Much of yesterday was wasted. With no more information than "your parcel will be delivered before 8pm" I ended up on high alert waiting for that van to pull up, or if I wasn't looking out the window, for the doorbell to ring. It was a lot of effort just for a single bottle of Chivas Regal 12 year old whisky - particularly when I could have possibly bought it for a similar price from Tesco. It finally arrived at about 5pm.

  Once I knew that delivery was going to happen I decided I didn't dare go out for a walk, but I didn't pass the day with no exercise at all. I spent much of the day reading stuff on my PC upstairs, but maybe twice and hour, perhaps three times on some occasions, I would go down the stairs to feed CDs into my laptop where they were being ripped to mp3 files. Having changed the disk I would walk back upstairs. I haven't the foggiest idea how many times I went up and down the stairs, but it wasn't a trivial mount, and it might have been some sort of useful exercise.

  One thing I didn't do much of yesterday, despite often feeling like I would like a tasty snack, was to eat much. I didn't fast though, and I do remember having quite a few nibbles. Most of them being fairly safe. This was reflected in my blood glucose reading just before dinner. It was just 6.7mmol/l. That is really where it should be without any effort if I was not type 2 diabetic.

  That low reading gave me ideas. Ideas that were not very clever. I thought I could get away with going a long way off the golden path, and get away with it - and I almost did. My dinner was mostly safe enough. It was grilled sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, and slices of leek. Apart from being able to taste those leeks for hours afterwards whenever I burped, it was a very nice dinner. The full fat ice cream afterwards was playing with fire. It was the tub of Jude ice cream I had bought a week or two ago in the mistaken belief it was a low calorie and sugar ice cream.

  A little while after dinner I stayed up late watching a TV programme. It was a documentary about the life of Eric Clapton. Unlike some others beliefs, Clapton was not God for me, but I did like a lot of the stuff he did over the years. What I had never realised was how much turmoil there was in his life. For a long period in his career he was desperately in love with a woman who was unattainable because she was married to another musician. That felt a very familiar situation to be in (Angela) !

  There was other interesting stuff in the documentary. For instance it showed the inspiration for the song Layla. It was inspired by a Middle Eastern book about a jilted man whose love was called Layla, but much of the lyrics was about Pattie Boyd - George Harrison's wife. I knew Clapton had a drug problem, but I didn't know he managed to partly (or completely) kick the habit by becoming an alcoholic. In the depths of despair he very nearly killed himself several times. In a way I am jealous. I have never had the money to almost drink myself to death, then pay for rehab (which I guess had costs in the thousands of pounds).

  It was a warm night, or at least it was when I finally turned out the light a little after 11pm. I don't think that was the reason why I found it hard to get to sleep. Mostly it was my mind going round in circles as I considered the differences and similarities between my life and Eric Claptons. Obviously I am not, and probably could never have been a famous guitar player (it's not easy when you are tone deaf). The similarities were in aspects of our love lives. It seems Eric Clapton's life has a happy ending. I'm not sure mine while, in fact I very much doubt it.

  I did eventually get to sleep, and it wasn't long before I thought I was having a rotten night. I can't be sure because I wasn't using a stop watch, but I think it was less than an hour before I woke up again for a wee. I probably fell asleep again faster than it seemed after going back to bed. It seemed as if no more than 15 to 20 minutes had passed before I woke up again, and I was getting quite depressed about what rotten sleep I was having. That was until a did a double take on what the clock was saying. That last period of sleep was actually a bit more than 3 hours.

  The next sleep was about two hours, and at that point I was running out of night. The next sleep was only an hour, but it was gone 6am, and I couldn't seem to get back to sleep again. It was a bit earlier than I got up the few previous morning, but it did feel like I had to get up. I did seem to have collected an assortment of aches and pains during the night, probably as the result of sleeping awkwardly or something, and even now they still haven't completely faded away (but almost have).

  It wasn't long before I found out how badly that naughty ice cream I had after dinner last night would affect me. My blood glucose was up to 8.9mmol/l. That is high, but maybe less than I feared. Oh well, that ice cream has now gone, and I won't be buying any more of it. Of course there is a fair chance that I will find another ice cream that looks superficially OK, but turns out bad. Sometimes nutrition labels can be confusing, or maybe even designed to confuse. Some makes or ice cream give the information for a full tub, and some for half a tub. Obviously the information for half a tub looks OK until you read the small print. I think that Jude ice cream gave information for 100ml. That is a very standard weight for most foods, but I prefer per tub, or per can.

  Today I am not waiting for any parcels - or at least not yet. I do have two other things on order, and as yet I have no idea what day they will arrive. I guess this means I have no excuse not to go for a frolic in the park. Maybe a 3 mile plus frolic in the park if my legs still work after a month of idleness. Before I do that I have a few items to wash, and hang on the line. There should be no trouble with them drying in this warm sunshine.