The sky is certainly clear at the moment, and for the next few hours we should be treated to glorious sunshine. We need it to warm up another very chilly morning. I haven't checked, but I wouldn't dispute the forecast 11° C. It seems it will cloud over as the morning ends, and the afternoon will probably be dull and grey - maybe light grey most of the time. The temperature is predicted to rise to just 18° C today, but it should stay dry. Tomorrow should see more sunshine with some long spells of it, but mostly just sunny intervals popping up during the afternoon. It could be a whole degree warmer than today.

  The highlight of yesterday, if it can be called a highlight, was an early morning walk to the pharmacy. It is only a 5 minute walk there, and so not really significant when compared to my usual walks. The reason for visiting the pharmacy was to pick up my latest repeat prescription. I arrived there before they had even opened, and had to wait for 10 minutes before I could go in. It was fairly predictable that my prescription was not complete, but on this occasion it was close to it.

  There is one drug that they do not keep in stock, and it has to be ordered. On this occasion they had remembered to order it, and it was due to be delivered by 10am. After a couple of hours I went back again, and my prescription was ready to pick up. Everything was there when I checked it once I was back at home. It is tricky to do on the spot because there is a quite a lot to check....

  When I first walked to the pharmacy I found the cool air seemed to make my eyes water enough to cause my nose to drip. If I had been wearing a mask it would have ended up quite disgustingly soggy. It was possibly a degree or two warmer on my second walk to the pharmacy, but I still found my nose needed a frequent blow. Maybe it was a sort of hay fever like allergy rather than cool air. Whatever it was matters less than the fact it would make mask wearing difficult.

  The sun was out as I walked to and from the pharmacy the second time, and by that time my legs were starting to loosen up. It felt like I would be OK for a longer walk, but I had made my mind up I would have a rest yesterday. There were things I should do at home, and it seemed like a good idea to have a lazy day - or at least one not featuring a long walk. In the end I did very little that could be called productive.

  Maybe the only important thing I did was about 20 minutes of gardening. I dead-headed the Companulas to encourage them to continue flowering, and I fed the tomato plants that are growing in pots. They need more frequent watering compared to those growing in the ground, and sometimes I am a bit negligent. The result is they are doing less well than those in the ground. Hopefully a few doses of plant food will help them along, but like last year it feels like it is getting too late in the year for my tomatoes to ripen.

  I spent much of my day just reading, and trying not to feel too hungry. At lunchtime I treated myself to a couple of cans of soup. The first was lentil and bacon soup. That seemed to be the best soup to spice up with my new delivery of chilli sauce. It worked well. The second can was tomato soup, and that got treated to a generous splash of Lee & Perrins Worcestershire sauce. Delicious !

  As dinner time approached I fancied something more substantial to eat. I opted for a Fray Bentos "Just Chicken" pie. Like the steak and kidney pie I had some weeks ago, it was a big disappointment. Once again it was mainly goo with a few bits of meat floating in it. My mini oven has trouble getting the shortcrust pastry to rise properly, and has a tendency to burn it if I am not careful. Maybe the puff pasty topping has always been the best bit, and the filling has always been crap, but that is not how I remember it from years ago.

  There was an additional problem when cooking my pie. It must have been several week ago that the mechanical timer on my mini oven failed. That was no more than a small problem. I am quite capable of using a clock to time how long something cooks for. The big problem last night was that the timer seems to have started to work again. To cook the pie I just turned the timer to about 10 minutes, and went away in the belief that it would still be cooking half an hour later. It wasn't. I went down to the kitchen to check it, and it was almost cold. I had to start the process all over again, and I had my dinner later than I wanted it.

  I washed my dinner down, which, incidentally, also included a sachet of flavoured beans, with a can of Guinness. I would have three glasses of Guinness (2 cans, and one bottle) before I went to bed. It was possibly lucky I did because after some snoozing during the day I found I was less sleepy than I thought I would be. The booze probably helped me get to sleep. It was another night that was both good and bad. The good is that I seemed to sleep well for long periods before waking up. The bad was that I couldn't seem to get back to sleep after 5am.

  I tossed and turned in bed, and crunched my chest a few times in a futile attempt to get to sleep again. Eventually I realised that I might as well get up despite it still being dark outside. Maybe it was the assortment of pains that stopped me getting comfortable enough to go back to sleep. None of the pains were very strong pains, and most were very familiar. One was slightly unusual. It was a bit of very mild gut ache. It didn't feel like it, but it turned out I needed the toilet more than I realised. A nice early poo was quite useful.

  After I had finished on the toilet I got on the scales, and to my great surprise I seem to have lost another 100gm. If I can be very careful about what I eat today, or go on a long walk, I could see the units digit on the scales flip down to the next lower number tomorrow morning. That will be in an area I have really only visited before when very dehydrated after a long walk in the hot sun. Unfortunately my blood glucose did not go down, and seems to have instead gone up another small amount.

  At least my blood pressure seems to be back where it typically is again. It did go through a small peak that was only significant when compared to my typical readings. The higher reading were generally equal to, or less than "normal". In theory I should be feeling good this morning, but in practice I don't. The server that serves these web pages needed to be rebooted this morning, and to do that meant no more than a couple of actions on a keyboard. That keyboard is about chest height, and has to operated with my arms extended. Just doing that gave me some annoying chest pains.

  As well as my chest feeling delicate, my legs and back feel delicate too. The back ache will probably be cured by going for a walk, and my legs usually free up after a I've walked mile or so. I guess I am going to have to go for a walk today, but I must admit that I am not very keen about it at the moment, and any distraction would be enough to stop me. At this point in time the best I can say is that I will probably go for a walk.