Yesterday, the advance forecast for today was not as optimistic as the early morning version today. The latest revision doesn't change much, but one small change is that 1pm may just light cloud, and the rain at 2pm is now shown as light rain. 3pm is now shown as sunny spells. Today should see the temperature rise to 15° C by midday, and with it being 14° C now, according to my own thermometers, 15° C should be easy to achieve. The only fly in the ointment is rain tonight. Once again the forecast for tomorrow looks like a pure guess. It currently features some hours of sunny spells, and some hours of rain at assorted strengths. The temperature may be no more than 12° C. However, I am expecting reality to be a fair bit different - just like today is turning out rather different to how it was predicted yesterday morning.
  Yesterday was surprisingly busy, and it did feature real work ! It started when I took down the Xmas lights from the dining room, and took down the Xmas cards. After that things got serious. I emptied a few rubbish bins, and after donning rubber gloves, I washed the lid of the kitchen rubbish bin with bleach. I knew it was grubby, but I didn't realise it was that grubby !

  I think the kitchen smells a bit sweeter after cleaning that bin, but I think there is another, milder, and harder to pinpoint source of something whiffy. It may just be the the bin for recycling stuff. I should have emptied that. It is possible, even probable, that there is a plastic tray in there that once had meat in it. There is no enough residue to be really stinky, but now the main bin is clean it probably make anything else a bit more obvious.

  The next thing I did must have been a new years special or something. I got out the hoover and hoovered most of the living room and dining, plus the hall and stairs. I really only intended to hoover the dining room because all the boxes I have cut up in there (to fit the recycling wheelie bin) had left tuft of cardboard here and there. Well it's all gone now, and so has some assorted crumbs that Jodie had dropped. I do try and pick them up as soon as I see them to avoid encouraging "wildlife", but some crumbs aren't always obvious until you do something intensive like hoovering. As far as I can tell, the last mouse found one of my traps around a year, maybe two years ago, and since then the house is free of little furry visitors !

  The other rather time consuming thing I did yesterday was to prepare spreadsheets to record all my medical readings. The principle ones are my blood glucose and blood pressure. I also record my temperature a few times a day. There is no real need for that, but I started to do it when Covid first hit the headlines, and I wanted to record when I had a fever - and I did, but it was a very short lived fever back in February 2020, and even then it wasn't a fever by conventional norms, Hmm, that seems to be a false memory, and it wasn't until April 2020 when I started to record my temperature. In all that time the highest temperature I have recorded was around 37.3° C - which is considered to be "normal". My average temperature is around 35.6° C - or almost 2° lower than normal.

  Preparing those spreadsheets for the year ahead is a tedious job. Some of it is just cut and paste, but getting the dates, with the name of the day right for the whole calendar is very tedious. There is probably an automated way to do it, but my self taught spreadsheet skills are rather basic. Even after spending a fair time slaving over my PC (and it feeling much longer because it was boring work) there are still many blanks to be filled in as I progress through the year (and I don't mean data points - they are obvious). Now I wonder if I should make a spreadsheet for my weight. It would be good if it could record any progress, but rather depressing if not. Oh well, no one will see it except me !

  I had no intention of celebrating last night. I don't feel there is anything to celebrate. If this year could guarantee an end to all covid restrictions, and a change of government for one more humane, and one not just trying it's best to emulate George Orwell's 1984, then I guess that would be something to celebrate with much joy. For me, 2022 is just another year to try and make it through to the end. However, I did have a sort of private celebration. Even without the aid of any booze, I decided I wanted to treat myself to a tasty takeaway.

  I could have gone for the healthy option of shish kebabs, but I fancied an Indian or Chinese. Upon perusing Just Eat the Tai Won Mein Noodle House came up as an option. That place, on the high street, has been there for years and years, and a few people have said it is very good. I thought it was about time I gave it a go. Knowing full well there would be health consequences for it, I ordered a selection of stuff. One thing of note was that it was quite expensive.

  I didn't have to wait long until it was delivered. The first thing I had was deep fried spare ribs. They were as good as hoped for. My next course was actually a noodle dish. It was beef with Ho Fun in soup. The meat was nice, and so was the bit of greenery, which was partly corriander. However the soup seemed to have nothing good about it, and the Ho Fun noodles were nothing like I had seen before - quite wide, and very slimy. I ended up eating the meat and greenery, and left the rest. My final course was mixed meat fried rice, and that was very good.

  I read in bed for half an hour or more, and then turned out the light at 9.20pm. It would be over three hours before I managed to fall asleep. Even at 9pm there were many very loud fireworks going off. I did my best to try and fall asleep, but  it just didn't happen. At 11am I turned the lights back on, and started reading again until just after midnight. I thought the fireworks would stop soon after a grand finale at midnight, but there were still occasional bangs at 2am ! I did get some sleep between 1am and 2am, but it wasn't until maybe 2.30am this morning that I got some proper sleep.

  It is no surprise that I got up a lot later than intended this morning - it was almost 9am. That was annoying because I had fantasies about going out for an early walk this morning - basically as soon as the sun came out - which was before 9am. I was even going to go for that walk before I had washed, and because I didn't bother to wash yesterday, I was pretty smelly this morning. One thing held me back - I seemed to be constipated again, and although not actually uncomfortable,  was aware that sooner or later something would be happening.

  The consequences of that takeaway last night were that this morning my blood glucose was very high at 10.4mmol/l. That is not a great start to the year. The worst thing is that I have two more courses left over that I ought to eat today. My reading tomorrow could potentially be worse. If I could bring myself to do a 5 mile walk today it might help a bit, but until I have had a big poo, I won't be going anywhere.

  I did have a desire, but not actually a plan, to go to a gig tonight. Whether I would have gone would have been a split second decision nearer the time, but it seems unlikely now. I was checking to see if the trains to Bickley, from Catford station, were running, and after finding they were I clicked on the link to see travel restrictions. I learnt that the latest government rules say that masks are back to being compulsory on all trains again. If it comes to a choice between wearing a mask, or not going, I choose not to go.