Once again it is the BBC weather forecast is a bit more generous with it's sunny spells for today. They say there may be sunny spells for a few hours around mid to late afternoon. The Met Office, as shown above, predict not a single ray of sunshine, but fortunately they agree with the BBC that it will be a dry day. Today might possible reach 23° C despite the lack of sunshine, although maybe 22° C is more realistic. Tomorrow will be dull and in the afternoon it is likely to be wet. The Met Office say just light rain. The BBC throws in teh chance of thunderstorms - as they often do, but they rarely happen. Tomorrow could be 20° C or 23° C depending on who you believe.

   Judging by how much I spent, yesterday must have been a successful day. I have to admit they yesterdays sunshine or sunny spells delayed me going out instead of hastening it. It just seemed nice to lay on my bed reading and dozing while warm sunshine warmed the room.

  Before describing yesterday I want to show a screenshot I took a couple of days ago.

It was a couple of days ago that I got a text message from The Group Practice where I see a doctor or nurse. It said the only way to book appointments from 2nd October was to message them via Whatsapp, and said, or implied, the telephone lines would no longer work, and also that the online appointment booking service would be withdrawn.

  The latter is not surprising because their new website is about the worst looking website I have ever seen. I checked it to find more information about seemed a total disaster to me - to the extent that I was considering changing doctors - if indeed that is even possible in these days of a government impoverished NHS.

  The (sort of) good news is at the bottom of the screenshot I took. It says "if you do not have access to WhatsApp, or do not want to use it, then you can still phone the reception team". They, or course, will do their best to put you off seeking help, but if persistent enough they may pass a message to the doctors or nurse. It feel like managing my health is just getting harder and harder these days.

  The day before yesterday I was feeling ill. As I described it yesterday it was like heart burn. I think it was caused by acid reflux after eating the very rich Thai food I had eaten as part of a takeaway. As I noted yesterday, that food played complete havoc with my blood glucose as well, It may have been high blood glucose that made me feel very tired and very lazy. Yesterday morning I seemed to be over that, but during my rather spicy breakfast, my nose started to pour, and I coughed a lot. I think it was just a reaction to the hot spices, and it did calm down some time after eating.

Back to yesterday: It seemed to take me a long time to get myself ready to go shopping. It was gone 11am before I washed my hair, and had a shower, and gone midday when I walked to the shops. It felt good stretching my legs. The walk seemed really easy even when walking quite fast. It was not so free and easy on the way home when I was carrying quite a weight. My shopping trip did include some food, but mostly I was stocking up on non food items.

  My first port of call was to Savers. I topped up my supplies of vitamins plus stuff like toothpaste and mouthwash. I also bought some hand cleanser (the type I use every morning before I prick a finger to check my blood glucose). I was a bit disappointed by their selection of bleach/toilet cleaner, but I bought a couple of bottles of cheap bleach. Savers still seem to be a relatively cheap source of scented candles, and I bought a couple to add to my stockpile.

  After Savers I went across the way to Poundstretcher. I had some ideas of what I was going to buy, but top of my list were wire coat hangers - and they had run out of them ! I did see a few loose ones that had escaped from a pack, but I couldn't grab them without causing disruption at the checkout as they tried to work out what they could charge me. Hopefully they will get more back in stock at some point.

  One thing that I always find Poundstretcher to be good for, and it is sugar free soft drinks. They don't have a lot, but more than many other places. I bought a 6 pack of 330ml cans of sugar free Irn Bru, plus two cans of Fanta dark berry sugar free drink. I also bought some food. I bought 4 pots of "Firepit" instant noodles. The chilli flavour is rather good, and the chicken flavour is rubbish. I also bought a small selection of sugar free biscuits. In support of those biscuits I also bought a couple of airtight containers to keep the opened packets in. I only eat those biscuits now and then, and often have to throw away some because they are stale before I finished them.

  I don't think the sun was out, or maybe it was not quite high enough in the sky when I walked to the shops, but it was out when I walked home. That hot sunshine, plus carrying a heavy bag and heavy rucksack, left me feeling hot and sweaty by the time I got home. I cooled off a bit quicker by stripping down to just shorts. It was probably a rash decision, but I felt the urge to have another couple of instant noodles for my lunch. One was of the firepit flavour, and with added chilli sauce I was soon sweating again.

  I had to have another lie down to cool down, but I couldn't spend much time doing it because I had another task on the go. After my shower I left the large hand towel, or very small bath towel I had used to dry myself off, soaking in detergent. I was determined not to leave it soaking all night, and thus delay having a shower this morning, and so after I had rested for half an hour I went back to that towel.

  After I had wrung out the detergent, and then rinsed it four times, the water I was wringing out still seemed soapy. I could have persevered, but I decided to rest of another half an hour before going to to give that towel another four rinses. The water still didn't seem to run clear, but I hoped it was rinsed well enough to hang up to dry. I hung it on the clothes horse in the front room with the desk fan helping to blow it dry.

  I could have done the shopping I did, or gone to Tesco yesterday. Initially I thought I might have had some of the sausages from the freezer for dinner last night, but I felt a mad urge to have a known very safe shish kebab takeaway for dinner last night. I ordered a small lamb shish, and large chicken shish, and to top the order up to £30, to get a 10% discount, I also ordered a portion of chips. That took it just up to the threshold, and this time I made sure I didn't go over the limit.

  I ate my two shish kebabs, but not the chips while watching a documentary about The Beatles on Sky Arts. It was a bit of an odd documentary, but quite enjoyable. Now the silly thing is that I can't remember if it was before or after (and even possibly during) the documentary that I watched an episode of QI with Stephen Fry with three excellent guests on the panel. It was a really great episode, and of a level that I don't think Sandi Toksvig has ever achieved.

  I think I was in bed, and asleep very soon after 9pm last night. I seemed to sleep really well. I woke up feeling like I had had a great sleep, but I was very disappointed to note that it was only 19 minutes after midnight. One one hand it was very good that I had slept solidly for about three hours, but it felt like it should have been much closer to getting up time. Fortunately, after a pee, I was soon fast asleep again, and once again I got about three hours of uninterrupted sleep.

  I didn't feel quite so refreshed when I woke up from that three hours. Once again I needed, albeit not exactly desperately, another pee. It did seem I peed a lot less last night, and I was also not suffering my usual dry mouth - another reason to wake up occasionally. It was just after 5am when I woke next, and I could not get back into a deep sleep, and I got up at about 5.50am. That was good in one respect - I got a screenshot of a very early version of today's weather forecast.

  As I write this there is some rather hazy sunshine, and a check of the latest revision to the weather forecast shows some sunny spells expected now, but curiously not until later !

  I hoped that what I ate yesterday, particularly the shish kebabs, would mean I could start this month with a nice low blood glucose reading(s). this morning the new meter read a rather good 8.1mmol/l, and the oldest meter almost backed that up by reading 8.2mmol/l. The older meter bucked that trend with a magnificent, if it was true, reading of 7.3mmol/l. I was wondering if I would continue to use all three meters  this month, and I think I have a plan now. I will use the new meter, plus the older meter, and if they approximately agree I'll save the test strips for the oldest meter, and only use it if I need a "tie breaker". The reason for this method is that the new Chinese meter has cheap test strips, and the test strips for the older meter I get as part of my repeat prescriptions. The test strips for the oldest meter are a bit expensive....although I admit not terribly so.

  There are two things on the agenda today. The first is a shopping trip to Tesco. I need meat and vegetables for some nice and healthy stews to hopefully keep my blood glucose down. This after should be a beer tasting session with Jodie. It was be dull without Michael gabbing away ten to the dozen, but sometimes you can have too much of that.