This morning started quite mild, and it was bright, but I don't think the sun managed to shine as per the forecast. I suspect that today is a difficult day to forecast. It's only a guess, but I think we are caught between two different weathers, and it is hard to say which will affect us more. It does seem almost cloudy enough for light rain at 9 and 10am, but there may still be a chance that it will stay dry. From 11am until sunset we could have sunny spells. The temperature should peak at 21° C. As I write this just before 9am, the outside temperature seems to be 19° C, or 3° C higher than forecast. Tomorrow could be cooler than today. Just 17° C, and that for maybe a single hour. The afternoon will probably be wet.

  Yesterday was one of those days when after a slightly less than good start, soon turned good, but by mid afternoon was dull and boring. I can't say there was nothing for me to do, but it would be very true to say there was nothing I was in the mood to do.....

  I got up yesterday feeling like another hour or two of sleep would be good, and that was after having extra sleep. As I was writing I was thinking how nice it would be to have a long snooze when I had my usual lie down after writing. I think I may have had a very short snooze, maybe only 10 minutes or so before getting up. It was getting quite late in the morning, and I felt the need to wash my hair and have a shower. In the end I just had a nice shower.

  I was not expecting to see anyone yesterday, and so having freshly washed hair did not feel important. It wasn't too bad without being washed, but only just. My plans for the whole day had been winnowed down to just a walk to the shops. I first went to Savers where I topped up a few of my favourite vitamins and similar. I also bough shower gel, and washing up liquid. I wanted some spare shampoo and conditioner, but they didn't have what I knew and wanted.

  I then walked across the way to Poundstretcher. I mostly bought food in there. They had some more sugar free biscuits in stock, and a bought a few packets. I also bought some crisps - baked crisps ! This was they were marginally more healthy than fried. One pack was not exactly crisps - it was shaped and baked potato flour (I think). It was very light. A big bag only weighed 125gm.
  I bought two cans of Tango "Strawberry Smash" sugar free fizzy drink. I was disappointed they only seemed to have two cans left, but later I was rather glad about it. It may sound wonderful, but I did not find it very nice. It definitely tastes of strawberry, but a mix of unripe, and over ripe and going off strawberries. I can imagine this is exactly what it is - a sort of attempt to not waste all the strawberries rejected when being harvested.

  The most important thing I bought in Poundstretcher was not food based. It was a small reel of braided cord, or basically rope. For years I was able to close my bedroom windows by pulling on a length of cord around one of the handles/locks. This was important because it was increasingly difficult to reach over the table in front of the windows to pull the window closed. The previous cord was most probably attacked by UV light over the years, and had become very easy to break. I am not sure this new cord will be immune to UV attack, but there must be enough cord on the reel to last for many years.

  The walk to and from the shops was almost pleasant, and if it had been sunny it might even have been pleasant. Even with no more than one 23 second long bit of sunshine, it was still very pleasantly warm, and my forehead was feeling damp with sweat when I got home. At time I wondered if I might find the enthusiasm and energy to go for a longer walk once I had put my shopping away. I didn't feel too bad when I got home, but I still seemed to lack the enthusiasm and energy to want to go out again.

  Instead of going out I had some lunch. I started with quite a lot of the (mildly) cheese and onion flavour baked potato shapes, but then went on to eating 6 mini pork and pickle pies with added mustard. I really must learn that mini pork pies are not very nice, and those with pickle are pretty bad. I used a lot of mustard on them to boost the flavour to something approaching nice.

  I must interrupt my chain of thought here to say that the forecast light rain for 9am has actually happened. It almost looks like it has stopped, but I suspect that is an illusion, and it is just too light to see at the moment. It is now very grey outside, and the idea of a second hour of rain seemed fairly likely now.

  Back to yesterday afternoon, and after my lunch I had a lie down and read a few pages from the book I am reading - "Better Than Life" by Grant-Naylor. One very odd thing is that I can't remember reading the book before, and yet it was on my bookshelf. One possible reason was that it was the second book based on the Red Dwarf TV series, but very much expanded compared the the constraints of a half hour episode. Maybe I thought I would order the first book and read that first, or maybe I didn't realise it would be so different to the single TV episode, and thought that it wasn't worth reading. That seems unlikely, but not being able to remember reading it before seems pretty unlikely as well.

  I didn't time it, but maybe I read for an hour before putting the book down. I think I was just going to take a 20 minute break, and then get back to the book, but I found there was about 8 back to back (ignoring all the very tedious adverts and similar crap) episodes of The Simpsons being shown on the E4 channel. All were recent repeats, but somehow I ended up watching all then except when it clashed with watching the BBC News, although it was possibly a waste of my times watching the news, but then again it could easily be argued that watching all the recent repeats of The Simpsons was a waste of time.

   I think it was probably just after 4pm when I gave in to an urge to have a snack, which was a small portion of ice cream, because although not exactly bored, I think my mind was under utilised.....err OK, I probably was bored ! As 6pm approached I had part one of my dinner. it was two satsumas, one apricot, and one apple. My main course was two grilled quarter pounder burgers with some "mixed veg" (mostly peas, carrots and sweetcorn) with some melted Red Leicestershire cheese on them.

 It was a pretty nice dinner, although I have had nicer. I half expected it to give me terrible heartburn, but oddly enough that was one thing I did not suffer from when I went to bed. I was in bed around 10pmm if I recall correctly, but I could not get to sleep. I think I had more snoozes during the day than I have written about, plus I had a good lie in before getting up, and so I was less tired than I expected. I was also feeling uncomfortable.

  This time it was less my body at fault, and more to do with my body - which sounds stupid. I guess I mean I didn't have any digestive system discomforts, a prime cause of loss of sleep recently, but I did seem to have a few aching muscles and joints. None were what you might call painful, but combined they were bad enough to stop me relaxing. I got up again, took a couple of paracetamol, and went back to bed 30 to 60 minutes later. I was soon fast asleep, and I seemed to sleep well with no problems except the usual waking up for a pee every 2 or 3 hours.

  I do remember one dream from last night, but it is difficult to describe. I think what seemed like one dream was actually 5 or 6 very brief dreams that shared a sort of common background.They were about work, but they seemed to jump around between the three main jobs I did in my working day. There were work benches along one wall with windows in it. This was like a telephone exchange, but it seemed like I might have been repairing TVs. There was definitely one of my old workmates from the telephone exchange on an adjacent bench.

  In one of these dream fragments my boss came in, and he was from the last one of my three jobs. I had jotted notes on a scrap piece of paper about something I was designing, although I am not sure I was designing it for work or for me. To put my boss off the scent I started copying across in a more formal way to a proper note book. I think the only definite thing I did was to reset an electric clock on the wall behind the benches. It was showing that the power had failed, and I had to climb under a bench to get to a power socket that looked like someone had accidently kicked into the off position.

  I think I had these dreams at about 5am this morning. I woke up then to have a pee. After getting back to bed it seemed to take ages to fall asleep again. I suspect I fell asleep faster than it seemed at the time. I thought it was gone 7am when I got up, but I am wondering if my first look at the clock was actually part of a dream, because after going to the toilet I saw it was only about 6:10am.

  I was satisfied to have not just a pee when I got up, but also a poo. I initially thought that wasn't going to happen, but suddenly, whoosh ! I suspected it counted for only a tiny weight, but it may have helped to make my weight this morning to be exactly the same as yesterday morning. I must confess I thought I might have put on a bit more weight, and I am happy I didn't.

  My blood glucose readings were good and terrible ! The Contour meter read 8.1mmol/l, and while it would have been nice if under 8.0mmol/l, it was still very good. The GlucoRX meter was almost as good with a reading of 8.2mmol/l. Only the Sinocare meter gave a terrible reading. On the first reading it said 9.1mmol/l. I tried again because that was so very different to the other two meters. The second time it read 9.7mmol/l, and that is only just clear of the red line and danger zone. I didn't dare try it a third time !!!

  Thee main thing on the menu today is boozing. It could be here with just Jodie, but I think we will meet in The Catford Bridge Tavern for the third day of their beer festival. I couldn't raise the enthusiasm to go on my own for the first two days, but with some company I do fancy going. We will probably be joined by Alan, and maybe others will appear. In theory I will not get as drunk as I might do if we were drinking here. Apart for "one for the road" I expect most beers will be low to medium strength. That one for the road will be a nice high strength beer - if they have one that looks decent.