Today should be brighter than yesterday, but at the moment it is like someone took out the 15W bulb, and replaced it with a 17W bulb ! However it seems that some sunny spells might happen today around midday, but there will also be plenty of rain either side of that. The heavy rain shown in the screenshot above for 10 and 11pm has now gone in the latest revision, but now there may be mostly non stop light rain from 3pm until the end of the day, and then on into the start of tomorrow. The latest revision also says there might now be a whole three hours with the temperature at it's peak of just 8° C. Tomorrow may start even more deeply depressing as today - lots of rain in the morning, and then it may dry up, but the sky will still be filled with 100% white cloud. Once again the temperature may peak for an hour or two at 8° C.

    Yesterday did not start or end well. I felt pretty rotten in the morning. It was generally a legacy of catching a chill on my chest the previous day. Past experience says that such a thing can take several days or more to clear up, and one of the last days should ideally feature hot sunshine - something we may not see in the foreseeable future.

  Ideally I would have gone out shopping, but I was feeling lousy, and couldn't face more cold and wet. Besides which, feeling so bad seemed to slow me down, and I couldn't get ready to go out until it was far too late. I passed a lot of yesterday morning, up to just gone midday, just laying on my bed reading. That was quite pleasant, but I felt a bit guilty because there wee important things that needed doing.

  I think I finally had a shower at about half past midday. Once I was dressed in clean clothes I had some lunch. It was a couple of corned beef and mustard sandwiches. I enjoyed them, and hoped that maybe they would not be too unhealthy for me. Fortunately I didn't have to do much to get the dining room sorted out for the traditional Thursday afternoon beer tasting session.

  I heard from Michael a bit later in the afternoon, and his message was good news. He had been to Tesco, and had bought me some bottles of Diet Coke while buying his own shopping. He said he would bring them around later, and hoped he would be able to stay for a few beers with us - which was also good news.

  Jodie was first to arrive, and was a bit earlier than of late, at about 3.15pm. Michael turned up a bit later than usual at about 3.45pm. We had some mostly good beers, and Michael was able to get a load of moaning off his chest about all the trouble with his wife, and her ongoing mental illness (which might have a medical origin of which she may now be cured, but it's effect on her brain may take some time to heal).

  My beer supplies have been drying up recently, however there were still many cans and some bottles in the beer fridges. The trouble is that Jodie has been selectively choosing some and ignoring other for various reasons - some being that "she has had it before !".  Yesterday we finally had some that were either too strong, or too weak, or were from breweries Jodie was unsure about, or didn't like. Curiously, one the beers I really liked, a green hopped beer (i.e. it was made with fresh hops instead of dried hops) was the one beer Jodie said was too horrible to drink !

  Michael was the first too leave. Despite some prompting that he ought to be going, he left nearly 20 minutes, maybe 25 minutes, later than he intended. He said he had to be home again by 5pm to supervise his wife cooking her dinner.  He is worried she'll set fire to the kitchen or something. The funny thing is that he tells of stuff that he fears could happen, but never relates any accidents that have happened. I sometimes worry about his mental health, and how it could cause his wife to react even more badly.

  Jodie left a bit earlier than usual, but I think her train may have been delayed. It was shown as on time when she left, but many others were delayed due to earlier trespassers on the line somewhere. She had booked a table for two in The Three Hounds, very near Clockhouse Station, because the place is apparently becoming very busy, and finding a seat for Alan, her boyfriend, who has a false leg, and needs to sit down, is getting hard to do with pre-booking a table.

  I had set the seeds for it when I was writing yesterday morning, and indeed I did order a couple of shish kebabs for my dinner last night. I ordered a large chicken shish, but I am sure it was a lamb shish that was delivered, a small lamb shish kebab, and because I needed something fairly cheap to meet the minimum for a discount, I ordered a small chips. It arrived at about 7pm- which was about as expected.

  My original intention was to eat the small kebab and the chips while watching the second, and I think final episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. It was followed by the very first episode of Star Trek: Voyager (my least favourite Star Trek). The small kebab and chips should have been all I ate, and I had planned the large kebab as being warmed up for dinner tonight. After eating the whole order I felt stuffed.

  I went to bed feeling all sorts of pains. My stomach felt sore, but somehow it didn't seem to be the feeling of having eaten too much. My chest, which had been uncomfortable for most of teh day in varying amounts, was giving me more trouble once I laid down on my bed. One novelty of my chest ache was that yesterday a lot of it appeared to be radiating from an area to the left of the top of my sternum. There is now a sort of small, but broad lump under the skin there. Yesterday it was quite tender, but this morning it seems not to feel tender, and is painless.

  I would assume that such a lump must be cancer, but it is also where there should be a wire staple that should be holding my sternum together. Back in 2019 I saw an x-ray that made it look like that staple, and a couple of others, seemed to be less like staples, and more like almost straight wire. It was the damage I suspected of doing to myself back in 2013 when I carried for more then recommended after being discharged form hospital after my quad heart bypass operation, and probably the source of the internal "twang" I felt while staggering back from Aldi with a good weeks shopping.

  Whether that bit of wire is floating free, and occasionally poking something it shouldn't, is something I may never know because no doctor seems to be interested in what could be a self inflicted injury.  All a GP seems to do is to prescribe pills, as recommended by a pharmaceutical company salesman with his free samples and such like. I don't think they care, or no how to deal with pain any longer.

  Just after dinner I had just enough room to force down a couple of Ibuprofen tablets. They helped some of the inflammatory pain. Later on, once I realised I was still in too much pain to get comfortable, and get to sleep, I took a couple of Paracetamol tablets. They help to reduce and in some places kill some muscle and joint pain, but I still had one big discomfort that I thought was the result of over eating.

  The problem turned out to be in the same process in the body, but at the other end. I think it was gone 1am when I went to the toilet, primarily for a pee, but because I had been farting a lot I decided to try for a poo as well. At first it seemed like I didn't need one, but a bit more perseverance lead to quite a substantial, rather "firm" poo. I felt better after that, and even better when I followed it up with a smaller deposit about 20 minutes later.

  It is weird, and very annoying, that in the last few months, maybe more, I have had to have a late night poo. In the past it never seemed to happen. The only good thing about it is that I do less the next morning, and usually once that is done there is no need for anything for the rest of the day.....well maybe a second lot half an hour after the first. I think it was just after 2am when I finally got to sleep this morning.

  By then I think I had turned the heating on full, but at about 4 or 5am I turned it down to half again. At 6am I woke up as usual, and turned the heating up full. After a pee I went back to bed determined to get at least another hour of sleep. I think I got at least 90 minutes. before going back to sleep I took a quick snaps of a very red sunrise.
  It was a very coppery coloured sunrise this morning - full of threat of bad weather ahead. Oddly enough, as I type this it is about 11am, and the sun is shining. I can feeling it warming my bedroom up already, but it is still perishing cold outside. It is possible that it there is still some light drizzle as I write this, and this would be in accordance with the weather forecast. For 11am they used that peculiar symbol of a big (single) raindrop falling out of a white cloud with the sun peeping around the side of the cloud.

  Talking of the weather, I remember one of my dreams was about weather last night. In the dream I was standing on what seemed to be a playing field, and it was snowing heavily. At the side if the field was a window, and strangely it seemed to be looking outside . There were a couple of people on the other side of the glass brushing the snow of it, and we pulled faces at each other once we could see through the glass. Next to the window was an opening to the top of 3 or 4 steps leading down to a road. behind me it was still snowing heavily, but the road was barely touched by any snow. There was some snow to see, but it was just a very thin cover on a few sheltered areas. It was as if I was standing right on the join between two lots of different weather.

  I was feeling pretty awful when I got up, Various joints seemed very creaky, and my gut was feeling like it was empty and a bit sour. The good thing is that while I could feel some tenderness in my chest, it was generally not painful apart from a couple of times when an awkward movement cause a short twinge. My guts are still definitely not all they should be - as I was just reminded by a smelly fart.

  My blood glucose readings were all over the place this morning. The Contour meter gave a very high reading of something like 9.4mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter said 8.7mmol/l, and although higher than ideal, is a perfectly OK reading. The Sino Care meter read 9.0mmol/l. That is just into the unwanted zone, but still under the danger zone. With the last two meters reading less than the first, the Contour meter, I decided to try that one again. I used a different finger for the blood sample, and this time it gave a far more satisfactory, and very good reading of 7.9mmol/l.

  I now have no idea what my blood glucose level really is this morning, but I came away with the impression I ought to be careful about what I eat today. I might have skipped breakfast, and ideally lunch too, but my stomach had a sort of sour feeling, and I wanted something inside me before taken my morning pills - which includes a low dose aspirin tablet. Aspirin can cause stomach ulcers if it lies in an empty stomach. I used to get away with it, or so I thought, but now I make sure I take that tablet, plus all the rest, with some breakfast.

  I may still try and fast until dinnertime today. It will be easier to do so if I don't go out shopping in Tesco today - something I was probably going to do, although the outside temperature give me no great desire to go out, and plenty of reason to stay in. I expect I'll fill in the time reading plus some video editing. Also, being the first of the month, I ought to back up my pictures, and maybe other stuff on my PC.
     







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