I had a seemingly busy day yesterday. It wasn't until the afternoon that I did anything physical, although I did go to Tesco in the morning. I spent a lot of money in Tesco, but most of it was not on food - unless you classify whisky as food for the soul - which might be possible.

  If you study the shelf labels in the picture on the left, you'll probably get eye strain, and so I will explain... It seems Tesco have once again made a very strange, but very good special offer. Basically you can spend £25 on a 70cl bottle of Haig, or sitting on the same shelf there are 1l bottles. Those one litre, or 100cl bottles are just £22. It is cheaper to buy the bigger bottle - not in price per cl, but in absolute terms. £3 less buys 30cl  more. Of course I had to buy one ! I also bought a big bottle of my "standard" preferred Tesco "Special Reserve" whisky.

  The other thing I bought a lot of was dry soup mix. I have been wary of them in the past because I seem to think they may taste a bit powdery, but I wonder if that is an irrational idea. I was partly attracted by the seemingly low amount of sugar in some of them. One of the flavours included a discount for buying two.  It wasn't until I got to the other side of the store that I discovered the real reason for buying them. It was because they are very light compared to cans, and that was very handy when carrying two big bottles of whisky !

 I also bought a couple of ready prepared salads, and some double Gloucestershire cheese. The latter was on the reduced price shelf, and of the stuff that interested me, it was the only thing that had a decent discount (I think it might have been half price). There was one other thing that I should have avoided, but also had a decent discount, and was quite tempting - a bag of half a dozen mini (bite size) pork pies.

  In complete disregard to the consequences, I ate those mini pork pies while doing some work on my PC. A lot of what I was doing was preparing for February. I now have spreadsheets ready for my blood pressure and blood glucose measurements for February. While I am not under the cosh of the diabetic nurse, and I may not be called for any sort of check up at my doctors, until later in the year, these records are not quite so important, but it is still useful for me to keep an eye on things. I still check my blood glucose most mornings, but I am not bothering with the pre-dinner measurement now. This morning, despite some possible reasons for my blood glucose to be a little high, it is still nice and low.

  A little more time consuming was preparing the web page for February. It is now ready, but as I write there is little more than the calendar to be seen. From February the calendar will have links to a separate page for each day rather than to sections of the monthly page as they used to. The reason was that my daily diary, what your are reading right now, is getting so long that the monthly collection was getting to be a ridiculously long page. I am thinking of ditching the current version of the monthly pages, and just have a single pages with all the calendars for the year, but I haven't made a decision about it yet.

  The final bit of work I did on my PC was to design, if "design" doesn't imply anything too exciting, a mostly pictorial page of my "adventures" on Tuesday when I raced to Romford and back. I took pictures on my mobile phone of anything displaying a clock to give some idea of how time was passing. I also took some bigger pictures on my pocket sized Canon iXus 285HS camera. That page can be viewed by clicking here.

  It was halfway through the afternoon before I tackled an actual physical bit of work. It was to sort out, clean and tidy the bookshelf in my back room. That bookshelf probably has never been dusted in it's life...although that maybe more true of the very top shelf. I attacked it with a damp cleaning cloth, and a bowl of hot water with some Dettox in it. I had to change the water twice because it was ending up like brown soup !

  One of the objects of the exercise was to try and throw away stuff I no longer needed, or could conceive of having a future need. The latter was a very difficult decision to make. I had a lot of old information from a few societies I once belonged to, and it was hard for me to throw out stuff that contained information that may not even be on web sites like wikipedia. Nevertheless, I gritted my teeth, and threw a huge pile of paperwork into the recycling bin. The top two shelves are now basically clean, as well as being neat and tidy - mostly. The two lower shelves may be a job for today, And the junk below the bottom shelf is going to be a big problem for some time in the indefinite future - but hopefully not too long in the future.
  There is a reason that I didn't walk any further than Tesco yesterday, and the reason is in the picture above. I gained this injury on my race to Romford and back on Tuesday. I think it was something, perhaps a seam, in/on the socks I was wearing that ground away the skin on my foot. I don't think I can blame the shoe for it, although it was a pair of shoes that I don't think are comfortable for long distance walking. Evidently I must have done a fair bit of walking on the journey to Romford and back.

  Yesterday morning there was a nice dry scab on that spot until the strap of my flip flops flicked it off. I was not really aware it had happened until I looked down and noticed I was bleeding. I took the picture while there was a lot of blood for dramatic effect. In reality it is not a big injury, and with a nice padded sticking plaster on it, I barely felt a thing when I went to Tesco. I probably could have survived a 2 mile walk through the park, but I thought I ought to try and do some work yesterday.

  During the day I did have a few snacks that were not good for me, and so for dinner I tried to be a bit more careful...ut only a bit. My dinner was poached/braised pig liver with some leek, mushroom and peas. It was not the lowest calorie meal, but not too bad. The problem is that even the smallest pack of liver had enough for 2 or even 4 people. I can imagine my mum padding it out even further with thick gravy, and loads of onions, and some bacon, to feed all 7 of us when I was young. I had little choice but to use the whole pack once it was opened.

  This morning my blood glucose was very good again. It was 6.8mmol/l - not quite as good as yesterday's 6.2, but still better than my typical average of 7.0. It is even possible that my weight is going back down after an annoying, but understandable small rise. The change hangs on a fine thread, but is seems to be heading in the right direction. Maybe today, I will do better - although several pints of good ale will be consumed.

  There were a variety of reasons ranging from some emotional stuff watched on TV, to maybe shell shock after my brutal shelf clearing, but I felt a bit pissed off last night. Impending Brexit probably didn't/doesn't help. I was quite relieved to fall asleep very quickly last night. I am not sure what time I actually went to sleep, but I think it may have been before 11pm. Nothing much happened until just gone 2am when I suddenly realised I had not taken my early evening drugs. I took them, and then laid down to go back to sleep. No sooner was I asleep then I woke up again - and this time it was for real.

  The not taking my drugs thing was a dream that was apparently set in real time. When I really woke up only a few minutes had passed since the time in the dream. That was a bit weird. Unfortunately I woke up with my chest hurting. There were a few times when I was clearing the shelves in the afternoon when I felt my ribs or sternum crack, and just that was enough to cause the ache in the night, but I had also felt a few crunches when turning over in bed. I took a couple of Ibuprofen because that usually calms things down. I also took a couple of antacids just in case I was also suffering from a bit of reflux after that big dinner.

  It seemed to take well over an hour before I could get back to sleep, but it was a very poor sleep. I just could not seem to get comfortable. In every position something felt uncomfortable. The most annoying may be the one problem that is potentially curable, and that may be carpal tunnel syndrome. It's where the nerves in the wrist get crunched causing numbness and painful pins and needles in the hand. It could also be something worse. I'll get it looked at one day.

  Today it is dull and miserable, and that doesn't inspire me to do much. The only definite thing I am planning to do today is to go for my regular late Thursday afternoon drink. Once again we are meeting in Shortlands - and that suits me fine.