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December 2019
January 2020


Sunday 12th January 2020
09:17 GMT
 
  Yesterday featured one (or was it two ?) sunny spells that were not in the weather forecast. Maybe being rather brief, they didn't count, but I liked them. Otherwise, yesterday was rather grim, dull day. At 11° C from midday onwards, it was not cold cold, but it didn't feel much under those thick grey clouds. I feel sure there was also a light shower yesterday, but I can't remember when it happened - if indeed it did. It certainly rained after midnight.
some sunny spells today
   As I write the sun has already broken through the clouds for a few brief seconds. If the forecast for today matches reality, or perhaps the other way round, we should get some nice sunny intervals today. One very peculiar thing about the latest revision of the forecast today is that the headline now says "drizzle" instead of "sunny intervals". What makes this very peculiar is it doesn't say when this drizzle will happen, and the estimates for the hourly chances of precipitation are now all lower, and all apart from that at 11am and midday are in single figures. The highest chance is only 12% at 11am. The figure that usually turns out to be correct is the temperature, and this afternoon should see 12° C. That might even feel warm when the sun is out. Tomorrow could be cool and dry until 5pm when it should be 10° C, and see the start of rain that may fall all evening. I don't have much confidence in today's forecast, and even less for tomorrow.

  With two exceptions, yesterday was a continuation of the resting I was doing the day before to try and throw off the remnants of my recent cold. I'm not sure that any of the resting did any real good. It certainly didn't 100% cure my cold, and the improvements to it would probably have happened anyway.  The worst of this cold was probably over a few days ago, but it is hard to tell because this cold is more notable for it's lingering effects, than of it's severity. In many ways it was quite a light cold.

  The first exception to resting was in the morning when I went shopping to Aldi. I did suffer a bit from a few aches and pains - notably my right shoulder, which is playing up. My chest/ribcage was also a bit sore after some powerful coughing the previous day (and during the night). The rest of me actually felt quite good. It was almost nice out in the fresh air. Of course it would have been far nicer if the sky was blue, the sun was shining, the temperature was closer to 20° C, and I didn't need to wear a coat.

  One of the peculiar things about yesterday's shopping trip was how I seemed to buy a lot of stuff, but after coming home I wish I had bought this, that and the other too. I guess that is probably true for many of my shopping trips. Yesterday, like most shopping trips in the last few months, was guided by the need to be careful with what I bought so I could avoid certain types of food. Some, perhaps all the thoughts I had about stuff that I wished I had also bought, were to do with actively not buying stuff I would have liked to, but didn't dare buy. For instance some crispy rolls to make bacon sandwiches may have been top of my desires, but was also top of my do-not-buy lists.

  The second bit of non resting I did was to wash three t-shirts, and some underwear. It is always good not to let these things pile up, but I think I did that hand laundry partly because I was feeling bored of being inactive, and maybe more so to see how I was feeling. I have to say it was not the hard work I was expecting, and was probably no harder, or easier, than any other time.

  I think I am doing well under current circumstances to control what I eat even if I am failing in how much of it I am eating. The most important indicator is my blood glucose level. I would like it to be lower, but the last few readings have been good enough, and I think they are under the target that the Diabetes Nurse set for me. That is not strictly accurate - the target was actually the long term average based upon the H1bc1a blood test, and that uses a different set of figures to the daily pin-prick test. I think my long term (2 to 3 months) average should be below the target maximum, but since the start of this year various things have lead to some very high transient readings (mainly because of all the sugar in cough syrup).

  While what I eat has been keeping my blood glucose level heading in the right direction, the amount I have been eating has done my weight loss no good. I am stuck at the point where my weight keeps oscillating up and down in a way that it is hard to say if the overall trend is up or down. With just two days to go before my next appointment with the Diabetes Nurse, I think the best I can hope for is to match the reading taken when I saw the dietician 10 days ago.

  One thing I forgot to mention from the day before yesterday is that I had contact from Patricia. She was busy over Xmas and New Year with relatives and stuff, plus she has also been busy with work. She contacted me from Chile where she was contracted to do some live court interpretation (English<>Spanish). It seems to be a jet setting life to be an interpreter. Her client paid for a flight from Argentina to Chile, and for hotel accommodation plus her fees for the job itself.

  One important bit of of our exchange of messages was that Patricia says she will definitely be staying in the UK this year, and it might possibly be quite a long stay. Despite it seeming to me that Britain is going down the tubes, Patricia is thinking of trying to apply for "settled status" to make sure she can hang on to her British bank account. She feels she can trust a British Bank more than one on any other place she frequently visits.

  If she does have an extended stay in the country I think it is almost certain that she will be renting somewhere to live with her partner. That probably means I won't have the pleasure of her staying here - unless she uses here as a base to do her property searches while her partner visits his folks in Wales. The more I think about it, the more that seems likely. Anyway, even if it is just the occasional visit, I look forward to seeing Patricia again, and I hope that I may have something like a proper garden to show her (plus other home improvements I have made in the last year).
Last night's
                          entertainment
  I spent yesterday evening relaxing...sort of. It could have been a boring time. I scanned the TV listings for some entertainment, but it seemed very thin on the ground, and then I noticed this movie on Talking Picture TV. It is a movie I have watched once or twice before, and while it may not be stunning, it is infinitely better than Star Wars, and what is more important is that it is a British Film and not full of yanks running around in panic as they always tend to do.

  All through the day, and into the evening, it sometimes felt like the last remnant of my recent cold had all but gone. That was the cough that has probably bothered me more when I consider that I didn't expect to get a cough like that 6 years after pausing smoking. For much of the time it has been a mild cough, but even a mild cough can be very wearing when it won't stop. Some days it has felt like hard work to find the enthusiasm and strength to do some things. It was not fighting that sort of fatigue that made yesterday, and even more so the day before yesterday, so useful.

  So through the day my cough was very intermittent. I never stopped to time it, but I would guess there were many hours when I wasn't bothered by the merest tickle. That all changed when I laid down in bed. Initially it was just to read, but that started the cough up in a small way, but once I turned out the light, and turned over, the cough became dominant for a while. For a while I thought it was just a sort of cold tingle from the toothpaste I had used before going to bed.

 Maybe that toothpaste tingle didn't help, but it was soon over shadowed by the same thing as the night before. My breathing became very slightly wheezy (although I am really looking for different word that seems less emotional). Before long I felt the need to try and cough up some sticky mucus, and like the night before, I eventually resorted to a couple of squirts from my Salbutamol inhaler. Very soon I coughed up a couple of big gobbets of mucus, and then felt fine to go to sleep.

  I think I used the inhaler once more in the night, but with or without it, once I had coughed up some mucus I felt fine to get back to sleep. Apart from these short interruptions, it seemed like I actually got an unusually good night's sleep..although maybe it doesn't always feel like it with hindsight.

  This morning my airways seem fairly clear, but an occasional tickle demands a cough - occasional, but more frequent than I like. My weight still seems stuck higher than it could be, but maybe not as bad as the day before. My blood  glucose level is satisfactory, but as always I would prefer it to be a bit lower. My blood pressure remains boringly low. I think I only bother to take it so I can wave a piece of paper at a doctor if I see one, and he dares to try and measure it in the surgery.

  For all the things I can actually measure, and what they may say, I still don't really know how I feel today. When the sun has gone back in after a few minutes of weak sunshine, I feel like laying on my bed, and closing my eyes so I can't see the grey cloud, and if I happen to fall asleep, so much the better. Better still if I had an amazing dream ! Back in the real world, I am contemplating going out for a walk around Soho today. At the moment I don't have much confidence I will actually do it. One thing that would make the decision easier would be if the forecast sunny intervals seem to be a real thing. Perhaps the most exciting thing I might actually do is to go and buy more seeds from Poundstretcher. As usual I will just make up today as it happens.