Clear skies in the night allowed the temperature to plummet last night. My most exposed temperature sensor was showing -3.0° C at 8.29am. The latest revision to the forecast has changed 10am to -1.0° C in a sort of admission that they got the earlier temperatures wrong. Fortunately it still shows blue skies and pure sunshine until sunset today. Unfortunately it says the maximum temperature today will now only be 2° C.  Tomorrow will be a worse day. Freezing fog is predicted from 5am to 11am, and with no sunshine at all tomorrow, the maximum temperature may be  1° C. There have been a few very advanced forecasts for snow or sleet on the BBC and Met Office forecast web sites, but there are none visible in the days that forecasts are given for (7 days for the Met Office, and 14 days for the BBC). Of course neither manage to come close to an accurate forecast for more than 10 or 12 hours ahead, and so anything forecast for 7 days ahead is just fantasy.

   To save you having to read the entire page, or click on the link for the complete archived page for today, I can reveal now that yesterday was both good and bad.....but then again the same could be said about most days. The different thing about yesterday was that I felt sure there was some tangible improvement on this lurgy I have been suffering from.

  The problem with this illness is that it is always up and down. Keeping warm, and drinking plenty of fluids can mask the underlying symptoms for useful periods of time. Yesterday it seemed like I didn't suffer from the worst symptoms for very long periods of time. The worst symptom is basically a cough, but it does take many forms. The dry cough, or at least the cough which doesn't seem to be able to shift any irritating mucus, is the worst because it is easy to get carried away, and cough non stop hoping that the tiny blob of mucus that seems to irritate the top of the windpipe will finally move.

  On the other hand, the opposite of that, where you cough up a great big blob of mucus, that threatens to drown you, can be terribly annoying to. This is particularly so when it is half out and half in, and you have run out of breath to blow it all out, but can't breath in because all that effort of getting it to the top will be wasted. Fortunately I had very few of these two problems for most of yesterday.

  I actually did some meaningful work yesterday. It was to finish washing the pair of sweat pants that I had left soaking for 24 or more hours because I couldn't seem to get around to doing it the day before yesterday. It was actually easier than I expected. Although the material those sweat pants are made from feel thick, and possibly very absorbent, they don't seem like that when saturated with water.

  I had decided to skip using fabric conditioner because I didn't think I would be very effective when wringing it out. Now I have washed them for the first time I may reconsider these ideas in future. What was more amazing is that by burning 1kw of electricity in a fan heater for the whole afternoon, and a few hours more, I got those sweat pants almost fully dry. I let the last, only very slightly damp, areas dry out in my warm bedroom overnight.

  The only other thing I did of note yesterday was to eat too much. Nearly everything would have been relatively safe by itself, but lots of small things add up to a big thing. My problem was that I was feeling a bit better, which improved my appetite, and I was also feeling close to cold now and then, and food, ideally hot food, gave a lot of comfort. I think I had two portions of instant noodles for breakfast. Two cans of soup for lunch, and later on two snacks of 4 rice cakes each. I put cheese on the rice cakes.

  The final "bad" thing was a lamb hot pot ready meal. Under different circumstances I could have got away with it, but combined with everything else it was bad for me, and particularly my blood glucose level. One oddity was that I hard hardly any booze yesterday. With hindsight it seems that lots of booze might have been nice. On the plus side, but also the negative side, I was feeling good enough to feel bored yesterday. I didn't cough much, and I didn't ache much. I am not sure what I could have done on such a cold day if I was perfectly well, and maybe not being able to do something is worse than not having anything to do......or should that be the other way round ?

  I was quite looking forward to a good sleep last night, but that didn't happen. It seems that once I was laying in bed my cough perked up again. At one point it got quite bad, but it was all tied into a difficulty of telling dreams from real life.  One rather extended, or perhaps repeated dream was about downloading ,y entire medical records to somewhere local under my own control.

  It was a task that seemed to take half the night, and sometime the dream would spill over into real life. In other words the dream would reveal stuff that needed thinking about when awake - assuming I was awake when I thought I was. Some of this long sequence, or sequences were about transferring some very old medical records to my computer. How I was doing that is a mystery because they were paper records.

  They were very old, and many were very dusty. That dust would catch in my throat, and I would end up coughing. I would then wake up actually coughing....or so it seemed, but it could have been real coughing transferred into the dream sequences. It was/is very, very confusing. Other bits could be confusing in a different way.

  Among the records were quite a few videos. I have no idea what I was playing them on. They seemed to be playing directly on the paper they were stored on - somehow. I think the videos were supposed to represent some sort of exercise I had done, but they seemed to be just video of traffic and people on a high street. They all looked to be authentic 1960s footage, and possibly set in Bromley.  They would make great historical footage, showing stuff like traffic patterns and street furniture, but how they got in my brain is a big mystery.

  Another bit of "moving image" was also on the subject of exercise, but was much more traditional dream material. It started out with me and several others sitting outside a house after some sort of all night gathering. I announced I was going to stretch my legs. I was soon in a park, and being passed by several joggers. I though how wonderful it would be to be able to run. The next bit was downhill, and I thought "how hard can it be to run downhill ?". Of course it was easy, and if almost felt like I was flying.

  I'm not sure how I jumped to the next step in this "exercise". I was on a bicycle following a couple of other cyclists. I thought I could go much faster than them despite them being dressed for speed on very posh looking bikes. I started really pumping the pedals. I seemed to be very aware of the pressure my legs were pushing down on the pedals. I quite can't explain what that felt like. Very soon I was getting ready to over take the man in front, and then the one in the lead. At the peak of exhilaration I woke up. I don't think I coughed straight away, and I don't think I was breathing deeply, but it wasn't long before I was trying to hack up a great big glob of mucus.

  The dreams about trying to copy all my medical records seemed to last almost all night, and I am sure that some were repeats ! I don't think I can say I slept all that well last night, although maybe the first and last couple of hours were fairly good sleep. I think I only got up when I did because I needed to visit the toilet for more than just a pee. Once I was comfortable I checked my blood glucose. I knew it was going to be high, and I expected it to be very high. It was over the red line, but not by too much. It was 10.5mmol/l. At least it was an improvement over the three 11+ reading I have had so far this month. Although I do not deny it is a dangerous level, I can take some solace in that I knew all the reasons for it this time - I was just feeling too off colour to deny myself.

  If it were a lot warmer I might be tempted to go out in the sunshine for a while, but I think that would be foolhardy just as I am seeing some improvement in this illness. I think I will be going out as far as a couple of the local shops, but no more. Before I do that I need to wash my hair and have a shampoo. In theory both will make me feel a lot better for a short while.