There would seem to be no chance of sunny spells today, and worse than that is that it seems it is going to be a wet day. Of course, having said that, the forecast heavy rain for 8am, as I wrote this, is not falling, and earlier it looked more like drizzle. One change in the latest revision is that the white cloud shown for 9am has changed to a grey cloud. Also, 3pm is now shown as having light rain like 4pm. With just an afternoon high of 9° C it promises to be a fairly miserable sort of day. Tomorrow may only be better because the afternoon temperature may reach a nicer 13° C, but the afternoon may still feature non stop light rain.
 
  Yesterday was a day where at least I did one thing right - being very careful about my eating - but it was a day that I feel was ultimately wasted. The weather was mostly good, although a little cool, and I could have gone out for at least a short walk, or maybe a long rail journey, but I had the problem of being uncertain what my guts were up to. After eating two cans of lentil soup the day before I expected my guts to be very volatile - they weren't !

  I think I went to the toilet for more than a pee twice yesterday morning, although the second time was close to the end of the morning. Both times were unremarkable as such, but one stool seemed impervious to flushing. I finally managed to flush it away at 4am this morning !

  There was just one thing I did of note yesterday (apart from going to the toilet !), and it was to spend no more than an hour sorting out, and filing old paperwork. One "amusing" find was my retinopathy scan results from 2007 and 2008. Those results are a sort of part proof that my memory is that every time I have had a scan in the last 20, or more years, they have used the same form letter for the results. It says that I have some background retinopathy, but it is not bad enough to need treatment, and that it will be checked again in 12 months time.

  About the only other thing of note, that I did, was, as I mentioned above, to keep a careful control of what I was eating. After a series of bad blood glucose readings, yesterday's being close to the "red line" at 9.7mmol/l, I had a compelling reason to try and get a better reading today. I was going to skip breakfast, but I had to have something to hold down the after taste of the cod liver oil capsule I took soon after getting up. I had just one, small packet of instant noodles.

  For lunch, which I did try and skip until I just felt too hungry (but probably mostly bored) at 2pm, was 4 rice cakes with cheese and on just two of them, ham as well. A bit earlier I had stewed some diced beef in beef stock, but I didn't have enough green vegetables to make it into a dinner. I decided to keep it for today, and planned a very simple dinner of shrimps (or were they prawns ?) with one single, but large orange bell pepper with lashings of white pepper and vinegar. It was a very light dinner, and I felt the need to have a sort of dessert of a handful of salted peanuts.

  Being as it were a weekday night I was able to entertain myself with three assorted episodes from the Star Trek family of series. After that there was a 20 minute gap until an edition of QI at 8.20pm. Unfortunately I didn't like one of the guests, and turned off after 5 minutes. I brushed my teeth, and went straight to bed where I read for quite some time - possibly for an hour. It seemed to be comfortably warm in my bedroom, and I read with the heater off for maybe 20 minutes, and left the heater off when I went to sleep.

  I think it was probably 3am when I realised I was feeling rather cold, and switched the heater on low, and maybe 2 houir later when I turned it up full. Apart from those interruptions to sleep, which only happened when I woke up to pee, plus of course the usual very light, half waking, sleep for the last hour, I slept quite soundly, although I did seem to dream a lot. As far as I can remember my dreams were about walking.

  I can't recall those dreams in detail, but some bits stick in my mind. It didn't seem all, or indeed any of the walks were for "exercise". Some may have been, but I think I would classify them more as curiosity and exploring. Some had a definite goal in mind. One was probably something to do with work, either going to, or coming home from, but one ended at a pub - which is always a fair reason for walking.

  There were two or three highlights (or oddities) that I remember. One was going up an alleyway behind some houses. Two houses had what I thought was wartime damage, and that had a (permanent) temporary repairs by having a thick layer of pitch or tar poured over their damaged roofs. Over the years, in hot weather, that tar would melt, and flow off the roof. It had spilled into the alleyway from one of those houses. I had to climb over moss or lichen covered blobs that were slightly soft, and presumably would have been very soft at the height of summer.

  A fair bit further along the alley, possibly in a separate dream, was a three of four story house with some strange people around it, plus a goat. On my approach they all went indoors, and the goat part jumped, and part scrambled up to a first floor window, and went inside. I think this bit of dream, and another were inspired by reading about a gig taking place at a pub called The Shelverdine Goathouse. In the other dream I was actively looking for the goat house, but I couldn't find it.

  This morning I woke up before it was light, and managed to get back to sleep again, but by just after 7am, and because f the dark clouds it was only a sort of grey light, I got up. As always, I went to the toilet, but only produced some pee, but have washed off any residue of the hand cream I put on last night, I pricked one of my clean fingers, and checked my blood glucose. I was very happy to see it had come right down to just 7.9mmol/l. It is the sort of reading, although lower would be better still, that I would like every morning, but it was hard to achieve that without doing some heavy exercise - such as a 5 mile walk. Maybe I'll eventually get to doing them again one day.

  The weather today promises to be considerably worse than yesterday. It seems to have stopped raining again, but if most of the forecast holds, it will be unpleasant doing one thing I feel I have to do today - go shopping. I'll probably just go to Tesco, but it is only a minute or two closer than Aldi, and there is some stuff I could get from Aldi. I think another thing I ought to do today is some laundry. I'll put some stuff in to soak as soon as I finish my morning shower, and I hope I can find the enthusiasm to finish it before too much of the day has passed. That could lead to another thing I'll probably do. I will need to put some heat on in the dinner room to get my washing drying on a clothes horse. While it is warm in there I could do more paperwork sorting and filing. The rest of the day will probably be boring.