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Saturday 11th
January 2020
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10:45 GMT
Yesterday's forecast sunny morning was 3 or
4 hours late ! I am unsure exactly when the sun
first burst through the clouds, but I feel sure it
was after midday. From then on the day changed
from a deeply dull, miserable day to bright, but
cold day. I'm not sure I would call any single
hour "sunny" if I were compiling the forecast, but
maybe "extended sunny periods" would not be far
off the mark. The afternoon temperature was only
8° C, and it felt probably colder.
Today's forecast is, for once,
looking perfectly accurate. It is very dull
outside, but it does feel rather milder than
yesterday. Although having said that, the wind can
feel very cool when it hits you face on. The
latest revision of the forecast doesn't change the
big picture, but it does show a 30 to 35% chance
of rain between 11am and midday. Curiously
enough, it still shows these hours as being dry -
unlike 0100 in the screenshot above where rain is
forecast despite there only being a 24% chance of
it. <At this point
several hours have passed while I have been on
the phone to a friend>.
One curiosity that wasn't in the forecast
was sunshine. It may not have lasted very long,
but there were a couple of short sunny spells
between 1 and 2pm today. Maybe it made today a
little less awful than expected. Maybe that will
be negated by rain. It currently looks like it
could rain at any minute now. I haven't checked it
is correct, but if the current temperature
actually is 11° C, The forecast says it will be
11° C from midday today until sunset tomorrow.
That is a long time at a constant temperature.
Tomorrow morning may start with rain, but it might
be dry by 7am. From 11am there could be sunny
intervals. From, or perhaps just before sunset,
the temperature will start to drop, but maybe only
to 7° C. After the morning rain tomorrow should be
a dry day.
Yesterday turned out differently than
expected. I wasn't feeling too keen to go out for
any exercise, and so I sent a message to Angela to
see if she thought it likely that she would be
going to the pub at lunchtime - that being the
major draw to get me out of the house. She fairly
quickly replied that she didn't think she would
be. While that was a bit disappointing, it was
also a bit of a relief. It took very little effort
to think along the lines that I might do well to
treat being ill as if I was ill.
In other words. I would stay in the warm,
and rest. I was pretty sure I would fail at
spending the day in bed, as we used to once upon a
time - mainly at mum's insistence - but I could
just spend some time reading books or from the
internet. It's hard to say just how I managed to
pass the time without getting bored. In truth I
did occasionally fight boredom by eating. I did my
best to eat stuff that would not be too bad for
me, and I did get quite a good blood glucose
reading from it, but only after my dinner when it
seems my blood glucose can go down instead of the
more normal up.
At 5.30pm I went online and ordered a
takeaway dinner. It was, as I had predicted in the
morning, grilled meat and salad - aka shish kebab
eaten without the pitta bread. I ordered it from
the place that does the jerk chicken shish kebab
because I wanted to try that again. It arrived a
little earlier than the hour wait predicted, but
maybe only by 10 minutes early.
I have only one complaint about the food,
and it is a minor very big one. My ordinary
chicken shish kebab was ordered with chilli sauce,
and yet it didn't taste very spicy (although it
still tasted delicious). It was when I unwrapped
the jerk chicken kebab that I found a pot of
chilli sauce with it. It was obviously intended
for the plain chicken kebab, but I put it on the
jerk chicken.
The reason for the jerk chicken kebab was
research. I am still trying to work out just what
jerk seasoning is all about. Most jerk chicken I
have eaten has been almost bland, but last night
that was different. Maybe it needed the chilli
sauce to bring the flavour out, but I definitely
tasted flavours I had not detected before. There
was a slight hint of cinnamon, and on some bits of
chicken there was a slightly strong taste of
cloves. Sometimes the latter tasted a bit strong
with the chilli sauce, but overall it was rather
nice.
I felt quite full after that dinner, and
just stayed very relaxed watching TV until TV got
boring. Then I went to bed to read. I don't think
I put the book down until just after midnight.
During the evening my cough definitely seemed to
have improved, and I don't remember coughing much
at all until I lay on my bed. Slowly it seemed
that laying horizontal allowed mucus from deep
inside to start climbing up my windpipe. I began
to feel something like, but not actually wheezy.
From time to time I would need a good cough
to clear my airways of what seemed like, but
probably wasn't, a big gob of mucus. This seemed
to be the case through the night. I didn't have
any trouble getting to sleep, but everytime I woke
up, possibly less frequently than usual, I would
have to go through a ritual to try and clear my
airways of mucus. A couple of times I used my
Salbutamol* inhaler to open up the airways to make
my cough a bit more powerful.
* This is the precise reason I have the inhaler.
They are normally only prescribed to asthmatics,
and not supposed to prescribed to heart patients.
I managed to persuade a doctor to prescribe one in
the early days when I put smoking on a long pause.
That caused lots of coughing that was painful on
my newly stitched together chest after my quad
heart bypass operation. I only got the next one
prescribed when I showed that I only used it when
absolutely needed, and that my average use was so
little that the old one had gone out of date !
Treating myself a bit like I was ill was
probably beneficial, and the nature of my cough
was much more manageable during the evening,
through the night, and today. The long phone call
I had earlier, which involved a lot of speaking,
did dry my throat out for a short while, and I had
a very short period of tickly throat, and
coughing, but mostly I am comfortable, and not
coughing until it feels like I have a frog in my
throat that needs clearing. That feeling seems to
be happening less and less now.
During the night it was frequent enough, and
possibly happening while I slept, to make my chest
a little sore. I have had so many false
predictions, but somehow, this time it does feel
like I really have got the better of this cough. I
feel it would be tempting fate to suggest I will
wake tomorrow morning, and be able to announce
that my cold is now in the past tense, but maybe I
can slightly allow myself to think it is not
impossible.
There was one important job to do today,
and I wanted to get it done early in the morning.
So my first priority today was to get washed
enough (just a damp flannel instead of a shower)
for a shopping trip to Aldi. It felt terribly
early when I walked down the road to the
supermarket, but it was almost 9.30am. Luckily it
seems everyone else felt it was very early, and
the grey colour of the sky did look like the sun
had barely risen. I was surprised it worked, but
it did. "It" was to get to Aldi, and out again,
before the heaving masses arrived.
I had a pleasant shopping experience, and
there was only one person ahead of me when I got
to the checkout. I did have a hard time balancing
the desire for something "nice" with something not
to unhealthy. I think I only got one dubious
thing, and it was a harissa chicken pasta salad
type thing. It was nice enough to make bending my
self imposed diet rules a bit worthwhile once, but
not nice enough to desire a repeat performance.
I managed to buy one product I had been
looking out for over the last few weeks. It was
the other French beer in a bottle with a wired,
champagne style, cork. The first, which I had
bought and tried before Xmas, was a bit like a
Belgium wheat beer. This second flavour, for which
there was just one single bottle on the shelves,
is described as "Rhum matured" (or something like
that). It may mean it has been matured in rum
casks, or it may mean something very different. In
some ways I hope it is not that nice considering I
may have bought the last ever bottle, and I would
never be able to savour another if it turns out to
be exceptionally nice.
As I type this it has gone 3pm. Starting
late, being interrupted by a near on three hour
phone call, and writing so much seems to have used
up over half the day ! It means saying that I have
no idea what I might do today half meaningless.
What I might do is to wash a few t-shirts.
What I will do next is to have a siesta.
If that includes a proper snooze then so much the
better ! I think that what I may mostly do is to
hope that tomorrow I feel sufficiently well to get
back to my daily exercise. The forecast could be
very wrong, but if the promised 11° C, and sunny
intervals happen, it would be a good day for a
walk somewhere. I might even go beyond Catford if
there are any trains !
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