The latest revision to the forecast has removed some of the wet hours, but it still shows a very dark grey day. That latest revision only shows rain at 11am, 6 and 7pm, and it will all be just light rain. The maximum temperature today will be at 8pm onwards, and it will be 10° C. Most of the day will be 9° C or under. On the other hand, while the BBC agrees with the temperature forecast, they still show loads of light rain or drizzle through a lot of the day, with the rain getting heavy at the end of the day. Tomorrow could start with heavy rain, but there could be sunny spells in the afternoon. The temperature could be an almost warm (for the time of year) 15° C.

   Yesterday was good in some ways, and bad in others. The day started off quite productive, and at other times that would have been good, but maybe it was bad yesterday. I felt quite good yesterday morning, but it wasn't long before the first warning signs.

  Washing my hair, and having a shower seemed to mildly provoke whatever I have broken near the base of my spine. I doubt I will ever know if it is actually a broken bone, or just deep bruising, but bending over the bath while washing my hair caused some light discomfort in that area. Despite that it still felt good to be washed and dressed, and ready to go out into the bright sunshine.

  Maybe "ready to go out" was slightly premature. A hot shower, and shampoo always leaves me feeling hot and my face sweaty. I think I gave it a good half hour before going out. Now at this point in the narrative I have forgotten one important fact. I mentioned yesterday morning that the scab on my left grazed knee had cracked in the night, and left smears of blood on my sheet.

  After close examination of that bed sheet I decided it was probably past it's best, and rather than struggle trying to get that bloodstain one (plus a couple of historical stains) I would throw the sheet away. While selecting a fresh sheet I noted I still had an unopened sheet bought in a sale. I will wash that one before use, but I found a nice fresh sheet, and also some fresh pillowcases, plus an old hand towel to drape across the pillows as protection from chilli provoked facial sweats.

  I put the old pillowcases, and hand towel in to soak after I had finished shampooing and showering. Once I had cooled off a bit I put on coat and rucksack, and went out into the sunshine to walk to Tesco. It seemed most pleasant outside despite the temperature only being around 7° C. What spoiled it all was increasing pain from my broken and or bruised tail area ! I thought I had healed a lot more than I evidently had, and while I had felt generally comfortable just walking around indoors, including up and down stairs, it seems a longer walk really inflamed the damage.

  Top of my imagined shopping list was to get a few packs of meat I could grill to make my home made shish kebabs. I bought a small pack of diced chicken, and some diced lamb. I also found some "Tesco Finest" pork belly strips on the reduced price counter. They could make for an interesting variation on a shish kebab - possibly a very nice variation. I did find, and buy, one "bad" thing on the reduced price shelf, and it was a pack of two "steak slices" style pasty.

  On a different reduced price shelf I found an almost half price basic ready made salad. As I walked around Tesco, picking up a few more bits and pieces, I was acutely aware of the the pain in my rear. It could have served as a warning against my next purchase, but of course it didn't. I saw, and bought a one litre bottle of Haig Whisky with a save of £10.50 off when bought with a Clubcard. How could I refuse that ?

  The walk back home featured that sort of more than uncomfortable, but less than painful feeling. I was happy to get home and rest my aches and pains, although sitting, or laying down, in less than the exact right position, was pretty painful in itself. I was soon having a good and naughty lunch. The good was the ready made salad. It seemed to go well, or at least provide some moisture to the cold steak slices I scoffed.

  After that I laid down on my bed, wiggled around until I found the least painful position, and then read a few pages before having a snooze. It seemed like half the afternoon had passed before I went and continued the washing of the pillows and hand towel I had left soaking after my shower. At any other time just the three items, all quite light, would be simplicity itself to hand wash, but once again, as I bent over the bath I could feel the base of my spine, or thereabouts, throbbing.

  From then on I resolved to go into deep lazy mode....but I didn't. I had a few other tasks to do like slicing up half a big white onion, and half a small red cabbage. Then I seasoned the diced chicken breast, and got that grilling. This was a lot earlier than dinner time, but I wanted some time for the onion and cabbage salad to marinate, and thought that maybe precooking the chicken might improve it's flavour.

  One problem with late yesterday afternoon was that I had run out of news items to read, and it left me at a loose end. I turned on the TV and checked the listings on that. There was almost nothing I wanted to watch until mid evening. When I couldn't find anything on live TV I resorted to my collection of recordings. I opted to watch two episodes of Star Trek: The original series. Most of the episodes I've seen recently on TV have seemed to have been very sort of crude and unsophisticated compared to the richness of, for instance, Star Trek: The New Generation, but I did select two favourites from the original Star Trek to watch.

  Even those two favourite episodes were what I can only describe as childish compared to later series. Captain Kirk was a very gung ho character. It was no wonder that some of the lyrics to the comedy song "Star Trekkin" were "we come in peace, shoot to kill". ( I can't actually watch You Tube because they object to my ad blockers, but if you can stomach all the adverts they now heap on videos, you can watch, and hear the lyrics here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCARADb9asE).
  I had my home made chicken shish kebab at around 6.30pm. I think it looks a bit better than the last one I showed here. I took extra care to try and get the chicken looking a bit grilled by cooking it for a final 10 minutes right at the top of the mini oven/grill with the meat just half an inch from the top heating element. It tasted nice, but the salad was a bit of a disappointment, The cabbage seemed very tough, and the onion was very onioney !
  Having bought a litre of whisky, and finding I still had 3/4 still in the previous bottle, I treated myself to just one large scotch on the rocks after dinner. To sort of ensure I didn't have too much whiskey I used a whole tray of icecubes in the glass before pouring the whisky on top.By half way down the glass the ice had melted, and i was drinking about 50:50 water and whiskey. Note the posh looking cut glass tumbler it is in. In it's previous life it was a scented candle bought for no more than £2, and possibly less. A good scrub up and it made a fine drinking glass, although it is hardly crystal glass, but from a distance......

  It wasn't all that long after 8pm that I was in bed reading. I am currently reading "Frankenstein Unbound" by Brian Aldiss. It is a strange SciFi tale, much of it written in the first person. The narrator is caught in a time slip caused by too many atomic explosions in a confined area during an atomic war in the year 2020  (The book was written in 1973) ! He, and the car he was in are taken back in time to when Mary Shelly was writing her book about Frankenstein.

  In this book Frankenstein, and his monster, is real, and Mary Shelly's book is closer to a history than a work of fiction. The narrator meets up with Mary Shelley and while her future husband is on a boat for a sail around Lake Geneva, they end up making love together. The writing makes that abundantly clear, but the act is mostly unwritten. A bit of sex can often liven up a book that at time can be a bit dry !

  By about 9pm I was fast asleep, and dreaming, although the half remembered bit of dreaming was probably a couple of hours later. The dream as a sort of continuation of what I had been reading, but it all got very strange. In the dream Mary Shelly got pregnant, but to preserve her apparent chastity her foetus was transferred to a video tape recorder. The dream then changed into a dream about video recorders and camcorders.

  I was talking to a video director or some such person, and asking about a camcorder device on a very posh looking tripod across the room. The person I was asking could hardly answer any of my questions, and so I went over to the tripod where a woman was doing something with it. I asked what sort of tapes it used, but she had no name for them. However she did show me one and it was as thin as a mini-DV tape, but almost A4 sized.

  It was all very intriguing, but I woke up for a pee before I could learn more. To my great annoyance I can't seem to remember anything of a second set/series of dreams that I know I had later. I do remember that I had a 20 to 25 minute period of insomnia from about 3am.....unless that was a dream. I had left the heater on low all night, and at 5am I turned it up full to get my bedroom nice and warm for 6am, but it was gone 7am when I actually got up.

  That extra hour of full heat was good because it was a very cold feeling morning. (it is barely 9° C outside now). All that good sleep did seem to help to heal more damage, but my tail area (which sounds better than the top of my bum crack) remains very sore if provoked, and mildly sore at other times. Other than that I guess I don't feel too bad, but a big question mark hovers over my blood glucose readings.

  I think the first reading I took, using my official NHS blood glucose meter, the GlucoRX Nexus, was an unremarkable 8.6mmol/l, but the next two readings were awful. The Sino Care meter said an really terrible 10.2mmol/l, and the old Contour meter said 9.7mmol/l. I did mention a day or two ago that it is common that my blood glucose rises when healing damage or fighting infection. I am definitely healing damage !

  It does seem I am healing quite well in most places. The bruise on my upper right arm is fading before it could go pretty colours, and is only very, very slightly tender. The couple of abrasions on my legs and arms seem to be healing painlessly. It is really only in my buttocks area that there is still some annoying discomfort, but if I can keep this posture up (almost sitting bolt upright with some weight more on one buttock than the other), I am actually quite comfortable.

  I now think that this morning I am feeling quite close to, and in some ways better, before I ruined it all during my shopping trip yesterday. I think that indicates that today I should resolve to be very lazy and keep warm to help things heal more today. It is a bit boring, and an annoyance I no longer heal as fast as I did when I was 16 years old, but that was a very long time ago !

I've just noticed that Frankenstein Unbound has been made into a film. I suspect the book is better than the film, but who knows ? There is some stuff about it here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein_Unbound