There is a choice of weather today. There is the dull and miserable weather predicted by The Met Office (as above), or there are the sunny spells predicted by The BBC. As I write this the cloud cover is quite thin, and hints of blue are to be seen, and the sun is doing it's best to shine through one of them. It would be nice to think the BBC version of the weather turns out to be right. On the other hand, the BBC only predict 11° C today, while The met Office say 12° C.  Tomorrow might be 13 or 14° C, but it looks like it will be dull all day. The Met Office only predicts a couple of hours of light rain, but the BBC throws in quite a few random hours of drizzle.

  There was no doubt about it - I felt lousy yesterday. It was like some heinous alien had turned some sort of SciFi pain amplifier on me. I don't think anything ached that hadn't ached before, but they were all aching at once, and often more intensely than usual.

  During the early evening I did find my temperature had risen to 37.3° C. That is supposed to be normal, but at least a full degree higher than typical for me. I am not sure if that counts as a fever. I didn't feel feverish, but I did feel like running the heater on high for long periods during the day, and I also had two cans of hot soup to make me feel warmer. I don't think it is Covid because it is only now and then when I cough, and there is usually a good reason for it. I do think it is possibly some sort of viral infection though.

  The worst ache, because it is a sort of worrying, is the chest pains. I am almost confident it is not a heart problem, but like all the other aches and pains, it is a flare up of the sort of inflammatory pains I have had from the scar tissue from my heart bypass operation. There are also pains from what I call, almost certainly incorrectly, my twisted rib(s). I had a good example of this just this morning. I was standing up having a pee, and leaning forward with my hands on the wall. Once I had finished I moved my hands back to my sides, and as I did so a short burst of quite intense pain passed to the right of my right man boob.

  Sometimes my chest just plain aches, but the nature of the ache is affected by posture. Sometimes as I move I get the feeling as if bones are rubbing together. While all this is going on I'll be getting pains from my right wrist and elbow, plus some aches from my right shoulder. I do get lesser pains on my left arm, but old injuries and stuff make them more intense on the right. Generally speaking my legs are OK except for my right knee. That occasionally can get quite sore, but I was not very active yesterday, and so didn't provoke it.

  I think the headache I woke up with was probably just a bit of hangover from the whiskey I drank last night, but I have had headaches during the day when not drinking. My neck also aches from time to time, but it is very intermittent, and maybe not such a strong ache. I've already mentioned feeling cold yesterday, and so that just leaves one other discomfort, but it is hard to say if it is a cause or result. It is a feeling of yuckiness - impossible to define, and it can't be pinpointed to any specific place. I guess you could say it is a strong desire to act as if I am very ill - and I can do just that because there is no going to work, or seeing others to distract me from it.

  Apart from having a couple of cans of soup to help me feel warmer, I can only think of two other definite things I did yesterday. Last night's dinner was not typical because I threw caution to the wind. I had 4 grilled pork belly strips with a sachet of Heinz "Spanish Style" baked beans - which seemed to have a slightly lower sugar content than Heinz Baked Beans - which are saturated with sugar. It was a very tasty dinner, although that greasy pork may have given me heartburn to add to my chest pains.

  The other definite thing I did was to watch a rip of a DVD I think I bought in Poundland of Bill Bailey's comedy gig entitled "Part Troll". It seems rare that I have the time or patience to watch a whole 90 minutes or so of one continuous performance. It was very enjoyable, although maybe there were a few weak bits, but they can be ignored.

  I lost track of time yesterday evening because there were no cues from things like TV programmes starting or finishing, but I think I was in bed around 9pm. I only managed to read a page or two in bed because the 1274 page book I am reading is pretty heavy, and my arms were aching a lot. It wasn't too long before I was asleep. After what happened the previous night I turned the heater off before going to bed, and relied on the duvet to keep me warm.

  Either the duvet was too efficient, or I was generating too much body heat, but I woke up several hours later with my pillow damp with sweat. I kicked the duvet aside to cool off, but it felt far too cold like that. I didn't check, but some of what I felt was like I was experiencing a fever. Maybe there are some hints this morning that it was indeed a fever. I had to get out of bed for a pee, and I turned the heater back on, full power as I passed it.

  I was possibly awake for an hour waiting for my bedroom to get warm enough to sleep almost uncovered. I did have a few other short periods of not sleeping, but I part made up for it by having the longest lay in I have had for ages. It was gone 8am when I finally got up. Like sometimes earlier in the night, I only knew that I had definitely been sleeping because of the dreams. The dream I was having around 7am was sort of sexy, but I didn't personally get any "action". Shame really because she was a very striking woman.

  So far this morning I think I feel a bit better. While I sit here quietly typing I am not in much pain, although I can feel twinges from my chest as I change my posture. My temperature is about usual for just gone 8am, although maybe it was a bit higher for straight out of bed, although my bedroom was very warm when I got out of bed. My temperature was 35.6° C. I also checked my blood pressure much earlier than usual. It was 117/58, and the inbuilt diagnostic of my blood pressure meter labels that as "Optimum", or the best possible.

  What did let me down this morning was my blood glucose readings. I got quite a unanimous indication that my blood glucose was too high, although surprisingly still under the red line (10.0mmol/l). The best reading was actually OK, and it was 8.3mmol/l on the GlucoRX meter. Three other meters say that was wrong because two of them agreed on 9.2mmol/l, and the other was 9.1mmol/l.

  In view of these high readings I am going to fast for as long as I can hold out today. Maybe I'll only last until lunchtime when I might have a couple of cans of Tesco's very low sugar chicken soup. Maybe I'll last through to dinner time. Maybe I might last beyond that, but in reality I'll probably have some sort of snack before dinner time comes around. If I have dinner, which is highly likely, it will probably be diced beef and red cabbage stew.

  At the moment I have plenty of potential food, and most of it could be regarded as safe in a sugar content way, but maybe I don't have the variety I would like. I still fancy going to Tesco. I wanted to go yesterday, but I felt too ill. Maybe I could make it today, but the place will probably be heaving with shoppers, buying enough food for the month because Tesco will be closed for a day or two over Xmas. The chances are that I will stay in the warm again today, but I think I will probably have a shower, and wash my hair to make myself feel better.