07:49 BST

  Yesterday was generally bright with occasional periods of hazy sunshine. Despite the weather forecasts predicting rain in the late afternoon, it stayed dry all day. It didn't seem particularly warm, but 15° C is at least very mild.

  

  The sun is a bit slow burning through a misty looking sky (a fact predicted by the BBC, and not the Met Office), but it is getting brighter almost second by second. Most of today should feature full sunshine, but it will only raise the temperature to 16° C. That should actually feel very warm in direct sunshine. Tomorrow might swap some of the hours of sunshine for hours of sunny spells, but it should be very similar to today, and the afternoon temperature of 16° C should be the same.

  When it came down to it, I couldn't raise the enthusiasm to go out yesterday. Although there were a scattering of (hazy) sunny spells, the overall cast of the day, particularly the morning, when it really counts, was that of a rather grey, and uninspiring day. As sometimes happens, by the afternoon, when there were a few more sunny spells, I regretted not gritting my teeth, and just going out on the trains rather than go walking.

  With no grand distractions from reality, I had to work hard to follow something like my eating plan for today. There were times when it would have been easy to give in, and eat something moderately safe for my blood glucose level, but maybe not so good calorie wise. On the whole I seemed to do a good job being careful - as the results this morning confirmed.

  What I did do, apart from reading online stuff and from a book, was to do more work on my grand spreadsheet cataloguing every type of train I have photographed over the years. The last time I had a load of time on my hands (late last week ?) I went through all the scans of my negatives, and picked out out the usable pictures of trains, and did the necessary photo editing to try and make the most of some photos that were a bit "marginal".

  Yesterday's job, and with 30 photographs to deal with it took quite some hours, was to enter those photos into the spreadsheet, plus add the links to the full image stored alongside the spreadsheet file. One thing that surprised me was that I had to make two more sheets for trains that used to be quite popular in the 1990s, but in one case I only had one single photo of that class of train (or more accurately, loco).

   By just after midday I was feeling ravenous, and I had to give in and eat 4 rice cakes with cheese and sliced red jalapeños on them. I would imagine the calorie content of the cheese was quite high, and as for the various fats..... Later on I slowly nibbled on some salted peanuts. It is sort of amazing how much a lot of seemingly small nibbles adds up over the space of a few hours. Once again I have long ascertained that peanuts have little effect on my blood glucose, but they do contain a lot of calories.

  Finally dinner time came around, and I had a delightful dinner of roast chicken legs with rocket, baby tomatoes, and more red slice jalapeños. I was a bit worried about the chicken legs because that had been sitting, fully sealed, in the bottom of the fridge for just over a week. Fortunately there were no nasty smells when I opened the pack - unlike when I opened a pack of southern fried flavoured chicken steak that might have even been bought at the same time.

  Those chicken steaks definitely smelled dodgy. I did end up cooking them, but I couldn't bring myself to eat them. Over the course of two days I put them on the bird table, and I know for a fact that a big black crow thought they were delicious. I rather expect the magpies had a meal or two from them, but it was only the crow that I saw in the act of pecking at them before flying off with a chunk in their beak.

  I don't think I can complain about last night's sleep. It seemed pretty average, although it was another morning where I felt that I shouldn't have woken up so early. I would have liked to describe my dreams because I feel sure at least one was enjoyable, but as dreams do, they have mostly faded from memory now. I can remember a few scenes, but they mean nothing in isolation.

  There are two bits of good news this morning, and hopefully a third. The first is that my blood glucose is nice and low again, albeit not quite as low as yesterday. This morning it was 7.7mmol/l (yesterday it was 7.6mmol/l). The other good news is that I seem to have lost almost 2kg since I peaked a fortnight ago. The second kg was possibly lost in the last 3 days. If only I could have done a large poo this morning I would have seen the numbers on the scales using a tens digit less (i.e. down from 30 to 29). I didn't do a large poo this morning because I had an explosive outburst last night that probably reduced my weight by one of those kg !

  The potential third bit of good news is that I should be seeing Angela at lunchtime. That can't be said to be definite until it actually happens, but it is a high probability. As well as the long bank holiday weekend, Angela was off work sick in a lot of pain that she thought was a trapped nerve, but apparently isn't according to a doctor she saw at a walk in centre after a wait of 3 hours. I think Angela said that he said it was a pulled muscle, but I can't help but feel that is not right because it seems to be lasting a very long time. Today I will take Angela some Comfrey cream. I think it helped me 3 or 4 years ago when I have a very painful shoulder, and I hope it helps Angela.

  Before I forget, there is another piece of good news from last night. I preparation for warmer days I tried on a couple of pairs of my shorts. One of the pairs I thought of as being a little tight in summers past, but both pairs I tried last night seemed to do up easily with no straining. Maybe my gut has not expanded the way I believed it had in the last 6 months. I can't say I feel it, but maybe I am more healthy (for an OAP) than I think I am. What a strange idea !