Today, according to the latest revision of the weather forecast, may not be quite as grey as shown in the screenshot above, but only by a small degree. It seems unlikely we will see any sunshine today, but the wind is probably going to come from a more friendly direction because the afternoon temperature should reach 11° C. If there were any sunshine that could feel mostly pleasant, but sadly sunshine is in very short supply at the moment. There is a persistent 10% chance of rain for most of today, but that usually means it will stay dry. Tomorrow could see some sunshine, and also some light rain, but the temperatures should be similar to today.

  I have to admit that some of yesterday afternoon was boring. It should have incited me to do something like a bit of gardening, but I didn't fancy going out again after a short walk in the morning. It was fairly late in the morning, maybe 11am, when I decided I would walk to the cash machine by Catford station, and then spend some of the money extracted from the hole in the wall in the little supermarket on Catford Bridge. Going there had been my original plan.

  All I wanted from that little supermarket was some cheese and some sugar free carbonated soft drink - Diet Coke ! I'm not sure if it was worth the pain. My feet felt slightly sore, and my calf muscles were gently complaining, but those discomforts were nothing compared to the feeling of intense cold from the wind. My face felt frozen, and my eyes were watering enough to make my nose run a lot.

  On my way to the cash machine I was facing into the sunshine, and the front of my body soon felt very warm as the sun heated up my black coat. I undid the front of my coat to cool off a bit. That was OK because I was also wearing a black t-shirt, and that was warmed by the sun. On the return journey the sun was on my back. My back may have felt warm, but my chest was freezing. I really should have done my coat up again, but I only had a few tenths of a mile to walk, and it didn't essential until it was too late. I arrived home shivering, but on this occasion, for reasons unknown, it didn't seem to trigger my costochondritis (chest/rib pain).

  I spent the rest of the morning, and then some of the afternoon, warming up. I had been considering having a hot soup to warm me up, but I didn't seem to be ravenously hungry like I did the day before. I should have tried not to eat, but I was conscious of the fact that I had bought fruit that was going to spoil if I didn't eat it soon. I ended up having a rather sweet conference pear, and a couple of apples which were not sweet at all. I also had a chunk of cheese with the fruit. It was Bulgarian feta-style cheese made with ewes milk. It would have been better in a sandwich than with fruit.

  While eating that lunch I felt an anomaly. It was something hard in my mouth, and it looked like a sliver of gravel, but I am very sure it was a bit of tooth. There was no pain, but it was accompanied by a taste of blood. I think (or hope) that there is a strong possibility that it was a bit of broken tooth that had been lodged in the gum since a really awful tooth extraction at the dentist 15 or more years ago. It was so painful, despite half a gallon of anaesthetic injected into the gum (my face was numb for hours afterwards), that I was reluctant to let the dentist do any more after the tooth came out. For a long time there was a feeling of something sharp there, and once or twice I cut my tongue on it, but it seems to have gone now.

  It was still a couple of hours until the highlight of the day - dinner time - and I was bored. I ended up passing half an hour or more by ringing Sue. Normally our calls are very rare, but very long when they happen. Oddly enough this call only lasted 30 to 40 minutes. She was getting stressed because she had mislaid her packet of fags, and so I finished the call so she could search for them. Half an hour later she phoned me back to say she had found them in a fairly obvious place !  That call went on long enough to delay my dinner by almost an hour.

  It wasn't such a bad idea to delay dinner because it gave it a chance to cool to a better temperature for eating without having to continually blow on it to cool it a bit before still almost burning my mouth. It was a more sophisticated version of the dinner I had the previous night. This one had less red cabbage, and the bulk made up again with a green bell pepper and one leek. It was nicer than just red cabbage, and in theory just as healthy.

  I think it should have been low calorie, and low sugar, but high in fibre. These all vegetable dinners certainly don't hang about when I go to the toilet the next morning ! This is apparently good for you - possibly by rampant vegetarians. I can confirm by experiment that it is good for my blood glucose level. A little later in the evening I had a snack of sliced pepperoni, and I am not so sure that was as sugar free as it should have been.

  I feel convinced I had a lousy night's sleep last night. I seemed to wake up more often than needed. What was worse were my dreams. They were not the scary stuff of nightmares, but neither were they happy dreams. I can remember very little to tell about them, but at least one featured a walk home, probably from a pub, in the rain. Another seemed to be about trying to walk through an unfamiliar part of London (or possibly just outside London) to try and get to the station before the last train for the night left.

  It seemed quite a nice idea when it was time to get up, and to leave those gloomy dreams behind. One of the first things I did was to check my blood glucose. It had gone up from 7.6mmol/l to 8.0mmol/l. That is not a bad figure, but a bit disappointing that it should have gone up after taking reasonable care to try and keep it down. I'm not sure whether to blame the sweet pear at lunchtime, the pepperoni in the evening, or maybe the leek in my dinner. It was probably all three, but on reflection I am wondering if that leek was the bigger problem. Like most root vegetables, leeks probably store quite a bit of sugar in them.

  The highlight today, providing it isn't too bad, will be another Thursday boozing session with Jodie. I may not enjoy again of Jodie spends 90% of the time on her bloody phone. I guess in these strange days all of us have little to talk about,, but surely we can find something to say that is worth listening to ! Some stimulating chat would reduce my booze consumption, and that would allow me to take better care of my eating !