The sunshine is a bit hazy, but it is definitely sunshine, and it has been shining for maybe the last two hours. As can be seen in the screenshot above, the sun was not due to show until midday. The latest revision to the forecast still says the next couple of hours will feature white cloud and no sunshine. Of course the BBC said there would be sunny spells from sunrise until midday when full non stop sunshine should take over until sunset. I am unsure why The Met Office is so stingy with it's forecast this morning. They have even taken away some of the sunny spells after midday. At least both forecasters agree that today will be very warm with the temperature hitting 20° C. Tomorrow may be mostly dull (Met Office) or mostly bright with sunny spells and full sunshine (BBC). Once again, bit agree tomorrow should reach 18 or 19° C.

   Yesterday was generally enjoyable, but it wasn't all good. More of the not so good later. I was happy to get out and do some shopping a little earlier than usual yesterday. The only downside was that while the afternoon got to feeling quite warm, before midday I needed to wear a coat to go to Tesco.

  I think only one thing tempted me off the path of righteousness, and it was a solitary reduced price peppered steak slice. Most of the rest of what I bought could be considered healthy eating, although I have a suspicion the Golden Delicious apples may have more sugar in them that the gala apples I have been eating recently. Apart from one bottle of the new lemon flavoured zero sugar Coke, I bought three bottles of Tesco own brand, sugar free, cola. I find it quite drinkable, and at less than a third of the price of the genuine Coke, it is hard to refuse - now I have taste tested the latest version.

  I don't think I have any negative thing about my walk to and from Tesco, except for the ongoing stiffness and knee and ankle aches. The knee and ankle joints seizing up I can blame on old age, but the general stiffness and lack of power, seems wrong. At least it seems worse than just a lack of activity might cause. I am now left wondering if I can ever push through it to regenerate all my slack leg muscles, and maybe loosen up some of the joints.

  My original plan was to have some cheese on toast for lunch. I felt it should be good enough to help line my stomach for later drinking, and for some unexplainable reason, I thought it might be healthier than a cheese sandwich. I did indeed eat two slices of toast with cheese on it, but I also ate the peppered steak slice. This time I gave it the recommended 90 seconds in the microwave, and I must admit that made it much nicer than eating it cold.

  After my lunch I could be fairly lazy for a few hours as I waited for Jodie to arrive. All I had to do in that couple of hours was to wash the beer glasses, and wipe down the kitchen work surfaces. In fact Jodie arrived later than expected because, as I learned when she arrived, she had been shopping in Lidl, and that is maybe a 10 minute walk from home.

  When Jodie arrived she announced that it was Belgium week in Lidl, and she had bough a few things, and one thing was a four pack of a dark Belgium beer that she announced we had never had before. I found it was quite nice, but it was possibly too much in an Abbey style for Jodie to enjoy it, and I had to finish it for her. That means there are 3 more bottles here that I assume I can drink "unsupervised".

  Another Jodie brought with her was a couple of the relevant pages of what I think was Lidl's free magazine. It showed some stuff that would probably be very nice, but containing too much sugar for me. It also showed that there was one other Belgium beer that interests Jodi, and several more that are of no interest to her - but I am quite interested in them ! I had been planing my own expedition to Lidl, but I don't think it will be today for reasons I'll come to later.

  As usual, some of yesterday's drink was boring because Jodie was concentrating on her phone so much, but later on the tables turned. Once she had flicked through all the pages, reading a few bits here and there, she gave me a copy of The Metro. I spent very little time reading anything, and within minutes I had ended up on the crossword page. I completed the quick crossword in maybe 10 minutes, but as seems sadly normal now, I don't think I solved a single cryptic clue.

  I sometimes wonder if being unable to do the cryptic crossword is an early sign of dementia, or something worse, or just an indication that the compiler they have been using for the last 6 months or more is an utter, utter, bastard ! I must admit that I tend to the latter idea when I consider some clues I have managed to solve. Assuming my answers are right It seems that half the clue is actually misdirection, or just padding to make a simple anagram seem to be something else.

  Jodie left as usual to get the 6.29pm train to Clock House station, and then a few shops down the road to The Three Hounds where she was meeting Alan. I had not prepared any dinner because I had it in mind that I would have more cheese on toast. I now have doubts about the safety of that, but it seemed like a safe-ish way of using up my loaf of bread before it started getting spots of mould on it like the last one.

  I had four slices of toast, and the last two had crispy fried onions under the cheese. Maybe those ready fried crispy onions were a bad choice. Maybe following the toast with a single Golden Delicious apple was not a good idea. There could be two idea why all this was bad, and one was that I seemed to get a bit of angina pain when I went to bed, but oddly enough before I was actually pulling the duvet around me.

  In a moment of desperation I watched an episode of M*A*S*H last night. After not watching it for years it seemed a lot to get acclimatised too. When watching it once a week, or maybe more frequently, maybe 5 or 6 years ago, you get used to it, but after such a long break, and then starting on what I think was a particularly bad episode, I found I didn't want to watch the one or two more episodes that followed.

  I think I was in bed, quietly reading, not long after 8.30pm. It was probably just after 9pm that I put the book down, turned out the light, and turned over ready to go to sleep - except I couldn't because I suddenly got what I hoped was some acid indigestion. When a couple of antacid tablets didn't seem to help I turned to a 300mg aspirin tablet dissolved in water. That, or maybe it was just time, seemed to solve the problem within half an hour. That suggested it was angina, although it is very odd that it should be invoked when trying to relax.

  After getting to sleep I seemed to sleep mostly soundly, but there were time when it seemed like I might be half awake. I seemed to remember one tiny fragment of dream, and it seemed no more than looking at a file listing on a computer. One folder was named secret. The way I remembered pondering what it probably was, and not just opening it, suggested that maybe I had part woken up, and was considering it from that point of view. I made the assumption it was some (cough) "naughty photos". If I was still dreaming I would surely have open the folder, and looked at the photos - if indeed that was what they were.

  Another dream/not dream, was reconstructing something I thought I had dreamed about, and then going further to hone it into a more coherent idea. Quite what I saw/read in the dream seems to have completely evaporated, but what I was toying with when possibly half awake, was like a newspaper headline: "Expert on profanities recalled from Nairobi to assist parliament during the current crisis". Well I thought it was amusing.

  I don't think I "opened my bowels" at all yesterday, but I am happy to say that this morning I went twice with no special effort, although the total amount might not been enough, and it is possible I may need to go again before the morning is over. On the other hand, it would fit in with a stupid idea that I did not eat that much yesterday - even if all I ate was evidently not good for me.

  This morning my blood glucose readings were shockingly high. The Contour meter read OK. It said 8.4mmol/l, and that is satisfactory even if not as low as I would wish for. The GlucoRX meter read 9.6mmol/l. That was so different, and so high that I cleaned the blood off my finger, and then squeezed out more to check again. It was still 9.6mmol/l. The Sinocare meter just rubbed it in with the same reading of 9.6mmol/l.

  In light of those figures I have to be very careful what I eat today. This morning I restricted myself to a single, but semi big  (100gm) pack of instant noodles. Breakfast seems important these days, and in particular one or more of the drugs I take in the morning does suggest it is taken with food. Of course the most important one that has to be taken with food is the cod liver oil capsule. It is most unpleasant to burp up cod liver oil taste !!!

  If, as I hope, the worst of yesterday was the four slices of toast, the crispy fried onion, and the Golden Delicious apple I had last night, then my blood glucose could drop to a more acceptable level by lunchtime, but I will still try and skip lunch, or maybe just have a bit of fruit. It seems that the sugar in fruit is a "variable constant" - in other words it can sometime be low, or maybe just dealt with by my reduced level of insulin very quickly, or sometimes high enough to leave it's mark. I will also try and be extra careful about dinner tonight. In fact I should now be on a regime that helps me be a bit more healthy for my MRI scan next Tuesday.

  My original plan for today was to go shopping in Lidl, but that is far too dangerous with all sorts of probable temptations. What I think I am going to do instead is to load myself up with painkillers, possibly including another 300gm aspirin tablet dissolved in water, and try for a walk. It is already 18° C now (it's gone 11am as I write this), and by the time I get on the raod it could be 20° C. In theory it should be enjoyable to walk in such warmth. I'll be taking one of my big cameras (the Canon 600D), and it would be better to have the sun behind me. One possibility is to get a train to Lower Sydenham, or even New Beckenham station, and walk home with the sun behind me all the way. Of course this does have the disadvantage that once I start I have few options to complete the whole walk no matter how much pain I am in. Of course, with the camera it is easy to keep stopping to take pictures, and to rest. It makes it less of a race home - which would probably be really tiring.
  This tree is outside a house just down the road from me. Jodie tells me it is a magnolia tree. I have never seen a tree with such big flowers on it. Of course this tree is very young - probably only planted a couple of years ago - and some of  the flowers are at head height, whereas on some tree the flowers can be up high, and so seem smaller.
      







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