I was not aware of any sunshine early this morning, and no sunshine is forecast for the rest of today. Mostly it will be sort of bright with white clouds, but, according to the latest revision to the forecast, 2 to 5pm could see darker clouds. No actual rain is forecast for today, but here does remain a 10% chance of rain for much of the day. The forecast 12° C is a couple of degrees higher than yesterday, but I am not expecting it to feel warm. 11° C is the best temperature forecast for tomorrow, and it looks like the whole afternoon will be wet.
 
   Nothing dramatic happened yesterday, but it did seem to be an OK sort of day - whatever that means. The gloomy and wet weather drained any desires to go out, even to the shops, and I was somehow distracted by my desire to fast so I could get my blood glucose down from dangerously high in the morning to slightly above average in the late afternoon.

  Most of what I did yesterday was a continuation of checking the batteries for my seldom used video lights. I decided to include the bigger batteries as used in my big, but sadly only standard definition, Sony digital camcorder. The batteries for that are in the same series as the batteries I use in the video lights, but like two of them stacked one on top of the other. The camcorder and the video lights can use either, and the video lights can use other batteries too.

  If you consider I have possibly been meaning to do it for as many as 10 years, I guess my greatest achievement yesterday was to extend the mains lead on one of the Sony battery chargers (originally for a camcorder) from about 6 inches long, where it had been cut so it could be used on a work bench without a long trailing lead, to about a yard long so it can be plugged into a domestic wall socket. I solder the joint between the old lead and the new, and used several layers of heatshrink sleeving to make it a nice safe join.

  One other thing I did is something I have suddenly got quite good at since getting my slow cooker, and that was to get everything washed up, instead of dumping it all in the sink, and then getting another dinner slowly cooking in the slow cooker. That slow cooker has now provided the inspiration for a very strange dream, but more about that later.

  It was about 4pm when I checked my blood glucose after the morning check. In the morning it was a dangerous 10.7mmol/l. In the afternoon, after fasting, it was down to 8.6mmol/l - safe, but not providing much wriggle room if I were to deviate off the safe path - which I did, but only very slightly. I had a small snack of tomato flavoured crisps and a few scraps of cheese. I deliberately poured out some crisps onto a plate, and sealed the rest of the bag which I then hid away in the kitchen cupboard.

  A few hours later I ate my dinner. It was a fairly safe dinner of just chicken and sprouts. The sprouts were a bit dubious. They were from a frozen packet of "balsamic sprouts with pine nuts and bacon". Their sugar content was a lot higher than fresh sprouts, but they were all I had. To make dinner seem a bit more substantial I used some chicken gravy mix to thicken up the stock it was all cooked in. I am never quite sure how bad gravy granules might be bad for me.

  I had almost forgotten it was a weekday yesterday, and almost missed watching the three Star Treks on a weekday evening. It was not exactly an exciting lot of watching. The first two Star Treks, "The New Generation", and "Enterprise" episodes seemed too familiar to be that enjoyable. The third Star Trek, "Voyager" was probably a good episode, but it is not my favourite series, and I wonder if it was that the writers were less skilled, or imaginative, or maybe I just don't really identify with the characters.......Captain Janeway is a bot of an old boot......

  Instead of the usual QI and/or Have I Got News For You, Dave was showing some Red Dwarf stuff. As much as I like Red Dwarf, I didn't fancy watching any last night. I thought I felt tired, and so I turned the TV off and did some reading instead. I thought I would probably try for sleep at around 9pm (just when a gig I had considered going to, if the weather was more friendly for going out, would have just been starting). In fact it seemed to take ages to get to sleep. Just about anything you can imagine was uncomfortable last night - arms, legs, head, chest, ears, toes, elbows, knees, teeth, tongue and lips. More than that, it was the old story of the temperature being just wrong no matter what I did. I was probably asleep by 11pm.

  If I was asleep by then, and it feels like everything was really hazy last night, I have no idea how long I slept before waking up again. I think, but can't be sure, that I did have several long periods of sleep with seeming to be long, but possibly not, periods of insomnia. I can't even be sure that sometimes I wasn't dreaming that I was awake. It was that sort of night.

  One period of sleep featured an apparently long dream, although some fast cuts between views suggest it was more like a lot of shorter dreams. I seemed to be at a bar on farmland. It was in the open air, but there were typical bar tables and there was definitely beer. It also seemed to be the site of a narrow gauge, pleasure rather than industrial, railway. I saw a small loco haul a short rake of brightly painted carriages from what I knew to be a jetty on a big river, and where they had just been delivered by barge.

  I saw two of these short trains of brand new carriages, and wanted to get a closer look at one of the passenger platforms which was a little way down a shallow grassy hill. As I walked down I saw a different view. It was a swimming bath sized slow cooker where food was being cooked in bulk for visitors to the railway. There was another similar sized cooker, but the dream seemed to fade away before I found what it was for.

  It felt like I got up far too early this morning. It was soon after 6am when I got up and started my morning routine. That included checking my blood glucose. This morning it was a nice 8.0mmol/l. I thought I deserved some breakfast this morning, and I had a single, medium sized, packet of instant noodles. After eating them I went back to bed. I thought I would sleep, but I didn't seem to although trying for about 45 minutes before getting up again.

  Today should be dry, and it seems moderately bright considering the sky is covered from horizon to horizon by clouds. I'm not sure if I can force myself out for a walk today, but I have given some thought to possible routes. I thought that rather than go for length I might go for height, but before any of that I really do have to go and get some shopping. The cupboard is just about bare at the moment, although tonight's dinner is already mostly cooked (overnight in the slow cooker), and I have plenty of soup and instant noodles if worst comes to worst.