Clear skies means a nice bright sunny morning, but it also allowed the temperature to drop a lot during the night. My thermometers showed the temperature nearer 7° C than 8° C, and definitely a lot cooler than the forecast 9° C. The possibility of solid sunshine until mid afternoon, followed by sunny spells, will only raise the temperature to just 17° C. I've just checked and the forecast has been revised. It now shows 9am as being 9° C, and that means the forecasters have confessed that this morning started a degree cooler than originally forecast. It also shows the full sunshine continuing until 5pm, but still the maximum temperature is stuck at 17° C. This time last year the forecast was for 21° C, which is the sort of figure we might expect from mid September. Today's weather seems more appropriate for mid October. Tomorrow may start at a far more reasonable 11° C, but will still only rise to 17° C - which is surprising considering only a couple of hours of sunny spells is the best that is currently predicted for the whole day.
 
  I think I can say that yesterday was a good day, although there were some negative aspects to it. The whole day hinged on my appointment with the nurse for my diabetes check up. There was also the minor joy of a parcel delivery, and some delightful food for dinner in the evening.

  I broke my usual rules prior to seeing the nurse, and broke them deliberately. Usually I would fast before seeing the nurse, but I had breakfast of a bowl of instant noodles, and then half an hour before going to the surgery I had two cheese and onion flavoured burger patties. They were not terribly enjoyable - an attempt to make cheap meat taste better with the addition of cheese and onion. The whole thing tasted a bit vomit like !

  The reason why I would normally fast is in case the nurse tries to weigh me, but this time she was quite happy to accept a picture I had taken of my scales in the morning when I thought I might have been at my emptiest - which was a whole kilogram higher than I hoped it would be ! The reason for all the eating before seeing the nurse was in case she wanted to check my blood pressure. I believe it is always lower after eating.

  Once again she was quite happy to accept the print out of all my blood pressure readings that I have taken so far this month. I added a bit more evidence with a picture of my blood pressure meter reading taken at 8.45 in the morning. I pointed out that it was typically higher than the previous readings because I was already thinking about my appointment. It is always much higher in the surgery !

  On the whole it was a pleasant appointment, and it was also educational. In the last few years it has become so difficult to see a doctor at the practice that I have wondered if they all went on holiday to the Caribbean, or somewhere, for the whole of the covid pandemic. Yesterday I didn't have that confirmed, and I wouldn't have expected to, but I did learn an amusing fact. The nurse freely admitted that despite working in a building (allegedly) full of doctors, she usually checks her symptom on Google. Whether that shows little trust in the doctors, or that the doctors are too busy to be disturbed, or maybe something I haven't thought of, but it must say something that a medical professional does what we are all told not to do - check our symptoms on the internet !

  One possible good outcome of my appointment is that I have confirmed that I have now been referred to the diabetic foot clinic in Lewisham hospital. My feet are mostly working OK, but maybe not perfectly. The chance to get some professional maintenance on them for free is worth pursuing. I left the surgery feeing sort of happy, and looking forward to a peaceful afternoon.

  I got home to or twenty minutes past midday, and by 1pm I decided some lunch might be nice. It was not a great idea after eating so much in the morning, and I had desires that I might eat something bad, but nice for dinner. I still went ahead and had a couple of cans of soup. They were both low sugar, but only moderately low sugar - canned Irish Stew, and canned "Chunky Beef stew".

  It was fortunate that soon after that I learned that a parcel I was expecting to be delivered by Amazon would not arrive until 3.30pm at the earliest. That allowed me to quietly lay on my bed reading for several hours if it felt good. It did feel good, and I think I had a snooze, but from as early as 3pm I went on high alert for a ring on the doorbell. It was a long wait, but at about 5.30pm my parcel was delivered.

   It was nothing too exciting. It was a nice large (4TB) external USB hard drive, and a 2.5" hard drive caddy for SATA disks. The large external hard disk is for a backup of my video archive. The full archive is on a 4TB external hard disk, but it's backup is split over two smaller drives. I will be transferring those onto the one big disk to match the primary archive. The disk caddy is a complement to the disk caddy for IDE drives that came through the post a day or two ago. One of them will be very useful when I come to try and recover some files from a 2.5 inch hard disk that my friend Kevin has. I have powered interfaces to do the job here, but it may well be done in a pub, and so USB powered interfaces will be easier.

  I had a plan to celebrate getting through my appointment with the nurse, and it was to order a very tasty, and almost certainly unhealthy takeaway. I chose an Indian takeaway, and half of what I ate yesterday was indeed delicious, but the other half was not that nice - which is surprising considering it was a very simple dish - Bombay aloo. Quite how what is little more than potatoes cooked in a curry sauce could not be wonderful is a mystery. Fortunately the lamb bhuna was delicious.

  In point of fact it was really a bad idea to luxuriate in an Indian takeaway because although my direct business with the nurse is over there is still the matter of the blood tests. Once I manage to make an appointment with the vampires I have to give two test tubes full of blood to test for this, that and the other. I also have to produce a urine sample. These blood and urine samples probably won't be taken until some time next week, and the worst of the takeaway will have dissipated by then, but the rise in blood glucose after eating those curries will add to the average.

  As usual I ordered more than I needed or wanted for last night. Last night I ate less than I might have done, and if I eat at a similar rate I have enough left over for two more similar dinners, plus a naan bread. The reason for all this spare food was that I had to meet the minimum charge for delivery, and then over the top to hit the 10% discount rate.

  I watched a bit of TV as I ate my dinner, and then watched a bit more after. As usual there was the blank gap between 8pm and 9pm. Quite why nothing happens on TV between those times is a mystery. At 8pm I opted to read for a bit. After a while I felt a bit sleepy. I had already brushed my teeth, and so I turned out the light, and I think I was possibly asleep by 8.30pm. Unlike the night before, when I had stomach ache, and the consequences of that in the middle of the night, my sleep last night was rather good.

  I can remember a few times when I felt too hot under the duvet, but too cold without it. Later on in the night that would no longer be a problem, and I was glad to sleep fully under the duvet (face excepted). I have very vague memories of dreams in the first half of the night, but it is only a few snatches of dream from the last hours of the night that I can remember just enough to mention.

  One dream was quite a strange dream, or at least what I can remember makes it seems strange, although maybe very bland is a better description. All I can remember was being on the phone to an old friend while eating chicken nuggets. I'm sure the conversation was fascinating, but I can't remember a single thing about it. All I can remember is those chicken nuggets, and maybe a suggestion that the dream was set in the past because the phone I was using was an old GPO dial phone.

  The other dream was more like a nightmare. It started with me discovering a small hole in the floorboard behind the settee. It was right next to the wall, and obviously made by a mouse. I went to get a tube of filler to plug the hole. When I came back with it the carpet was missing, and it was actually more like I was in a different room with much newer floorboards. Instead of one tiny hole there were 3 or 4 quite big holes, and there was no way I had enough filler to fill them. Fortunately I woke up before things got worse.

  Having gone to sleep so early there were several time in the night when I wondered if I could sleep for much longer. I can just about remember thinking it was not likely I would be able to get back to sleep at about 3am. The next thing I knew was that it was about 5am. I was then convinced I would never get back to sleep again after so much sleep, but once again I was wrong. Evidently my badly disturbed sleep the night before had taken it's toll on me. I was very surprised to find that the next time I checked the clock it was just after 7am.

  I was also surprised to see how cold it was at that time. It was just 7° from a frost in September ! It makes me worry what this winter will be like. Last year, before electricity prices almost doubled (or maybe they did double) I would not have hesitated to put the heater on, but not this morning. I shall at least try and hold out for another month, and hopefully more, before considering using the heater.

  I have had a hot bowl of instant noodles to help me warm up despite my blood glucose shooting up to 9.6mmol/l after all I ate yesterday. Fortunately that is still under the red line, but I ought to be careful about what I eat for the rest of today. Ideally I should go out for the day so I don't have any temptations to eat before tonight. I am contemplating the idea of going on a few trains, and exploring a bit, but particularly after last night's curry, my guts feel a bit volatile this morning. Maybe later I'll feel more confident, and of course the day will have warmed up a bit, I might end up going out. On the other hand I have computer files to back up, and some laundry to do. It would be nice to dry it in the sunshine.