By now we should be seeing a sunny spell, but the clouds are too thick to let the sun through, but fingers crossed that it will turn into a sunny day in the end. The latest revision to the forecast shows non stop sunshine from about 11am until sunset, but even that won't raise today's temperature to more than 15° C, but it does stand a good chance of warming up my front rooms to a comfortable temperature. Tomorrow could start off dull, but starting at about 3pm there could be heavy rain, and it could fall until 8pm when the rain might turn into just light rain. It is possible, that amidst that rain, when it almost doesn't count, the temperature could rise to 16° C

   My aching chest, caused by getting my chest cold and wet a few days earlier, continued to be quite nasty until nearly 5pm yesterday. I wondered how I would fare during a walk to Aldi, and even more, a walk home from Aldi carrying heavy shopping. It was definitely quite uncomfortable, but maybe not as bad as I feared.

  After a shower at about 11am, I got myself dressed ready to go out. I put on my thickest, but not hooded winter coat, and did it up to the chine before venturing out. By chance I bumped into Michael by the corner shop, and we stopped for a bit of gossip. My main contribution was about an odd thing I had noticed. I can't remember which was around it was, but after Angela's wedding she either named herself with her married name, and maiden name in brackets, or the other way around, on social media, but I noticed yesterday that she has reverted to just her maiden name. Also very curious is that her new husband does not appear to be on her friends list. Very peculiar !

When I got to Aldi I was feeling bad, but not terrible, and I was improving all the time I warmed up. I kept my coat done up all the time I was shopping, and when I left the store I was feeling very hot under my coat.   I bought several meats and some green vegetables to go with them. I also bought some beansprouts and button mushrooms. My dinner tonight will be a sort of chicken stew with bean sprouts and mushrooms.   I also bought two of the the things on my shopping list - detergent, and fabric conditioner. I also bought a spare 9 roll pack of toilet paper - you can never have too much toilet paper.   Two novelty items were the drinks pictured on the left. Both are as good as sugar free, and both are very nice, but maybe only as an occasional drink.

  There were a few other odds and sods that I bought. One was a one litre bottle of Aldi own brand vodka. Vodka aficionados would probably say it is inferior vodka, but it tastes OK to me, and when drowned with Diet Coke I doubt you can tell the difference. Two potentially bad things in my shopping basket were a pack of two chicken tikka flavour pasty like things, and a definitely bad, but very delicious, a pot of pasta with dried tomatoes and slices of cheese in an tomato and oil sauce. It's sugar content was noted as high, but fortunately it was only a few mouthfuls.

  When I hit the cold air outside Aldi, my chest started aching a bit more, but as I walked I started to heat up more, and the pain seemed to actually start to fade, but it was still there when I got home. It was my intention to have some hot soup for lunch when I got home. I forgot to mention that I had also bought four cans of soup from Aldi, but instead I ate the pasty type things, and the pasta salad pot.

  The pasties were OK - not good, but not bad - and the salad pot was, I will admit, rather delicious. After eating I pulled on my old work jumper/sweater (from the job before the last), and that, along with the thick jogging bottoms type pants, kept me just warm enough to lie down and read for a bit, plus have a snooze, although I was feeling cold when I woke from the snooze. Basically I was just passing time before going out again to the pharmacy where I hoped to pick up my next repeat prescription.

  I had only ordered the repeat prescription last Friday, and 2 working days are supposed to have passed before it is ready for collection, but Monika, the young lady who took my order, said it might be ready late yesterday. I wasn't sure if I was wasting time, but once again I put on my winter coat, zipped it up, and walked to the pharmacy. Getting cold while snoozing revived my chest aches full strength, and it was an uncomfortable walk to the pharmacy.

  When I got to the pharmacy I felt fairly warm after a brisk walk (probably something that would be a bad idea if that ache had been heart trouble). I had to wait 5 or 10 minutes before I was attended to, and I continued to feel hot, maybe even hotter while I waited. The aches faded away as I got hotter and hotter. When I was attended to it was simply Monika pushing my big bag of drugs already bagged up in a carrier bag, under the glass slot on the counter.

  Walking back home while feeling hot was almost comfortable. Once I got home, and had taken off my coat, I went up to my cold bedroom, and decided that I would just have to put some heating on (my pet fan heater). It wasn't long before I was feeling comfortable. It didn't seem to take long to raise the temperature in my bedroom from 18° C to just over 20° C, and at that point I turned the heater down to "one bar", and that was still enough for the temperature to creep up a bit more.

  I was surprised, but maybe more relieved by how quickly the room warmed up, and I was able to turn the heater down. My reason for holding out against using any heating was just how big my electricity bill was last winter. I was rather extravagant then, but this winter I want to be more frugal. One important thing will be to not run the heater overnight, and to rely on my duvet (or two of them !) to keep me warm in the night - even if it a bad shock to the system when getting up in the night to go for a pee in an icy cold toilet !

  After my "naughty" lunch I thought I ought to take care with my dinner. One thing I had to eat was a pair of "Jalapeño burgers". I bought them from Tesco with a reduced price sticker ion them because they were on their sell by date. I had kept them in the fridge since I last went to Tesco on Friday (?). They had to be used ! Upon opening the pack I realised they were not ordinary burgers. They seemed almost sticky. After cooking they seemed to be almost glazed, and it was like they had loads of sugar in them. I think I may have seen something saying 6.3gm of sugar, but I have no idea if that was per 100gm, one or both burgers.

  Their cooked texture was quite odd, and I wondered if I had accidently picked up "meat free" burgers. It is possible that they were some artificial protein grown in a vat, instead of a field. I concluded that the taste of the jalapeños was the only good thing about them, and that I wouldn't be tempted to ever buy any more of them them. Just the two "burgers" was quite a small dinner, and it wasn't long after I had a couple of slices of cheese and some pastrami.

  As usual I watched the three Star Treks, and neither was all that good. They finished at 8pm, and soon after I was tucked up in bed reading. I had turned the heater off maybe an hour before I went to bed, and it had cooled down a few degrees to feeling cold. It seemed warm enough under the duvet, but once I had finished reading, and turned the light out, I seemed to find it hard to keep everything under the duvet all night.

  I mostly slept well, usually warm enough, but sometimes feeling slightly cool, until I think it was around 3am when I had a spell of insomnia that may have lasted an hour. I don't think it was a case of my brain suddenly becoming active, but more a case of feeling uncomfortable. A few bits here and there, mainly my right elbow, or right shoulder, but from time to time other bits, seemed to ache just enough to keep me awake. After about 45 minutes I also felt a fairly non urgent need for a pee.

  I could have ignored it, but I know in another hour or two I would have to deal with it, and so it seemed sensible to get it over and done with. Of course that allowed me, and the bed to cool down, and so the next bit of my insomnia was getting warm again before going back to sleep. I eventually fell asleep until just after 5am. I woke up again, and as often happens, it seemed like I would never get back to sleep again, but I did, and also as usual, I was pleasantly surprised to see the clock had moved on an hour.

  I was going to attempt to describe my dreams, but the only dream I can part remember is so fragmented that I can't make any sense of it. It is better to move on to the all important (to me) blood glucose readings. After what I ate yesterday there seemed to be potential for a disaster, but it was all very ordinary. The new blood glucose meter read 8.1mmol/l and that was very pleasing. The oldest meter read 7.7mmol/l, and that was very good. The older meter initially read something horrible like 9.7mmol/l, but I put a new test strip in it, wiped away all the blood before giving my finger a good squeeze to get a nice fresh bead of blood. This time it read a more satisfactory 8.7mmol/l. That is still quite a range of readings this morning, but the average was quite good.

  It is almost 10am and I am still waiting for the promised sunny spells. The sky looks rather grey to me, but maybe there are some thinner patches of cloud. Maybe the sun still might break through. I am rather counting on it to warm up my front rooms. It will still be cold outside, and so I don't think I'll be going out today. I may do some housework, and that will include, or be just some laundry. Some warm sunshine through the front room windows would help a lot when I hang up the laundry to dry.