Apart from being a degree or two cooler than yesterday, today will probably be a lot like yesterday - frequently grey and dull, and generally miserable. The early morning forecast, as above, even showed a shower at midday, although the most recent revision doesn't show any rain. Until 5pm the chance of rain is shown as just 10%, and after that it goes down to less than 5%. The afternoon temperature will now only be 9° C until sunset, but by midnight the temperature may drop to just 5° C.The afternoon may feel almost as good as yesterday, but tonight is going to feel cold. Tomorrow will be another sunless day, and the prediction for tomorrow shows, at various times, light grey clouds, mid grey clouds, and dark grey clouds. Some of those clouds are going to bring rain, and some of the showers may be heavy., but for all that the should be a slow temperature rise from something like 5° C in the morning to a very mild 12° C by midnight. Monday may be a very slightly warm day !

   I felt very different to previous days yesterday. It was a much better feeling, and yet it is hard to say why. It certainly wasn't bright sunshine making me feel better, but it could have been weather related. I guess the atmospheric pressure had probably changed as a result of the warmer air, and maybe that change of pressure relieved some of the usual aches and pains. On the other hand, with less of the usual aches and pains to distract me, I was aware of a lot of chest/rib pain. It was never uncomfortable painful, and sometimes not painful at all, but I could still hear/feel unpleasant noises from the bones of my chest. It is hard to describe those "noises", but think along the lines of odd clickings and occasional grating noises. There was also sensations a bit like very mild muscle cramp that could be easily stopped by a change of posture.

  The one very notable thing that slowly began to feel good was that the warmer weather meant that I had to use very little heating, and for much of the afternoon I had the heating completely off. Maybe this felt particularly good only in regard to my electricity bill, or maybe it was a reminder that one day winter will be over, and spring will follow. Of course we haven't really had winter yet in terms of ice and snow, but it has still felt damn cold many times recently. I wonder if we will get ice and snow this winter ? If we do it it will probably be in February, and so there is still some time to wait.

  I can't really say I was busy doing stuff yesterday, but I did seem to do enough to pass the time quickly enough, although there was one exception to that. I was expecting a parcel delivery (more booze) yesterday, and I knew that when it was gone midday before the delivery driver left the depot in Dartford, that it was going to be another late delivery. For some stupid reason I started to go on high alert not that long after 3pm. Stupid because I knew it was unlikely to arrive before 6pm.

  It arrived much, much later than that. The advice from Amazon's order tracking page was "before 9pm". I waited and waited and waited ! At 9pm I checked the website, and they apologised for missing their advisory deadline, but that my package was still on it's way. It arrived at about 9.25pm. I could have been tucked up in bed, fast asleep by then if I hadn't been waiting for the delivery. The trouble is that we don't know what is happening at the depot, but because other drivers seem to leave the depot as early as 10am, admittedly on rare occasions, it gives the impression that my driver was a lazy bastard who couldn't be bothered to get out of bed earlier.

  One good thing came from frequently consulting Amazon's web pages, and that was seeing the status of other orders (although they are pretty good at sending emails with status updates). It seems another package that was originally going to be delivered sometime next week will arrive today. It arrived at the final depot at just gone 7am, and so it seems to me that an early rising driver could load his van, and be on the road by 10am. I bet that won't happen. The other useful bit of info is that the latest estimate for the delivery of Angela's present could be as early as next Thursday. that would be good because I think there is a fair possibility that Angela, not being aware that it is coming, may miss the first attempted delivery, and will have to arrange a time for a second attempt.

   I spent some time washing a few bits of laundry yesterday. That was mainly inspired by getting sausage fat all over a tea towel the day before. I gave it a good soak in detergent after turning up the water temperature. I also washed a t-shirt and some underwear at the same time. I can't say the tea towel came out perfectly clean, but it was probably better than expected. Some of the yellow patches were from an earlier curry based incident, and turmeric stains can be a right bugger to remove !

  The other thing I did that used a fair bit of time, was to do some more VHS videotape to computer transfers. This was sometimes time consuming because I ended up watching some of the transfer (which can only be done in real time by playing the tape as normal). Some of yesterday's transfers generated gigantic files, and at least one was bigger than I thought Windows allowed, but it seemed to work OK, although I could not copy it off the hard disk except to a Linux formatted disk.

  The gigantic files are in mpeg format, and conversion to mp4 files reduces their size considerably - or should do. My problem was that the latest version of Kdenlive, the video editor I use to trim the beginning and end, and save the result as an mp4 file, has changed it's control panel. The earlier version allowed you to set the actual bit rate to suit the material. That has been replaced by a slider that just sets arbitary number, and to make matter worse, it work backwards. As you turn the slider down the numbers get bigger, and there is no explanation of what these number mean.

Here is a very short video that I didn't not finish until just before I started to write this morning. When I save it yesterday I set the slider for video quality way too excessive. The resultant file was 29MB. This morning I experimented a bit more, and now it is just 1.6MB - a considerable saving, and a more appropriate bit rate for embedding in a web page.   This was found on the skraggy end of a well worn VHS tape, and I estimate it was probably recorded in 1987 or 1988. It starts with the test card, and that is followed by about 20 seconds of "Pages from Ceefax" - as used to be shown in the afternoon before TV schedules changed to 24 hours of mostly rubbish !

  As I reported yesterday morning, my blood glucose was dangerously high yesterday morning, and I had to take steps to get it lower. That meant being selective in what I ate and drank. It didn't work out a well as it should have. It was as I started eating lunch, which was the same as my breakfast, that I realised I had dropped a clanger. I was eating rice crackers (very safe) with cheese (also usually safe - except for clogged arteries). I suddenly realised that the cheese I was eating, which was very delicious cheese, probably had sugar in it. It was mango chutney flavoured red Leicestershire cheese. Very, very moreish, but if it had real mango chutney in it, which is possible, that mango chutney is effectively jam, and could be 75% sugar !

  My dinner was a lot more careful. It was just grilled chicken thighs with a decent helping of mange tout. I followed that with some satsumas (or where they clementines ?).  It was, in my terms, a light enough meal for it's intended purpose of being low sugar, and low calorie. I certainly didn't feel stuffed after eating it, and if anything, I felt a bit hungry before going to bed. That was not good because of that late parcel delivery.

  I probably would have been in bed reading by the time the packet arrived (actually it was a box) at 9.25pm, and might have otherwise have turned off the light by 9.30pm. By the time I did turn out the light it felt so late that it seemed I had passed the point of maximum sleepiness (if such a thing can exist), and I found I hardly felt sleepy at all. It was almost midnight when I got up again, and spent some time on the internet before going back to bed again. I finally got to sleep just after 2am (I think). I seemed to sleep OK, but I only seemed to sleep on about half an hour after I would usually wake.

  I feel OK, but I also feel I am owed at least 2 or 3 hours sleep. I predict I will be snoozing a bit today, but I had better be careful not to over do it, and stop myself getting to sleep tonight. When I first woke up my neck was stiff, the pillow felt like it was made of concrete, and I had a headache. Fortunately the neck ache, and the headache have faded away since then. At the moment I am mostly conscious of feeling tired, although I have to admit that is only since I wrote about it half a paragraph previously !

  Well, the good news is that my blood glucose level has dropped to a more sane level. It is still higher than desired, but I knew I would never get it down enough in one day unless I fasted. If I am "good" today it could be down to a far better figure tomorrow.  I don't know if I can find enough distractions away from the fridge today, but I'll try to find some amusements. The only problem is that like yesterday, I am waiting for yet another delivery, and the chances are it is going to be another very late delivery. Hopefully it won't be as late as yesterday. For the curious, and I must admit I am one of them, it is a bottle of Welsh whiskey. I've never tried Welsh whisky before. It could be interesting.