Tuesday 7th April 2020

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Tuesday 7th April 2020

08:34 BST

There was a sprinkle of rain yesterday morning. It was later than originally forecast, and a bit more then the drizzle that a later revision predicted for later in the morning. That last light rain was around 11am. After that it brightened up a bit, but the predicted sunny spells were rather thin on the ground. There seemed to be more bits of blue sky to the north, but the south remained stubbornly cloudy, and the sun only broke through now and then. It was a mild to slightly warmish day with the afternoon temperature at about the forecast temperature of 17° C.

Today has certainly started nice and sunny. The latest revision to the forecast has the sunshine continuing another hour compared to the screenshot above. From 5pm there may only be sunny intervals until sunset. This morning felt a little cool, but with an afternoon temperature of 19° C, it should end up as a nice warm day. Tomorrow should be warmer still with the temperature reaching 21° C, but the day may only feature sunny spells rather than non stop sunshine.

Yesterday was the day I finally did a sort of proper shop in Tesco. It was quick, but left me feeling rather depressed. When I arrived at Tesco after going through the car park, and came out by the doors. I was expecting to see a big queue lining up across the front of the store, but there was no one there. I held back a bit as a man approached from directly in front of me. At the doors the woman who was regulating people entering, beckoned him in. I looked at her for guidance, and she beckoned me in too.

There were few people in the store, as is supposed to be, and I got around in there, mostly avoiding other people, very quickly. With hindsight I think everyone was supposed to follow a fixed route, but I just went my normal way, heading to some aisles, while avoiding others. At the end I approached the checkouts. They didn't seem to be very busy, and I dutifully kept 2 metres away from the person in front. It was then that I learned that there was one single queue, spaced at 2 metre intervals, and a member of the Tesco staff was calling people on to the next empty checkout. Having got to the checkout I was instructed to load everything on the the conveyor from the end, instead of the side. Well that seemed awkward and cack-handed, but I did it anyway. Once the cashier started scanning my stuff I moved down and started filling my bags from the side, with my body shielded from the cashier by a new perspex screen. That was wrong, I had to stand behind a bit of tape at the end of the checkout, and the cashier would throw my shopping down to me. From that position their was no perspex shield between us, and if I had coughed she would have been sprayed with who knows what.

It felt like a bad shopping experience, and one I don't think I want to repeat in a hurry. To make matters worse I spied a big queue, queuing in a place I didn't even look at until I was on my way out. I feel sure I should have noticed them before. Maybe there was no queue there when I went in, or maybe I just didn't see it because I was only looking at the store to my right, and not looking left away from the store. I would have thought the woman at the door would have pointed me to the back of the queue if I had jumped the queue. It is possible that my timing just happened to be lucky, and that there was no queue when I arrived there.

Among my purchases were a couple of slightly reduced price cheese and ham mini-subs. I ate both when I got home, and that bread really played havoc with my blood glucose level. Just before dinner time, when on a good day it can be fairly low, is was far too high (although it still didn't cross the line into the danger area). I am unsure how those rolls might have contributed to it, and how much my shopping experience left me feeling drained, but I felt like doing little more than just laying on my bed to read and snooze through the afternoon.

One thing I noticed as the afternoon progressed was an odd feeling in my gut. At that time it was not uncomfortable, but I recognised it as an early warning of either a stomach upset, or trapped wind. Mostly it was ignorable, and my choice of dinner was more inspired by my high blood glucose level (but not dominated by it). I had bought a couple of Tesco ready prepared "simple salads", and to one of them I added some sliced corned beef plus some sliced chillies, some black olives (stoned), and a good squirt of mayonnaise. It transformed that salad from something healthy to something less so.

As normal I watched some Star Trek while eating dinner. I first watched an episode of "The New Generation", and then an episode of Voyager. While watching the latter I began to get restless. Soon after it finished I went down to the back room, and started clearing stuff from the top, and inside top of the drinks cabinet. Before the evening was over I had removed enough weight from the drinks cabinet to walk it across the room, and park it in it's new home backed on to the wall of the cupboard under the stairs.

I don't think I was expecting to find a load of old mouse droppings under it when I moved it, and so once again it was time to give that area of carpet a good hoovering. I also hoovered the wall because there had been loads of cobwebs behind that cabinet. Once that was done I felt like I had done something productive for the day, and I could rest again - or try to. Before completely trying to relax I sent another message to Angela.

At the back of my drink cupboard I found a voucher for £1 off a 70cl bottle of Smirnoff. Unfortunately it had expired in December 1996 ! I took a picture of it, and sent it to Angela along with a message saying I knew she would never forgive me for wasting the voucher - Smirnoff being her favourite drink. I wasn't sure if it would get a reply or not, or what a reply might say. I did get a reply, and once again it was very short, and very sweet. It simply said "I miss you xxxx".

After that I could try and relax, and after reading for a bit I tried to get to sleep. Sleep eluded my until 2am because I was in pain. It had been generally ignorable when standing, or sitting up, doing anything that might distract me, but laying in down in bed probably made it worse, and very difficult to ignore. It was two things. One was trapped wind, and it was getting worse. The other was something akin to a pulled muscle in my chest - almost certainly from moving that drinks cabinet without fully emptying it.

A couple of Ibuprofen tablets calmed my chest down a bit, but the trapped wind just would not ease until gone 1am. Two visits to the toilet turned out to be productive, and by 2am I was left with some tenderness, and still with the odd gurgling sound from my gut, but I seemed to be able to get some sleep then. I did not sleep well, and I think I am still owed 3 or 4 hours sleep this morning.

My guts were evidently not cleared out last night, and this morning I think I needed 2 more visits to the toilet. I have a feeling I will be going again before the morning is over. Fortunately my chest seems to feel no more than a hint of stiffness this morning. It is also fortunate that I shouldn't need to manhandle any furniture again today. I guess it is a combination of little things, perhaps lack of sleep being not so little, but I do feel pretty lousy this morning.

Oddly enough, all my health indicators point to good health (or as good as can be expected). My temperature is low. My blood glucose has come down to a sane figure for the first time for some time, and my blood pressure is typically low. Even my weight is not too bad, although it has taken to "hovering" again. It jumped down a useful bit, and now it just oscillates a few hundred grammes up and down around an average figure. Hopefully there will be another permanent drop sooner or later.

One little diversion, earlier yesterday, was another play with my old Philips flashgun. I decided to try it with a Fuji camera I have. It is supposed to have a "hot shoe" attachment point for an external flash unit, but I noted it seems to have a few extra contacts. After some experimentation I concluded that camera is rigged to only work with a special, presumably Fuji made, flash gun.

That was not the case with my Nikon camera. I tried it with that camera, and apart from an occasional strange colour cast, as if it was set for the wrong light source, it worked perfectly. Then I put the camera away, and put the flash gun in the camera bag. It seems that I forgot to turn it off before zipping up the camera bag. It was well after midnight when I was trying hard to get to sleep, when I kept hearing a strange pop at seemingly random intervals. It took a long time before I realised it was the sound of a flash gun firing. I opened my my camera bag, and took the flash gun out. It was extremely hot, and most scary was the lithium batteries I had put in the flash were almost too hot to touch - not a good thing for potentially explosive lithium batteries ! I took the batteries out, and left them in an ashtray to cool off. I assume they are now knackered. Whether the flash gun still works, or if that cooked up, is something I'll check later.

My master plan for today is to probably go out for a long walk. I really want to walk in the hot sunshine, but at the moment I am not sure that I feel up to it. My plan was that I would pass 2 metres away from Angela's favourite park bench - where she may be sitting having her lunchtime cigarette. It would feel awful not being able to hug her, or even get closer than 2 metres, but it would be nice to see her for a few minutes, and the possibility of that will probably be what gets me out on a long walk. On the other hand I am now at a point where I could make a big difference to my back room. I want to put up a shelf above the drinks cabinet to keep some of he stuff, mostly loads of special beer glasses, out of the drinks cabinet. I also have a lot of glass washing to do. Getting one more bit of that room sorted out would feel good, but so would seeing Angela - albeit at a safe distance.