This early morning version of the weather forecast (shown above) got off to a bad start. The next revision correctly showed that this morning is sunny again. Now if you believe the BBC weather forecast there will be sunny spells right through to mid afternoon. The Met Office is a bit more conservative, and says 11am and midday will be dull, but sunny spells will resume after, and might keep going until sunset. Neither forecast gives any hope for the temperature to go above 1° C today. I think it is a bit breezy today, and the wind chill could make that feel much worse ! The sky could be clear tomorrow, and allow full sunshine from sunrise to sunset, and maybe the temperature will briefly touch 2° C.

   As I suggested I would probably do yesterday morning, I did go shopping in Aldi, and I made a slight detour along the way to post my Xmas cards. I think I had a bit of a relapse yesterday, and while walking to Aldi I could feel my chest and lungs and stuff start to complain. Oddly enough I felt much better walking home laden down with a fair bit of heavy shopping.

  I didn't really need much from Aldi in particular, but I still needed to make a small shopping trolley look fairly well filled so I could use a proper manned checkout. Some of the stuff I could have got from Tesco, although when I try and remember what I actually bought, only a few items, like a pack of diced beef might have been better if bought from Tesco. Some things like beechwood smoked chicken soup seem only to be available as an own brand in Aldi.

  One thing I bought was actually a bad idea for more than one reason. It was a large pack of "southern fried flavour" chicken bites. The nutritional info on the pack suggested it had a low sugar content, but it is possible I didn't read the fine print to try an work out what the total amount may have been. That could have been important because I ended up scoffing the whole lot for lunch. It was stupid to do that for the obvious reasons, but also because I found the whole pack to be very bland. Maybe it was just me, and that others would have found them nice, but I think I ate the whole lot because I was searching for elusive flavours - particularly the peppers that are the, or one of them foundations of "southern fried flavour" (in my opinion).

  Very little happened yesterday, and I won't attempt to pad out this diary with blandness, but there were two other things to mention. One other little, and admittedly brief task was to wrap another Xmas present for Angela. The other thing was an Amazon delivery - that once again arrived earlier than first expected. That is earlier by days, and not by hours. No estimate was given for when the delivery might happen yesterday - which was annoying.

  It was about 6.30pm when the doorbell rang, and I was handed my little parcel. I had been waiting for it like a kid waiting for a Xmas present. It was actually just a few spare memory cards for my cameras. Two of them came as a special offer with a free small tin storage case that holds 6 cards. I am still a little concerned that those pair of memory cards might be Chinese knockoffs.
  I "borrowed" the picture above from the Amazon web site, but the actual memory cards do look identical to the picture. I think I have used this make before, and so fingers crossed they work as expected. One of life's little oddities was that I actually felt quite sad once I had inspected all the memory cards, and put them away in the tin storage box (similar in some ways to an old fashioned cigarette case).

  I guess it was the anticipation of the delivery that built up an excess of adrenaline, or something like that. That woulod be enhanced because most of yesterday was very boring. Once I had the memory cards in my hand there was nothing to do except check them and put them away. I couldn't play with them, or even use them unless I took only partly used cards from my cameras and put in the new ones. I was rather surprised just how sad I felt.

  Feeling sad could also have been magnified by an apparent relapse of my cold, or quite possibly mild Covid. The first big lapse was in the morning when a bit of spicy noodle (or something in the noodles) touched a delicate bit of my throat. I had a major coughing fit, and coughed up a few big globs of mucus. It was just like some of the worst attacks of several days previously.

  I had the occasional dry cough through the day, although thankfully not while I was out shopping. I also felt a bit cold - on the other hand it was cold as my thermometers readily agreed. I had a small incident when stuffing my face with those chicken bits I mentioned further up the page, but I also had another major incident when eating my dinner.  That latter one really made me feel I was back where I was several days earlier, and the feeling persisted until, and after I was in bed.

  I went to bed quite early, maybe 8.30pm, but I could not seem to get comfortable. I felt like the descriptions in SciFi stories of trying to endure double strength gravity. It was like every bit of my body in contact with my bed was pushing down extra hard...or something like that. I'm not sure if that feeling persisted all night, but I did have trouble getting to sleep after every time I woke up.

  It felt like I was getting no sleep at all, and yet the clues were obvious that I was falling asleep. The clock moving on by a couple of hours was an obvious clue, but on the other hand it felt very different to how that usually feels. Having said that, I have no idea how it normally feels, or even how it should feel. The other obvious clue was some quite long, and seemingly complex dreams.

  The first dream I remember more from the analysis I made of it when I woke up from it. It was a dream that was heading, and sadly only heading, in an erotic direction. The thing that bothered me when I woke up was that the woman seemed very young, but only in the sense that show might have been in her mid twenties. She also seemed to have pointed ears. When I woke up I realised I was having fantasies about a Vulcan woman I had seen in Star Trek earlier in the evening. She did indeed look young, but I believe she was said to be 136 years old in the story !

  Another dream was like a nightmare, but not the type that is terrifying, but annoying or frustrating. There is probably a better word to describe such dreams, but I can't think of one now. I can only remember a very small bit of the dream that was about a visit to a preserved railway. I was trying to get some pictures of a pannier tank steam locomotive, but it seemed to be encased in bodies - people standing shoulder to shoulder around it, and even sitting on top of it.

  I managed to find a high viewpoint, and hoped to take some clearer snaps looking down on it. That was when I found my camera was not how In thought it was. From the rear it was the same as my Canon 1200D camera, but the front had a sort of square section cone of black material, almost like a pair of bellows (as used on very vintage cameras). I managed to work out how to extend them, and then tried to look through the viewfinder. For some reason I couldn't seem to get a clear view through it. I couldn't check the focus, and just clicked the shutter and hoped. I never saw the result, but I have a feeling it would be a really crap picture.

  The third and final dream was rather complex. It was set in a pub, and there were several people I knew there. For some reason I have no recollection of actually drinking in there. The people I was supposed to be drinking with seemed to change several times, and gradually there were fewer and fewer of them. I decided to go home before I was left on my own.

  It's at that point things got even stranger. As I left the pub I realised two things. The first was that it was raining, and the second was that I had no coat or shirt on. Walking home in the rain didn't seem to be any great bother, but realising there was no corn flakes at home was annoying. What I really wanted was a bowl of cornflakes with a tub of slightly runny ice cream poured over them. I have no idea where the inspiration for this came from, but it seemed like a good idea, and one day in the future, when I am finally on insulin to control my blood glucose, ice cream and cornflakes for breakfast is on my to do list !

  My throat is still a bit tickly if I let it get dry this morning, but maybe I am back on the path to get over this illness. There are several reasons why my blood glucose is back up to 9.2mmol/l this morning. Over eating those chicken bites could be a good culprit, but it could also be part of the relapse. My body temperature is back up again, but it is only by a couple of tenths of a degree - and it wasn't much more than that during the worst days of this illness.

  Today I am going to do my best to enjoy a walk in the icy cold, but hopefully sunny park on my way to the pub to meet Angela - assuming she will going there today. Before that I need to have a shave, wash my hair, and have a shower - all in the freezing cold bathroom !