According to my thermometers the temperature was between 0° C and 0.3° C at 7am this morning. It is now warming up, and the frost is melting. Non stop sunshine since the sun rose should raise the temperature to 11° C this afternoon. If the wind is not too bad that could feel nice in the sunshine. The threat of light rain later tonight has been removed from the latest revision to the forecast, but it will still be cloudy tonight, and tomorrow morning. That should keep the warmth in, and so tomorrow should start at 9° C.  There should be enough sunshine to raise the temperature to 12° C by 1pm tomorrow.

  The weather forecast for yesterday suggested it could be a good day, but it wasn't to be. It felt freezing, with a biting wind, when I went shopping in Aldi. I was wearing a warm coat, and had the front done up from the time I left home, until the time I was standing at the checkout, and starting to overheat. I unzipped my coat there, and left it undone as I walked home again. I arrived home, after carrying quite a heavy load of shopping feeling hot in places, and cold in others.

  My experience of being out in the morning put me right off going out later - particularly with the weather forecast (correctly as it turned out) saying the afternoon would only be possibly  1° C warmer. The only good, and bad thing about the whole walk there and back again was to test some old boots. I have a pair of walking boots bought from Aldi a few years ago, and I rarely use them because they are one size smaller than I prefer.

  The funny thing is that yesterday they seemed to be a loose fit - sort of. A bit more width up near my toes would be good, but in other places they seemed fine except at the heel where they felt sort of loose. The other initial problem is that the profile of the sole seemed odd, and that made walking feel not quite right, although I have to admit with the distraction of carrying my heavy shopping I didn't notice it on the way home. The only time those boots did feel a bit uncomfortable was 3 seconds before I took them off !

  I spent a fair bit of money in Aldi, but that was probably to be expected with a bottle of whisky, a large bottle of beer, and a large bottle of sparkling cider in my trolley. Incidently, the beer and the cider were "posh" versions with wired corks like champagne bottles. I am not a cider drinker, but the bottle I bought intrigued me. I may suggest to Jodie that we change one of our beer tasting session to a cider tasting session. It would probably end in a disaster, but it would make a change.

  I bought a lot of fish yesterday, and most of it was frozen - and I have no room in my freezer for it. My diet was heavily fish based yesterday, and it will be again today as I use up the last of the fish that isn't frozen. I think it was more an unconscious decision, but I thought that fish may go easier on my rancid digestive system. It is possible this idea has worked, but time will tell.

  There were two deliberate bad purchases yesterday. One was a small container of ready prepared "herby" potatoes. My recent experiences suggest that I can get away with eating small quantities of boiled potatoes, but maybe only on days when I have been otherwise careful about what I eat. The other thing I bought was really tempting fate, but I really fancied it (despite it being a very cold day), and I wanted to see just how bad it would be. It was a tub of low calorie, but very high sugar content, salted caramel flavour ice cream. It was very, very nice, but no, it was not good for me.

  Apart from that shopping trip, and eating all sorts of stuff, but mostly fish, I didn't do anything of note yesterday. I won't describe it as a boring day because if it had been terribly boring I could have easily found other stuff to do - although some of that, like dealing with the washing up in the sink, would mean working in the cold (my kitchen has no heating, and is freezing !).

  I watched one TV programme, The Simpsons, while I ate my dinner of fish and herby potatoes, and looked for more stuff on TV. The first thing I might have watched would have been an old episode of QI on Dave, but the listings said it featured Johnny Vegas, and he makes me feel ill. I declined to watch it, and it didn't seem worth waiting for Have I Got New For You that followed QI. I spent my evening reading or on the internet (and also reading).

  I don't really know what time I went to sleep. I think the last hours where I was reading from a book left me disassociated from the real world. What I do know is that a recent letter from EDF energy, who want a bit more money from me, said that (their) energy prices are going up a fantastic 54% this spring. That made me thing I ought to cut down my electricity bill if I could (electricity being my most expensive bill by a factor of 10 !).

   With a frost expected this morning I didn't want to leave the heating off completely, but I had it on low, and did my best to sleep under the duvet all night. Maybe it was because I was tired, but last night sleeping under the duvet seemed easy. Maybe my bedroom being colder than usual helped a lot too. I seemed to sleep well, but my sleep was punctuated by a wild assortment of dreams. The memory of most dreams has evaporated now, but the one dream that seemed to be quite long, has left a sort of jumbled memory.

  This dream was evidently made up of several/many short dreams, and I don't know if I am remembering them in the correct order, but I will try and tell them in the most linear way. Let's say it started with a meeting, a sort of work meeting where there was a Japanese lady telling us to make sure we were dressed in proper work clothes for a visit by upper management.

  The meeting seemed to be taking place in the park, and when it was finished we were to walk to the other end of the park. The park was essentially Ladywell Fields, but it had a pylon at one end, and very high voltage wires crossing it. Those wires were really sagging badly, and were barely 7ft off the ground. Anyone walking under them would get instantly fried in a big 132,000 volt flash.  This rather concerned me, and I made sure I kept well away from them.

  The meeting continued at the other end of the park, and it was right by the pylon. Details at this point are a bit vague, but we were somehow lead on a countdown to when the breakers would open to isolate the sagging wires. I have seen those breakers in operation on You Tube, but never in real life, and maybe that is why my dream didn't seem to include the breakers opening. The You Tube videos suggest it can be quite spectacular. I had more vague dreams after that on the same sort of theme. One was that a mad friend was going to try and tap off those wires while the power was off. I think he would have probably killed himself - dealing with extra voltages like 132,000 volts is not something for amateurs !

  It was probably the first rays of the sun (at 6.29am this morning) that inspired me to get up fairly early this morning, although I guess it was probably no more than 10 minutes earlier than some mornings. I can't say I felt all that wonderful, but I also can't say I felt that bad. What was bad was expected to be bad. Eating that sweet ice cream yesterday caused my blood glucose to shoot up to 8.9mmol/l this morning. As a one off it is not too bad, and of course it could have been worse. I think I was expecting something over 9.0mmol/l.

  I have decided not to worry too much about that one high reading, and I am assuming that if I don't eat any more ice cream, and return to the diet that keeps my blood glucose low it will go down again soon. On the other hand, circumstance today do offer a possible way to help it go down. This afternoon promises to be very sunny, and 11° C. It sounds like I could go for a nice walk without having to wear a thick coat. If there is little wind it could be comfortable in my sleeveless denim jacket. It all rather depends if my bottom is going to behave itself. If it feels good by lunchtime I might even be tempted to go for a walk in the countryside !