By my reckoning the temperature was only 5° C  this morning, and it is still that low. Getting so close to a frost was the result of clear skies. The sky is supposed to stay clear, and we should have a day of non stop, brilliant sunshine. Sadly it will only raise the temperature to a brief peak of 11° C towards the end of the afternoon. Hopefully it will raise the temperature inside my bedroom from the cold feeling 18° C it is at the moment. The great paradox is that no sunshine is forecast for tomorrow, although mist of the day will be fairly bright, but the temperature tomorrow could rise to 12° C (which is still damn chilly, but a degree warmer than today might reach).

   Sometimes something just goes "click" inside the brain, and you (or I) decided to have a different day to that which I expected. I expected to do nothing, but I actually did some useful things. Of course half the morning was over before I embarked on these useful things.

  I started off by having a shower, although prior to that shower I did one very small thing that was important - I closed the bathroom window, and I don't expect I will be opening it again until perhaps the end of next spring unless we get some unseasonal warm days - which the way the weather is going could be possible. Even with the window shut it was pretty chilly in the bathroom with no clothes on, but lashing of hot water warmed me up.

  After I had finished showering I put some clothes in to soak in detergent prior to washing them. It would have been easy to forget about them, and they could have still been soaking this morning, but I made sure I went back to them while the soapy water in the big bucket was still warm. Apart from a brief break to see what was sitting on my front door mat (it was a menu for a Chinese restaurant who may not do a delivery service) I persevered until I had done every stage of washing.

  As I hung that laundry up to dry on the clothes horse I counted that I had washed seven pairs of underpants, and two t-shirts. Although I took a half hour break next, I didn't stop at just doing some laundry. I did something I have been meaning to do for some time now - I hoovered the dining room carpet, and I even lifted up the edge of the mat in there so I could get the grit at the side of, and just under the edge of the mat.

  I didn't even stop there because I went on to hoover the hall, just a bit of the front room, and half the stairs. I might have gone further but for two things. There was the physical restraint of the lead on the hoover not stretching enough to go further up the stairs, and then there was the fact that all the hard work had got me sweating. It was quite a shock when I took off the damp t-shirt in my rather cool bedroom, and it was a bigger shock when I put it back on later and it was still damp.

  There were two more lesser, but still useful things I did a bit later. One was to order a second copy of the book "You Know You Like It" by Matt Fielder in which he tells the story of his first band. The next book, which is planned but not yet written will lead up to the formation of the band Ransom - his current band, and who rather impressed me when I saw them at Petts Wood Calling. The second book is for Michael, although what will happen is that he will keep my copy of the book, and I will have the brand new copy (and he will pay me the £12.45 it cost me to get it for him).

  That job only took 10 minutes, but I embarked on a much longer job that was also about books. It was quite some time back that I started making spreadsheet lists of my books, and books I wanted to be my books. I think the original trigger for this was when I accidently bought a couple of duplicate books because I didn't realise I already had them. My spreadsheet is very far from complete, and it will remain that way because I am really only listing the authors I like. I won't, or probably won't bother with books where I haven't cared to buy any more from the same author.

  The earliest lists I did were simple text files, and then I tried writing them as a Word document. I noted that while checking those early lists that some need to be transferred to the spreadsheet style of lists. It all sounds very simple, but typing in all the information of an authors books takes quite a time - even if some of it is copy and paste from wikipedia. I think I spend over an hour doing all the entries for Greg Bear.

  Like many of my favourite authors, he is a very prolific writer, and like most of them, he has written several thematic series. Fortunately not as many as Isaac Asimov. He makes things even more difficult because he wrote several novels bridging, for instance, his "Foundation series" with his Robot novels. It make a clear list quite complex, or indeed in Asimov's case, impossible !

  One thing I didn't do, or at least didn't do much of, was to eat during the day. I did have a hot bowl of instant noodles for a late elevenses, but it was only my second bowl, and I often tend to have two for breakfast (a habit I really must try and break). Later on I think I may have only had one or two handfuls of peanuts. I managed to do this because I decided I would treat myself to a shish kebab dinner.

  At about half an hour to 45 minutes before my notional dinner time of approx 7pm, I ordered two shish kebabs - one small lamb, and the other a large chicken. I also ordered some chicken nuggets because I needed to increase the price of my order to over £25 to earn a discount (and free delivery). The chicken nuggets took it over the limit, and I only paid £22 after the buggers took back some of the discount with a £1.99 "service charge". It is an expensive way to eat, but it does bring dividends as I shall explain soon.
  The afternoon sun helped take the chill off my bedroom, but once the sun went down my bedroom started to cool off again. Like most years, I do not want to resort to putting any heating on until at least November (although I admit I feel very tempted to put some on today !). I resorted to burning 9 very cheap Poundland tea lights to add a tiny bit of warmth to my bedroom yesterday evening.It was indeed a tiny bit, probably less than a degree, but it seemed like it might be helping.

  When I went to bed last night, at about 8.30pm, I had one more ache than the usual aches and pains. It was toothache, and I am very sure it was caused by being a bit brutal with a flossing harp when trying to get a bit of meat out from between two teeth. I probably nicked, or even cut the gum. It seemed like a good enough excuse to take a couple of Paracetamol tablets before getting into bed.

  Maybe those Paracetamol tablets worked well for other aches too because I seemed to get a lot of solid sleep last night. There were times when I felt too hot under the duvet, and hot enough for a bit of sweat or stickiness, but it was far too cold to consider sticking even just an arm or leg out from under the duvet. I can't quite remember if it was at 4am or 5am when I did have a 30 minute period (possibly) of insomnia. Had it been mid summer I might have just got up extra early.

  It was during the first 3 or 4 hour block of sleep that I had a dream that was mostly all symbolic. I can't remember much about the dream, but I do remember the symbology, or at least my warped interpretation of it. It goes something like this: She loves him, and is very happy that he loves her, but he discovers a perfect piece of bacon, and he falls in love with the perfect bacon. She is sad because he no longer loves her. Maybe that is my interpretation of it because it has similarities to real life, although the genders are reversed !

  This morning it felt bloody cold when I got out of my nice hot bed, but apart from that, I guess I didn't feel too bad. That is not to say all the regular aches, pains, stiffness and creakiness were absent, but maybe they were a bit attenuated. I feel very sure that some of my physical work yesterday helped pull my skeleton closer to it's proper shape - particularly my sternum and rib cage that was giving me some discomfort yesterday morning, and the night before that.

  I don't think I can attribute much, if indeed any improvement to my improved blood glucose levels this morning. Once again the shish kebabs have worked their wonders. My newest blood glucose meter gave a reading of 7.9mmol/l, and that is very good. The older meter was even better at just 7.6mmol/l. The oldest meter gave a very different reading for some reading. It said 8.8mmol/l, and that is higher than my typical average - the other two readings were a fair way less than average.

  It will be interesting (or maybe a miracle) if I can get anywhere near those figures tomorrow. The main event today will be beer tasting with Jodie. That is always a great excuse to get drunk - which makes eating control very difficult. Today there is the added problem of it being so cold. Feeling cold is always a great incentive to eat.  Fortunately the sun is now shining, albeit at an acute angle, into my bedroom, and I can feel hot sunshine across some of my back. It feel rather delicious, and I hope it can get my bedroom up to over 22° C.

  It can only be the sunshine, even if it will still be cold outside, that seems to be raising my chances of actually going out for a walk from really quite unlikely to almost possible today. Maybe I could increase the odds of some exercise by thinking along the lines of something really un-ambitious, like a quick walk once around the park (about 1.5 miles maximum).