So far it has looked like it might be possible that the sun might make it through the clouds to give a sunny spell or two, but while it is not actually gloomy, it is not that bright outside.The BBC predict the first sunny spells at 10am, and they could last for 3 or 4 hours. Like The Met Office, they agree that it will rain from 4pm for 4 or 5 hours, but The BBC say light rain instead of the Met Office forecast of heavy rain. Both forecasters agree the temperature should reach 12° C late this morning, but will start to fall this afternoon. Tomorrow could be brighter, but a couple of degrees cooler. There might be an isolated shower or two.

  I want to say that yesterday was a good day, and in parts it was, but in other parts it was less than great. Not actually terrible, but sort of "meh". At least I was feeling good enough to finally make it to Tesco to top up my dwindling stock of food. Going to Tesco came at a price though.

  I had a lot to write yesterday, and that took time. I was as much as an hour behind schedule, and then I faced another delay as I dealt with the bucket of laundry soaking in the bath. Initially all I could do was to wring it out, and put it aside so I could use the bath to wash my hair, and to have a nice shower. Before I turned off the shower I put the buckets back in the bath, and filled the bucket with the clothes in up for it's first rinse - which I would do a lot later.

  At this time I had a dilemma. Ideally I wanted to go to The Jolly Farmers for my (usually) regular Wednesday lunchtime drink, but another annoyance popped up. I saw that Amazon had sent out an order that I was not expecting until Saturday, and their courier had left the depot surprisingly early. There was a chance the delivery could be unusually early, and possibly in as little as an hour. That ruled out going to the pub, and so I went to Tesco.

  Unlike the day before, when even if cold, it was bright and cheery, albeit it with hardly any direct sunshine, yesterday was very dull, and felt much colder. I wrapped myself up well in my best winter coat (without a rain hood). It definitely kept my chest warm, but did nothing to keep my right knee warm. That knee started out a bit sore, but I guess friction warmed it up enough, and by the time I got to Tesco it had stopped bothering me.


  Breathing in the cold damp air was just starting to cause some chest ache when I arrived in Tesco, but the ache just melted away once I was in the warm store.  Apart from one frivolous thing found on the reduced price shelf, I stuck to my imaginary shopping list and bought green vegetables and some meat. "Some meat" also included some smoked bacon to go with the frozen sprouts I bought. I look forward to that combination in the not too distant future.

  One thing I was looking for was heavily discounted Xmas branded stuff. It is entirely possible that there were loads of it in the cakes, biscuits and chocolate aisles, but I have trained myself to never visit those aisles to avoid temptation as I continue my martyrdom to avoid any of the nice things that would send my blood glucose readings soaring. I guess it is a special type of masochism that I want to avoid the day when I have to go through the tedium of getting fitted up for Insulin injections.


  One of the first "bargains" I spotted was Slane whiskey, as shown above. It is an otherwise rather expensive Irish whiskey that I had never seen before. A 70cl had a price tag of £21 when bought with a Clubcard. Otherwise it was around £30 - that is a bit rich for my taste. However, a tiny sip when I got home showed it to be rather smooth and tasty. The only post Xmas discounts I found, and were suckered into buying are shown in the awful quality picture above.

  I really should have taken a better picture without the bright window behind the boxes. The picture has been cropped to remove the worst of the glare of daylight, but it still screwed up the camera. On the left are some Xmas liqueurs. I doubt they are any good, but they could be "interesting" to share (and thus reduce the amount of sugar I would have to consume).

  I didn't really look at what I was buying when I put the little box of Jagermeister in my shopping basket. Like the liqueurs, it too was reduced to £3.15. It is still an expensive way to buy spirits, but the Jagermeister did come with two nice green glass shot glasses. It was probably worth it for those....maybe.

  Coming home maybe didn't feel quite as bad as going to Tesco. Maybe it was because by then, and after keeping my coat done up in the store, I was hot enough to be sweating under my coat. Like the previous day, some of that sweat was a result of my high blood glucose yesterday. It felt good to take my coat off and cool down for a bit. While I put my shopping away I heated up the one "luxury" item I had bought. A packet of Italian style "thingies".

  I can't recall how they were described on the packet, but there were three types of things in the packet, and the packet said their sugar content was very low, although I don't know if that was per gram, per item, or per 100gm. One of the things was like a tiny pastie filled with cheese. Another was a sort of breadcrumb coated lump with cheese, and possibly a bit of macaroni in it. The final, and only nice tasting thing was like a thick straw with an almost orange coating on something that might have been macaroni with cheese in it.

  As I ate that snack for lunch I did my best to improve the pictures I had taken, but ultimately wasted more time than it would have taken to go back downstairs and take a better picture. Having got the two pictures I would use today I suddenly felt really tired. I quickly checked to see if there was any progress in my Amazon delivery, but it still said "before 9pm". I then laid down on my bed to read, but fell asleep for maybe half an hour.

  After waking up I checked Amazon again, and this time it was estimating between 4.35pm to 7.35pm. I felt I had about an hours grace (minimum) to try and finish the laundry. Diving straight into that just after waking up was not a good idea. it felt like hard work, and worse still, it felt boring. I got as far as doing the three rinses, but I gave up before I did the fabric conditioner phase.

  In anticipation of hanging up that laundry to dry I had turned the fan heater on low in the dining room. With that burning up my electricity bill I knew I would have to get that laundry done sooner or later, but it was several hours before I finished it. It was after after dinner, and after Star Trek: Voyager before I hung the laundry up to dry. I didn't leave the heater on because the room felt quite warm. I just left a desk fan blowing at it overnight.

  My dinner, that I had prepared and cooked earlier in the afternoon, was a simple stew of diced beef and cauliflower. It wasn't terribly exciting, but it was pleasant enough, and it should have been a very meagre source of sugar. Now that the influence of Xmas is fading there was the choice of four Star Treks last night (two on at the same time). I ended up switching back and forth between Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Enterprise. It wasn't the best way to enjoy either !

  As I mentioned above, I did the fabric conditioner phase of my laundry, and hung it up to dry in the warm dining room. That took me up to about 8.30pm, but I didn't feel relaxed enough to go to bed, and stayed up for at least half an hour before going to bed to read for 20 minutes or so (or as long as I could hold up the 1274 page, heavy book, before my arms were aching too much).

  Once I had turned out the light I was asleep fairly quickly, and like the last few nights, I seemed to sleep quite well, but not without waking up a few times in the night - usually for a pee, but on one occasions because I felt cold and uncomfortable. The latter time was probably around 4am, and it seemed reasonable to put the heater on full at that time. It seemed to take a couple of hours before the warmth made me extra sleepy, and i ended up not getting up until much later than my usual time of not too long after 6am.

  I can remember, mostly in extremely vague detail, quite a few dreams, but two in particular were sort of linked, and had an interesting message in them - at least I think it may have been a message for those who think dreams can predict the future. One dream was about a sophisticated "Avometer" (a multiple use meter for electronic and electricity that was much favoured in the past).

  I was talking to someone in a workshop/lab, and he was saying that he wished he could get the same accuracy in a new test meter he was building, as my meter. He was trying to do it in computer software. I opened up the back of my meter to show it was simply done with a couple of thermionic valves, but that did mean it had to be mains powered instead of portable.

  The next dream was almost the opposite. Someone else was playing with a clock/timer/programmer thing, and was saying that it was over complex for what he wanted, and that it had to be mains powered to operate all the solenoids and stuff in it. I pointed out that at it's heart was a simple LCD clock module that could run for years on 4 AA batteries, and it had a beeper to show when the timer reached it's goal. That was all he needed, and he junked the rest of it.

  After getting almost 2 hours late (did I really sleep well last night ?) I checked my blood glucose. Apart from one meter (the same one as usual) which went out on a limb (and produced an even worse reading on the second attempt) all other meters agreed my blood glucose was back at a more sane level, although still not as low as I hoped. The Contour meter read 8.7mol/l, and the GlucoRX meter read 9.8mmol/l. The new Vivachek meter read 9.0mmol/l, and that tallies with the other two.

  It would be nice to think I can improve on these figures today, but there are a couple of impediments to this. The first is that I intend to go shopping in Aldi before the morning is over. That always brings certain temptations. Those temptations could be worse later because Thursday afternoon is boozing time. Jodie in is Finland for a week or two, and we won't be seeing her today, but I will still be drinking with Michael. As yet I don't know if we will be drinking here, or going to a pub. If the latter I may see if Kevin wants to join us. There is the potential for a very boozy afternoon, and all the temptations that brings !