The weather is not looking good now, and probably will seem bad all day. I have seen no sign of any sunshine peeping through the grey clouds, and it seems unlikely there will be later. The Met Office version of the forecast shows dark grey clouds from 1pm, and light rain for 5 and 6pm. Both forecasters agrees that the day started at about 6° C, and that this afternoon will see 14° C. Tomorrow may be a bit warmer, 16° C in the afternoon, but without much sunshine, and there is a fair chance there will be light rain all afternoon.

   Yesterday was another of those days when I didn't feel like doing much. However I did do one useful thing, and somehow I also managed to control my eating/sugar intake despite lots of temptations. How I managed that is mostly a mystery, but a few clues emerge in the rest of my narrative.

  I awoke yesterday after seemingly having a good nights sleep, but soon found that my weight and blood glucose reading were higher than desirable. That was not good news on a day where I had planned to go shopping in Aldi. I didn't rush to get ready because I wanted the day to warm up a bit before going out. If I recall correctly I had an extra long rest after I finished writing, but I was watching the thermometer more than the clock.

  I think it was almost 1pm before I was washed, dressed and ready to go out. The temperature outside looked a bit low, but in the hope I would be in sunshine sometimes, I thought I would brave it, and go out in just an short sleeved t-shirt and no coat. It was nice in direct sunshine, but there really was not enough of it to make more than about 10% of the walk there and back feel nice.

  My shopping list was very vague apart from the usual bottles of Diet Coke (my version of your tea and milk). I did not expect to find any Ciabatta rolls left (again) and so they weren't on my shopping list. They were not a healthy alternative, quite the opposite, but I bought some soft rolls with melted cheese on top - and after putting them in my shopping trolley I saw they did have Ciabatta rolls, and bought some of those too.

  The most vague thing on my shopping list was "something meaty". I did get a couple of meaty ready meals, but I could not see much that I fancied. There were other odds and sods that I bought including ice cream, and instant noodles - some in big pots (almost tubs). The previous time I shopped in Aldi, maybe about a week ago, my bill was surprisingly high, but yesterday it was a useful bit cheaper.

  Apart from the bottles in my rucksack, my two shopping bags were not very heavy, and so my walk home wasn't to arduous. I think I ended up walking a bit faster than last time, and so I ended up just as knackered when I got home again, although maybe I recovered a lot faster. After putting my shopping away I made my lunch. It was not exactly very healthy !

  Lunch was two of the soft rolls with melted cheese on them, and they were stuffed with corned beef, salad leaves and horseradish sauce. They were very nice, and rather filling. When I say "stuffed" I mean over filled. To use up a just out of date pack of sliced corned beef (5 thin slices) I used the whole lot. That did give it quite a rich texture to the rolls. I also had four pickled onions that I ate as a sort of side dish.

  After eating my lunch, and I finished it at about 2pm, I had a lie down. I did read for a bit, but I think there was some sunshine coming through the windows. That made me feel sleepy, and I was soon having what may have been quite a long snooze - maybe over an hour, although to be honest I was not watching the time enough to tell apart 5 minutes or 65 minutes.

  What I do know is that there was no temptation to eat anything else I bought while laying on my bed reading and/or sleeping. It was still nearly 2 hours before dinner time, and I think I did have a quick snack of a couple of small (25gm) packets of crisps. Eventually dinner time arrived.

 I had noticed one very important thing about one the "tub" noodles I had bought. The entire tub (100gm), when made as directed, contained no sugar at all. It seemed like a no brainer choice for dinner.

  In the end it was not as nice as it could have been because I didn't make it as directed, and it was only after doing it wrong that I realised why it would have been better if made as directed. I did the usual thing of putting the soup base (oily liquid in this case) and the dried vegetables on to of the broken up noodles, and then poured boiling water on. I left it the usual 3 to 5 minutes before eating it.

  What I should have done is to pour the boiling water over the noodles, and then let it stand for 5 minutes before straining off the water. They said it might be worth saving the starchy water to use to make soup. With the excess water drained off the oily soup base would coat the noodles with a nice shiny and tasty glaze.

  The noodles were still nice with a sort of watery soup, although the experience was spoiled by the knowledge that they could have been nicer. It was quite a valuable lesson because I have had other noodles that seemed a bit disappointing, and they have all had a sort of oily soup base. Some of them actually say to boil the noodles and then discard the noodles. The next instant noodles I have with a sachet of oily goo stuff I will drain off the water, and then add it.

   Having (possibly) had zero sugar with my main course I thought I would be safe to have a small amount of ice cream for dessert. I had bought a new 900ml tub of plain vanilla ice cream from Aldi, and was keen to try it.

  The almost unhelpful nutritional information panel on the bottom of the tub said there would be 9gm of sugar per scoop. It is odd how "a scoop" is very poorly defined. I guess, being an constant volume, the weight does depend on the density of the ice cream (which is possibly an indicator of it's quality). In this case it says a scoop weighs approx 50gm.

  I do have a vague idea of how much 50gm of ice cream looks like, and it is very roughly the size of each blob of ice cream as it appears in the tub (as per the picture above). In fact it is smaller, but not by a lot. It is shame that the tub wasn't somehow filled with 9 blobs because each would then be one scoop each.


  Maybe I had 10gm of sugar from the ice cream. That is both not much and too much - and that conundrum depends on how well my pancreas is working on the day, or maybe just depends on what else I have eaten earlier (or later). In this case I did not eat anything later. It is interesting that the calorie content of the ice cream I ate was almost a quarter of the noodles I ate.

  There was very little TV on last night. I watched the news on the BBC news channel for a bit, but that was about the limit of my TV watching. I think it must have been around 8pm when I went to bed. I am pretty sure it was still almost light outside. I was not intending to go to sleep for a while, and I was intending to spend as much as an hour reading - maybe more if it was a good book, but I did not read for that long before putting the book down, and falling asleep.

  That seemed pretty fair after a few recent nights when I have had insomnia for one reason or another. The thing is that I also had insomnia last night. I think I slept for around 2 hours and then woke up for a small pee. I didn't seem to feel sleepy after that, and could not seem to get back to sleep until around midnight. I think I yawned, went back to bed, and fell asleep very easily again.

  It may have been in the first bit of sleep I got that I had a dream which seemed to have an unusual theme. I dreamed I was at a gig, at least I think it was mostly a gig, but some scenes may have been more like a band practice. I think I may have helped set up the sound for whatever it was. What I do know is that it was a three piece, all girl band, and that they had almost zero stage craft.

  They had a deadline to start at 9pm (which made it seem more like a gig). The drummer started off just using the foot pedals because she was filing her nails. The lead guitar was using a radio link to the P.A., and so started her playing while chatting to someone in the audience. The lead singer, and bas player seemed almost OK except she has forgotten that she should be singing into a microphone. They did still somehow sound quite good, but I didn't fancy staying too long.

  There was someone there who I knew who was driving herself and some friends home, and said she could drop me off somewhere near Catford. I can't remember where the gig was, and so I didn't know how long the drive would be. In the end I was dropped off near a night bus bus stop that would take me back to Catford. That seemed fair enough because I don't think I knew how I would get home from the venue (or even how I got there).

  I did have another, probably very brief dream on the subject of gigs. In the dream a local cab firm was sponsoring a half day rock music festival. Half day being midday to 11pm. It was a sort of logical deal for them because with each ticket also offering 10% off a ride home, it would make them some money at the time, and was a good advertisement for future business. The pub was like a version of the Catford Bridge Tavern that had a large field out the back, and the cab firm was almost next door. All I can remember of that dream was that it probably lasted for a whole 30 seconds.

  After midnight I seemed to sleep rather well, and I might have even had a few longer periods of sleep between getting up for a pee, than I usually do. I did get the impression that I was not even peeing as much as usual on each occasion. That made me worried about my weight. If I was retaining water I could have weighed a lot more when I got on the scales after waking up. To my delight I seemed to have lost 700gm, and I am once again back to a good point to lose more.

  It seemed that maybe I did pee less because my blood glucose was lower in the night. The Contour meter read 7.6mmol/l, and that is very much where I want to be. The GlucoRX meter was not quite as good, but still very good with a reading of 7.9mmol/l. The Sinocare meter spoiled things by reading just that little bit higher with a reading of 8.2mmol/l, and thus not being coloured coded light green, like the other two on my spreadsheet of results.

  The theme for today is another Sunday beer tasting session with Jodie. This does bring the danger of getting drunk - which would be fine if it doesn't involve getting ravenously hungry, and eating everything in the fridge. I will try and avoid that, but two things I ought to eat are the second pair of cheese covered soft rolls, and the second pair of Aldi's Aberdeen Angus beef burgers. Both things opened and potentially starting to deteriorate. I think I ought to keep them very simple to avoid heartburn when I go to bed.