Yesterday was a weird day. As I explained yesterday, it started with a 5 or 6 minute walk to the pharmacy to try and collect the repeat prescription I had ordered last Monday morning. It wasn't ready because one drug, that they have to specially order, had not arrived. I was told to come back at 4pm when it would all be ready to collect. That was a bit annoying, but these things happen.

  It wasn't definite that Angela would be meeting me at lunchtime, but I felt I still needed to  force myself to go for a walk yesterday. It felt like I was beginning to seize up or something. Perhaps more importantly, I needed a distraction from food. I feel insane urges to eat more during these cold and dark days...well maybe it's not so insane. It's unspoken orders from a primitive part of the brain that still thinks we are living in a cave, chasing dinosaurs.

  For the past few days I have not dared to weigh myself, and neither have I checked my blood glucose level for fear of what I might find. This morning I did have good news when I checked my blood glucose level. I got a reading of 7.0mmol/l - which is good (although lower would be even better, but probably unrealistic). It is about the average figure I was getting during my intensive testing while seeing the Diabetes Nurse, and which both the Dietician and Diabetes Nurse thought was very good.

  I only walked 1.74 miles yesterday - one of my shorter walks - but I seemed to keep up an impressive average speed. I would say it was because it was so horrible outside that I didn't want to hang around in it for too long, but I did stop a few times to take photos. However there is source of error in the tracking of my walk which I shall explain soon.

When I sent a message to Angela that I would be in the pub she replied to say she wasn't sure she wanted to go out at lunchtime because she had been feeling cold all morning. I replied that I would let her know if the pub was warm when I got there. It was, and as soon as I sent that to Angela she replied within seconds that she would be there soon. I suspect she would have come anyway.

  Angela turned up at about 10 past 1pm, and we had a very nice meeting. It only went wrong at the end, and in a silly way. At least I think it was silly. Time was passing too quickly, and 2pm caught us by surprise. It was about 10 past 2pm when we realised Angela had got to get back to work as fast as possible. I said I was going to have a pee before leaving, but I would wait until I got home so I could walk Angela back to work. Angela said go and have a pee now, and she would wait. Maybe I was just too slow for her because before I could get back to the bar her nerve had gone, and she decided she had to rush back to work before she was too late. I rushed after as fast as I could walk, but I could not catch her up. If it hadn't been in the busy high street I might have tried to run. I felt a bit sad to not get a final hug from her, and to hug her back in return.
  On my way back home I crossed over the river on one of the bridges, and this pigeon, with all it's feathers fluffed up against the cold and damp, was posing on a branch almost level with my eyesight just a few yards from the bridge.

  This narrative is getting out of chronological order. I guess my brain is wandering. This picture on the left is of the pump handle clip of one of the two real ales they sell in the pub. I usually drink Guinness in there at lunchtime, but yesterday I got curious. While my first Guinness was settling before the glass was filled to the brim I decided I would try just a half pint of Razor Back ale.

  At 3.8% it is a fairly weak ale, and it had a weak, but still quite pleasant taste. At first I thought it was reasonably priced, but further thought suggested that for a session ale £4.30 a pint was rather expensive. Guinness is only £4.10 a pint.

  The other bit or this story I should have mentioned earlier concerns the accuracy of the length and speed of my walk. While I am in the pub I put the tracker on my phone on pause. I then re-start it when I leave the pub. Yesterday I was in such a rush to catch Angela up that I forgot until I was able to pause to watch Angela disappearing into work. That bit of the walk is shown as a dead straight line on the track, and it was just that in the real world. What I am unsure about is how well the app did at calculating the distance. Past experience of doing the same walk suggests it did get the distance right, but I have to admit it might have over estimated the speed.

  I felt hungry when I got home, and wanted some hot food. I could have had soup, and maybe I should have, but I decided to grill some sausages and a couple of big mushrooms. Twenty minutes later I was going to tuck in, but I noticed that half the sausages were not properly cooked. The other half looked nice and brown, and I ate those with the mushrooms - and they were very nice.

  Time seemed to be racing yesterday. Before long it was approaching 4pm, and time to go back to the pharmacy. About 20 minutes before I left I set the timer on the mini grill/oven to give the last sausages another 20 minutes to get really well cooked. At 4pm I walked to the pharmacy, and was happy to pick up my prescription. Of course the useless assistant couldn't find it at first, and the pharmacist had to point it out to him.

  When I got home I opened the sealed bag, and that is when I found one drug, and the blood glucose test strips were missing. I couldn't be bothered to rush back to the pharmacy for a third time yesterday, and so I ate my sausages before settling in for the evening. Like the day, the evening seemed to pass quite quickly. Later in the evening I had my proper dinner (the sausages were a sort of late lunch). Dinner was a couple of fish cakes with runner beans.

  I watched a bit of TV, and then spent a short period of time playing with my old laptop. I think that for now I have given up trying to get the internal WiFi working. It just seems easier to plug a USB WiFi adapter in if I need WiFi on it. I also checked that it could still boot into Windows XP when needed, and while that was running I used the software to print a couple of simple labels onto two disks I had burned - one had Kubuntu, and the other Xubuntu - both Linux distributions.

  Things got more interesting later when I noticed that Talking Picture TV were showing "Personal Services" - a film starring Julie Walters, and based on, but apparently not the real story of Cynthia Payne - The madam who run the infamous brothel for old men in Streatham. The film did not finish until a little after midnight - a little late for me normally, but it was very enjoyable to watch it again.

  I went to bed, and it was one of those nights when I laid there thinking I would never get to sleep, and then suddenly I was asleep. I probably slept quite well, but I did seem to wake up earlier than I thought I should have. In fact getting up early was useful because I needed to go to the pharmacy again. Before I did much else I decided  would dare to check my blood glucose level. I was really surprised to see it was so low - not low in absolute terms, but a very satisfactory level for me.

  There is a saying that to err is human, but if you really want to screw things up you need a computer, and so it was when I got to the pharmacy. It was quiet in there, and I was lucky to deal directly with the pharmacist himself. He checked his computer, while the usually good assistant checked hers. She insisted that my prescription had been put together correctly, and it was all ticked off on her computer. That was true, but it omitted two items. This started a bit of a row between the assistant and the pharmacist.

  He checked his stock and found he had two boxes of the drug I wanted, and gave them to me. He said he would get the glucose test strips for me by Monday morning. I walked out the shop, but before I had gone a dozen paces I checked the boxes he had given me. They were both the wrong strength, and so I went back inside to point this out. There never was an official explanation, but reading between the lines, I am guessing that the stupid assistant I had seen yesterday morning, ordered the wrong strength (they are not kept as a normal stock item) because the dozy twat looked at an earlier prescription before my dosage was increased. The pharmacist promised he would sort it out himself, and that I could pick up the correct drug, and the test strips on Monday morning.

  That brings things up to date, and now there is the rest of today to consider. The only thing happening today is my resumed, regular, late Thursday afternoon drinking session with the lads (and Jodie). Today we are back drinking at Shortlands. The only unknown at the moment is whether to consider walking through Beckenham Place Park to get to the pub. On a nicer day it could be a pleasure. On a day like today I have to try and evaluate whether the misery of it would be over ridden by how good it might be for me. I may come up with a decision sometime after 3pm today.