Today looks like it will be hotter than yesterday, and that seems counter intuitive because by 3pm the clouds will gather to reduce the sunshine to just sunny spells, and from 5pm it will be cloudy. Even worse is that the latest revision the the forecast says we will lose the sunshine even earlier, but it still insists the temperature will peak at 30° C. That sounds like the build up to a thunderstorm, but the forecast insists that the chance of rain will be less than 5% all day. The BBC forecast tells a different story with the sunny spells continuing until sunset, and the temperature reaching 31° C. Tomorrow should be hot with the Met Office showing a single hour at 30° C, and the BBC saying 2 hours at 31° C. The Met Office shows much of tomorrow being dull, and the BBC say sunny spells, or better, for the whole day !

  Yesterday was one of those odd days where not a lot happened, but the day seemed to pass by very quickly. One thing I did do was to go shopping in Tesco, and like sometime last week (was it last week ?) I seemed to almost buy more bird food than human food. I must admit, it felt good going out in the midday sun to get that shopping, although I was a bit soggy by the time I got home again.

  Of particular note about that shopping was the packets of "Oriental style" instant noodles. What makes them noteworthy was that they were 100gm packets instead of the more typical 55 to 70gm packets. Later in the afternoon I would discover that the "special spicy" was actually rather spicy, as in hot, and rather delicious. It was actually a peppery hot, rather than chilli hot, and more than once that pepper tickled my throat and got me coughing a lot.

  I had assumed that Jodie would be over in the afternoon for a beer tasting session. I knew there was a small element of doubt about it, but I am sure I can remember her saying something about this coming Thursday rather than yesterday. After waiting until it was after the time she would normally appear I sent her a text message. It was several hours later when she saw the message and replied that she wouldn't be coming yesterday, but Thursday should still be going ahead as usual.

  I was just starting to get bored when there was a ring at my doorbell, and it was the man from Amazon dropping off a small box of goodies for me. I say a man, but it could have been a woman, or maybe even a robot. By the time I had opened the door the packet was sitting on my doorstep, and the delivery van was nowhere in sight. I had only ordered 2 items, and one, a packet of multi-coloured glue sticks was partly to add value to the order, not that it really needed it.

   I have no immediate use for those glue sticks, but one future intended thing is to seal the crown caps on bottles of beer that it seems like it would be a good idea to keep.  I am think of beers like special Xmas brews. Some East European beers have the capped end dipped in wax, and are known as "cellar beers". They are designed to last for years and years. I am not sure if sealing the cap with hot melt glue will work, but I feel it ought to.

  The second item in my delivery was another external hard drive. It was a 4TB drive, and I needed it to make a back up copy of another 4TB drive that I had been moving all my movies and TV programmes to. It was dangerous to have just the one copy. If that drive failed I would lose so much. It was an overnight job using the less powerful dining room PC to duplicate all the files onto the new external hard drive, but this morning it is done, and looking OK.

  Yesterday morning I started with my blood glucose level in the danger zone, and I had to fast for as long as I could. Usually that would mean until dinner time, and I would try to go out to avoid temptation. Yesterday I only went out to Tesco, and of course that increased the temptation ! At about 1pm I decided to check my blood glucose again, and as I hoped, it had come right down to almost average. That seemed to be a good excuse to have some lunch. I restricted it to a very simple ham salad - just ham and lettuce with a good squirt of mayonnaise.

  It got to about 5.30pm, if I recall correctly, and curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to taste the 105gm pack of "special spicy" (or something like that) instant noodles I had bought earlier. It was not a good idea having something like noodles that late in the day - particularly on a day when I was supposed to be very careful about my sugar consumption. I have to say that those noodles were very nice, although as I mentioned a few paragraphs up the page, the pepper in them caught my throat a few times and left me coughing and spluttering.

  My proper dinner was a much more healthy well grilled burgers of lettuce, although I have some gathering doubts about the mayonnaise I am currently using. I think it is Helmanns, and I have suspicions it has much more sugar in it than Tesco's own brand. It seems to be a general rule now that most Tesco branded stuff has far less sugar in it than "well known brands" of similar stuff. A little later in the evening I munched on a couple of slices of sliced cheddar cheese. Apart from the instant noodles, and maybe the mayonnaise, I thought I had eaten very carefully yesterday.

  There were a few interesting things on TV last night. The Genesis concert being shown by Sky Arts was best listened to while reading, That was followed by a documentary about heavy metal music. It is the sort of thing I should have liked, but I watched very little of it while engrossed in a book. I did put the book down to watch some of an episode of QI, and all of an old episode of Have I Got News For You. That took me to 10pm, and it was time for bed.

  After a couple of nights of poor sleep I took some extra precautions last night. I took some painkillers before turning the light out, and they did seem to work. I also set the fan to blow over me instead of at me. That seemed like it was a sensible idea. The third thing was being very tired after two nights of bad sleep, although I didn't seem to feel specially sleepy because of it.

  I can only describe last nights sleep as normal or better. I didn't seem to wake up to pee much. I do recall a couple of times when I automatically went to the toilet when I woke up in the night, but when I got there it hardly seemed necessary. I woke up at around 5.30am, and it felt like it was time to get up, but I wanted to try for another hours sleep. I did get my wish (plus or minus 10 minutes), but before going back to sleep I turned over very quickly, and suffered from a spell of vertigo.

  I first felt a loss of equilibrium, but ignored until I opened my eyes and saw the room rotating. I quickly closed them again, and concentrated on the idea of going back to sleep. Since getting up I have suffered a couple of very brief spells of vertigo, but only when looking down or up. I have grown used to this now, and have learned to mostly ignore it. The last time this happened was quite a few months ago, and the cure was, as I hoped, to drip some light oil (I chose walnut oil) into each ear to soften any hard wax. I does seem to work, and I have done that this morning (and suffered oil dribbling of my ears because maybe I was a bit over generous with the amount used. I'll do the same tonight, and tomorrow morning).

  The important health issue is my blood glucose, and this morning it was still a bit high. I thought that I had eaten carefully enough to see a decent drop this morning, but apparently not. The first reading I took was 9.7mmol/l. I wondered if that was accurate because I could only squeeze a very tiny drop of blood from the first prick I made. I pricked a different finger, and squeezed out a big bead of blood. That gave a reading of 9.5mmol/l. I suspect that demonstrates the poor accuracy of these meters, and why doctors and nurses only believe the results of a laboratory blood test. The more important thing is that both readings were far too high even if not in the danger zone, and that I really shouldn't have had a big bowl of pork flavoured instant noodles for breakfast.

  I really ought to go out today for a bit of exercise, and to stop me eating anything until dinner time. I think it all depends on a second visit to the toilet. I didn't seem to pass enough on my first visit. I would strongly prefer not to have to try and find a toilet while in the middle of nowhere. If all goes well, maybe today will be the day when I finally go on part of my Freedom Pass Quest to the 4 northern ends of the Metropolitan Line.