The headline weather feature today is going to be very strong winds this afternoon. The BBC says those strong winds may start from around 7pm, and they could peak at 46mph. The Met Office doesn't predict them to be quite as strong, barely touching 40mph, but does say they could start from early afternoon. they will be responsible for pushing some slightly warmer air our way, and the temperature should rise to 12° C. Today will be rather dull, and there could be a light shower now and then. Tomorrow could also see winds of 30+mph, but it will be a lot cooler with no more than 9° C forecast, and in the wind it could feel a lot cooler than that ! One plus point is the day should be a bit brighter, and there might even be a chance to see a quick glimpse of the sun.

  On the whole, yesterday could be described as satisfactory when the good and bad bits are averaged out. Of course the terrible nights sleep I had, which didn't actually include that much sleep, put a dampener on most of the day. There were times when I felt I had relapsed back to how I felt the previous week.

  I guess it was a sort of amateur confirmation that I was suffering from a virus last week, and that it can take a long time for the body to subdue a virus. It can then wait for any chink in the bodies defences to burst into life again. Well, that's my theory, and the facts seem to support it. yesterday I had many of the aches and pains back that made last week quite miserable at times.

  With bits of me, particularly my right elbow and wrist, but also right shoulder, neck, and chest, slightly more than mildly aching, I was not keen on doing much yesterday. There is one thing I thought I could do easily, and that was to catch up some of my lost sleep, but it didn't happen. With my bedroom quite warm, and laying on my bed, I was not bothered by the assorted aches, and I though falling asleep should have been easy, but it was almost as if I just wasn't tired.

  Maybe it was after I took a couple of Paracetamol tablets, but I don't think it was, I did do a little bit of work in the cold kitchen, and I didn't seem to feel so bad. I was quite surprised that the cold didn't trigger any painful inflammation of my operation scar tissue. That was quite a pleasant surprise, and so of gave some hope for the future. All I did in the kitchen was to do all the washing up, and preparing my dinner. I gave the diced beef 20 minutes in the microwave, and came back to it in the afternoon to add the other ingredients.

  Maybe the most satisfactory thing I did was to make another order with Amazon. It was triggered by two things. The most important was that I paid off my credit cards yesterday so I could start the new year without owing too much. I hadn't spent all that much on either card, but I did pay rather more than I needed to on my Tesco credit card. It is because I tend to pay my credit cards at the end of the month that things get a bit weird.

  My first credit card has a last payment date a few days after the start of the month, and so that is almost normal. The Tesco Credit card has some very creative accounting. It continues to show the full payment needed until the cut off date even when you have paid it all a week or two ago. My actual balance was shown as quite low after paying off everything a week or two ago, but the payment page still shows the full payment for the month. I have, in effect, loaded a credit on my credit card - something the other card tries not to let you do.

  One of my cheap, leather-look, jackets is starting to peel at the back where I thing my camera strap rubs against it. The leather-look is effectively just a coating of something like black latex paint. It looks good until it peels. Apart from that area by the back of the collar, it is still in good condition, and generally still waterproof and warm, but last Thursday I wondered what I could do for a replacement. Peacocks, where I bought one, or both of my leather-look jackets is long gone, and the only clothing shop in Catford is Tesco, and they don't even seem to have any men's coats at this time of year.

  I looked on Amazon, and found a jacket that looked quite reasonable, and in an almost identical style to my existing, but failing jacket. It was priced at £25, and that was about the same price as I had bought mine for in a local shop. The sting in the tail was the postage costs. Slow delivery meant adding over £11 to the price, and fast delivery (about a week) was £29.99 if I recall correctly. It is a bit silly when the postage costs more than the item.

  Yesterday, with my finances seeming to be fairly sound (at least for small amounts) I rechecked Amazon for men's leather jackets. They list quite a selection, and some are very expensive because they are either a "high fashion" version, or very rugged versions for motorcyclists. Some of the cheap ones looked a bit cheap, but still had high postage rates. One I spotted was different. It was real leather, although only thin sheepskin instead of cowskin, and it was just £49 - with free postage ! Another good thing is that it was made in Turkey instead of China, and so the described size was more likely to fit, and they did extra large sizes - something rarely seen in local shops.

   I ordered their second largest size, and with luck it will actually be a loose fit, and so not feel restricting when walking, or even sitting on a bus. With luck it should be here between the 8th and 10th January. After that I just relaxed....or did i ? I can't seem to remember if it was before or after doing that order that I had a light lunch. it was 4 rice cakes (not crackers this time) with precooked, and sliced, BBQ chicken with some grilled peppers (in oil). Originally it was going to be cheese on those rice cakes, but in the nick of time I saw that the best before date on the chicken was the day before !

  Later in the afternoon I added the vegetables to the stewed diced beef. Mostly it was broccoli, but I also added a couple of sliced red chillies for an extra bit of "zing" !  Cutting up those chillies was the cause of what I thought was an even more tedious illness - Herpes (simplex), aka a cold sore on the nose. I had obviously not thoroughly washed my hands after cutting up the chillies, and managed to rub some residue into the side of my nose. It became very slightly sore, and like a cold sore it felt "cold". It was probably not for half an hour or more, as the chilli effect faded away, that I realised what that real cause was.

  I ate my dinner watching Star Trek: Voyager. The Legend channel showed Star Trek: The original series as usual, but didn't follow it with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Meanwhile, Sky Mix weren't showing an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, but for some reason they were showing a triple bill of three Star Trek: Voyagers. By the laws of chance one of them should have been a good or reasonable episode, and maybe that was the last one which featured life form 8472 - the only lifeform that The Borg could not assimilate. I can't honestly say it was a good or thrilling episode, but it was partly interesting.

  I think the last episode would have finished at 9pm, and in theory I should have rushed straight to bed, but I took my time, and possibly got into bed at about 9.30pm. I think I read a few pages from my book before I turned out the light. There was a short period when I wondered if I would ever fall asleep, but with hindsight I doubt it was any more than 10 minutes, and probably a lot less.

  What followed was some great sleep. Maybe it lasted for three hours, maybe four, before I needed to get up for a pee. one notable thing about it was that it seemed to be dreamless. I think I turned the heater down (or off ??) before falling asleep for another three of four hours - also dreamless, or at least I can't recall any dreams. The next time I woke up I turned the heater up full because it was getting cold, although I had woken up for another pee. The cold was making my right elbow really sore, but it calmed right down as soon as it warmed up.

  I did have some dreams in my last hours of sleep - particularly during the time when I decided I might as well try and sleep until a little closer to sunrise. In fact I got up at about 7.30am, over half an hour before sunrise, but still later than what I think of my typical time of around 6am (but maybe than now is only a habit for when the sun rise by then or earlier). As soon as I woke up I forgot to try and remember the dream I just had. I think it was something interesting, but now I'll never know.

  The good news is that my blood glucose level is back down to sort of typical average figures, although I am trying to aim for even lower. The lowest figure was 8.3mmol/l, and that is slightly lower than typical, and the highest was 8.8mmol/l, or a bit higher than average. It was quite a tight range of readings for a change. In an ideal world I would try to do better tomorrow, and maybe that could happen through sheer inertia. It does seem that my blood glucose changes slower than changes in the food I eat. I believe a non diabetic, or at least one without excess belly fat causing insulin resistance, is supposed to process all the sugar in the diet in a matter of an hour or so. I believe (probably wrongly) that my body is still processing food until it is actually excreted. It seems why I seem to be able to gain weight when eating less than some very thin people.

  Today the strong winds provide a great excuse not to go out anywhere. Maybe avoiding stirring up aches and pains, particularly chest pains, needs no excuse. I may still go shopping though. I still want to go to Savers and Poundstretcher to top up my stores of this, that and the other. other than that, I am unsure what I am going to do today. I may do a bit of laundry, although there is no pressing need to do any beyond not letting the laundry pile get too big. It could be a boring day....or maybe something might happen to distract me.