There was some more snowfall in the early hours of the morning, and the road outside was starting to look very wintry. Any snow that had fallen would have settled because today the temperature will be below zero all day long. The coldest is predicted to be -2° C, and the warmest -1° C ! More snow has been forecast for around now, but it has been a very feeble effort. The latest revision says it will finish in the next hour, and won't snow again until about 8pm, and it will still be very light snow showers - that is if you put your faith in the Met Office. If your faith lies more with the BBC, and their Meteosat forecasters, then it will snow all through today, and some of it will be heavy snow. Staying with the Met Office - Tomorrow may see more light snow in the morning, but then the temperature will rise, and it could be 0° C by the start of the afternoon, and possibly 1° C by sunset. There might even be a sunny spell in the afternoon !

  With no snow to see until late afternoon, I decided not to go out, but to pursue some things to do indoors. That didn't amount to much, but did include another small bit of laundry - just a hand towel, a pair of underpants, and a pair of lounge pants. It was a good excuse to leave some heating on downstairs during the night to get it dry, although the temperature being -1.6° C when I went to bed was a good enough reason to leave some heat on by itself.

  I had it in mind that I was going to occasionally warm myself up with cans of "no added sugar" soup yesterday, but maybe because I didn't go out in the cold I didn't need to. On the other hand the cold outside made me feel cold inside despite the thermometers saying it was nice and warm in the two rooms I spent most of the time in. It was really that subconscious desire for extra food - food like breakfast !

  It wasn't too long before I gave in and had some breakfast. I opened up a tin of bacon grill, which seems to be basically smoky Spam, and I sliced it before giving the slices a jolly good grilling. I ate those grilled sliced with "no added sugar" baked beans. It was a fairly substantial breakfast, although I suspect it didn't have a huge amount of calories in it, and my theory about it not contributing much, if any, glucose to me blood seemed subsequently to be true. I don't think it was particularly high in fat either. Almost no far ran off it as it was being grilled. It did seem to be filling enough to distract me from eating much more before dinner time.

  Probably the next significant event yesterday was dinner time. It was simplicity itself - the second half of my takeaway from the night before - chicken and lamb shish kebab. I had to be very careful about microwaving it. I wanted to warm it a bit without cooking the salad. The first one was a bit cool, and I gave the second a little longer, but even that one could have benefited for maybe another 30 seconds worth of zapping. I didn't have any beer with yesterday's dinner, but I did treat myself to several rather large whiskies in the evening.

  After such a sedentary day I didn't feel ready for sleep until a lot later than usual. That was sort of annoying because I wanted to be up early to go shopping this morning (I was). I spent a long time in bed just reading. In one respect that was good because I am no enjoying the current book I am reading....well, it's not bad, and I will read it to the end, but I have another book lined up that will hopefully be much more enjoyable.

  I guess I was probably asleep by midnight. From then on I had that curious of thing of insomnia that isn't insomnia. I would lay in bed wondering if I would ever get to sleep. I would check the time, and then inwardly grumble about how slowly the night seemed to be passing. A "few minutes later" I would check the time again, and 2 or even 3 hours would have passed without being aware of it. This even happened when I woke up at three, and stopped to pull the curtains aside to see all the newly laid snow outside. Thinking about that snow seemed to take 20 or 30 minutes in subjective time, but possibly less than 5 minutes in real time.

  I got up at about 6.30am. The snow didn't seem to be much better than what I had spied at 3am. Despite seeming to get some solid hours of sleep, albeit only around 6 hours, I feel I must have slept a bit awkwardly because I had a few extra aches and pains this morning. My right shoulder, in particular, seemed to be a bit stiff and sore. It is another occasional, but long standing complaint of this slowly disintegrating body.

  I felt a bit better when I checked my blood glucose. It was down to a very good 7.9mmol/l. That was more like I was expecting yesterday morning. It tends to support my ridiculous theory that there can be a time lag in my blood glucose dropping after a day of eating carefully. That theory will be dashed to pieces when I check my blood glucose tomorrow. I expect it will react instantly to stuff I may eat today after shopping in Aldi.
  At 7.59am I was ready to go to Aldi,  the temperature was -1.6° C, and this was the view outdoors. As can be seen, the snowfall didn't cover everywhere. What is not easily visible is the amount of black ice on the road. I was wearing my best walking boots that have plenty of good tread on the sole and heel. On the crispy fresh snow they gripped like poo on a blanket. However, as I found to my cost, they are absolutely useless on black ice. As I stepped off the kerb, into the road, at the crossroads with the corner shop diagonally across the junction from me, I went flying !

  I was basically OK, but it was embarrassing trying to get upright again on the slippery surface. Fortunately I discovered that the granite kerbstones still gave a very good grip. For the next minute I had a pronounced limp because I seemed to pull a muscle in my left thigh (it neatly matches the right one that still gives me trouble 7 months after tripping on a tree root or something in Brookmill Park, Deptford). The pain faded away, or almost away, before reaching Aldi, but I can still feel some tenderness there an hour or two later.

  Going shopping in Aldi has satisfied my most important ambition for today. The other ambition is a "nice to do" thing - namely taking pictures of the snow in the Linear Park. After that fall earlier, and the lingering tenderness in my left thigh muscle, I am less keen to go out, and the poor snow cover makes me wonder if it would be as photogenic as I hoped. I may still go for that walk, but it's probably 50 - 50. Other than that, it will be another sedentary day.