Today is going to be very different to yesterday. At the moment it seems medium bright outside. The cloud cover is thick enough to completely block the sun, but at least the clouds are white....for now. It seems that will soon be getting darker, and even the latest revision to the forecast predicts light rain for 11am and midday, and then again maybe three more hours of it starting at 5pm. After a frosty start the temperature will rise through the day. By midday it could be 3° C. By 3pm it could be 5° C, and then it will rise very slowly to 6° C by 10pm. Tomorrow looks like it will be very grey with some rain during the day, and probably more at night. The morning is predicted to start where today leaves of, 6° C, and then during the afternoon it may hit 9° C. That is tantalisingly close to tepid, but then the temperature will start to fall back a degree to 8° C. The day after tomorrow may see the temperature rise to 12° C, but everything else about the day looks pretty grim.

   Yesterday's sunshine should have drawn me out for a walk, but for some reason just going to Aldi seemed like all the exercise I wanted. The other reason for not going out in the cold was because I was feeling a bit fragile. I think I may be coming to the end of it today, but I have definitely had a flare up of my dodgy chest - what I incorrectly call my twisted ribs, and what is probably Costochondritis. The wikipedia article I have linked to (and not seen before today) seems to have an excellent explanation of it.

  It is interesting that one basic treatment mentioned in the Wikipedia article is the use of (deep breath) nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. One such drug is Iboprofen. I have independently found that Ibuprofen provides some, and occasionally a lot of relief from the pain. I should mention that it is rarely a strong pain, but it is a long term pain that become very annoying after a while.

  The other interesting thing in the Wikipedia article is that it says the pain can be very similar to a heart attack. Once again, I can confirm that. I am pretty certain that it was only costochondritus that landed me a week in hospital in 2019. While some heart tissue debris (or something) was found in my blood, and that strongly suggested a heart attack, all the tests never found anything wrong with my heart, or it's plumbing. No tests were done to confirm or deny my suggestion that it may have been costochondritis.

  It was a shame to waste yesterday's bright sunshine, and yet in a way it wasn't wasted. I ended up effectively sunbathing. I laid on my bed, initially just reading, but eventually I just lay there with my eyes closed against the dazzling sun, feeling those hot rays on my body. Any ultra violet was blocked by the glass, but the heat from the sun warmed my bedroom up to summer temperatures - even with the heating completely off for a few hours. It was rather pleasant, and may have even contributed to my chest starting to feel better.

  While it was very nice to feel that warmth, it made for a bit of a boring day, and boring days usually make me hungry. It was hard fighting that hunger, but I mostly succeeded because I was acutely aware that I had over indulged with ready-mix pasta snacks I had bought in Aldi during my morning shopping there. I knew all that pasta would have a negative effect on my blood glucose level - and it did.

  I very nearly made up two bowls of instant noodles, but stopped just before I opened the packets because I knew the last thing I wanted was even more pasta. What I had instead was also rather unhealthy in a different way. My lunch was "strong cheddar" cheese spread scooped up with rice crackers. I also ate a whole, but small packet of cashew nuts. They are rather high in calories, although fortunately they contain very little sugar. The sad thing is that I didn't really enjoy them. I used to think that cashew nuts were like ambrosia - food of the Gods - but now they seem to be very "ordinary".

   I realaly didn't do anything of any significance during the day (after my morning shopping trip), but somehow it didn't seem to take all that long before dinner time arrived. There were various things I could have cooked for dinner, and many of them could have been nicer than what I actually ate. I knew they would be crap when I bought them, but I cooked a pack of "southern style", or possibly just seasoned breadcrumb coated chicken.

  I part grilled, part roasted them in my mini oven and grill, but they were still rather greasy. I feel they would have been a lot nicer if I had very generously dusted them with ground black pepper, maybe white pepper too, before cooking them. They seemed rather bland without additional seasoning. I even made a point of letting them cool off for 10 to 15 minutes after cooking so that they weren't too hot to touch and taste. Even "Favourite Fried Chicken" (often ex Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises) chicken would have tasted a lot better.

  The one thing I didn't do yesterday was to have any booze. Maybe I was thinking of giving my liver a rest, or maybe I was hoping to sleep better last night. The latter did work. I only woke up maybe twice in the night for a pee. The truth is that I seemed to sleep so well that I can't clearly remember getting up for a pee more than once, although I am not counting the pee I had sometime after 6am. It would have been my first pee after getting up, but afterwards I decided to go back to bed again to sleep for another 45 minutes. That last 45 minutes was quite surprising because I was not aware I had fallen asleep until I woke up 45 minutes later.

  At some time in the night I had a series of small dreams that morphed into a longer story even if there were were some strange discontinuities in it. The first bit I remember was being in a car with Chris (Mayer - guitarist from Chain, and fellow beer drinker). I think I was getting a lift because he wanted to do some shopping in Catford. We drove down a road that I had apparently not been down for ages, and I had to remark how much it had changed since the last time.

  Then there was one of those odd discontinuities because suddenly we were walking through one of the shops, and ended up walking through a crowded bar. We discovered a few people we knew in there. All of a sudden we were sitting at a table in a far less crowded bar/pub. I seemed to have a few bags of stuff with me, and said I would go and put them in the car so I wouldn't have to worry about them while drinking.

  Once again there was a jump, almost like an edit in a movie. I was suddenly outside, and the car was a double decker bus. I opened the passenger door, and got in. At that point the bus started to move. Somehow getting on the bus caused the brakes to slip, and we started going down a hill. I grabbed the brake lever and started pulling at it. It was like a ratchet screwdriver or spanner, and I would pull it up, release it, and pull it up again. Each time it got tighter and tighter. Somehow the camber of the road seemed to steer the bus away from any other parked vehicles.

  The bus eventually stopped right on the stop line for the t-junction at the end of the road. I got out, and faced the prospect of having to walk up the hill to tell Chris that he should go and rescue his bus. At that point the dream faded out, or I woke up. I guess that last bit, being in a runaway bus, should have been a nightmare, but I seemed to still feel that it was all under control, and at worst it was the bus that would be damaged, and not me.

  As I finally woke up I became aware of an old pain had re-emerged. It was my right shoulder. It was very uncomfortable if I lay on my right in a certain way. Fortunately the pain 90% went as soon as I sat up, and now I can still feel a little tenderness if I try hard to provoke it - which obviously I prefer not to do again having confirmed it once. I'm not sure about my chest. It did feel a bit tight when I went into the freezing bathroom for a pee, but seems a lot more comfortable while just sitting here typing. Maybe another day of keeping it warm, and resting it, may see the end of another flare up.

  The worst thing about this morning is the expected rise in my blood glucose after eating that pasta yesterday morning. After keeping it in the eights, it was 9.1mmol/l this morning. That still leaves a lot of wiggle room before hitting the danger level, but it is annoying that I ought to take a lot of care to try and get it down again - on a day that could be more boring than yesterday, and on a day where I really ought to eat a lot of sweet fruit before it starts going off.

  The weather forecast more or less dictates that I will be staying in, keeping warm, resting my chest, and being bored. Maybe I won't be completely resting my chest. Last night I put a greasy tea towel in to soak, and so I will be doing at least one very small bit of laundry, but I have a few other things I could wash. Sometimes doing my laundry by hand can pull my chest back into the correct shape (or whatever) and reduce the discomfort of Costochondritis). Let's hope it does this time. The one thing I did not want to do at the current time is to present myself to A&E at the hospital complaining of chest pains. Dying of a heart attack is one thing, but I could never live down dying from Covid caught while in hospital.