Like yesterday, no one can predict when there will be some light showers today, but there will be some - sometime. The first could be at 9am, but the latest revision shows it as light rain, and not heavy rain as shown in the screenshot above  of the early version of the forecast. Today's high may be just 9° C. The BBC forecast, that is usually different to the Met Office forecast, shows sunny spells for 1 and 2pm. Tomorrow, the first day of the new year, may feature a few sunny spells in the morning, but from late afternoon it could get very wet. The afternoon temperature could be a chilly 8° C, but the temperature could rise very late in the evening to 10° C. The day after tomorrow could be several degrees warmer, and many degrees wetter !

  I am still trying to decide if yesterday was good, or not so good. I don't think I remember anything bad, and so maybe it was averagely good. The highlight of the day was having a good scrub up before going out shopping. I'm still debating whether a full shower, shampoo and conditioner, and a shave was a bit over the top just to go to Poundstretcher.

  As usual it was a bit more than Poundstretcher because I went to Savers first. I have to admit that the visits to both shops were quite mundane. I never discovered anything wonderful in either shop, and on the whole I could have predicted most of what I would buy. Of course there is always some uncertainty because Poundstretcher in particular sometime has items only for a week or two before they are never seen again. I was hoping they might have new stocks of cheap crispy fried onion, but it seems that was just a flash in the pan that lasted a week or two, and i haven't found any more in there on my last two visits.

  One slight cause of very muted celebration was that I found some Turmeric capsules in Savers. I have had strong suggestions they might be good for me, but maybe not these because it was Turmeric and Black Pepper that is the stuff to get. The rather expensive (£3) bottle I bought has just 30 tablets in it, and if I am not doing hand stands, and cartwheels in a week or two I will not be buying another bottle of them, although maybe I might seek out the legendary Turmeric and Black Pepper tablets from somewhere and give them a go sometime.

  I had a warm coat on when I went out, but I didn't zip the front up because it didn't feel too cold despite a bit of breeze (but not the gale force winds that were predicted for some vague time yesterday).  Of course, after having had a semi hot shower, and poured hot water on my head when I washed my hair, and finally cooked my head with the hair dryer, it would be some time until I cooled off ! So nothing hurt walking there and back, although maybe my legs felt a little bit stiff for the first few minutes, but that is nothing unusual.

  I suppose that if there was one great thing yesterday it was the absence , or almost absence of all the aches and pains that had reappeared as a sort of relapse of the previous weeks illness, the day before yesterday. It is definitely nice to be free from pain. After having a good night's sleep I was almost feeling good, or at least better than the last few weeks. Maybe the one thing that spoiled it was that I had no desire to push myself to do a few things that might have been good in other circumstances. For instance, there was a gig i could have gone to last night, but I automatically choose not to dare to go out into the cold and wet night.

  I did allow myself one little luxury yesterday, and it was in the from of a medium sized bag of crisps for lunch. They were alleged to be "Aunt Bessie's Roast Potatoes With Black Pepper" flavour. I am not sure that is what they actually tasted of. The taste was a bit peculiar because it seemed to very quickly saturate the taste buds, and after a good, but slightly weird start, they started to taste increasingly bland. I guess that should have been the time to stop eating them, but I had a cunning plan (possibly). I scoffed the whole lot, and called it a meal, lunch, and I had nothing else for lunch (and very few snacks during the day either).

  One afternoon "amusement" was to hand wash, as usual, a hand towel, a t-shirt, and some underpants. Washing towels is always a chore, doubly so for large ones,  because it seems to take so many rinses to get the rinse water to stop getting foamy. I started washing everything together, but after the first rinse I started rinsing the towel on it's own. I think it probably took 7 or 8 rinses until i was happy I had got all the soap out. The t-shirt and underpants got the usual three rinses and then a dip in fabric conditioner.

  I hung all the items on the big clothes horse, with the fan heater blowing on them in the dining room. I thought warming the dining room up may have been useful if I decided to do anything down there, but also so some of the heat could pass through to the kitchen when I did do something in there - cooking. I cooked a very simple chicken and sprouts stew for a healthy dinner. It worked as expected, but it wasn't very nice. The sprouts seemed to taste rather bitter for some reason.

  I had some very pessimistic visions about TV last night, but it was actually very good. Instead of Star Treks Channel 4 (or was it 5?) were showing Carry On Films back to back. I ate my dinner while watching Carry On Cleo with Amanda Barrie looking very sexy as Cleopatra.  The highlight of the evening was Carry On Up The Khyber with the famous dinner in the residency while war goes on outside. That was a suitable highlight for the evening, and although there were more carry on films to be shown, it was 9pm, and it seemed like time for bed.

  I read in bed for a while, and then attempted to get to sleep. For a while it seemed I was going to have another night with little sleep, but suddenly, perhaps half an hour later, I fell asleep. I slept really well, only waking once for a pee (as far as I can remember) until 4am when insomnia did strike. It was partly the case of feeling cold after waking up almost uncovered. I turned the heater up fullm but it seemed to take about an hour before I felt warm enough to get back to sleep.  I am aware that I did have some dreams last night, but all memory them seems to have faded to nothing.

  As well as feeling cold at 4am, I also seemed to feel hungry. It was an hour or two after my dinner that I did something unusual. I checked my blood glucose using just the Sino Care meter. It said just 8.4mmol/l, and I considered that to be very good. This morning when I checked my blood glucose I got some very welcome readings - particularly after a string of high readings.

  The Contour meter read just 7.1mmol/l - below my often hoped for, but rarely achieved target of 7.5mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read 7.3mmol/l, and that was extremely good too. Less good, but still very good was the new Vivachek meter which read 7.8mmol/l. Finally, the Sino Care meter read 8.2mmol/l/ That is a bit disappointing compared to the others, but in a bigger context is still good. My average for the whole of December was just 8.0mmol/l, and that is extremely good, but some high readings in previous months means my average for the whole of the year was 8.57mmol/l, and that is very close to the last couple of years. One notable thing is that so far this winter I have probably done better than most years.

   One thing I would like to have said is that on this last day of the year I had lost a fair bit of weight. This is difficult because as I write this I seem to be having one of those days when I am not yet technically constipated, but nothing has yet happened. One the other hand, even with one useful weightloss not happening. I am still at least a full kg (2.2lbs) less than officially recorded on my last medical records. Winter is very far from not over yet, but we have had enough miserable weather, and less than scintillating days for other reasons, but to have got this far without giving in to excess comfort food is some sort of victory for me.

  Since writing the last paragraph I am no longer officially constipated. Sadly the output seemed to be less than I had eaten for breakfast, and thus there is no point of re-weighing myself.

  I have one vague plan for today. I think I'll be going to the little supermarket on Catford Bridge to stock up on some of their nice Polish, Vietnamese, and other instant noodles. There will probably a few other things I['ll buy, including some of their mega strong garlic sausage for Michael, and a treat of a pack or two of genuine Turkish Delight for my favourite barmaid as a New years present. I'll go to the pub on the train after buying my shopping, but I'll only stop for one pint of Guinness - unless there is an old unread copy of of The Metro at the station so I can sit down and do the crossword. That is unlikely because the last Metro was probably published 2 days ago (and possibly before Xmas).