I'm not sure if the weather is forecastable today. Early this morning 9am was forecast to be bright, but with light rain. That actually happened closer to 8am, and the rain was very light, and probably only lasted 5 minutes. The latest revision says 9am should have thick black clouds and heavy rain. There are some thick black clouds, but not many, and it is still currently dry. By 10am the chance of rain drops to just 40%, and that often means it will be dry. It might also be quite bright. 1pm could be the same, but after that the latest forecast says it should be dry with sunny spells that will turn to solid sunshine by 5pm. The afternoon temperature is still predicted to be 16° C. Tomorrow may be dry with a scattering of sunny spells through the day, and a top temperature of 15° C.

 
   I had hopes for a far nice walk than I had yesterday. I wanted to take advantage of the warmer weather, and I wanted to try and burn off some of the excess glucose in my bloodstream. It turned out to be a chore rather than a pleasure. I had hoped that in the warmth I might feel good enough to extend my walk to 5 miles or so, but it became hard to walk as far as I did.

  When I set out it initially felt mostly OK, but I had barely made it to the end of the road when I became aware of some discomfort, or a bit of stiffness from my right knee and ankle. It was quite mild and I thought once the painkillers I had taken kicked in it would soon feel fine. It is not unusual for a bit of stiffness when I first start walking at any time, and usually it goes away once I get moving.

  I am not sure where that stiffness peaked, but after that it did start to fade away, although it never went completely away. It wasn't any part of my legs that stopped me going further. It was my chest. I was expecting it to behave itself quite well in the warmth, but my chest wasn't always warm.

  My high blood glucose makes it easy for me to sweat. I was far from dripping, but I did sweat enough to make my t-shirt just damp enough to make my chest feel cold. That was enough to make me prone to a Costochondritis attack, and the final trigger was a result of walking o boring roads at the start, and so walking faster than usual because there was nothing to see.


   It felt like there was nothing to see, or at least nothing new to see, for most of my walk, and I didn't stop to take any pictures. I felt an urge to get the walk done as fast as possible. The only time I slowed down was when walking along the river bank, and extra care had to be taken where I trod (and because I was wearing shorts I had to try and avoid the stinging nettles).

  I guess my chest didn't hurt that much at all. It was just a dull ache, but an ache that feels like the onset of Angina. It evidently wasn't Angina because it didn't get worse. Later in the walk, as I was approaching home I could hear, or feel, my ribs complaining. It was like they were rubbing together. That is probably impossible, and without a handy Xray movie machine I am unable to say that was definitely happening. It still felt unpleasant though.

  It was a great relief to get home because I felt awful. Any of the aches or pains just seemed like seasoning on a thicker layer of fatigue. I suspect a lot of it was fatigue of the mind rather than body because I was feeling disappointed that the walk was not enjoyable, and it felt like I had given up too quickly. That was not a good position to be in when I wanted to try and reduce my blood glucose by partly fasting.

  Instead of fasting I ended up having some cheese on crackers with that awfully sweet Heinz tomato and mayonnaise sauce. I don't know why I allowed myself to have so much of that sauce when it is not that nice, and is almost like syrup. I think there was something else I might have eaten that was not wise, but I can't recall what it was. It did seem a long time to dinner time, and I was just too keen to eat.

  My dinner was not that healthy either. It was based around some very well grilled, but still surprisingly fatty pork belly slices. The couple of big mushrooms were probably OK. The beans weren't ! I had a whole tin of Heinz "Weight watchers" baked beans with that pork and mushrooms. The first lot I cooked turned out to be a disaster. I wanted the beans to be very well done, in a thickened sauce. I set my microwave to zap them for 8 minutes, and walked away and left them to it. I returned maybe 20 minutes later and found the microwave timer had gone weird, and reckoned it was going to keep cooking them for another 23 minutes. They were just starting to char when I turned the microwave off. I cleaned the mess out of the plastic saucepan, and tried again. This time the timer worked OK, but I did keep a stern eye on it.

  It all seemed quite boring after dinner, and a couple of hours later I was trying to go to sleep (at 8.30pm - and still daylight outside). I may have felt tired and listless when I went to bed, but that all evaporated once I turned the light out. I think it was just about midnight before I got any real sleep, but even that was not for long. I had actually wanted to get to sleep early so I could get up early enough to wash my hair before going shopping this morning.

  I am tempted to think it could be some sort of long term side effect of my Covid jabs, but since then I seem to feel a very sharp boundary between hot and cold. Last night was typical of that. I sometimes felt rather cool, but just a few minutes under the duvet felt too hot. I resorted to putting the heater on low, and not bothering with the duvet. I did seem to get to sleep easily like that, but I still couldn't seem to stay asleep before long.

  My best sleep was shortly before getting up. I think I had about 2 hours of solid, dreamless sleep before I woke up rather later than I had originally intended. Before that chunk of good feeling sleep I seemed to have something like an hour of sleep that was all dreams, and almost like a continuous narrative. It was one of those dreams that was fiction, but could very easily have been reality.

  In my dream I was once again working at repairing TVs in the old workshop at Elmers End. The only fantasy aspect was that a PC that had been passed around, and ended up with me, seemed to be running Windows 10. The customer kept complaining the clock was wrong. He had taken it to the shop where he had bought it. They could find nothing wrong, and so it was escalated up as a workshop repair. We didn't usually repair PCs, but we had a good reputation, and so this troublesome PC was sent to us. We couldn't find anything wrong with it at first, and then I noticed that the hours on the clock display were flicking on and off.  That was the reason the clock was wrong. The PC was keeping perfect time, but not displaying it. It was all a big mystery, but I think I cured it by changing the font used for displaying the time. I say I think I did because that is the last thing I can remember trying as I was waking up.

  This morning I felt like I had really missed out on a lot of sleep, but otherwise I seemed to feel fairly OK. All was not OK because my blood glucose was up to 9.6mmol/l, and that was doubly bad on a day when I go shopping for lots of tempting food. As I mentioned further up the page, I woke up too late to wash my hair, and while I had had a shower, I felt a bit yucky as I walked to Aldi. It was warm enough this morning to be comfortable in just a t-shirt, and even the few seconds of light rain didn't seem to worry me.
  Among the things I wanted to buy were these 0% lagers. Both Mark and Jodie tasted a bottle of it last week, and declared that it was nice as a beer without making extra allowances for it being an unholy alcohol free beer. I had bought the first bottle for Michael because he was saying he wasn't keen on some of the strong beers Jodie and I were drinking, but he hasn't joined us since then. I think keeping a few bottles will be handy either for Michael, or for people like Mark who can't drink when he has to drive.
 Here's something you don't see every day. It is a shame you can't actually see it in this picture ! What it is supposed to be showing is a snail that somehow has ended up dangling in spiders web. It is not an orb web but just a tangle of threads in a small corner between the wall and gas meter cupboard. I almost freed the snail by using my boot to break the web, and the snail should have been in reach of the top of one of the weeds when I took my shopping in the front door.

  One another day when I should be fasting until dinner time I have had a breakfast of "lightly dusted" Basa fish (and nothing else). The ironic thing is that I didn't enjoy it. Basa is often cited as a more sustainable substitute for Cod, but that has as much relevance of exchanging car tyres with ginger biscuits.

  Today I am very likely to do two things. One is to have a snooze or two. The other is to finish some washing I have left soaking, and get it on the washing line this afternoon when there is a chance it might be sunny for a while. I feel like it might be a good idea going for a short walk this afternoon, but it feels unlikely....but you never know....