The Fuji XP71 only has a x5 zoom range, and so not ideal for wildlife photography, but this squirrel did two nice poses for me. It was fortunate that it did seem to freeze for these two pictures because the exposure time in dim light was rather long. They are not perfect, but I am rather happy they came out as well as they did.

  I got to the pub about 10 minutes early, and I managed to do about a third of the quick crossword in The Metro. It was to get a copy of The Metro that I went to the station, and thence by train to Ladywell. Both the quick and cryptic crosswords seemed harder than usual, and even when I picked up the paper again last night I barely managed a fifth of the cryptic crossword. On a good day I can sometimes finish it.

  It was wonderful to see Angela again after not seeing her last Wednesday. I gave a her a special present of a couple of avocados. Back in the glory days, when Angela used to visit me after work, and stay half the night, I would get her an avocado to eat with all the other tidbits she like to be fed with (olives, diced cheese, crackers, and the like). Maybe I'll never be able to do that again, but I couldn't help but think of Angela while in the shop. She was very happy to get them, and said she was looking forward to eaten the ripest on for part of her dinner when she got home from work.

  It does sometimes seem that someone, or something is smiling down at us when we leave the pub together. Most often it is unexpected sunshine, but yesterday it was a dry spell after some obviously heavy rain while we were in the pub. It is obviously not the usual sky fairly because his views are supposed to be that he would be cross with a bit of giggling conspiracy to secrete another Guinness glass in Angela's bag.

  After a very warm hug outside Angela's office I walked back towards home. On the way I called in to say hello to Michael, and to give him the money I owed him for 6 bottles of Diet Coke he had bought for me in Tesco a couple of weeks ago. At the time I forgot to give him the money, and he forgot to ask for it. It was probably when more serious stuff about his little bowel problem was being said. The other reason for seeing him yesterday was to get a progress report. It seems he had a battery of tests in the hospital, including an "armful" of blood. He now has to wait until the consultant has seen the results of the tests to find out how things will proceed.

  When I got home I started some lunch cooking, and went through the few photos I had taken (there were a few more train photos as well as the pictures I have shown here). As I did the selecting and editing, and waited for my lunch to be cooked, I started to feel like I had no energy. That is one of the main symptoms of the Omicron Covid variant that others have reported. It was a very washed out feeling, and it lasted into the night, but it seems to have passed now, but it does raise some questions.

  After lunch, which was some naughty Aldi branded southern fried chicken, I think I had a quick snooze, and did very little else apart from some reading until dinner time. Another facet of how I was feeling was that I was finding it hard to read the book - a book that should not have taken much effort to read. My dinner was two packs of southern fried flavour chicken burgers (and only those 4 big square fish fingers without any accompaniment at all).

  After dinner I watched a bit of TV, but I felt tired enough to turn the TV off after The Simpsons on Channel 4+1. That finished at 7.30pm, and I brushed my teeth and headed for bed. I did more reading in bed, but I feel sure I was asleep well before 9pm. I must admit it all feels very vague now. My bedroom seemed a good temperature with the heater on low, and I think I slept for a good few hours with the duvet over me.

  I'm sure it wasn't 3am, always a good time for weird stuff to happen, but probably 2am, although 4am is a possibility, but I got up to go for a pee, and when I got back into bed I felt very hot. It seemed to be only a minute or two before my legs felt sweaty, and my forehead was also very damp. I had to kick off the duvet because it felt like I was being cooked. For the next hour or two I slept completely uncovered, but eventually I felt OK to partly cover myself with the duvet.

  I woke up at about 6.50am feeling sort of good this morning. It was like I had fought off some sort of infection. There was one other possible symptom of some sort of illness, and that was my blood glucose. It has been high for a few days now, but until yesterday I could blame it entirely on what I had eaten. This morning it was extra high, wellover the danger line, at 10.5mmol/l. I know that what I ate yesterday was not ideal, but this morning's blood glucose reading is very exceptional. It suggests something else was going on that was not to do with food.

   I had some even higher readings when I had a suspect heart attack in 2019. I was given a blood test, but it was probably not to detect any sort of infection, and so I was not treated for any infection. I did try and eat frugally in hospital, but still my blood glucose was very high. I was referred to the diabetic clinic, and by the time I got the appointment my blood glucose had returned to normal, and the blood tests there, plus the memory in my own blood glucose meter, confirmed that I was, at that time, in what the called a pre-diabetic condition. In other words, the readings were high enough to show I was heading to be diabetic, but no treatment was needed. It was probably less than a year later that the nurse, at my GPs surgery praised my good sugar control. On the basis of all that I am not going to panic about today's high reading, or even a few more high readings, but I will try and be more careful about what I eat, and take it from there.

  I certainly have a modicum of energy back this morning. Before sitting down to write all this I hand washed two towels, one a small bath towel, and the other a hand towel. I have hung them on the line to dry. Thanks to my new wonky garden path extension around the tree stump, I have hung them on the line much nearer the back fence, and in theory they should get some sunshine on them a bit later to help them dry. At the moment I notice there is enough of a breeze to give them a slight jiggle. That should speed up the drying too.

  The next major thing to happen today will be a beer drinking session with Jodie this afternoon. The only problem with this is that I want to try and drink a lot less on this occasion to give me a fighting chance to go out later tonight. Tonight The Pinheads are doing a special gig in The Black Cat. The last time I saw them I did not enjoy myself because I didn't think the band were quite to my taste, but more because I felt outnumbered by their fans. Tonight it is possible that Michael will make it there, although that depends on if he feels comfortable enough. It is also possible that Angela will be there, but that depends on the approval of lover boy. He will, or course, chaperone her if she does come. In my more pessimistic moments I doubt that either Angela or Michael will be there. If I knew that in advance then I could just ignore the evening, and have many strong beers this afternoon.