I reckon it was only just 8° C at 7am, and that the closest to fog was just a slight haze in the air.  The sun is now just peeping over the houses to the east, and it is blindingly bright. It is looking more like yesterday afternoon's forecast for today - sunshine from dawn to dusk. The latest revision to the forecast now says that the sunshine will continue until sunset, but that the last hour may only be sunny spells. The afternoon temperature will be similar to what I saw yesterday - 17° C. Tomorrow may be a little cooler at 16° C, and there may only be a few occasional sunny spells in the afternoon. Rain could start in the evening.
  Last night's sunset - weather lore dictated that today just had to be a sunny day !

  Yesterday was one of those days where I still had a lot of free time on my hands, and when I experienced several boring hours, but on the whole it was generally satisfying. One of the first things I did was to finish the laundry I had started the previous day. It is something I seem to do far too often lately - putting stuff in to soak in detergent, and then losing the enthusiasm to finish the job until the next day.

  Having braved the freezing cold laundry in detergent I went on to do the rinsing, and fabric conditioner in warm water. The fabric conditioner was from an ancient bottle of Lenor, and it had turned almost into jelly after sitting still for years. I had left it because I found the Lavendar and Camomile perfume in it far too strong. Yesterday I reminded myself how bad it was, and used a very dilute solution of it, and tipped the rest down the toilet.

  Having cleared the bath of the big buckets I was doing the laundry in, I could have had a shower, but for some reason I couldn't be bothered. I still wanted to go out, and so I just washed the smelliest parts with a flannel. I thought that was sufficient for a shopping trip to Aldi. By the time I left to walk to Aldi it was about 15° C, and feeling warm in the sunshine. I elected to go out without a coat.

  It felt fine in just a shirt. Maybe it was because I didn't have a coat on that I seemed to walk with great ease. On the other hand a coat could not really be blamed for aches and pains and other detrimental stuff. The thing is that I can't recall any aches and pains beyond a desire to pass wind once or twice. Fortunately I did that before I entered the store !

  That walk was good for more than a lack of aches and pains. It felt what I can only describe as "normal". It felt like it would be no hardship to tackle a 4 mile walk. In reality I think I was just drunk on the sunshine. The walk home was often in the shade, and I think a few clouds passed in front of the sun. I was very glad to get home then and take the weight off my feet.

  I was carrying quite a weight when I walked home. As well as three 2 litre bottles of Diet Coke I had a big bottle of fabric conditioner plus a smaller bottle of detergent. There was a lot of other stuff that all added up to quite a weight. It was the sort of load I carried back from Aldi on one of my first shopping trips after being released from hospital after my quad heart bypass operation in 2013. I was under strict surgeons orders not to attempt to carry more than a single kilogram for a month or two - I carried at least ten time that amount, and I believe I irreparably damage my chest. I actually heard something like a tear from under the skin.

  One of the oddities I bought from Aldi was the candle in the picture above. I could not believe there could be such a thing as Tomato Vines & Basil scent, and upon getting it home, and lighting it up, I still stand by that. It does give off a sort of damp green smell, but it needs a lot of imagination to pick out Tomato Vines or Basil ! Another oddity was Sour Cream and Onion flavoured peanuts. I had a taste and they were nearly nice, but it was obvious they felt sort of sticky. A look at the ingredients revealed a lot of sugar in them. I am going to have to wash all that flavour off if I don't want to waste them.

  Going to a supermarket always brings temptations, and I tried to ignore them, and so I bought a couple of packets of some strange vegan crisps - which weren't crisps, but puffs. One was meet free roast beef flavour. It was easy to tell whoever devised the recipe had never eaten beef before in their life !  It is fortunate that each packet, the other allegedly being pickled onion flavour, were only about 25gms per bag, and the sugar content was shown as low. I ate both packets, and both were close to unpleasant.

   What wasn't unpleasant was the treat I had deliberately bought for myself. I had fancied something meaty, and bought a pack of beef burgers. The pack didn't say they were low fat, but when I oven cooked them in my mini oven/grill there was no free fat in the grill pan when they were well cooked. I had them for lunch all by themselves except for some English mustard. I feel they would have gone great with a heap of baked beans, but even low sugar baked beans contain too much sugar for me these days.

 After I had eaten my lunch there was some sunshine coming through the window, and falling on my bed. I hadn't slept all that well the night before, and it seemed like an excellent time to have a long snooze while I digested the burgers. I'm not sure how long I snoozed for, or even how much I read before falling asleep, but the sun had gone in when I woke up, and it would be very intermittent from then on until it finally set. Nevertheless, it had been enough to take the chill off my bedroom, and for a while it did almost feel quite warm in there.

   I didn't do a lot after that snooze, but I didn't do nothing. One little task was to do some housekeeping of my collection of music files. Almost a fortnight ago I had ordered a CD of Curved Air's "Phantasmagoria", and it arrived in the post yesterday. It was my first complete album from Curved Air (a band from the early 1970s), but I had a random collection of their songs I accumulated from somewhere. After ripping the new CD into the Curved Air folder on the music hard disks I decided to try and identify what albums the other random tracks came from so I could tidy things up a bit by putting them in appropriate folders. It was a slightly tedious process that took some time, but was very much speeded up thanks to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curved_Air.

Later on I had my dinner. It was what I had cooked for the previous day. It was a beef and red been stew with sprouts. It was nice-ish. It would have benefited from a long slow cook to tenderise the diced beef, but was otherwise OK. I only ate half of it. I gave the other half another 15 minutes in the microwave before sealing it in an air tight container. I had probably better eat the rest tonight.

  I watched several hours of TV before going to bed last night. I then read in bed for about an hour until I had finished the book I was reading. After my poor night the night before I decided to take a couple of precautions. They probably weren't needed because I wasn't suffering from bloat like I was the night before. Nevertheless I took a couple of paracetamol. I also decided it was time to try something I had bought in Poundstretcher a couple of days previously.

  It was an Elbow Support. Although my right elbow is not hurting as bad as it was since coming off the blood thinners, it can still have it's moments. The elbow support is nothing more than an elasticated tubular bandage. I am still wearing it now, but I can't decide if it helps or not. Possibly it's greatest effect is to keep my elbow from getting too cold. It only cost about £1.50 (I think), and so it is a cheap experiment even if it turns out to be useless. The big trouble with this as an experiment is that there is no control elbow. My elbow, now I am off the blood thinners, only occasionally gets very painful. I have no idea if the elbow support is preventing pain that wasn't there to begin with. Oh well, as I say, it is a cheap experiment.

  Overall I seemed to sleep mostly OK last night. There were a couple of times when I felt much too hot, and although I don't think I was awake when the worst of it happened, I did have a period of heavy sweating in the night. I know this because my pillow, and worse still, the top edge of the duvet were cold and damp when I later woke up. That was unpleasant, but the rest of the night seemed OK. I know it wasn't dreamless because I have a sharp memory of being on an old tube train, but I can't remember why, or where.

  I had hoped I had eaten carefully enough not to trigger any spikes in my blood glucose, and it seems I was right, This morning my blood glucose is a very average 8.5mmol/l. 7.5mmol/l would have been far better, but that is a rare treat these days. I think I feel reasonably OK this morning. It won't be too long before I test that assumption. I want to test the new fabric conditioner I bought yesterday. I have a couple of t-shorts and some underwear to wash. If I feel as good as I hope then I will get the job done before the morning is over, and not leave it soaking until tomorrow.

  I think the message came through to late to mention it yesterday, but Angela sent me a message to say she was well enough to go back to work, although later I read that she was feeling rather washed out. This should mean I should be able to look forward to seeing her tomorrow lunchtime. I still have to find stuff to do today, and if it really is sunny I think I will go out with a camera somewhere - maybe just a walk, or maybe a bit of rail exploration.