As the early version of the forecast shows (above) there was some light rain at 7am, but it seems to have stopped now, and no more rain is forecast for today. This morning is going to be very dull, but it should brighten up this afternoon. It is probably going to be 11° C until late at night when it will cool by a degree or so. Tomorrow could be a lot like today except it might be completely dry. The temperature will probably be the same as today. The only variant is the BBC weather forecast that predicts sunny spells from 9am to 4pm.

  Yesterday was nearly a good day, but I didn't feel very good until I got some beer inside me later in the afternoon. I have a theory about what was the "cream on top" that made an assortment of aches and pains worse. I'll discuss that a bit later. Apart from a bit of a mad dash to get some needed housework done, I was very lazy yesterday morning.

  The housework was mostly some washing up, and a light tidy of the kitchen, but I did precook my dinner after I had finished cooking some oven chips which I had for lunch as a buffer against the effects of (possibly|) imbibing too much beer in the afternoon. In fact I think I restrained myself to not cross the line, but I did my best to go almost up to the line ☺ 😊 (Just for a novelty I am experimenting with some unicode characters that should display on most web browsers [I think]. With luck you will see two sizes of smiley faces at the end of the last sentence).

  The other bit of special housework was to give the toilet pan a good scrub. After my explosive poos in the early hours of yesterday morning I didn't bother to clean the pan until the morning. After that time I did need to scrub quite hard with some bog cleaner and bog brush. The pan positively sparkled, like one in an advert for some expensive cleaner, but I was just using Poundland cleaner !

  One thing I was expecting when Michael dropped off 4 bottles of Diet Coke at around 2pm, was to be told he was completely bamboozled about the Xmas present I bought him. He was continually complaining that his old VHS machines no loner worked, and he couldn't record to either keep, or just timeshift TV programmes. I bought him a cheap Freeview receiver than can record onto a USB device - either a USB "thumb drive" or a USB hard disk.

  Michael boasts that he spent a chunk of his working life installing TVs and VHS machines. I stupidly assumed he would know how to connect a box to his aerial and TV, press a button on the remote control, and be watching TV once it had autotuned, but apparently not.  He asked if he could bring it round with him when he came for the beer drinking session. He wanted me to write detailed notes of what I was doing. I said that although I wouldn't stop to read the manual, what I was going to show him would all be described in the manual.

  It took about 15 minutes from a cold start to get it connected to my TV, and letting it autotune. The only delay was that the 128GB thumb drive I also bough Michael was not recognised. It seems strange, but the TV box would seem to only recognise external memory formatted to NTFS instead of the more universal eXfat that thumb drives, and extrenal hard drives come formatted as. I later learned that the box is capable of formatting that memory itself, but it was not obvious from a quick flick through of the menus.

  When I had finished showing Michael how easy it all was, I packed the box back into it's transport box, minus all the cardboard partitions so I could leave everything plugged in. In theory he should have been able to plug it in to his own TV, and be watching, and recording stuff, within a few minutes, but I just know he will be calling me around to set it up again sometime in the week because he has forgotten how to press the red power button on the remote control. Plus he is scared stiff to experiment with it in case he "breaks it". That possibility is already taken care of by a factory reset option in the menu.

  Apart from Michael's panicking and fretting, we had a fairly good drink. Most of Jodie's beers were not to my taste, although one was close to being nice. While she drank her fruit sours, I generally stuck to more traditional English or Belgium ales. A few of them were Xmas ales, but once Jodie has finished her beer advent calendar, some time in January, we can start on the real Xmas beers.

  One very rare visitor was Mark, Jodie's friend from the past. He generally refuses to enter the low emission zone, but made an exception for Xmas. He brought me a Xmas card, and stayed for a 0% beer, and then took Jodie away to meet Alan, and maybe others, in The Three Hounds near Clockhouse station - her usual meeting point after she has been drinking here. Michael left at about the same time.

  I couldn't be bothers to complete clear the dining room table, and I think I left a couple of glasses on it. However, I did turn all the fairy lights off, and turn of the 6 electronic candles before grabbing my dinner from the mini oven.....CORRECTION... I turned the mini oven/grill on to warm up dinner while I had a small snack of cheese with rice crackers while my grilled lamb and sprouts heated up.

  This time my grilled lamb and sprouts contained quite a big heap of sprouts. Those sprouts were frozen ones, and after tipping out about the right amount I noted that there was only about a half portion left in the bag, and so I cooked the whole lot. I have an inkling that sprouts contain a small amount of sugar, but it was not enough to raise my blood glucose, although maybe it was not as low as it could have been if I had eaten less sprouts.

  I ate my dinner while watch the last half of Star Trek: Enterprise. It was not the greatest episode, but Deep Space Nine might easily have been worse. Enterprise was followed by Voyager, and it was probably one of the less dreary episodes. After that there did not seem to be anything else of TV I fancied watching. After reading in bed for a while I was probably asleep not that long after 9pm.

  I slept solidly until about 1am when I woke up feeling awful. For one thing I was feeling cold. With hindsight it would have been better to have turned the heater completely off because it was a mild night. I left it on low, and then I had the old problem of it being too hot under the duvet, and too cold without the duvet. When I woke up around 1am I had almost kicked the duvet completely aside. If I knew then what I know now, I would have turned the heater off, and acclimatised myself to sleeping under the duvet, but I didn't !

  I spent the next couple of hours awake feeling too hot or too cold, and also with quite a few assortments of aches and pains. There were the usual arm pains, plus my legs started to cramp once or twice. Fortunately I was able to act quickly before my legs went into complete, and bloody painful cramps. My more worrisome pain was my chest. It was mostly the old scar tissue aching, but also included the feeling of bones rubbing together, and clicking when breathing.

  I think my heart might have been doing something not good too. I kept getting the sort of feeling as when something has caused a jolt of adrenaline, and you can feel the heart beating fast. On top of everything else, my breathing seemed a bit wheezy. I think I may have found a reason for some of the chest problems. I think it was one of the candles I had burning in my bedroom for a lot of yesterday.

  It was a Gingerbread scented candle in a small jam jar sized bottle. it was giving off a heavy, but pleasant, but oily sort of scent. I suspect I breathed too much of that in, and it coated my lungs (or airways). I think I had put the candle out before going to sleep. One thing made me suspect that candle was when I was eating my breakfast. I was eating a fairly bland instant noodle when I could swear that I could taste that candle again while I was inhaling steam from the noodles as I ate them.

  I think it was around 3am that I turned the heater full on, and once the temperature rose enough to not need the duvet, I started to get some sleep again. That sleep featured a couple of long dreams (or more likely a long stream of dreams). The one I remember best, although not completely, was set in a college, or possibly a university, but I don't think I have actually been in a university to say if it was like one or not.

  The first bit I remember was a lecture/lesson ending, and deciding I needed to go to the toilet. I went to the toilets at the end of the corridor, but found the wash basins were in a very poor state of repair, and the toilet cubical I chose had a hole crudely cut in the door. I had just sat down when I saw two eyes watching me. I said I can't do this with a pervert watching me, and left the toilets without doing anything. I decided I would try the toilets on the next floor down. That was the start of a long adventure.

  Having gone down to the next floor I didn't see, and I think I didn't expect to see another toilet. I started walking. It included going up and down another set of stairs which seemed to be the result of an old building being joined to a new one at a different level, and having to go over a section of wall that couldn't be removed for some reason. I walked past a sort of cafeteria area, but didn't spot any toilets. At this point, and probably even before, I didn't feel any need to use a toilet, but it seemed more like a search for future reference.

  One corridor, in the film studies area, had a warning that it had some special surface. I can't remember what it was called, but it was sort of spongy stuff. There was also a lot of film lighting effects. Soon after passing the end of that corridor, marked by a set of double swing doors, I found myself outside on a road, and it seemed to be a mile or two from the front entrance of the whole site. I started walking back via the roads, and it was then I realised I was only wearing a t-shirt, a pair of purple underpants that could almost pass off as skimpy shorts, plus flipflops. While trying to decide if this was embarrassing, I woke up.

  I managed to get back to sleep for another hour or so, and I had another, but now forgotten dream. It still seemed a bit too early, but I got up at about 6.15am. I felt really awful when I first got up. My chest and bits were still feeling weird, and my arms, particularly the right shoulder, elbow and wrist, were hurting a lot. Once I started moving about a bit I began to feel less bad. One of the first things I did was to check my blood oxygenation. It was slightly low, possibly suggesting Covid, but it was more that I didn't seem to want to breathe as deeply as usual. When I forced myself I got the blood oxygenation figure up to 99%. That suggests that there is no physical reason why I wasn't able to breath in enough, and so ruling out Covid. I think it was just that my chest felt too sore to breath deeply.

  The important indicators of my health are blood pressure and blood glucose levels. I've just done two blood pressure readings. The first gave 115/70. A systolic if 115 is good, but the diastolic of 70 looked a bit high, although those two figures, plus a pulse rate of 60, gave an instant diagnosis of "Optimum" on the meter. A second attempt, about a minute later gave a slightly higher systolic pressure of 119, but a lower diastolic of 58. That is very good in my humble opinion. It is probably a very good sign that the first reading was actually good even if I thought I could get it better.

  I got a right mix of blood glucose measurements. Yesterday I had three out of four giving identical readings of 8.4mmol/l. This morning I got four very different readings. Even on a second attempt, with a fresh test strip, my new Vivachek meter gave a very high reading of 9.3mmol/l. The other three were more acceptable. The lowest was the GlucoRX meter which gave a very good 7.3mmol/l. The Contour meter said 8.0mmol/l, and that is pretty good. The Sino Care meter read 8.6mmol/l, and that would be acceptable, but nothing to celebrate.

  Last night, while I was passing time any way I could while trying to get back to sleep, I started imagining a day out on the trains. I want to visit West Drayton station again.
  I took the above picture in 1996 (plus or minus a year). At that time it was a Network Southeast station. Apart from being cleaned up, it still looks like a traditional railway station. The principle operator now is The Elizabeth line which spent a lot of money on stations, and may have changed the look of this station. It is possible, although hopefully unlikely, that this lovely old station may have been demolished and replaced by a couple of garden sheds (or something).

  It will be good to take a look at this station again, and it is free journey using the Freedom Pass, but I think there will be better days than today. Today may be dry and almost mild, but it would be better if it were brighter for photography. Not only that, but I don't think I feel good enough for a rail expedition. The best I may attempt today is a trip to a supermarket. I was thinking of Aldi, but maybe it ill just be to Tesco where I can buy another bag of frozen sprouts.