At 6am the temperature seemed to be 0.2° C. but by 8am it had risen to 2° C according to my thermometers. As I write this it is quite bright. The sun is shining through thin clouds, and producing a thin watery sunshine that appears to carry no heat. The light clouds should continue until 4pm. By 5pm the chances of rain will have risen from 10% to 50% and rain is almost certain. It will probably be just light rain, and will continue to midnight. At 3pm the temperature could peak as high as 7° C, but then will slowly fall, but not by much. By 2am tomorrow morning he temperature should start to rise again. By 3pm tomorrow it could be a rather marvellous (compared to recent days) 13° C ! Much of tomorrow should feature light coloured clouds, and the morning may even have some sunny spells. The taps get turned on again tomorrow evening when dark clouds will bring rain again, but the temperature may only dip to 11° C during the night, and Monday may see 13° C again, but it may involve showers of light rain.
 
   Yesterday had it's moments, but overall it was not a great day. The worst thing was that it was one of those days that seemed cold no matter what I did. The only time I felt really warm was after feeling really cold ! It could have been fortunate that it had stopped raining by the time I had finished writing yesterday morning. By the time I had showered, and was ready to go out it had even started to dry out.

  By "going out" I mean just going shopping in Aldi. There were a few things, like toilet paper and man sized tissues that still seem to be cheaper than from Tesco. I could also buy the cheese and ham that I forgot when I was in Tesco the day before. It could have been an almost exciting shopping trip, but it wasn't. There was one big problem, and one less of a problem, but still a problem.

  The big problem was that it felt very cold yesterday morning. I wore my thick winter coat, and that kept my torso almost warm, but there was a freezing cold wind that made my face tingle with cold, and wasn't nice on my hands either. The minor problem is that Aldi seems to be boring these days....although maybe boring in a limited sense. They seem to have far less interesting non food stuff, or at least not of interest to me, although these things have always gone in cycles. However, they did have a lot of bird food - at a time when I am not feeding the birds until I have blocked off all the holes under the fence where the rats get through.

  One novelty I did buy from Aldi was a load of sugar free soft drinks. I usually buy 3 bottles of Diet Coke (2 litre size), but yesterday I bought 6 one litre bottles of assorted drinks including cream soda, orange, a couple of flavoured still waters, and a bottle of Kiwi Apple drink. It is basically apple and kiwi fruit juice with a bit of fizz. It says no added sugars, and so it does have a small sugar content (similar to the orangeade), but it is a drink to only drink occasionally. It has a nice flavour, but is very tart.

  When I got back home I was starting to sweat, but still feeling cold. My thick winter coat does retain a lot of heat, but my legs were cold and my face was cold. However it was almost as if my blood was hot (which is surely impossible) and while the surface of my face was very cold, the blood was overheating my brain, and that caused my forehead to sweat, although possibly not until I had got home out of the wind.

  I had bought some very naughty stuff in Aldi, and I had two very naught items for my lunch. One was a pack of 4 (or was it 6 ?) pork, bacon and cheddar sausage rolls. I didn't bother to heat them up, and found even when cool they were rather nice, and much better than the sausage rolls I bought from Tesco last week, or whenever it was.  I also bought, and scoffed, two Scotch Eggs. I don't know how or why, but they seemed unusually nice as well. Maybe it was just me.

  It took a little while before it happened, but it was soon apparent that breathing in the really cold air while I was out had left it's mark on my chest. On this occasion it wasn't the scar tissue from my operation which complained - I had kept that nice and warm under my winter coat - but my throat. I felt mildly wheezy, and it seemed easy to trigger a cough. I first notice the latter while eating. Any small crumb landing on a sensitive spot could trigger a dry cough.

  My original plan was to try and go out in the evening to go to a gig with Michael. By early afternoon I decided that with the weather forecast saying it would be just 2° C in the late  half of the evening, it might be foolish to expose my throat to that cold air again. I sent a text message to Michael to tell him my decision. It wasn't long before he replied to say that he had been thinking along the same lines.

  Yesterday afternoon could have been quite boring, but out out of the blue I received a phone call from Kevin. He said he was having one of his better days, and thought it was a good opportunity to explain his troubles, and why he had not been active since late last year. His main troubles centre on his extreme psoriasis. The TV series "The Singing Detective" was about a man with similar, although perhaps worse symptoms - it is an autoimmune  disease the presents itself in different ways.

   Unfortunately for Kevin he has additionally suffered from side effects from some of the hoped for cures for his condition. I say cures, but there is no actual cure, but palliatives that may help, or in Kevin's case, hinder. Apart from the fact that the condition does look unsightly, his worst problem has been all the creams and stuff prescribed to calm his skin down. They leave him with permanently slippery hands, and he had dropped a few mugs of tea/coffee as a result - not such a good idea if drinking beer in a pub.

  On good days he is relatively cheerful about it, and he is happy that the various consultants he sees are doing all they can, but of course being stuck in most days gets anyone down. The condition often improves as the weather improves, and hopefully he will be able to get out for the occasional drink now and then once spring really has sprung, but it does seem like maybe his train spotting days are over.

  We spoke for just over an hour, but somehow it seemed longer, and filled in what would have been a tedious part of the afternoon. I'm not sure if it was before, during or after that call that I started to fixate on the idea of a takeaway for dinner. That was a bit of a mad idea considering I had done supermarket shopping trips on two consecutive days, and had all I needed to make a variety of dinners.

  I think one problem was that I kept feeling cold. The heater in my bedroom, where I generally spend most of my time, could easily get the room warm, but not hot, and after going down to the kitchen, which has zero heating, I wanted hot so I could thaw out again ! Then there was the disappointment of not going to yet another gig. I needed something to bring a bit of cheer. It was one of those days where booze didn't seem to be the answer, and apart from a large whisky, I didn't have any booze yesterday.

  Of course all this is just generating excuses for wasting money on a potentially high calorie, and maybe high sugar Indian takeaway. As usual I ordered enough for a meal tonight as well as last night. Maybe it was the slightly naughty lunch, but I didn't seem to feel the need to eat all I could have eaten last night, although I did eat all the poppadoms (2 of them). I ended up feeling satisfied without feeling full - which is a rare condition for me.

  I almost forgot that yesterday was a Friday. At times it felt a lot like a Saturday. I almost forgot there was stuff on TV to watch in the early evening. I didn't fancy anything on later, and I ended up reading in bed soon after 8pm. Maybe it is because the days are very noticeably longer now that my need for sleep is getting less. In January I could have probably slept from 8pm to 8am the next morning, but last night I think it took near three hours before I fell asleep.

  Once I was asleep I seemed to sleep reasonably well, but not as well recent days. I guess having dreams that include Donald Trump are never going to be pleasant dreams. One dream also included Kanye West - the rapper who has changed name many times, and whose ego is the size of the planet, but apparently does not have the intelligence to control it. I must admit he was a very unlikely character to appear in a dream, but I can blame that on this news item - https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/09/adidas_yeezy_mountain/. In the dream he was a drummer who could not manage a simple beat. Even more bizzare, one of several guitarists on stage was Donald Trump - who probably can't even play guitar with his stubby little hands.

  I felt like I wanted to sleep in a lot later this morning, but my best efforts only took me as far as 7.15am. In some ways it as amazing I lasted that long because one of my current, although not new maladies is a very painful right shoulder. The pain seems to reach into the neck, or a bit down the arm, but it all depends of position and when I am doing. During the night I had to sleep in almost one position where it didn't hurt. Luckily it seems to have been a lot less noticeable since getting up, but reach out at a certain angle can still bring quite a powerful twinge.

  My main problem this morning is my blood glucose. Whether it was the curry, the lunch or even one of the soft drinks (no added sugar, but not negligible natural fruit sugars), or more likely all combined, but my blood glucose has shot up to 9.7mmol/l. That is still clear of the danger area - just - but leaves very little wiggle room. I ought to be fasting until dinner time when I have my Indian takeaway part 2. Today is not going to be more than a degree or two less cold than yesterday, and I do not want to feel cold and hungry at the same time. I fear I am just going to do what I want rather than what I should do.

  Apart from eating stuff it would better be not to, I have no idea what I am doing today. I don't think there is anything that would really tempt me to go out, although I suppose there is one gig I might consider, but not enough to worry about missing it. I may do a little bit of housework, and that may include hand washing a few buts of laundry, but otherwise I may read and snooze a lot.....or maybe I might do an experiment to see if I can download video from a digital DV camcorder over a firewire link to my new laptop. I think the IEE1994 interface is still included in modern Linux, but video capture isn't in my favourite video editor....but there are others as a possibility.