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Sunday 22nd
March 2020
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08:11 GMT
It was gloriously sunny for a lot of
yesterday, and it was unsurprisingly dry. The
thing that spoiled it was the wind. The afternoon
temperature was not very high, just 9° C, but even
that might have felt OK in the sunshine if it
wasn't for a very strong and gusty wind that blew
any warmth away mercilessly. I didn't check, but I
suspect the temperature fell away faster than
forecast last night.
The forecast for today, even the latest
revision, has started off wrong. The starting
temperature was almost certainly lower - we only
missed a frost by about a single degree, and it is
not sunny yet. At the moment the sun is trying to
shine through quite a cloudy sky. It is not heavy
cloud, and there are still plenty of blue patches
to be seen here and there, but they are small.
Maybe all the cloud will clear as the morning
progresses, and we will have the sunshine
promised. Unfortunately there is still a lot of
wind from the east, and it doesn't look like it
will be much lighter than yesterday. It is coming
from the east, and while that means dry weather,
it also means cold weather. Today will probably be
the same disappointing 9° C as yesterday - and
feeling much colder in the wind. The possibility
of frost in the early hours of tomorrow is looking
likely, but tomorrow may end up a degree or three
warmer, and the sun should be blazing down. The
wind direction will change a bit, and the wind may
be a little weaker. There could be a chance that
tomorrow may actually feel almost warm.
Before daring to step outside into
the big dirty world yesterday, I decided to check
some health indicators. It was partly as defence
against those stupid people who believe we should
wrap ourselves in cotton wool, and not leave out
"panic room" until the all clear has sounded some
time in the indefinite future. They claim that by
being out of the house I could infect their 90
year old grannies with Covid-19. That really begs
the question, why are they, and other similar very
vulnerable people, allowing themselves into
situations where they could come into contact with
infected people. Apparently they should be allowed
to roam the streets with impunity while we,
hopefully less vulnerable people are supposed to
shiver with terror in complete biological
isolation. I don't think some people have quite
grasped reality yet.
Anyhow, three of those indicators say good,
and one says bad. A blood glucose level of
9.4mmol/L is perilously close to the danger level
of 10.0, and is still high enough to cause a few
slightly less bad trouble. As I mentioned
yesterday, it has already "activated" the cavity
in my right inner thigh. The cavity fills with
blood (although fortunately no pus, or other signs
of infection), and then can suddenly start to leak
blood. The loss of blood is trivially
insignificant, but the mess it makes isn't.
The answer to my high blood glucose problem
was threefold. The simplest, but also sometimes
the hardest, is to avoid food known to raise my
blood glucose. The additional way is to go beyond
that, and fast for a while. The final thing is for
me to push myself to walk a bit further when going
out for some exercise. I did all three, and my
blood glucose was very nice and low before I had
my dinner yesterday.
I have to admit that I was not expecting
such a good result as a drop to 6.5mmol/L. That is
safely in the area that would be considered a
reading for someone without type 2 diabetes. It
would be very nice to keep it this low all the
time, although if I could do that I would then aim
for a figure around 5.5mmol/L to give a bit more
leeway for those occasions when a small peak can
be expected.
One thing surprised me yesterday, and that
was how busy the park was considering everyone who
has no special business outside (essential work
and stuff) to remain indoors while the pandemic
crisis continues. Exercise is explicitly allowed,
although things like gyms, and the like are all
closed. It is all outdoor activities now. The fact
is, from my observations, many were just in the
park to enjoy the sun. I can't say I blame them.
It will be a terrible thing if, like in some
countries, staying at home become mandatory
instead of "advised". It may well happen as panic
continues to rise. I can easily believe that the
panic, causing long periods of intense fear, which
we are already seeing, is going to worse for
people's health than Covid-19.
I started my walk on the side of the road
with no houses. I think I was protecting myself
from them rather than the other way around. Note
the colour of the sky - nice !
It's only on quite rare occasions when I
see a rat in the park (and always near the river).
It is even rarer for me to have a suitable camera
on, and ready to take a snap. It's still not a
great picture. It was taken using a lot of zoom,
and it was in the shade. Ah well, at least this
time I got a recognisable picture of a rat. It
seems to be carrying a lump of bread - probably
meant for the ducks.
I was expecting the pub to be closed, but I
was hoping it might still have opened. I passed 5
pubs on my walk (I had deliberately steered my
walk to do so), and I was disappointed, maybe even
annoyed, that not a single one put a notice on the
door to say they were closed, and the reason why
they were closed. Just because many of us knew
about it, and the news spread like wildfire, any
aliens landing on Earth would be very confused by
it. Maybe they would be annoyed too. Maybe annoyed
enough to turn the disrupter rays on, and destroy
the Earth.
One of the complaints I keep hearing about
is that supermarkets have had their shelves
stripped bare by panic buying. I've seen pictures,
possibly carefully framed pictures, that show that
is the case in places. Bromley seems to be hit
worse than Catford. I have a theory it is only
supermarkets with car parks, where people can fill
a trolley to the brim, and then wheel it to their
car, that are suffering badly from this problem.
The shop in the picture above, and three others
along Catford Broadway, often called Asian or
Caribbean shops, have no parking facilities, and
everything has to be carried out by hand. They
seem to be very well stocked with food. Much of it
is fresh, and not in packing. I suspect many
people don't really know how to cook with such
ingredients.
As my mobile phone gets used more and more,
and the memory is filling up, it seems it is
getting prone to errors when using the "Just
Walking" app to record my walks. While I was out I
had two text messages come through. I am unsure if
it was the arrival of the messages, or me reading
them, but each caused a little spike in the trace
of where I walked. On this occasion both spikes
were quite small, but it still means I can't claim
to have walked 3.35 miles. I think an estimate of
3.2 miles would give a bit of room for error, and
so that is what I shall claim.
It is curious to say that I don't know how
I felt after that walk. I guess my legs were
feeling it a bit, but I didn't seem to have the
fatigue that I sometimes get from even shorter
walks. I did feel like a bit of a rest before I
checked my camera to see what picture I had taken
- or more precisely to see how many were both
usable and interesting. Maybe the high blood
glucose reading in the morning scared me (although
I would prefer to say "made me aware"), but I
seemed to have primed my brain to not want to
break my fast until dinner time. It is a
discipline I all to frequently can't seem to
manage.
Later on I had some photo processing to do,
but in the end I ended up trying to watch TV.
There seemed so little on that it was annoying,
but I was mainly looking for quick thrills rather
than something long like a movie. Eventually I did
start watching a movie, but I had frequent
interruptions. The film was "Above Us The
Waves". It was an old black and white movie made
after the second world war, and made in homage to
the brave men who pioneered midget submarines, and
their role in what I think was a real story - the
sinking of an important German warship in the
German's own protected waters. I must admit that
although I can't seem to find the mental stamina
to watch long films these days, it was my kind of
film. It was told through the medium of good story
telling, and good acting. It did not need long
burst of gunfire and pyrotechnically extravagant
explosions to create any interest (although both
did have their moments at appropriate times).
I also watched the end of the original Pink
Panther film. I am not sure if I have ever seen
all the film before, or maybe it was such a long
time ago that the memory is dim, and it deserves
another watch. It was on one of the channels that
re-shows a lot of their output again and again,
and so I'll probably have an opportunity to see it
some time. I think the Pink Panther film finished
at 8.30pm. A quick scan through the Freeview
channels showed nothing but crap on for some time.
It was early, but seemed to be a good time to do a
bit of reading in bed. By 9pm (or very close it
it) I was fast asleep.
I mostly slept OK, but from something like
4am this morning I was starting to feel cold. By
the time I got up, around 7am, I was feeling
almost shivery. That worried me because a fever
could be the first sign that I had got it
! The explanation was much simpler. The clue was
that although the bathroom felt even colder, it
was not that much colder. It was my heater. It had
failed in the night, and my bedroom was getting
colder and colder on what was actually a very cold
night, and as mentioned above, we only missed a
frost by the skin of our teeth.
For some days prior to the heater failing I
had noticed a "hot insulation" smell - a smell
that is always very worrying. In this case I was
getting very worried. I had, as far as I knew,
eliminated any of the electrics in the room - no
hot plugs or sockets, no hot DC adapters. The
smell seemed as if it might possibly be coming
from inside my PC. I had visions of a cooling fan
blocked by dust, and my graphics card or CPU about
to fail. It was only this morning that the reason
for that smell had become obvious - it was the
switch in the fan heater. That fan heater was new
in January 2017. It didn't last long. It is
possible that I can repair it, but for now I have
a backup heater. Once that was switched on I soon
warmed up !
Today is another day of isolation.
Another day of not seeing Angela, and another day
of no pub. It will be sunny though 0 or should be.
The sun has come out a few times, but there is
still no sign of the great big, and bright sun
seen on the weather forecast pictograms. I am not
sure that I want to do another long walk like
yesterday, but I might do one of maybe half that
length. I could possibly do some gardening today -
it depends on whether certain aches get worse of
better. My right knee does seem to feel a bit
stiff this morning. Time will tell.
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