Today could reach 20° C (or 21° C according to The Met Office forecast). Like yesterday, the headline says "a moderate breeze", but at times it felt a bit more than "moderate". Hopefully it is not so unmoderate to steal too much warmth from the glorious sunshine today. Tomorrow should feature bright sunshine all day long again, but the temperature may only rise to 17° C. Once again there will be "a moderate breeze".

  Yesterday was generally quite a good day, but like most things, it was not perfect. There were a few negative things, but they can mostly be blamed on going shopping, and then booze. Having said that, I did not get very drunk during (before or after) the afternoon boozing session.

  AS I reported yesterday, I seemed to feel quite satisfied with my health yesterday morning (although I may not have expressed it exactly the same as that). One of my aims was to try and keep it that way during the day so I could report all was good this morning. I think I got off to a fair start. The first trouble started after I had finished writing, washed my hair and had a shower, and then went out to get some shopping in Tesco.

  Originally I hadn't planned to go to Tesco, but I thought up what could have been a great idea. The idea itself was sound, and I did follow that plan. Where it started to go wrong was in not being careful about what I bought in Tesco. I bought a few things that were probably not healthy choices - and I ate them !

  There were many things I might have wanted, but top of my list was sugar free, "Diet" lemonade. Other things I bought were mostly top ups of stuff I already had here, and so don't count. The Pesto Chicken "sandwich filler" seemed like it might be OK, but was not as nice as hoped, and I am not sure it's sugar content was as low as it seemed to suggest. I also bought two 4 packs of beer, and they have an unknown amount of sugar in them, but I only drank half a can of one of the beers, and I believe it was probably innocent,

  I walked to and from Tesco wearing the new trainers I had bought from Tesco for half price. I am not sure they were fully comfortable at the end. When I first started to walk they did not seem to pinch or rub, but my feet didn't feel comfortable in them, but quite soon I began to notice them less and less. I think a few more short walks may get them comfortable enough for longer walks.

  Those trainers don't seem to be as fast as other trainers, and having to walk a little slower probably made the walk to Tesco feel OK. Walking back with bottles of soft drinks, and cans of beer, made for a heavy load, and that most definitely slowed me down, and added enough strain to make me feel most happy to get home and relax (although only in the sense of no longer walking).

  After putting my shopping away I made up my lunch. It was the last two crusty (or allegedly crusty !) rolls I had in the fridge, and I filled one with sliced beef, and the other with corned beef. Both had horseradish sauce in them, and both had my last tomato sliced up in them. In theory those two rolls should have been very filling. I am not sure why I wanted some crisps as well, but I did, and that was one of the bad ideas yesterday.

  The original plan for yesterday was that Jodie would arrive for our beer tasting later than usual, and we would both drink a lot less so we could both go to The Three Hounds where Simon Whitestar would be doing an acoustic session in their downstairs room. During the morning I decided I was a lot less interested than I hoped I might be, and let Jodie know it would be drinking here as normal instead. An additional reason was that I expected that Michael would have a lot of stuff to say about his depressing lifestyle, and we are the only people he can tell it too. I was right.

  I think Jodie arrived at about her typical average time of 3.30pm. Although I could have drunks loads of strong beer, and got pretty drunk as usual, I decided to try and follow my plan as if I was going to go out. I did have tasters of a couple of beers that Jodie wanted, but mostly I had one single can of 8.5% Orangeboom extra strength lager - split into 4 unequal parts and each well diluted with sugar free lemonade as a home made shandy.

  Michael turned up around 4.30pm (although it might have been a bit earlier or later) and he had brought 4 cans of medium strength lager with him so he could do another taste test between them - which is the spirit of the session (although Jodie and I do try and go for exotic beers rarely found on the shelves of supermarkets). He seems to guzzle all 4 cans, plus a few tasters of stuff that Jodie was drinking.

  By the end of the session he was getting drunk, and his moaning got really quite bad. As usual he did apologise for it, and explained that we were the only people he knew these days who he could unburden all his moans and groans on. I feel sure he probably does the same with his son and daughter in low who he also sees at least once a week. Jodie left about 5 minutes before Michael, and Michael left in time for me to put the finishing touches to me dinner before I sat down to eat it while watching Star Trek: Voyager.

  My dinner was an experiment, and it didn't work as well as I hoped. Earlier on in the afternoon I baked 3 small new potatoes...and by small I meant small compared to most potatoes, but big for new potatoes (some of which can be tiny). To make matters worse, they seemed to shrink when baked. Once everyone had gone I split each little potato in two, and sprinkled grated cheese on them. I also laid on top the last two slices from a pack of sliced beef.

  The first big problem is that the cheese seemed to just melt away. There was not much left of it apart from a thin skin left on the potato. I should have been far more generous with the grated cheese, or used ordinary sliced cheese. I almost wonder if some of the grated cheeses are adulterated with palm oil or something to make them cheaper to produce, but the palm oil just soaks away when heated. I noticed gallons of oil when I used those same grated cheeses on an attempt at making cauliflower cheese.

  Even with the beef, which seemed to shrink a lot and was not nice after it's extra cooking, it felt like a very small meal. I think it was after that when I opened the little tub of pesto chicken sandwich filler, and scooped it out on rice crackers. On top of all that I had another dessert of more Neapolitan ice cream, and I may have got a bit carried away and nearly had two "scoops" of it.

  The only good thing in all this was that I was just about sober in the evening, and when I finally went to bed I didn't have any indigestion (although all the fizzy sugar free lemonade I drank left a lot of gas in my system, and I was burping a lot). I wasn't paying much attention to the time, but I think it was probably before 9:30pm when I fell asleep. I had spent a bit of time in bed reading the Philip K. Dick book I started a few days ago.

   It is a most strange book, but while I wouldn't go as far as saying I am enjoying it, it seems easier to read than last time, whenever that was. I can't actually remember reading it before. It is possible I never did read it. I have two books by Philip K. Dick, and it looks like I bought them at the same time. I may have tried to read the other, and gave up. Then didn't even bother trying to read the book I am now reading. The book, "Radio Free Albemuth" is a dystopian novel set in America in the 1970s, and features a very Donald Trump alike president who becomes a dictator. If he could be credited with intelligence it might be possible that Trump is using this as his text book for taking over as dictator for life. There are already many similarities. The Wikipedia page I linked to above gives a much better overview of the plot.

  I don't think I slept that well last night. I know I got up for a pee at about 11:30pm, and I cam back from the cold bathroom not feeling right, but I can't really say why I didn't feel right. I suppose I mainly thought I would not be able to get back to sleep. I decided to sit and read a few things on my PC, but after 10 or 15 minutes my eyelids were drooping, and I came close to fall asleep in front of my PC. I got back to bed, and as far as I can recall, was soon asleep again.

  I feel sure I did far more dreaming than usual last night. Most dreams are too disjointed to try and describe, but I can say a few words about a few dreams. One dream saw me going to visit the board of the company I presumably worked for. The mostly looked very old, but they seemed more like children. They had toys, generally adult toys, on their desks, and spent more time playing with them than paying any attention to me. I can't remember why I was going to be reprimanded, or even if I new a reason, but after being in the boardroom for 10 minutes, with no one paying me any attention, I slipped away, and heard no more about it.

  Another dream was about finding a small breed dog in a railway wagon that was full of growing vegetation. I could remember seeing something about a lost dog, and then, with the dog in tow (or often carried) I went around the entire company asking everyone if they had a copy of the memo about a lost dog. I think I searched three floors of the building, and that included the ticket offices on the ground floor. (I assume I worked for a railway company).

  I got up because it seemed to be about the right time, rather than feeling ready to get up. Even now, when many hours have passed, it feels like I did not get enough sleep. There have been a couple of times when I have almost fallen asleep while readings something off my computer screen. On top of that I seem to have a mild stomach ache. It doesn't feel quite right for constipation (although I have not yet "gone"), and it doesn't feel any common stomach complaint. It is not exactly painful - I can only describe it as a "feeling" without being able to describe that feeling.

  I did seem to pee a lot during the night, and when I got up. At other times that might mean my weight might be a bit lower, but it seems to have risen a whole 800gm this morning. Maybe I am constipated, or maybe all I ate, and drunk, yesterday was far more fattening that I would have given it credit for.

  All the extra peeing did seem to say that my blood glucose would be high this morning, and it is, but apart from the often rogue Sinocare meter, the other two readings were not that bad. The Contour meter read 8.7mmol/l. That is a bit higher than I like recently, but nothing terrible. The GlucoRX meter read 8.5mmol/l, and until I started getting better readings (now and then) it was my target, and so it can't be bad. The Sinocare meter was up to it's old tricks again. (I wonder if it is because I am near the end of the latest canister of test strips ?). It initially read 10.2mmol/l, and that was so different to the other two that I took another reading. The second time it was 9.6mmol/l - still very different to the other two. One possible, but unlikely thing, is that it is somehow sensitive to residual alcohol, or something else in my blood stream.

  One of the little oddities about reality is that this morning, when I think I am justified in saying I feel quite rotten, my blood pressure has returned to my normal readings. It has been very slightly high recently, but just now it was just 104/49 - and that is almost spot on my average for the morning for the last few months. Evidently I am very healthy, but it seems no one has told my body about it.

  On such a day as today, with blue skies, strong sunshine, and the temperature around 20° C this afternoon, it should be the perfect day to go out and enjoy the sunshine. It is therefore a shame I just do not fancy doing that today. Maybe I might go to the local shops to stretch my legs later, but the next thing I will definitely do is to have my traditional post-writing rest. I hope I have a snooze too, and I won't worry if it lasts for several hours. There is only one thing I think I will do today that would benefit in being done as soon as possible, and that is to do a bit of laundry. Then get it on the washing line, in the sunshine, to get it nice and dry, and ready to bring in hours before sunset.