08:58 BST

  So far this morning it has seemed bright, but not a single ray of sunshine has broken through the cloud - yet. It seems that most of today could be bright, bit with no actual sunshine until, maybe, after 7pm. It should be a bit warmer today with 19° C predicted. Tomorrow could be another day with almost no sunshine, and 7 and 8am could be really dull. The possible good thing is that the afternoon may see 21° C.

  Yesterday was a fair day. I managed to do a few useful things, and had a boozy afternoon. I almost managed to control my eating after getting drunk, and that could have been a miracle if I had managed to control it a bit better. There was even good news about my new phone !

  I think I felt moderately good yesterday morning, although my various health readings may have said otherwise. Yesterday morning was pretty standard - writing then resting. After my rest I had a shower, and once I had finished I put a small hand towel in to soak. I then got dressed ready to go out shopping. I considered going to Aldi, but decided going to Savers and Poundstretcher might be very slightly more important, and much later I realised why there was a good reason to go to Aldi today. More about that later.

  I wore my first pair of Adidas trainers to walk to the shops. Although the newest pair are more comfortable, that first pair are still very comfortable for shorter walks. I almost enjoyed the walk. Maybe I did sort of enjoy it. In savers I got the usual sort of stuff - a couple of replacements for some vitamins that are running very low. Some new shampoo and conditioner, and a bottle of antacid. The latter was marginally cheaper than the Acidex I have been using - although I now use it rarely after being more careful about eating too much spicy stuff in the evening.

  After buying a few things, including three types of crisps, in Poundstretcher, I walked home again. Two of the packets of crisps were made by a non profit food company - possibly Indian owned, but operating in London. One packet was a medium sized packet of "Mexican chilli" inspired flavour. They were OK, but nothing special. The other was more notable in so much that it was based on lentils and humus instead of potatoes. They were quite spicy, and actually rather nice. They also had a very low sugar content - which was probably handy.

  As can be assumed from what I just wrote, I ended up eating both those packets, each about 80gms, by the end of the day. The first thing I ate when I had got home, and had put my shopping away, was some lunch. It was just one single Pannini roll cut into two halves and then toasted. I split a small time of herrings in tomato sauce over each half. It was rather nice. I am enjoying fish like this for now, but I guess I will discover something different, but equally nice in the near future.

  I was quite surprised to hear from Jodie that she was going to arrive early for our afternoon beer tasting session. By 3:30pm, about her usual arrival time (apart from days when she misses the train), we were opening the second can of booze. I think most of what we drank was medium to good, but there was one beer that Jodie thought to be best of all, and I had to struggle to swallow it because I thought it was pretty nasty.
  As usual, Jodie was often uncommunicative because she was engrossed in whatever on her phone. She didn't even realise I was taking this picture using my new phone. It needed a bit of tweaking because I couldn't find an option to compensate for the extremely strong back lighting from the window behind her. It was a harsh test, and maybe it didn't do too badly. One surprise is that with all that natural daylight coming through the window, it still got the colour temperature wrong. It looks a bit too warm, and I think it needs a bit more blue in the picture to make the colours seem a bit more natural.

  Jodie left a little earlier for the 6:03pm train to London. She was off to meet Alan for a gig in Camden (at least I think she said Camden). I think I was only mildly sozzled at the end of the session, and sometimes that may be more dangerous that very drunk. I could have controlled my eating a bit better, although I don't think I did too bad. A "proper" dinner may have been a better idea, and I did have a calorie controlled ready meal in the fridge I could have had.

  What I actually had was more like lunch. I think the Paninni rolls I had were starting to get a tiny bit stale. They would probably have been fine for another 24 hours, and possibly 36 hours. I decided to use two of them (leaving one more for sometime today). One of them I toasted, and then melted cheese on each half. I then filled it with sliced beef. That was rather nice. I was too impatient to toast the other, and just sliced that one open, and stuff it with beef and horseradish sauce. That filled me up maybe a little bit more than ideal, but at least I was not tempted to eat any more.

  During the course of the evening I did several useful things. One was to finish washing the hand towel I had left soaking after I finished my shower. I came close to leaving it until this morning, but in two sessions of about 4 or 5 rinses I finished the job, and hung it up to dry on a clothes horse. That was pretty good, but the best thing I did was to discover how to turn off "Gemini" - Google's creepy AI assistant that was always trying to interfere with what I was doing. Unfortunately I could only disable it, instead of deleting it totally. It could mysteriously re-enable itself after some sort of update.

  The main, and indeed only TV entertainment on TV last night was The Simpsons Movie. It was followed by some random episodes. I watched very little of the episodes because 9pm seemed like a good time for bed. Unfortunately it was not a good time for sleep. I had to try out the new antacid liquid because I seemed to have some mild heartburn. Worse still was a sort of constipated feeling. I didn't recall having a poo all day, and so I wasted a fair amount of time sitting on the toilet waiting for something to happen. It almost did, but in the end I got bored and went back to bed. It might have been almost 11pm before I fell asleep.

  It does seem my sleep pattern has changed recently. Like the previous few nights, and maybe even a few before them, I seemed to wake less frequently for a pee, and last night it didn't feel like I peed as much as I thought I would need. I remember one dream I had last night, although it was not a very dynamic dream. A lot of the dream was just thinking rather than any action. I don't think anyone else actually appeared in the dream.

  The dream was about a second letter from an individual who owned a steam train. I, like several others he had identified, had taken pictures of the steam loco as it passed through Clapham Junction station, The owner claimed that our pictures had broken the copyright he had over the view of he steam loco, and that we all owed him compensation. I didn't know any of the other photographers to confer with them, but I strongly suspect they would agree with me that the owners claim was baseless. There is very little privacy in a public place, and while using the image of the train for monetary gain, such as for a company logo, would be wrong, just pictures, even if paid for my a magazine, for instance, are fair game in a public setting. I think my overall thought in the dream was just pure annoyance, and no fear at all.

  This morning I thought my constipation would be continuing, but with some persistence I dropped rather a large poo when I went for my morning pee. The pee still didn't seem as big as usual, and maybe there is more to come. I am fairly sure there should be more poo to come ! Unfortunately it, at the moment it seems like I gained 900gm since weighing myself yesterday morning.

  The apparent lack of pee might indicate my blood glucose was lower than recently, but no luck there at all ! The Contour meter read 8.6mmol/l, and the GlucoRX meter read 8.7mmol/l. Oddly enough, yesterday it was the same number, but swapped to the other meter. The Sinocare is still finding something it doesn't like in my blood, and completely ruined the average with a really bad reading of 9.9mmol/l. I will not be happy until I can get lower readings from that Sinocare meter. I know it can do it because I've seen them, but it all seemed to change since the 15th May. I have no idea what happened on that day, but ever since the readings have been a lot higher - but only on that one meter.

  Only my blood pressure is OK this morning. It was 110/51. That is a little bit higher than my my usual, but still in the "Optimum" zone according to the meter, and still under what the nurse thought was a more reasonable reading. In an attempt to get my weight and blood glucose back on track I have skipped breakfast, and I may try and skip lunch too. Skipping lunch could be easy or hard depending on what I do today.

  One thing I am definitely doing is to drop off my pee sample to the surgery, and hope it hasn't gone stale since I bottled it on Saturday morning. From the surgery I can walk around the corner to Aldi. There is a selection of stuff I could, and probably will buy from Aldi, but one thing I will be keeping an eye out for will be a jar of the chilli flavour Kimchi they had a few weeks ago. It is unlikely they will have any left, but fingers crossed !

  Once I am home again, two things could happen. One is that I will have found something so wonderful that I will give in and have it for lunch. The other is a bit unlikely, because I rarely go out twice in one day, but if I do I will be taking my Canon 600D camera for a train and probably a tram ride. Being away from home of 2 or 3 hours would be the best way to avoid eating. Apart from eating and some fatigue from carrying heavy shopping, there is one other reason I may stay in - I still feel a bit constipated despite passing a singular, but substantial "stool" ! I am not going to travel far from my toilet if there is a chance that something is on the move.