The two weather forecasters I keep an eye on have slightly different views about today, but neither brings any joy, only sorrow. The BBC say the temperature will be a constant 5° C all day, but the afternoon will be a slightly lighter grey. The Met Office say today will be very grey all day, but that the morning, and start of the afternoon will be 6° C before falling to 5° C around 3pm. Tomorrow will be another very grey day, but for all the difference it will make, it could be a very chilly 8° C. It seems that by Thursday we will be seeing some very cold days, and at least sleet is possible in the not too distant future - maybe even snow (except snow around Xmas doesn't happen !).

   Yesterday was one of those days that was both good and bad. For most of the day it seemed like my illness was 99% over - just an occasional light cough. The warm, but not quite hot shower I had in the morning may have helped - possibly helped a lot. I felt good enough to go to Tesco to get some needed shopping.

  I can't recall coughing as I walked to Tesco, although I did blow my nose before going in. I didn't cough inside Tesco, and I didn't cough walking home again. Once I was indoors and put my shopping down I was able to give my nose a good blow before it dripped, but still everything felt fine. It was perhaps 10 minutes later, having taken my coat off, and putting my shopping away in the freezing cold kitchen when my coughing resumed.


  Most of what I bought was essentials. I think I only bought one frivolous thing, and it was a pot of tuna and sweetcorn sandwich filler. It looked like it had a fairly low sugar content, but I didn't look at the small print. It could have been low per teaspoonful. I used chilli flavoured rice cakes to scoop it out of the pot, and ate last bit of it that way. It was my lunch part one !

  Lunch part two was a plate of oven chips. They tend to be an unknown quantity. Sometimes they seem fine, and sometimes the seem to contribute a fair bit to my overall blood glucose level.

  After lunch part one and two I relaxed on my bed, gathering strength for another job I had already started. I was on the point of drifting off to sleep, for a quick, long, or otherwise, snooze when the doorbell rang. It was the man from Yodel who I don't think I was expecting for another hour or two.

  The man from Yodel was delivering my Bier Company beer advent calendar. It came, as illustrated in the picture, in some rather fancy packaging. It was clever but crap because I barely hold together. It would be fine if you could keep it perfectly upright, but it actually arrived in a big, but quite thin cardboard box that had to be cut off because there seemed no way to slide it out of one end or something.

  It was a relief to get it so soon after apparently it had been going nowhere for a few days. I found it annoying that The Bier Company use another company to track the delivery. So along with Yodel's own tracking, which is more comprehensive, I was getting email after email, and only less than half of them provided useful information.

  Having got the advent calendar out the box, and stood it up against the wall, I started to cut up the plain brown cardboard shipping box ready to putting it in the recycling bin. It was during that cutting up, and possibly made worse when I took the cardboard outside to the recycling bin, that I had my next bit coughing session. Until then I had been feeling half well.

  The coughing may have only subsided when I resumed a job I had started earlier in the morning - hand laundering a couple of t-shirts, and maybe 8 pairs of underpants. It wasn't exactly steamy because the water was not that hot, but I guess the humidity was a lot higher as I squidged, and squirled, and squeezed that laundry, and then wrung it out - five sessions of that, and then a final extra strong wringing out before hanging it on the clothes horse to dry.

  Drying that laundry had an extra boost - using a fan heater on low because of a pleasant event that happened early in the afternoon. The post arrived, and in it was my gas and electric bills. The gas bill was in debit, and I had to increase my standing order by £10 to (hopefully) take care of it until some outrageous demand in the next quarters bill. The electric bill was a most pleasant surprise. After the last price rise, a few months earlier, I increased my standing order by a fair amount. That, and the result of leaving off any electric heating until I could stand it no longer, means that I have a very large credit on my bill, that with some care, will take the edge off my winter heating bill.

  It seemed so good that I allowed myself to use a fan heater on low to help dry those clothes for some hours. Later on I turned the heating off, and just used a desk fan to help dry the clothes over night. I was also cheered to see that I had had two £66 gas rebates as part of the government's plans to bribe us into thinking they are wonderful. I will happily take their money, but it does not meant I could ever support them in an election. When increasing my gas standing order I also noticed the other bribe - a £500 pensioners heating allowance had been paid into my bank account by the department of work and pensions. It does seem like this winter I will be able, to a limited extent, to keep warm and eat this winter.

  During the course of the evening I noticed (it would have been hard not to !) that my nose was getting stuffier and stuffier, and before long I was using tissues on an industrial scale to blow my drippy nose. It made for a most unpleasant night. If I wasn't coughing, I was blowing my nose. It seemed to take ages before I managed to fall asleep. it seems that my idea that I might have been almost over this cold, and it is now exactly like the common cold, is very wrong.

  After a very disturbed sleep I would soon get confirmation I am still fighting this cold bug - at least I hope it is that. I can't think of anything I ate yesterday that could drive my blood glucose up to a very scary 12.8mmol/l this morning. The oven chips may have contributed a bit to it, but usually stuff I have at lunchtime has little effect. My dinner was a sort of beef stew with brown mushrooms and curly kale. Normally that would be very safe. I can only hope this continuing high blood glucose reading, with today's being the highest yet, is the result of this cold. Maybe it has peaked because now I am fighting the cough and the snotty nose - although they must be the same bug.

  I think I am now getting bored with this cold. It has been going on too long now, and yesterday's morning's false finish was just teasing ! Clutching at straws here, but maybe the worst happens at the end, and tomorrow morning I'll wake up to find I am fit and healthy again......yeah, some hope ! The big problem now is that I should be seeing Jodie for a beer tasting session this afternoon. That gives a possible three problems.

  The first problem is than on a cold miserable day I need to fast until, ideally, a fairly small, and very safe dinner this evening. The second problem is trying to appear to be not still in the middle of a cold when Jodie arrives. Hopefully if I burn more electricity to keep warm I may feel OK for a while. The last problem really relates to Sod's law - the more I try and keep the cold hidden this afternoon, the worse it will be tomorrow when I take the lid off again.

  The last consideration relates to Friday's KT Bush Band gig that I want to go to. The afternoon temperature on Friday could be as low as 3° C, and the temperature could go negative in the late evening. I will need to be very fit and healthy by then to survive that !