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Monday 30th March 2020
09:42 BST
 
  Yesterday's weather left no positive feeling, and instead mostly negative feelings. After a little sunshine in the morning it was just cold and grey for the rest of the day. There was even at least one shower of rain.
winter is back
   It seems like winter is back. The sky is grey, and although no rain is shown to fall at any specific time, there is a small risk of rain at any time. The afternoon temperature may only reach 8° C, and wit the wind still coming from the icy north, it will probably feel much cooler. Tomorrow may be a far nicer day - by comparison, and not in absolute terms. The temperature should reach 10° C for a while in the afternoon, and with the wind coming from the east, still cold, but not icy, it may even feel bearable when the sun is out - there could be sunny spells throughout daylight hours tomorrow.

   One thing that failed to make an impact yesterday was the clocks changing from GMT to BST. I didn't even realise it had happened until quite late in the day, and it wasn't until I noticed that it was light at 7.30pm last night that I really believed it. The fact that the only clocks I pay any attention to automatically change from GMT to BST (and vice versa) means that there is no need to actually participate in the change. The only real impact of the change used to be when having to get up to go to work. Since retiring I run to my own clock, not that of others....well sort of. Obviously some times still matter, but on days like yesterday when it seems the outer world did not even exist, I did not feel tied to any clock.

  Yesterday was a day when I was feeling very slightly ill. It felt like a mild head cold - mainly just a bit of extra snot. The worrying thing is that a runny nose often precedes a cough as all that extra mucus runs down the throat. A cough at this time, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic is not a good thing because it is one of the prime symptoms. Fortunately my nose did seem to dry up a bit later in the day, but the hay fever-like feeling remained.
low
 I have been keeping an eye on my temperature for some time now. One interesting observation that probably means nothing, is that it is late in the evening when my temperature seems to peak. Last night it was, if I recall correctly, 36.9° C, and that is not far short of normal (usually taken to be 37.3° C, although different authorities have their own favourite idea of "normal" usually differing by a few tenths of a degree). This morning, (at approx 10:15am) my temperature was 34.2° C. That is fairly low, but not that unusual for me.

  All this makes me doubly, or probably trebly annoyed that I didn't think to take my temperature about three weeks ago when I had a severe case of the shivers. I was too busy trying to get warm to even think about getting my thermometer out. It is my belief, rightly or wrongly, that was when I probably had a corona virus infection. I had every single symptom except for the respiratory tract infection, and it is possible my high doses of vitamin D protected me from that.

  I have to say that I felt bloody miserable yesterday. The grey skies, once the few sunny spells in the morning passed, added to my despondency. Another negative input was caffeine withdrawal. My supplies of Diet Coke are now getting very low, and yesterday I decided to do without to make my last one and three quarters bottles last a bit longer. I could have gone out to try and get more, but I am unsure of the state of the shops. Some report say that supermarkets are only letting 2 people in at a time, and that queues to get in are very long. Others tell a different story. It is a shame that the corner shop has closed for up to a month because of illness (although I am not sure if the exact reason is known).

  The thing that really pissed me off is that I had been so looking forward to today because Angela is (or should be) back at work today. I had dreams of a clandestine meeting in the park, but in those dreams it was warm and sunny. The reality was not only that the weather forecast said it would be cold and grey, but that I wasn't sure if I was well enough to see Angela. It was always my intention to keep the required 2 metres from her, but even at that distance I would not be wanting to cough or sneeze on her.

  I took stock of how much food I have yesterday - by which I mean I had a very brief look in the kitchen. I could probably last another month, maybe more, without needed to buy any more food, but it would mean a very boring diet that would get increasingly unhealthy. For instance I have almost three full bags of pasta, and one of them is still in date. I am pretty confident that even the out of date stuff would be fine for many years yet. The reason I have it is because I don't eat pasta. It raises my blood glucose too high - like all carbohydrates.

  For some peculiar reason I decided that there was one foodstuff I needed urgently. Every so often, maybe as infrequently as once every couple of years, I have a strong desire for fish fingers. I think the last time could have been less than 6 months ago, but the urge has come around again. It made me think that if I get out at all today, I want to buy fish fingers as well as Diet Coke. One other thing I did yesterday has a bearing on food/eating. I paid my credit card for the month. For once it was quite a small amount. That means I could possibly treat myself to a takeaway sometime soon. I think that takeaways are still being delivered, but I worry about prices being raised during the crisis. I don't fancy a kebab at any cost !

  My pattern of sleep has changed a lot recently. It seems I am often more tired when I go to bed than I think I am. Last night was a typical case. I went to bed fairly early with the intention of reading. Pretty soon I felt like putting the book down, and I fell asleep really quickly. The really strange thing is that I have no recollection of waking up until 5am this morning. I can't remember the last night I managed to sleep non stop for what might have been 6 or even 7 hours. Of course the clocks changing meant that 5am would have been the same as 4am two nights ago.

  I can't remember if the big dream I had happened before waking at 5am, or if it was when I fell asleep again. It was a variant of a dream I have had in the past. In the dream my next door neighbour had a huge back garden that seemed to extend to the horizon. In last nights dream they decided to tarmac over a large part of it, and it seemed to amuse me when I thought it was going to do their drainage no good, and their remaining grass would become a quagmire.

  This morning I feel good, bad and indifferent. I sent Angela a message to wish her well on her first day back at work, and I said I would try and call her during her lunchbreak. I still feel really pissed off that I won't be seeing her. It is now 18 days since I last saw Angela, and I really miss her. It is also 11 days since I last went into a pub, and that seems reason to be sad too. At the moment I can't decide how I feel. There are some conflicting feeling to try and balance out.

  What seems to be a sensitive indicator of my health is my blood glucose level. Yesterday it seemed to have gone down, but it is high again this morning. I can probably blame it on what I ate or drank, but I am not sure what. Maybe it was some of the beer I had. It seems to have arrested my recent weight loss, and even slightly reversed it.

  I think that what I am going to do today is to have a shower, and wash my hair. Then, hopefully before I gain any more symptoms of bad health, I ought to rush out and see if I can buy some fish fingers. I am wondering what the Tesco Express store will be like. I have a theory that the crowds will be concentrating on the bigger supermarkets, and small shops may be OK. One thing I must try and stop doing is having an experimental cough. There have been a few times when I have needed to cough - for instance waking up with a dry mouth and throat - but sometimes I seem to have a cough to see how it feels.....or maybe I don't. Just thinking about that made me need to cough, but with no obvious benefit for doing so. It is possible that I may have the first inkling of a sore throat. Maybe I am losing the battle with coronavirus, or maybe it is all in the mind. It probably makes it important to get out to stretch my legs in the fresh air while I can.
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