09:12 BST

  Yesterday started dull and drizzly. The drizzle dried up quite early, but the morning was still very dull. It did brighten up in the afternoon, and by 3pm it was almost bright enough to seem to be sunny, although there were still plenty of clouds in the sky. It was not a warm day, and I had to keep the heater on low for a lot of day, but maybe only at times when I was being very sedate, or when I was starting to feel hungry. I think the maximum outside temperature was 16° C.

  Today is one of those days when the weather is changing fast, and it is hard to believe the weather forecast. The BBC forecast said sunny spells all day, and the Met Office forecast was as above. It got off on the wrong foot when the predicted sunny spells were actually uninterrupted sunshine ! At the moment the revised forecast says sunshine right now, but only sunny spells at 11am. There may also be sunny spells at 5 and 6pm. It will be overcast to some degree at all other times. The BBC forecast now says just sunny spells for 10 and 11am, and light rain for 4pm. There is general agreement that today could see 19 or 20° C. Tomorrow it will all be different. The BBC like their thunderstorms, and they predict them for 4am. There will be just light rain from then until 7am. By 11am there could be sunny spells until sunset, but 4am might see a sprinkle of rain. The Met Office tells a different story. They say there will be heavy rain for all the small hours of tomorrow. After a three hour respite there will be light rain from 9am to midday. It will be cloudy, but dry for a few hours, and then a thunderstorm at 2pm ! From 5pm until sunset there could be sunny spells. Tomorrow should see 20° C, but by tomorrow this whole forecast could have, and probably will have, changed beyond all recognition !

  I was determined to start yesterday in what could be called "normally", but who knows what normal is these days ? After I finished writing I had a nice hot shower, and I washed and conditioned my hair. That felt good. After allowing maybe half an hour to cook down a bit, I grabbed my rucksack and shopping bag to go shopping in Tesco. I found a few nice things on the reduced price shelf, and decided to buy them even though the cod and chorizo may contain a fair bit of sugar.

  The other item was a pack of Tesco "Finest" sausages reduced to the price of ordinary sausages. I am not expecting them to be a lot different though. The worst thing I bought was a six pack of small bags of Hula Hoops. I thought that experience had shown them to be fairly low sugar, but this morning I am having second thoughts. Maybe I should not have eaten the whole six little bags during the day, and particularly not the last two in the evening.

  There were two items I added to my shopping list. In fact they were the only two items on it apart from a bag of salad leaves, and the rest of my shopping was made up as I went through the store. One of the items was a couple of bottles of Diet Coke, and the other was a bottle of whisky. I ended up buying two bottles of whiskey. It is very hard to resist the very frequent over the last 3 or 4 years, special offer of one litre of Haig for less than the price of a 70cl bottle is you have a Tesco Clubcard - which I do have.

  I did have hopes of going out yesterday, but while the walk to and from Tesco was not arduous in any way, it was not very pleasant. The grey sky, and quite a cool feeling wind spoiled not only the walk, but any hope of going out again. At 3pm, when the sun was almost out ( did it actually come out ? I can't remember clearly beyond the fact it was very bright outside) I sort of regretted that I wasn't out to greet it.

  I spent a lot of the day....no, I guess it was just a few hours, but felt longer, going through some old CDR/DVDR disks looking for some files I had spotted when looking for other files a week ago. I never did find exactly what I was looking for, but I did come across a few files to add to my more formal archives/backups. I also copied 5 DVDR disks full of video files to my two "Videos" back up hard disks (a master copy, and a duplicate slave disk in case the master hard disk fails).

  Those videos were all transferred from both Hi8 and DV camcorder tapes, and all featured slam door trains. Some of the footage, generally that taken on the Sony V1000 DV camcorder, has come out rather well. Back in those days, the 1990s, I somehow managed to lug a fairly heavy tripod to all sorts of faraway places. I wish I had the energy of enthusiasm to do that today. Maybe I have been spoiled by using digital still camera with (usually) fast enough shutter speeds to make camera wobble nothing to worry about.

  I started the day with a double helping of instant noodles. Even after shopping in Tesco I managed to mostly control my eating through a not very exciting day. My lunch was what I have been having for dinner a few times recently - intensely grilled bacon on mixed lettuce leaves. One difference, and maybe it was significant, was that I didn't smother those lettuce leaved in mayonnaise, but I did give them a generous sprinkle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

   I have only recently heard that balsamic vinegar contains sugar. When I checked Tesco's own brand I found it contained about half as much extra sugar compared to the more expensive bottle I bought. I am wondering of Aldi's version contains even less sugar, and I intend to check the next time I shop in Aldi. I feel there should be little to worry about because it always seems that most of the balsamic vinegar is left swimming about on the empty plate after eating the meal, but once again, this morning I have some doubts.

  My dinner was rather nice-ish. It was heavily grilled pork belly strips with fine green beans. It was made nicer, but not so healthy, by a good splash of soy sauce, another hidden source of sugar, before cooking commenced.  The final nail in the coffin was the two small (25gm ?) bags of Hula Hoops I had as snack later in the evening. I never intended to eat the whole six pack in one, or even two days, but they seem such small individual bags that they hardly register on the consciousness when spread over a whole day.

  I did not sleep well last night. I felt uncomfortable a lot of the time, and it varied from the familiar to the ridiculous. One familiar and recently fairly frequent source of discomfort was my right elbow. It once spent a few weeks dislocated, and 30 (?) years later it has come back to haunt me. Other sources of discomfort were almost silly, and very transient. At one time in the night my right kneecap seemed itchy. I have no idea what it was, but I spent all of 2 seconds scratching it, and the itch went away, never to come back.

  I was also suffering from the dreaded "slightly too cool with the duvet, but too warm with it" syndrome. At maybe 3am I turned the heater on low, and my sleep improved a bit after that. It is quite possible that each session of insomnia only lasted 10 minutes or so, but each one felt like it was much, much longer in the dead of night. Like on many occasions, my last hours of sleep seemed the best. and the best was when I decided I would try for 10 minutes more when I woke up at about 6am, and then slept for more like a full 90 minutes.

  I wrote lots of things about how various things I ate contained lots of hidden sugar, and wrote it like a disaster had happened this morning. It was not a "disaster" but I find it hard to explain how my blood glucose reading was so high this morning. It was 9.1mmol/l, and while that is comfortably lower than the red line at 10.0mmol/l, it is higher than I feel acceptable. My ideal reading would be around 7.5mmol/l, but I rarely achieve that, but I am generally happy with any reading that starts with an eight.

  I have already started one of two things I was hoping to do today. The first, and it has happened, is skipping breakfast. The second is to finally get out for a few hours on the trains, and hopefully add a few ticks to my quest to visit all the extremes of free travel on trains allowed by my Freedom Pass. Like a few days ago, my main target is Elstree & Borhamwood station on the Thameslink line. It is a fair way to travel, but if I feel I have the time and energy I might get the Northern Line at Kentish Town (an interchange with Thameslink services) and visit Mill Hill East and High Barnet. All I have to do now is wait to find out if I achieve it !