Yesterday could easily have been another wasted day, but I did do a few useful things. I already wrote about going to Poundstretcher yesterday morning. Later in the day I did some laundry, and got that on the line to dry. I didn't get it on the line until gone midday, and that didn't give it long to dry. With hindsight it could have had several more hours or more, but my nerve went when it seemed to be getting very gloomy at around 4pm. Fortunately it was almost perfectly dry, and surprising warm to the touch despite there being no sunshine.

  I didn't do much more, apart from cooking, until about 7pm, or maybe even a bit later than that. An idea suddenly popped up in my head, and it concerned making use of the skip a few doors up the road. The good thing about that skip is that every time someone dumps some stuff in there, there is someone who has a rummage, and removes stuff - and so it was last night. I decided I would finally get rid of an old CRT PC monitor.

   As far as I can remember it was in perfect working order, and so it was a shame to just dump it, but I didn't really have any use for it. No one has lifted that out of the skip, but someone did take the box of old promo CDs I dumped. They date back to mthe time when I was doing a specialist radio programme playing a lot of death metal. I got sent a lot of promotional CDs, and to be honest most of them were unlistenable. I kept mp3 copies of the CDs for some bizarre reason, but it was good to get rid of another box cluttering up the place.

  There were several times when I felt peckish yesterday, and I tried to only eat mostly safe stuff. Of course I actually mean safe in terms of my blood glucose levels. Cheese on rice crackers generally satisfies those requirements, but of course the cheese fats accumulate in my arteries, and I'll be dying of a different disease now. I tried to make my dinner a bit more overall safe.

  Dinner was a sort of stew of lean diced beef, mushrooms and green beans. It was spiced up with some dark soy sauce, and ready prepared chopped chillies. The dark soy sauce does add some nice flavour, but it contains a lot of sugar. I avoided eating all the gravy after I had eaten the solid stuff. The chilli left me feeling very hot, and I decided I wanted to eat some ice cream.

  I checked the Jude (St Jude ?) ice cream I had bought from Tesco recently. I thought it wasn't too bad until I read the nutritional information properly. The rotten so and so's listed everything per 100ml. No wonder I thought it was relatively safe. I assumed it was per tub (or even half a tub as some other misleading tubs say). On reflection there was no way I could dare eat it in quantities of more than a spoonful a day. I had some Aldi ice cream instead. That stuff is moderately, but not completely safe for me.

  I should have slept well, but I had another attack of a mysterious ailment. From time to time, and until recently, it was quite rare, I get what is like an intense itching on the sole of my foot. I think it is always the right foot. I've had it two nights running now, and it is also playing up this morning. I suspect it is probably some sort of diabetes thing. It feels like the sort of itch you might get if there was a small cut on the foot, but as far as I can see the skin is unbroken, although there was a possible hint that there was something I can't see.

  I've tried many things in the past to stop that itching feeling, but nothing has really given much relief. Last night it seemed that rubbing aloe vera moisturising cream into the sole of my foot gave some relief. It was enough to get to sleep, but an hour or two later I needed a pee. At that point my foot was OK, but what I didn't appreciate was that my right foot was still very slippery from the moisturiser. That was no problem until I did the extra long stride to walk over the one stair height dip of the top landing. As I put my right foot down it slipped, and I nearly did the splits !

  While having my pee I became aware that my foot was getting very itchy again. I could imagine that it had carpet burn on it where it had slid on the carpet, but there was no obvious sign of it. I think that was when I decided to pass some time on the internet in the hope that the itching would die away again. It mostly did, and I was able to get back to bed, and fall asleep again. I don't think I slept that well. I can't recall my foot giving me any trouble, but I did feel sort of generally uncomfortable.

 The good news this morning is that eating that ice cream last night only made a very small change to my blood glucose. It went up from 8.5mmol/l yesterday morning to 8.6mmol/l this morning. It is not ideal, but I can live with it. I dodn't seem to feel as good this morning as I seemed to think I felt yesterday morning. I feel the blame lies squarely on today's miserable weather ( it is now raining, but it is light rain, and not the heavy rain the forecast predicted). Whether the weather can be to blame for my right foot is debatable. It is itching again. Maybe not as bad as last night, but maybe it just feels wrose in the night with few distractions.

  I have two plans in the pipeline at the moment. The first is to have my morning shower, and possibly wash my hair. I'm not sure I need to look that good for my other plan, and I'm not sure if I will carry out my other plan. It is to pay another visit to Poundstretcher. Yesterday I bought a couple of very cheap solar powered garden lights. I was curious about them, and went for the cheapest (£1.29 each). They work OK, but are a bit underwhelming for my purposes. I think I want to shed some light on the nocturnal goings on in my garden. Poundstretcher have some solar power spotlamps for £3.99 each (cheaper than something similar from Amazon). A few of those may do what I hope for. I may transplant the two little lamps into my window boxes. Mostly I will just be moderately lazy today.