It is a shame about 10 and 11am spoiling what could be a prefect sunny day, but those two hours of white cloud still exist in the latest revision, and even the BBC agree that 11am will feature white cloud. The BBC also predicts less hours of full sunshine, and mostly just sunny spells.  Curiously, with less sunshine, the BBC predicts that this afternoon will see 17° C, but The Met Office say just 15° C - which should still be pretty nice after some of the cold days we have had. Almost a week ago the long range forecast for tomorrow looked a lot like today, but now it seems the brightest weather will be in the morning, and the afternoon may feature rain. It should still hit 16 or 17° C tomorrow.

   It may have been the weather changing, or recovery from some undefined illness, but I definitely felt a lot better yesterday - also in completely undefined ways - and even the very gloomy, and wet morning didn't have the impact that it might have on my soul/psyche/whatever.

  Maybe that wasn't really stated correctly. While I still managed to feel physically in better shape, the dark skies and rains did nothing to enthuse me, and I ended up forcing myself to be quite productive. What was ultimately depressing was having to use my heater, albeit generally on low, all day to keep warm enough to be comfortable without wearing thermal underwear, and a greatcoat.

  It was good that my blood glucose returned to a lower level, and one that seemed better than my expectation after considering the food I had eaten the day before. It made me think I wouldn't have to do anything like having to fast provided I exercised some care in what I ate. After a morning where I did nothing more than write, and then reading, I had a light lunch of cheese with rice crackers before I finally got on to some productive work.

  The first thing I did was to swap the USB thumb drive in the back of my big TV to a new empty drive, and check what I had recorded on the TV over the last few weeks. There was an awful lot of recordings, but I renamed those files that had recordings of Secrets Of The London Underground. There were 5 (or maybe 6) episodes of that TV series, and I spent the whole afternoon, although not exclusively, with editing them for my archives - where editing is just topping and tailing, plus advert removal.

  While doing the same thing over and over again it begins to get very routine, and editing a whole programme didn't seem to take long, but at the end it was always a good 7 or more minutes to render the complete edit down to a single mp4 file. Mostly I just read while the rendering was taking place, and if the pages I was reading demanded it to reach a good place to break off reading, I would take that time regardless of how long the rendering had taken place.

  I also took a break to start cooking my dinner. I was not sure what it would ultimately be, but I made a start on cleaning some new potatoes, and boiling them first. I then decided to add a handful of frozen mixed vegetables. I had hoped to find some fish finger at the back of the freezer, but alas there were none. What I did find were just five Tesco pork sausages. I was fairly sure that they were known to be low sugar from previous personal testing.

  It was quite a tasty meal, although only with the help of some mayonnaise on the potatoes and mixed vegetables, and even then it was merely very nice instead of ambrosia ! The very peculiar thing was that while I enjoyed my dinner I was watching TV, but for the life of me I can't seem to remember what it was. I was tempted to say I watched the omnibus showing of 5 episodes of The Avengers, but that was definitely on Saturday evening.

  Whatever I watched, and I might have just been dipping in and out of more than one programme, I gave up at around 9pm, and went to bed. After reading my book a few pages at a time in the afternoon, I felt like spending some time to finish the current chapter, and to try and read all of the next chapter. I never did read the full chapter because  my eyelids were starting to droop. I put the book down, turned out the light, and turned over to try and sleep - and then it hit me again.

  "It" being heartburn, angina like pains, working their way up from just perceptible to lightly uncomfortable. Maybe it was a little more than lightly uncomfortable, but it is such a nagging pain that it seems impossible to ignore it. I had to go through what is now a very familiar routine - take a couple of antacid tablets, wait a bit, try to go to the toilet, but nothing happened, and then take a couple of different antacid tablets. I feel sure that a teaspoonful of Bicarbonate of Soda might have been more effective, and possibly have worked faster.

  It was getting on for midnight when the discomfort dropped enough to be just able to ignore it, and to finally get to sleep. I guess I got pretty much close on to 6 hours asleep last night, and I seem to feel OK, but usually I aim for a full 8 hours sleep. At least most of the 6 hours sleep was pretty good. I know I woke up to pee a couple of times, but I can't remember any time when I didn't fall asleep very quickly again as soon as my head hit the pillow. Like the previous night, I do remember fragments of dreams, but nothing worthy of any description.

    This morning my blood glucose readings were good enough, but a bit more consistency between the three meters would have better, as would slightly lower readings. Both the Contour and GlucoRX meters gave the same reading of 7.9mmol/l, and that puts them just in the green area. The Sinocare first gave a very high reading (9.2mmol/l), but I didcarded that test strip, and tried another after cleaning up my pricked finger, and squeezing a fresh drop of blood. It still aid that was 8.8mmol/l - mildly high- bit I think I choose the other two readings as being my correct blood glucose level.

  It is sort of lucky that I am now very familiar with my blood pressure readings, and if I seem a big anomaly I know that one of two things is wrong. The first is obviously that my blood pressure is very high because of some actual medical problem. The second is not so obvious to those who haven't experienced it before, and it is blood pressure meters that put the cuff around the wrist can be a little critical of their exact placing. Arm mounted cuffs are less fussy. This morning my first blood pressure reading was very high - a systolic pressure of around 147mmhg. I repositioned the cuff on my wrist, and on the second attempt I got a nice "Optimum" reading of 113/46.

  This morning is bright and sunny, and the day is starting to warm up a bit. By midday it might be almost reasonable outside, possibly even good enough to wear my sleeveless denim jacket. Having said that, there do seem to be a lot of fluffy white clouds at the moment, and the sun has blinked out a few times. Apparently this is all to plan according to the latest revisions to the forecast, and full sunshine should resume at midday. The temperature should have reached 14° C by then.

  The plan for today is to go over to North Cray to visit Sue. I must admit I am not doing it for pleasure, but something more like duty. Months ago she said she had a Xmas present for me, and I promised to pick it when I felt warm and well enough. I have a sort of present for her as well - 6 or 7 cans of Carling Black Label lager. It is terribly unpleasant in my opinion, but it is her lager of choice, and it will be good to get rid of my stash of it to a good cause. I aim to get a train around midday to St Mary Cray, and then the R6 bus. It will be the furthest from home I have been in ages !
        







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