Last night's heavy rain continued this morning, but now it may be stopping. The latest revision to the Met Office forecast shows the last rain at 10am, and it shows light rain for that hour.  From 4pm they show white clouds, but have removed the sunny spells as 7 and 8pm as shown in the screenshot above. Curiously enough, The BBC weather forecast still shows light rain through to 4pm, and then it will brighten up with a few hours of sunny spells. After an 8° C start, Today should peak at 11° C. Tomorrow is currently looking like it might be a warm and sunny day !! The temperature might reach 15° C (Met Office) or 17° C (BBC).

   Yesterday was a fairly productive day, but I can't say I really enjoyed being productive, and felt fairly low all day - both mentally and physically. I had no specific symptoms, but at least one clue that I may have actually been ill/fighting some sort of infection. That one indicator was my blood glucose readings, and they bothered me all day.

  I didn't really do anything yesterday morning except to rest. After I had finished writing I laid on my bed quietly reading. I am sure that during that time I had a snooze. I was certainly feeling tired after a very poor and late start to my sleep the night before. It may the be the case that my sleep didn't start the night before, but after yesterday had started. Yesterday I wrote "probably before midnight", and I guess I had a better memory of the night before, but "probably before midnight" leaves a lot of wriggle room.

  Yesterday morning my blood glucose readings were terrible, and the worst thing is that I didn't think I had eaten badly enough to warrant them. My stated intention was to try and fast until dinner time, but by midday I part gave in and had a small handful (palmful) of salted peanuts. An hour later I was feeling very hungry, and there was not enough going on to distract me. Once again I gave in - big time !
  Pictures above are a pair of chicken and mushroom slices. I think the nutritional panel claimed they only had 1.8gm of sugar each. That is not a lot, but more than I felt I should be chanced - except for one vital thing. They were bough "reduced price" because they were very close to their use by (or maybe sell by) date. I had kept them in the fridge for 2 days, and I probably could have kept them there safely for maybe another week, but I decided I was hungry, and they needed to be used, and so I heated and ate both of them for a big lunch.

  I felt pretty miserable about blood glucose, eating, and the dull grey weather, yesterday afternoon, and I knew I had to force myself to do something. I ended up doing some quite tedious work, but it was stuff that I needed to do, and doing it lifted a burden for later - except later on there would be a new burden ! It was to do a job I've been saying I would do for some time now, and it was to edit (top, tail, and advert removal) some off air TV recordings done on my big TV.

  Among those recordings was a single episode of Dick Barton - Special Agent. Dick Barton was a favourite of my mum in the 1950s (at least I think it was). I was aware of it, and it sort of sounded quite exciting, but originally it was just a radio series. Yesterday I discovered the Southern TV, one of the old ITV franchises, had used the old scripts as a basis for a TV series using short snappy episodes. I have a feeling that if I had seen more I might have become a bit of a fan, but without the back story of previous episodes, the single episode I watched was hard to follow.

  Having just skimmed through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Barton I now know there were 711 radio episodes broadcast in 15 minute slots between 1946 and 1951. It is no wonder I couldn't remember hearing the originals, and most of what I heard was from my mum. She once told me that Dick Barton used all sorts of special gadgets, including a write watch radio/walkie-talkie, but I have not found any mention of that elsewhere, but it did seem feasible. In 1946 the first, very expensive, transistors were made, and it was easily predicted that miniature electronics were on their way. They may be a bit bulky, but of course genuine wrist worn mobile phones, with video calling, have been available for some time now.

  It was possible it was while I was waiting for the edited episode of Dick Barton to render in my video editor that I decided to re-check my blood glucose. That was maybe an hour after eating my two chicken and mushroom slices. The reading I got (I just used the Sinocare meter by itself) was, if I recall correctly, 15.3mmol/l. That is very dangerously high, and it worried me, and it made the rest of my day even more miserable.

  After additionally editing two short TV programmes, Discovering Janis Joplin, and discovering The Mammas And Pappas, but under 30 minutes long after editing the crap out, I went on to do some longer stuff. The Longest was a 90 minute programme about Suzie Quatro. I have still only watched a few excerpts from it as I was editing it, but it looked interesting, and I must watch it properly some day.

  I think there was something else I edited, but I can't remember what - maybe it was not very interesting. I also decided I would delete the half dozen episodes of QI hosted by Sandi Tokstig. She has presented some good episodes of QI, but all too often has has some weird, and sometimes quite annoying guests. I think for now I will only collect the occasions Stephen Fry editions.

  I had come to dinner time, and short of wasting it, my only real choice was part two of the takeaway order I had made the previous night. It was a small "special chicken kebab". It was chicken grilled on a skewer with mushrooms, onion, and tomato between the chicken as it sat on the grill. It was really rather tasty, and with the salad that came in it's own plastic container (meaning the rest could be heated up without cooking the salad) it made for a very pleasant meal. It also seemed like it should not have had much sugar in it. I late went to bed fearing what my blood glucose readings this morning might reveal.

  One good thing about Saturday evenings is that Great TV! show an omnibus edition of The Avengers - 5 back to back episodes.  At least two of the episodes  I had missed been shown during the week, and two others were good enough episodes to be entertaining even on a second showing. One episode was a bit dull. I consumed several shots of cheap, but nice whisky while watching TV.

  It was 9pm when the last Avengers episode finished, and I went to bed feeling just some light effects from the whiskey, but not nearly enough to spoil maybe as much as an hours worth of reading in bed. maybe it was 10pm when I turned out the light, turned over.....and it happened again ! I started to feel what must be heartburn, although it did feel a lot like the start of angina. I also felt something else....

  I took a couple of antacid tablets, and sat down behind my PC to let them do their stuff. After a while I checked my blood pressure, and it was slightly high, but still well under the 140mmhg level that my doctors tell me is when it is of some concern. A few deep breaths later, and a second reading came out lower, and my meter's inbuilt diagnostic put it into the "normal" category. usually I can go one better, and go into the "optimum" area.

  As I write this I have just checked my blood pressure. The first attempt gave a diagnosis of "high normal" (stystolic pressure of 134mmhg). That was with no preparation, such as relaxing first, but just straight after i put the blood pressure cuff on. I tried again a minute or two later after trying to relax as much as possible, with a bit of deep breathing, and this time it diagnosed it as "optimum" with very low figures of 95/40, and a pulse rate of 55. I think that is good enough.

  While I was checking my blood pressure last night I go a few mild feelings that I might need a poo. It is rare, but not unknown, for me to have a very late night poo. I went out to the toilet, and sat there waiting. After maybe a minute I thought it was all a false alarm, but then I felt movement. A few muscles squeezes and whoosh - I had passed quite a substantial poo !

  I went back to bed feeling pleased, and sort of OK, but as soon as I laid down I could feel the heartburn returning. I took another couple of Rennies tablets, and soon I started to feel OK. One last thought before I went to sleep is that this late night heartburn is becoming a nuisance, and antacid tablets are rather expensive for what they are. I must remember to buy some Bicarbonate Of Soda, from the home bakery aisle of Tesco to see if a far cheaper, old fashioned remedy works as well.

   Once I was asleep, once again probably a bit before, or after midnight, I seemed to sleep quite well, and felt almost, but not quite refreshed when I finally got up this morning. I remember having a lot of random, and seemingly quite short dreams last night. A few featured the same woman, but I am not sure who it was, although it might have been my not-seen-for something like 30 years, friend Marion. I can't remember any bit of those dreams that would make any sense if I tried to describe them.

  It was with great apprehension that I took my blood glucose readings this morning. After a large-ish breakfast, and very unhealthy lunch, and a dinner with a few unknowns in it, I expected some more very high readings. I was wrong. Things are back to normal - if only we knew what normal is ! The Contour meter got of to a fair start of 8.3mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter was far more kind with a reading of 7.8mmol/l, and the Sinocare went one better with an unusually low 7.5mmol/l. Today I don't have to starve myself, but I still need to take care of what I do eat.

  I am happy to say that even after doing a large poo last night, I have done another this morning. Could this mean that my high blood glucose readings were just due to some sort of constipation ? It seems unlikely, but at least I shall probably be comfortable today - I hope !

  It may have stopped raining now, but it is still bloody miserable outside. It is fairly cold, it is very dull, and even if it has stopped raining, everything is still dripping outside, and there are some good puddles. The latest revision says the dark grey cloud will continue until 4pm. 5pm, and the next few hours should feature white clouds, but still no sunshine. By 7pm the temperature may have very slowly crept up to just 11° C. It may only hold it there for a single hour before dropping down again.  In short, the weather today is crap, and even if not raining, I am unlikely to go any further than the local shops, and that is only if I dare to go out, and that seems quite unlikely. I cans see myself passing a lot of today doing more video editing, and nothing else except reading and snoozing.
        







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