As I write these words the sun is trying to shine through a small gap in the clouds, but the clouds will have to thin a lot if we are to get the forecast sunny spells today. Yesterday's forecast for today just said grey skies, but first thing this morning just a few sunny spells were shown, but the latest revision shows even more, including a full hour of sunshine at 1pm (if we are very lucky). It all should raise today's temperature up one degree on yesterday to give a high of 12° C. It is worth noting that this morning, with the air temperature just a gnats whisker above 3° C, there was a light coating of frost on the she roofs I can see in the gardens behind me. Tomorrow could possibly see 15° C during the afternoon when there might also be some sunny spells.

   All the sunshine made yesterday seem a good day, but as noted above, it was a very cold day outside. Fortunately I didn't have to go out, and I didn't. The sunshine warmed my front rooms from a chilly 18° C to nearly 23° C by mid afternoon. That felt very nice, but I had to grit my teeth while it was warming up.

  The cold was giving me all sorts of aches and pains and stuff. One mistake I made the previous day was to put on a t-shirt that was damp from sweat, and splashed from when I was hand washing my laundry. I put it back on when my Saturday night takeaway was due to be delivered (rather than open the front door bare chested). That t-shirt felt very cold and damp, and I should have taken it off at the first opportunity (or never put it on in the first place - I had/have loads of other dry t-shirts.

  I think it was before Covid struck, but just possibly after when transport became more accessible, that I went for a riverside walk from Rotherhithe to London Bridge. It was a mostly dull and misty day, and I only had a light coat on because I thought it would brighten up. It didn't ! It started to rain, and I ended up walking a couple of miles in a cold damp t-shirt. The scar tissue in my chest reacted very badly to that, and I had a sore chest for at least a week, and maybe more.

  Putting on the cold and damp t-shirt on Saturday night seems to have done the same. My chest was feeling quite sore yesterday. Someone with no experience of these things might think they were having some sort of heart attack, and I must admit I had a few doubts, but I put my faith in past experience. One slight thing that may have warned of danger was a slight feeling of shortage of breath, but it did feel more like a constriction in my upper airway. A couple of squirts from my well past it's use by date Salbutamol. asthma inhaler quickly sorted that out.

  Through all this I did do some useful work by hand washing a couple of hand towels. They are much easier to "fight with" than a bath towel, and they seemed to rinse out fairly easily. i only needed to rinse them 5 or 6 times before finally hanging them up to dry on the small clothes horse in the front room. Like my bedroom it was feeling nice and warm in there for a while after soaking up so much sunshine. Aided by a desk fan, those towels were stone dry this morning.

  Of course there was one good analgesic for my aches and pains, and it was booze. Fortunately, being a Sunday, Jodie arrived just after 3.30pm to start a beer tasting session. We had some nice, and a few not so nice beers. I think only one of them was reasonably strong. We also had a whiskey to warm us up a bit (actually I had a couple).  Once Jodie left, at about 6.15pm I had my hot dinner to look forward to.

  I had precooked my dinner before Jodie arrived, and it just needed 5 minutes in the microwave to get it piping hot. It was a very simple stew of diced beef and broccoli with some added smoked chilli paste added for a bit of flavour, and quite a mile kick. I had been particularly looking forward to it because after quite a big breakfast I had eaten no more than a very light snack or two during the day.
 One other event yesterday was the delivery of a second copy of Matt Fielder's book called "You Know You Love It" - part 1 of his story about his first band "Hurricane Jane" (he now fronts Ransom). This copy was for Michael, although he can keep my copy, which he borrowed to read, and I'll keep the copy delivered yesterday (and Michael owes me £12.44 because Amazon only offered one day expensive delivery).

  A couple of times during the day I checked on Amazon in the forlorn hope of getting a better idea when the book might arrive. It was while doing that that I noticed, and too the screenshot above, of their recommendations of stuff related to my shipment (of a book about a rock band). I cannot see any connection about the book and teeth whitening products. Amazon often make suggestions that can be mildly odd, but this was the first time they seemed to be 110% insane !

  There was one thing I could have watched last night, but it was nearly two hours long, and I was feeling tired and drunk (or was it drunk and tired ?). The previous night I had recorded two consecutive TV programmes about secret (and not so secret) bunkers. I can't seem to recall if it was before or after Jodie was here that I spent some time editing out the adverts, and stitching the two episodes together to make the one, nearly 2 hour, programme.

  Instead of watching it I decided to go to bed. As well as the aforementioned drunk and tiredness, it was also starting to cool down in my bedroom, and it was much warmer in bed. It was not that long after 7pm that I headed to bed. I read a couple of very short stories before turning out the light, and before long I was asleep. I don't know exactly when that was, but I am sure it was before 8pm.

  The surprising thing is that I managed to sleep for most of the night. It is possible I got nearly 10 hours sleep last night. For the most part it seemed easy, although getting back to sleep after waking up cold at around 5am took some time. I was feeling cold because I had been feeling so hot under the duvet at around 3 or 4am that I partly kicked the duvet aside. That was a stupid mistake ! This morning it was, and still is, very cold. At 6.30am, when I got up, I could see frost on the the roofs  in the gardens behind mine. My bedroom was down to just 17° C - and still is, but there is now sunshine coming through the window, and it should start to warm up.

  The results of my careful eating, and maybe the luck of not having any very sweet beers, are that this morning my blood glucose readings are very good, maybe even exceptionally good ! Both my older and oldest meters agreed on just 7.3mmol/l, and my new meter which sometimes reads higher, and sometimes lower, read just 7.1mmol/l. That was so close to the much desired, but very seldom achieved reading of 6 point something.

  While my blood glucose readings were very good, I still felt pretty bad. The cold was getting to my chest, and it was aching, and maybe once again my breathing felt a bit odd. I thought some more diagnostic checks were a good idea. I first used my Pulse Oximeter to check my blood oxygenation. It said there didn't seem to be any blood in one of my cold fingers, but I did get a reading from my thumb, and apart from my pulse rate being a bit high, it was all perfectly normal.

  Next came my blood pressure reading. It can be a bit funny unless I time it well in the morning, but I had done one thing that seemed to help in many ways. I gave in and pulled a sweater over my t-shirt. It took some time but I am now starting to feel not too cold. My blood pressure reading was actually very good. The little black blob in the bottom left hand corner is next to the green "Opt" (optimum) symbol, and that is one better than "Norm" (normal). I may not feel it, but I seem to be healthy !


   Today I have just two things to do. One of them is to Aldi for some shopping. I choose Aldi over Tesco in this instance because I want to get more laundry detergent and fabric conditioner. I'll probably get more toilet paper as well as some meat and green vegetables. I seem to be running out of morning at the moment, but I might still make Aldi before lunchtime. Later, towards the end of the afternoon, I will be going to the pharmacy to see if my repeat prescription has been made up yet. It will be handy if it has because as of this morning I have used the last of some of my prescribed drugs.