started to work, but it was about this point in the dream that I woke up, and I never did find if all the problems were fixed. I think that was around 5am. I had woken to go for a pee. When I got back to bed I had one of those odd times of seeming to be insomnia, but weren't. I can remember laying in bed thinking I would never get back to sleep....and then suddenly I was waking up and it was almost 7am.

  As usual I went for a pee as soon as I was out of bed, and I tried for a poo. I can't remember going yesterday, and so this morning I am probably officially constipated. I have doubts, or at least I hope it won't last long because I am starting to feel a bit uncomfortable, and will probably be not constipated soon...I hope ! The consequence of not pooing, and seeming to not pee much in the night, is that my weight has shot up again. I seem to have put 700gm on in the last 24 hours.

  All that weight gain would seem to be because of overeating. I did try and eat carefully yesterday, and the proof of that is my blood glucose readings. The Contour meter read 8.2mmol/l, and although not wonderful, it is still fairly good. The GlucoRX meter read a fraction higher at 8.3mmol/l. The big surprise was the Sinocare meter. Instead of rading higher it read lower. It read just 7.9mmol/l, and that is pretty good.

  Before checking my blood pressure, which I was about to do next, I thought I ought to make myself comfortable. I knew I needed a pee, and it seemed like my constipation might be coming to an end. It was not a great end, but I am technically no longer constipated, and I expect at least another visit to the toilet before doing much today. After 5 or 10 minutes to calm down, I checked my blood pressure and it was a very good 108/42.

  Two main things should be happening today. I want to go to get some shopping from Aldi, and I almost certainly will be doing that. A bit later this afternoon should see Jodie, and a bit later, Michael over for another Thursday beer tasting session. One thing I may well be getting from Aldi is more beer, but nothing exotic - probably beer just for me when I get the urge - maybe just low to moderate strength lager.