Both The BBC, and The Met Office said that 7am would be sunny, but while it did seem bright, I don't think there was any sunshine at all. The BBC currently predicts some drizzle at 11am, and some rain after 8pm.They also predict a single sunny spell at 6pm. The Met Office say it will be dry until 11pm, and while most of the day will be dull, there could be 3 hours of sunny spells from 3pm. Both forecasters say this afternoon should reach 13° C, but The Met Office also think that 14° C might be possible at 4pm. Tomorrow will feature the first of the April showers, but they will be surrounded by sunny spells. Tomorrow temperature should reach 13° C.

   I managed to make a grammar mistake, by omitting an entire word, in my opening sentence yesterday. Maybe Yesterday didn't start as well as I was going to describe it ! Actually, although rushing to bang out these words, as I do almost every morning, usually includes loads of spelling/grammar errors, I can't seem to slow down, and do things like proof reading. That was particularly so yesterday when I had definite plans of things to do.

  The first part of the plan was to trim my beard, although not shave the rest of my face, and then have a good scrub under the shower. I'll confess I was overdue for a shower after not bothering the day before. I thought I had mistimed it all because by the time I was dressed, and ready to go out, the sun had gone in. In some sort of act of faith I went out without a coat. Fortunately the sun soon came out, and with only the lightest of breezes I felt very comfortable in the warm sunshine.

  After going out I had barely gone 30ft when I noticed the postman. It was the only one I usually have a short chat with. I said I hadn't seen him around for a long time. He told me how he had developed Angina, and ended up hospitalised - something I am very familiar with ! He was fortunate that some stents cured his narrowed arteries, but I think he said he may still need bypass surgery in the future.

   He was off sick for 8 weeks, and has a sick certificate for the next 6 months saying he has to be on light duties. He is only doing half his usual round, but he admits that after his stents were put in he feels far, far better for it. It seems that like me, he was compensating for the Angina by going slower, and putting off getting it looked at. After the first time in 2013, and reinforced by my week stay in hospital in 2019, I have acted quicker this time, and maybe will get a longer lasting cure.

  My first port of call was Savers. I was particularly after sensitive toothpaste, and some mouth wash. I got those, some multi vitamins with iron, plus some bleach and toilet cleaners. I then crossed the way to go in Poundstretchers. As I mentioned yesterday, there were some dangers of going in there - possibly naughty foods, and I did buy a few foods that had to be treated with care.
  One thing Poundstretcher seems to get, that other shops I know don't get, is sugar free Fanta in bottles and cans. They also seem to get what I suspect is spare experimental batches of some drinks. I had no idea that Fanta did a watermelon flavoured sugar free drink, nor a strawberry cheesecake drink. The latter is definitely a "limited edition" drink - it says so on the label. Both were fairly pleasant to drink, but didn't seem to induce any need to buy more if there were alternative sugar free drinks to try.

  As well as buying 6 x 500ml bottles of sugar free drinks, I did buy some food - some slightly harmless, and some only to be eaten very cautiously. Of the foods, the most notable was some new pots of instant noodles. They were the spicy chicken variant of some beef flavoured ones I had bought on a previous visit. I had two of them this morning, and I have to say I don't think much of them. They are not nasty, but there is little positive I can say about them.

  It was definitely nice walking in the mildly warm, and sunshine, and it put a bit of a spring in my step. I did a fairly brisk walk to Savers, but I was glad to get there, and slow down as I walked around the shop. I could feel my chest just starting to complain when I reached the shop. I think I kept up a fair pace when walking home with my shopping, and I didn't seem to get any feelings telling me to slow down, but maybe I was not walking as fast as I could have.

  It was gone midday when I got home, and I was feeling a bit peckish after the fresh air. I managed to ignore the new stuff I bought - almost - and made a single corned beef sandwich with cheese in it. With hindsight the cheese was superfluous, and that sandwich would have been just as nice without it. I'll admit I did have two bitter orange, known to be fairly low sugar, chocolate biscuits as a sort of dessert.

  After my lunch it was nice to lie on my bed, with the sun pouring through the windows, and quietly reading. I stated having hallucinations that I would soon get up, and go for a walk in the sun, but as is often the case, reality got in the way. The reality was that I had left two towels, one a hand towel, and the other slightly larger, and somewhere between a hand towel and a small bath towel, soaking in detergent, and I had to complete the washing process before I could do anything else.

  In reality that meant 7 or 8 rinses. I moan about it every time, but towels do seem to need loads of tiring rinses before the rinse water is no longer foamy. I dread to think how many rinses it would need to get the water to run 100% clear, but I did what I hoped was enough, before hanging the towels up to dry on the small clothes horse. I left a desk fan blowing at them for the rest of the day, and through the night. The bigger towel, that I use as a bath towel, is dry enough this morning to use when I have a shower later.

  I still pondered upon the idea of going for a walk, but all that wringing out had left me needing a rest. Once again I was laying on my bed reading. After a while I realised there was something else I needed to do. It was to pay off my two credit cards. One of my credit cards I seem to only use for Amazon, and I only owed about £70 on that. The other credit was considerably more, but not a huge amount.

  After paying off both cards I checked my current account. I wanted to check for any withdrawals that might be suspicious, and thankfully there were none. I also wanted to note down the dates and amounts of my recent pension payments. Finally I wanted to check my balance. It was very good, and still should be even after the amount to pay off my credit cards is subtracted from it. Despite thinking I have been a bit extravagant now and then, it seems my current account is very slowly growing....or maybe keeping up with inflation.

  Talking of finance... I can't remember if I mentioned getting my energy bills recently. I was concerned about how big they might be considering I haven't spared electricity if I needed to keep warm. The electricity bill was only £7 in arrears, and my next standing order will pay that, and a lot more ! My gas bill was not in arrears at all, Far from it ! It was over £200 in credit. I will enjoy a hot shower later with no feelings of guilt at all.

  I still could have gone out for a walk in the last hour or two of sunshine late yesterday afternoon, but dealing with banks is always traumatic and exhausting. Besides which I suddenly realised I was missing the first of a series of 5 back to back episodes of The Avengers. The one that was actually showing only had about 10 minutes left of it, and was one episode i particularly wanted to see - even if it was pure comedy instead of "drama".

  Fortunately I do have another recording of it, and may end up watching it some time today. While that last 10 minutes played out I went down to the kitchen to get my dinner ready. It was a fairly simple dinner made with half a pack of diced, boneless chicken drumsticks. I used half the pack for a casserole/stew that should be tonight's dinner. I grilled the other half of the meat with some onion and large chillies, and served it with a ready to microwave, for two minutes, peri peri flavour rice.

   It was quite a nice dinner, and it should have been very low sugar, and sort of healthy. In an ideal world I would have left it at that, but I seemed to have a little room left for some sort of Dessert. I chose a couple of medium big, sweet and juicy oranges. In many people's books they should have been a very healthy choice, but the evidence suggests they did have enough sugar in them to spoil my blood glucose readings this morning.

  The last episode of The Avengers, which incidently has gone back to the Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) episodes (and she was wearing a most attractive purple catsuit for all the action sequences) finished at 9pm, That seemed a good time to go to bed, and read for half an hour. I think I may have read for a little longer than that, but once I had put the book down, and turned the light out, I probably fell asleep very quickly - at least I can't remember any long wait to get to sleep.

  I seemed to sleep fairly well, although I was waking just over every 2 hours again, and while I did go for a pee out of habit, I can't recall any urgency for one at any time. All I can remember of my dreams is an extremely vague idea that they were pleasant, and/or enjoyable, but all details have faded out completely. The only, sort of, bad sleep, was in the last hour of sleep. Last night the clocks changed, and so 6am was back to being dark, and I tried to hold out to 7am, but didn't quite make it.

   Re the clocks changing: It looks as if I have gone through the whole of winter using the suffix BST instead of GMT on the time at the top of the page. I have no idea why I didn't change the suffix to GMT last October, but at least it is finally correct !

  I feel generally OK this morning, although I am technically constipated. Hopefully that will change soon. My blood glucose readings are okay-ish, but I had hoped for better. Maybe those two juicy oranges I had last night are to blame. The Contour meter read 8.6mmol/l - a little bit higher than average. The GlucoRX meter read 8.0mmol/l, and that is pretty good. The Sinocare meter read 8.9mmol/l, and I am not that happy with that figure. All these readings were the first reading. I could have tried the Sinocare reading a 2nd time, but I accepted it as it was. The good thing is that at the end of March, the average of all three meters for the whole month was 8.05mmol/l. That is pretty good and lower than February, 8.41mmol/l, and January, 8.37mmol/l.

  The rest of this morning, and for a couple of hours this afternoon, I will probably be in lazy mode, although I need to have a shower, and wash my hair. I might possibly be daft, and put some laundry in to soak after my shower, but if I don't pull my finger out I will never finish it today. The latter half of the afternoon should be a beer tasting session with Jodie. She said that provided the trains were running today, she would be over - and the trains are running at 4 trains an hour, which is better than a usual Sunday.......Correction: There were 4 trains an hour at the start of service, but now it is back to two trains an hour !
      







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