Today the weather makes one more effort to be like spring. Tomorrow we plunge back into winter. The latest revision hasn't changed the forecast, and so I think we can assume that this afternoon will be bright and sunny, and that the temperature will eventually reach 15° C - albeit quite late in the afternoon. From midnight the temperature staarts falling quite fast, and by 10am tomorrow it could be as cold as 3° C. There could be a mix of sunny spells and sunshine after that, but the afternoon temperature may not rise higher than 6° C. On Tuesday the early morning temperature could be down to 0° C, and once again might only reach 6° C in the least warm part of the day.

  It is surprising how lack of pain can lift the spirits, or maybe it is more correct to say that it is the absence of pain that makes you realise how depressing persistent pain can be.  I was not 100% free of pain yesterday, but my right knee seemed to be perfectly healed (probably until I stress it again), and some random tooth pain seemed to have vanished again. I never did find out if one pain was a tooth problem or the blocked saliva duct I mentioned a week or two ago.

  It was hard to feel very excited about it all on such a cold and grey day, but I did do a couple of things that I doubt I would have done if I had still been in pain. I did two lots of laundry. The first as a pair of lounge pants, a t-shirt, and a pair of underpants. It wasn't exactly a big load, but it felt like I had accomplished something. Earlier in the morning, after taking a shower, I noticed that my towel seemed to have a very slight hint of a bad smell, and so later in the day I washed that too. That towel weighs a ton when saturated, and washing it is not a task I do lightly !
  I make fairly frequent mention of doing my laundry by hand, but I have never illustrated how I do it. I have now ! I use two builders trugs in the bath. ( I think they have other names, but that is what Poundstretcher sells them as. I tend to call them builders buckets). On the right is a blue one that is filled with water, detergent, and the stuff I am washing. I squeeze it, knead it, and generally agitate it before wringing each item out by hand. They then go into the other trug for the first of (usually) three rinses in alternate trugs - with the items wrung out between each. Finally I treat them with fabric conditioner before an extra strong wringing out before hanging them up to dry. Towels seem to often need 5 rinses, and sometime more.


  I seemed to be quite busy yesterday, but I am not sure what it was that helped the time pass effortlessly. I did spend a little while playing with my Canon EOS D1200 camera. I charged the spare batteries, and set a few parameters on it that I hope will save a bit of time today. I should be using it today at a front garden gig - more about that soon.

  One thing I did was to make a little headway reading another book by Ben Bova. This book, Moonrise, is part of the same fictional future as the recent three books I have been reading by the same author (Mars, Return to Mars, and Living On Mars). With hindsight I should have read Moonrise before the Mars books because the event that take place in it happen before the first expedition to Mars. I have to check, but there may be another book before Moonrise, and another after it in the same series.

  The odd thing is that somehow I seemed to busy to read all that much yesterday. The day before, when I was feeling particularly miserable, and needed a powerful distraction, I read an awful lot more ! Yesterday I was partly distracted from eating as well, although it was definitely only partly distracted ! Apart from dinner I can't really remember what I ate yesterday, but I do remember trying to be extra careful about what I ate.

  Yesterday's dinner was an almost very simple casserole of diced lean beef with white cabbage. It was cooked in beef stock (from Oxo cubes) but made more complex by the addition of black pepper, chilli sauce, and soy sauce. I thought it was innocent enough to allow a dessert of four squares of very low sugar dark chocolate.

  After several nights of poor sleep I found I started to get quite sleep while reading my book in bed. It may have been around 9.50pm when I put the book down, and turned out the light. By 10pm I was fast asleep. I have a very vague, dreamlike memory of getting up for a pee just once before waking up at nearly 6am this morning. That must have been one of the best sleeps I have had in weeks or even months (possibly years !).

  This morning I feel passably OK. Now I have been up for a while, and had a sort of breakfast, I think I fancy a bit more sleep, but that might just be boredom while waiting for the main event of the day.  The really good news is that my blood glucose is down to just 8.1mmol/l this morning. That is still not low enough to take chances, but low enough to dispel any immediate worries.

  The main event today is a street gig at 3pm. The sun should have been out for several hours by then, and although the temperature won't peak until 6pm, it should feel warm in the sunshine by 3pm, and probably 2pm. The gig is in Hither Green, and I'll have to walk over the hill that includes Mountsfield Park to get there. That hill will be a good test of how well my body is functioning. If my knee (and possibly my calf muscles) don't complain then it could be a pleasant walk. I am considering leaving a bit earlier than needed, and overshooting into Manor Gardens, and possibly getting some snaps of the birds on the big pond in there.