Today may be the coldest day of the year so far, but with 358 more days to go until the year ends, another day could easily take the accolade as the coldest day.  My thermometer says it is only a bit above 0° C at the moment, but I guess the forecast 1° C is close enough. Maybe aided by the predicted sunny spells this afternoon, the temperature is predicted to rise to 3° C before dropping back down to 1° C, or lower. Curiously enough, the BBC (Meteogroup) forecast shows the maximum temperature as only 1° C from 11am to 4pm. Before and after that is shows 0° C ! The BBC doesn't predict any sunny spells at all today. It is feeling like once again I am on the border between 2 weather systems, and neither forecaster can predict where the dividing line is. There is also a difference of opinion about tomorrow. The Met Office says the afternoon will be 3° C, and there will be dark grey clouds all day with a 10% chance of rain, but there will be no rain. The BBC also says the afternoon will reach 3° C, and that the sky will be dark grey with clouds. There are a few hours before the afternoon when the temperature is predicted to be 2° C, and the chance of "precipitation" is 17%. That sound like there is chance of sleet or snow !

    Yesterday was another day when not a lot happened, but a few things did. As predicted, I did do some laundry, and hand washed some t-shirts, some underwear, and a hand towel. I did correctly predict that I wouldn't be going out for a walk (although I think I said "probably not"). At the time when I could have gone out, during the couple of hours that featured a lot of sunshine, I was enjoying the pleasure of laying on my bed, and reading while trying not to be dazzled by the sunshine pouring through the windows. In some ways it could have been thought of as sunbathing.

  One interesting thing that happened yesterday was receiving an email from my older sister. It had a pdf file attached to it. I don't think my sister actually said why she had written what was in the pdf, but it sounded a lot like it was for some sort of "memories of Blackheath" type of thing. She related how I once again cheated death - I seemed to do this a lot ! My sister was in charge of the pram that I was in when the family went almost just across the road to the pond outside the Prince Of Wales pub on Blackheath. I'm guessing it was a Sunday afternoon, and several men were showing off their model boats.

  My sister was distracted watching the boats, and didn't realise that me, and the pram I was in, started rolling down towards the water - nasty cold water full of dead leaves and mud, and possibly worse - it was a shallow ramp into the pond so that horses, of which there were still many pulling carts in the 1950s, could go down for a drink. Fortunately for me an adult noticed this, and pulled the pram out of the water before it went in too deep. I don't think the water would have been deep enough to cover me, but it would still have been a very unpleasant thing.

  One of the things about yesterday was another day of schizophrenic eating. I was deliberately eating very carefully so I could eat recklessly ! The real reckless thing was the sugar laden half a chocolate Swiss roll. Having opened the packet the previous day, I couldn't leave it for too long or it would quickly dry out and go stale. That seemed the perfect excuse to enjoy the experience of wolfing it down...well, sort of !

  One of the interesting low sugar meals was the can of "beef stew" I had as part of my lunch. The picture on the can made it seem very lush, but it was actually closer to beef soup. It was a few lumps of beef, cooked to the point of being soft and falling apart in a fairly rich beef gravy. The nutritional information on the can said it hardly had any sugar in it at all - which was good because I followed that up with a can of Tesco "beef casserole". That had some vegetables in it, mostly potato and carrots, and it's sugar content was low but still significant.

  My dinner was grilled/roasted chicken thighs. The chicken was not skinless, nor boneless,. I covered it with some cheap and nasty chilli sauce/marinade. That did have a lot of sugar in it, but most of the sugar was burnt off during cooking - the sauce had literally turned to charcoal. I don't think it was supposed to be used like I used it. I ate nothing with that chicken, but I followed it by an orange and a couple of apples.

  So little happened yesterday that I'll skip directly to my sleep. I read for maybe 30 to 60 minutes before turning out the light, and it was one of those cases where before I could conclude that I wasn't going to get to sleep, I was fast asleep. What is more, I seemed to sleep very soundly last night. I can barely remember getting up for a wee once or twice, and I can only remember have a single dream. With hindsight it was probably several dreams that have merged into one in my memory - not that I can remember much about that/those dream(s). I do recall it was another dream where I was back at work, and I think I was trying to repair something that should have been thrown away, but I didn't like to do that.

  Having a good night's sleep obviously makes me feel good in some ways in the morning. I guess that this morning I almost feel good, although I think I would phrase it as not feeling bad. The big exception to this is a feeling of being bunged up....in the lower regions of the body ! I can't recall having a poo yesterday, and I have yet to have one this morning. It is not painful, but it makes me feel sluggish, and the uncertainty about it is annoying. Hopefully something will move soon. There are occasional hints about it, but as yet nothing.

  This morning I was not expecting my blood glucose to have gone down - particularly after eating half a very sweet Swiss Roll ! It has actually gone up a little, but very little. What is sort of good is that apart from a a few small variations, it is other wise very stable with an average of about 8.5mmol/l. My self invented ideal is an average of 7.5mmol/l. Hopefully it won't be too long before circumstances (mainly the weather) will change enough to allow me to take the correct steps to get back down to that. In the meantime I take solace that this time last year, the hospital diabetes nurse was not really concerned about any reading higher than 10mmol/l. That is not to say he would be happy about 8.5mmol/l, but 10mmol/l is the trigger point for more intense intervention.

  This morning I do know what I am doing for some of the day. This afternoon my illegal support bubble, aka Jodie, will be joining me for a few hours of drinking, and talking.  Prior to that I need to do a bit of cleaning and polishing, but probably not going as far as the hoovering I was going to do yesterday, but didn't. I might also pop out to buy more Polish beer from the mini supermarket on Catford Bridge.