....This morning the temperature has reached that magic temperature where it is not painful to stand in my unheated kitchen. I think my thermometer was saying slightly under, but only a few tenths of a degree, the 7° C shown in the forecast. As I write this there are only a few hints that the sun has risen in the east, but looking to the west does show some clear sky, not much, but some. A refresh of the Met Office forecast page now shows we should be getting a sunny spell soon. If that big cloud could move a foot to the right we would be having a sunny spell right now ! There is probably going to be light rain after dark this evening, but the daylight hours should be dry with sunny spells, and at 12° C it could feel mild enough for bare arms ! Strangely enough, the BBC weather web page makes no mention of any sunny spells, but back in the real world, we could be having a sunny spells any minute now. Both the BBC and Met Office agree that tomorrow is going to be a disgusting day - dark cloud, copious rain, and zero chance of seeing the sun, but at least it should still be in the region of 9° C.

  It was odd how I felt between OK and good when I went shopping early yesterday morning, because I seemed to feel lousy for the rest of the day. I did mention that I had slept badly, and would probably snooze when I could when I wrote yesterday morning, and maybe that was the problem. I did spent a fair amount of time just laying on my bed, either reading or snoozing, and I think that just made me seize up. Of course it could have been the famous "mild 'flu like symptoms" associated with covid infection by those with fairly good immune systems, but if it was then the cure was to move around a bit, and eat a nice hot dinner.

  I think I spent too long yesterday concentrating on giving my liver a rest after Sunday afternoons boozing session, and not concentrating on not eating. I seemed to do a lot of eating between meals yesterday. Fortunately most of it was fairly safe with regard to my blood glucose level, but most of it would have not been low calorie. Oh dear, I am going to have to lose so much weight once the weather changes for the better, and I can start doing some intensive exercise. If the weather is favourable, and I don't kill myself doing it, I might be able to reverse all the weight put back on in time to lose even more before Autumn crashes in and messes everything up.

  There is not really that much to say about yesterday because I did so little. I've already mentioned shopping, but before I relaxed after shopping, and more importantly, when I was still wearing outdoor clothes, I did take out some food waste that had been neglected for far too long, and I also took out all the stuff for the recycling bin. It was much later when I did the next constructive thing - preparing and cooking dinner.

  My dinner was a simple cross between a stew and something like a chow mein. It was diced beef cooked in stock with plenty of spices. As the beef neared being cooked I added some chunkily chopped mushrooms, some tender leaf broccoli, and some runner beans cut into approx 2" lengths. For the last minutes of cooking I added some beansprouts. It turned out to be very nice, and while it was a bit heavy on meat, it had no added sugar, and very few carbohydrates in it.

  I was quite keen to get to bed fairly early last night, and so I ignored the TV, and took to reading in bed instead. Once again I lost all track of time, but I think I had turned out the light, and fallen asleep around 9pm. To avoid one of my struggles, fighting with the duvet to get the best cover for the best temperature, I left the heater on - and not on low - and hardly used the duvet at all.

  That evidently worked because I did seem to sleep soundly, with just one break for a wee, for maybe 6 hours. After that I seemed to run out of sleep. From sometime after 3am until sometime around 5am I tossed and turned, and may not have slept at all. I did finally get another period of sleep, but I don't know how long it was - maybe 40 to 60 minutes. That last bit of sleep featured a dream about feeding cats. It was set in a house that was slightly unfamiliar, and yet there was no sense that I didn't belong there. In some ways it was like going back to your mum's house after not being there for a long time, but it was not my mum's old house.

  I can barely remember some earlier dreams, but I can recall brief moments from two of them. The later one is easier to explain. All I remember was a couple of sentences with no context for them. It was something like "the difference between an architect and an engineer is that the architect designs a structure, but the engineer makes sure it is still standing, and functional 100 years later". I guess that is only one sentence ! I have no idea what came before it, or after it.

  The other bit of dream I remember is really weird. I think it probably goes several contexts deeper than dreaming. Once again it was incredibly brief, totally impossible, and like an 3 second animation.  The vision was of some tubes supposed to be blood vessels. The narration said that the picture enters the blood stream here, and if the picture is encrypted then it is sent via the brain, but if simply encoded (probably meaning something like a jpeg picture) it is sent directly to.... The dream faded there, but I would speculate it was being sent to the eye. It was all very weird.

  This morning I felt very reluctant to get up so early, but my best effort only managed that extra 40 to 60 minutes of sleep, and it was evident I wasn't going to sleep any more. I felt quite creaky when I first got up, but that faded away very quickly. I am finding it very hard to believe it, but I seem to feel OK this morning. Of course there has to be something wrong, something to confound any plans I may have, and this morning that seems to be some mild constipation. It might be that I have got up early, and my bowel's internal clock hasn't caught up yet.

  The really remarkable thing this morning was that after all my excessive eating yesterday, and now I think that might have included half a little sweet and sugary lemon cake, my blood glucose has actually come down from 8.8mmol/l to 8.7mmol/l. That is quite remarkable. Of course it is still rather higher than I would like, but at least it is heading in the right direction. Maybe today I can do even better, but it depends on the weather.

  The sunny spells that should have been happening for a while now have transmogrified into a medium heavy shower ! I just looked out the window to see how the sun was doing, and saw fresh raindrops all over the glass. There was no hint of the sun out there. Assuming this is just the 7am shower running late, and that the forecast is going to be out by 2 hours from now on, then we might still get those sunny spells. Assuming we do, and that the temperature does rise to 12° C, I will definitely have to go out for a walk this afternoon. I would like to think it would feel really good, so good that I would be tempted to walk 4 or 5 miles, but I suspect reality will bite me on the arse, and I will really have to grit my teeth to just do 3 miles. I feel terribly out of condition at the moment !