It feels like someone has set the clock back to winter. This morning felt very cold. It was about the predicted 5° C, but the wind was very chilling. The good news is that the latest revision to the forecast predicts the heavier clouds will give way to lighter clouds soon. In fact that seems to be happening now. From 1pm we may see some sunny spells. The same latest revision to the forecast predicts it is going to be colder than originally predicted. We may be lucky if the temperature hits just 8° C for one single hour at 3pm. 7° C would be more representative of the day. At least it should be a dry day.  Tomorrow is currently predicted to feature a very sunny afternoon, and the temperature rising to a much more pleasant 13° C.....maybe !

  Sunday is usually the most boring day of the week, and yesterday was no exception...maybe only in a mild sense for once. I didn't have a totally passive day, but it came close. The big problem was that I was waiting for the sun to come out to spur me into action....well, you know...  By the time the sun did come out I had sort of given up on the things I might have done in sunshine. That could have been a walk, or maybe some work in the garden. Instead of those I think I spent much of the time reading.

  In a limited sense the sunshine did spur me into a sort of action. There was a bit of work I had to do at some point, and it was cleaning up the dining room ready to do a VHS tape to digital file transfer for Sue today. As well as clearing off all the drinking stuff off the dining room table, I also did a little more housework. Most important was emptying the rubbish bin in the kitchen. I was getting very whiffy, and made the kitchen smell every time I opened it.

  Before I emptied it I decided I would dispose of an old PC. I stripped out the memory, hard disk, DVD writer and power supply before hiding it near the bottom of the wheelie bin, and now covered by a very smelly bin bag from the kitchen (and also another bag with non smelly stuff). I also cut up, and disposed of another Amazon delivery box into the recycling bin.

  I felt too cold to fast like I could have done to help my blood glucose level drop to a more reasonable level. Once again it was that cold that seeps into the bones from the grey sky outside no matter what the room temperature actually is. If I couldn't not eat, then I had to be very careful about what I did eat. On the whole I succeeded in mostly eating only safe stuff. My lunch was spam on rice cakes with either mayonnaise or low salt and sugar ketchup to add a bit of extra flavour.

  My dinner was a can of "no added sugar" chicken soup, and a can of minced beef and onions. The latter was one of those cheap supermarket shelf filler of no merit whatsoever.  I suspected it would be like a thick soup, but it was more like an unpleasant mush. Maybe it could work as the base of something like a shepherds pie, but the potato topping would need a hot enough oven to turn it crispy enough to give it some body.
  I had the above fish as a sort of snack after my dinner. I was a bit dubious about the idea of eating it before going to bed, but I had a stupid idea I might like it at the time even if it repeated on me later (fortunately it didn't). What made me want it so much was the "Hot Chilli Dressing". Well maybe the chillies were hot before being processed, but by the time they were introduced to the mackerel they were as hot as lukewarm cocoa. If it hadn't said chilli on the tin I would have just thought it was mackerel in a red coloured oil. They were terribly disappointing.

   When I went to bed I decided I would side step the issue I have with being too hot or too cold, by turning the heater up full, and ignoring the duvet until the early hours. I really ought to close the bathroom window again until the temperature rises to at least 15° C during the day, and more importantly, doesn't fall to low single figures in the night. I am losing a lot of heat through the open window (obviously) and by about 4am I needed to snuggle under the duvet despite the heater being on full.

  I probably slept fairly well last night. I was up reading quite late because I was nearing the end of another book. It was just gone midnight when I finished the book, and turned out the light. As seems to be normal now, I woke up several times in the night. The last time was around 4am when I felt cold. I can remember starting to feel warm, almost too warm, but suddenly I was asleep again, and I didn't wake up until about 6.20am.

  That was a good time because being a Monday morning I wanted to be up, washed and dressed, and ready to go to Aldi soon after they opened at 8am. My diet recently has been good enough that my blood glucose has dropped to a saner 8.3mmol/l this morning. Still a bit high, but good enough for the moment. In other aspects my diet has been quite poor, and this morning my guts were a bit volatile. This was different to the stomach upset I had a few days back.

  This morning it was the internal wind that was stirring things up. I seemed to feel good enough to go and get my shopping, but there were a few minutes when I was inside Aldi when I wondered if I had made a mistake. Thankfully I hadn't, and it was something like half an hour after getting home again when a small visit to the toilet was needed. The worst thing was that it upset my plans for an early morning visit to the post office.

  I had steeled myself to having to put my mask on again to go into the Post Office to send a card off to Spain. I had worked out from The Post Office's unhelpful web site that the postage would be £1.70, and I had sufficient stamps here to cover that, but thanks to our glorious Brexit, everything is totally fucked up, including sending card abroad. I needed to fill in a customs declaration form for a £0.99p greeting card before I could post it. Hopefully I will do it tomorrow morning.

  The main event for today will be a visit from Sue. I said I will copy a VHS tape onto my computer, and make a DVD from it. There may not be time to do it all today, but once the tape is digitised I can do the rest almost at my leisure. Making it into a DVD will be time consuming if I do it my way, but Sue may disagree. She is a purist in the worst sense of the word. She resists any touching up of photos even if the original picture is too dark to even see what the picture is ! Her video is of a band playing about 20 years ago. She will probably insist that the whole recording, including any crap, should be put on the DVD in one complete recording. I would prefer to split the recording into individual chapters on the DVD, and cut out things like the camera pointing at the floor and similar stuff. I'll probably end up making two versions of the DVD.