It wasn't supposed to rain until about now, but it is very wet outside. The puddles suggest that it has been raining for some time. It is not due to stop until 7pm, and then a few hours later it will start again. Today is not going to be a nice day ! Even the temperature hitting 14° C, although maybe only for a single hour, is no compensation. Tomorrow, the first day of the new year, may feature a couple of hours of sunny spells, but there will still be times when it rains, and it will also be cooler than today. Just 11° C is currently predicted.

   I had two aims for yesterday. One was something that would be sort of nice to do, but really only in better weather. I didn't do that one, but I did do the other one. The other was yet another quick(ish) shopping trip. That turned out to be very satisfactory, although far from exciting.

  There was a time yesterday morning when it did seem to brighten up, and I wondered if I could bring myself to go out, travel all the way to Willesden Junction station where I could get a train that would travel over a rarely used diversionary route. I'm glad I didn't decide to do that because the brighter period did not last all that long. Apart from the possible "joy" of travelling over an unusual route, it would have been mostly a photographic expedition, and rail photography is much easier if it is nice and bright.

  My alternative reason to leave the comfort of home was to do a bit of shopping. Although I was not desperate for anything I bought, it was still useful to top up my stocks of vitamin tablets, mouth wash, and other things sold in Savers. After Savers I went across the (pedestrian) road to see what they had in Poundstretcher. I didn't spot any reduced price stuff for sale ... err, I might have seen some reduced price strings of LED "fairy light". I will look into those lights another time. I ended up buying a spare wrist and elbow support bandage type things. I think they help with some pains I get from time to time. I also found a few smell candles. One other thing I bought was a packet of cheese and jalapeño flavoured baked crisps.

  Before leaving the subject of the stuff I bought I must mention one particular thing. It was the bottle of Wisdom Chlorhexidine mouthwash. I only mention it because it shares one strange thing with the Colgate Plax mouthwash (bought some time ago). After willing out either of these I am left with a strange effect. It is as if I can smell fresh leather, maybe shoe leather. The effect wears off after a few minutes. I have a suspicion it has something to do with covid affecting taste buds and sense of smell. In this case it is only smell that is affected. Both mouth washes taste as expected. I am unsure when I first noticed this. Maybe it only started after my illness at the start of the month. It is looking like that may have been a very mild form of Covid. It was really only annoying for the length of time I was affected for, rather than the severity of the symptoms - which were generally very mild.

  One of the first things I did when I got home from my shopping was to have some lunch. It was later than I thought, and rapidly approaching 1pm. My lunch was the other two mini sub rolls I had bought at reduced price from Tesco the day before - the same rolls that I accused of being saturated with sugar. Maybe there were, or maybe they weren't, and it was having the sandwiches for dinner, the day before yesterday, that made my blood glucose reading quite high when I checked it yesterday morning. More about this subject later.

  I did my best not to each much more yesterday afternoon, but I was semi-bored, and gave in. I had a snack of 4 chilli flavoured rice cakes with cheese on them. Two of them also had the last of a pack of corned beef on them too. That was the last I ate until dinner time. Dinner was a home made beef stew with miniature potatoes, and a whole pack of "tender stem" broccoli. It was a nice-ish dinner, but I can do better.

  One of the curious things about yesterday was that I seemed to be too busy to continue my binge watching of episodes of Futurama. I can't seem to think how I was too busy because I achieved almost nothing in the afternoon. I guess I did have a short snooze, and that would account for maybe half an hour, perhaps more. Maybe I spent longer reading than I realised. I had another two books delivered by the postman yesterday, and I now have three unread, plus one I have already started reading.

  I am expecting one more book by Edmond Cooper, and that should arrive sometime next week. The book I started reading yesterday, one that arrived in the post the day before yesterday, got off to a bad start. I didn't realise it was a collection of short stories. I started reading, and quickly realised it was not all that long ago that I had read the same story. My first thought was that it was the same book, but released under a different title (which sometimes happens to books published in America). Upon investigating this I was happy to find that the other book with the same story in it, had almost a completely different set of short stories. It think maybe there is one other duplicated short story.

  Last night started off badly. It may have been because the episode of QI I was going to watch was, or seemed to be, a recent repeat, and I decided to read in bed instead. I am wondering if laying in bed for well over an hour, just reading, made the bed seem uncomfortable when I finally turned out the light. Actually I can hardly blame the bed because it is usually comfortable once I get to sleep. It is me and my assorted aches and pains. I had an extra one last night that I'll explain in a minute. I probably turned out the light around 10pm, but didn't manage to get to sleep until almost midnight.

  My extra, and new ache/pain was from my right little toe. I can't see the part that is probably damaged, but I have a clue about what is wrong with it. It was possibly the morning before yesterday morning when I think a loose loop of thread got hooked on my toe while putting on my sweat pants (or slouching trousers as I think of them). I have a memory of just pulling on the leg of the trousers until either the thread broke, or it slipped off the toe. Now I must admit that I thought it was the toe next to the little toe, but whatever the exact mode was, it would seem like I might have had the equivalent of a paper cut on my little toe - possibly on the underside of the outer edge where I can't get in a position to see it. The good news is that after giving some pain for a lot of yesterday, it seems (touch wood) to have healed this morning.

  Once I finally got to sleep last night, it was like most recent nights - I slept rather well, and possibly first woke up for a pee about 3.30am.  Like the last few nights, or indeed most nights for perhaps the last few months, I slept fairly solidly until about 5am, and then more lightly until I gave up, and got up. That was about 7.30am this morning - a bit later than usual. Since then I have read some stuff on the internet, and had a bowl of instant noodles for breakfast. I have also checked my blood glucose, and I am very happy to say it had dropped back down to a very nice 8.1mmol/l.

  I suddenly realise I have a lot of stuff I should be doing today. It is possible that I may fit in a shopping trip to Aldi this morning, but most of the stuff I have to do is computer related. It is the end of the month, and time to make backups of this that and the other. I also need to make spreadsheets to record my main health readings for next year. I initially thought that would be very tedious, but I realise now it will only be ordinary tedious because I think I can just edit the existing spreadsheets, and save them under a new year setting. It could still take several hours though !