The Met Office says heavy rain will continue until 1pm, but at 9am it seems to have at least paused. The BBC say only light rain, but that will continue until 4pm. I have a new theory - The BBC says that light rain with an occasional short burst of heavy rain is still light rain, and the Met Office describe the same thing as heavy rain. One thing seems certain is that we won't see the sun today.  The whole day is going to be a bit cool with no more than 13° C predicted. Both forecasters predict a sunny morning, but the BBC predict a lot of light rain from 1pm, and the Met Office only predict some random rain in the afternoon. Tomorrow afternoon could see 15 or even 16° C
 
   Yesterday was a reasonably productive day providing you define reasonable some, but not a lot. Like a lot of days recently, and maybe longer, it was generally a good day until the late evening ruined it all - and this time I am sure it was something I did instead of just chance.

  Yesterday morning was very typical. I spent at least a few hours writing this electronic diary, and then I had a rest. I very nearly had a snooze, but I was woken just at the point I was almost asleep by a call from the pharmacy who were asking how I was getting on with the new tablet I have been prescribed. I had to remind them I had been taking the same tablet (but different trade name) for over 56 days - which surprised me, but 28 tablets in the box, to be taken as half a tablet a day, lasts for 56 days, and I had only taken a single tablet of that supplied by the pharmacy.

  I couldn't really think of anything more positive to say about it except it seemed to help, but was no cure for my angina. Fortunately I couldn't think of anything negative to say about it - until we had finished the call. There was one negative thing, but it was simply that I find the new make of the tablets a lot harder to break into two.

  After I had a shower I left another towel soaking in bio detergent in the stupid idea that I would finish washing it in the next few hours. I could have finished, and got it hanging up to dry yesterday, but after half a dozen rinses I was not happy that I had got out all the grease in it (I had been using it as a pillow protector for far too long), and so I started washing it from the beginning, but this time in ordinary detergent. I got as far as two rinses before time beat me. It is still in it's bucket this morning.

  Having cleaned me, I got dressed, and went out to get some shopping in Aldi. It was quite dull, but fairly mild, and I took a chance that it wouldn't rain by going out with bare arms in my sleeveless denim jacket. After not going to Aldi for several or more weeks, it was sort of exciting - in a rather subdued way. It was one of those shops where I bought a lot, but none of it was all that expensive, and I was happy with the final tally at the checkout.

  On the whole, most of what I bought was based on it having a low sugar content - although that did depend on reading the small print of the nutritional panel. Two things I bought, that were small boxes of savoury pastry, listed the sugar content per item, but there were 8 or so of the pastries in each little box. Some things, like the bag of about 10 pingpong ball sized mini oranges were a calculated risk, and I think I later found their they contributed very little sugar to my diet.

  Walking to Aldi seemed OK except for some mild stiffness of my ankles and legs. Maybe they slowed me down enough that I didn't even notice any onset of angina. Likewise when walking home, no chest problems at all, but then again I was walking even slower when carrying all my shopping. I only just made it all the way home without having to stop and rest my legs for a minute.

  After getting home, and putting all my shopping away, I decided to eat some of those savoury pastries for my lunch. I think I started on the feta and tomato pinwheels. The trouble was I found them very bland. I kept shovelling them in hoping that at least one would have a strong savoury taste, but alas no, Also double alas that I decided to try the other box which was a different flavour - or lack of it. I shovelled all those down until the box was empty as well. Incidently, each pastry was a single mouthful. Not only did I suddenly realise I was feeling a bit stuffed, but my blood glucose was now very high indeed !

  Apart from the dining room table getting the one minute tidy up, and the kitchen getting the two minute clean/tidy up, I did almost nothing of note until, at about 3.30pm, Jodie arrived to start our beer tasting session. It was not a good one. Jodie declined the ales that Sue had given me for Xmas, and decided to drink some of her evl tasting, not really beer, beers. Well that was par for the course, but there was worse to come !
  These are two of the three beers that Sue gave me, and I found them to be pleasant enough. The one on the left, a "golden ale" was slightly lager like, and the other was a darker, and more ale like.

  What was the "worst to come", was Jodie deciding to swap the SIM card from her new temporary mobile phone to her proper mobile phone.  I thought she had done that a week or two ago, but for some crazy reason she bought another cheap secondhand phone, the same as her old and dying phone, and had tried to copy everything to that. This was all because some of the scores of the many children's games she plays, didn't transfer to the new phone. It seems they didn't transfer the temporary phone either.

  Putting the SIM in the new (main/proper) phone just made things worse, and much stress was involved. I am convinced that the only way to do it when you have a new phone is just to do the transfer, using, usually, a built in app to transfer data from the old to the new phone, and do it in one go with no interuptions. That means doing it at home, and not on a bus, and with the phones on charge - particularly the old phone which in her case had very little battery capacity left. It seems everything she now does just makes things worse, and needs a lot of cleaning up.

  I was quite happy when she finally had reached about as far as she could get, and left to go and meet Alan half an hour later. I could finally have some dinner, or should I say, "some sort of dinner". Having checked my blood glucose, and found it almost dangerously high in the early afternoon, and alos knowing that mad lunch probably contained far too much of everything else as well as sugar, I decided I had to choose my dinner wisely.

  I did make a sort of wise choice, but one with a few loopholes. One thing I had bought in Aldi was a very lightweight feeling packet of extremely savoury tortilla chip straws. They promised a very low sugar content, and I decided I would just have them, and use then to scoop up some very low sugar containing cream cheese. It seemed rather nice, although the very savoury taste of the tortilla straws completely shaded the taste of the cream cheese - which was garlic and herb flavoured. That dinner seemed to be very satisfying, but there was a "but......." involved !

  I ate while watching an episode of The Simpsons. It was not a great episode, but it was good enough. That finished in time to watch and episode of Secrets Of The London Underground. I then turned off the TV, and than spent a bit of time catching up with tech news stories on The Register (dot uk dot come). I felt fine when I went to bed, but I was aware that I could still taste those very savoury tortilla straws every time I burped, and I seemed to be burping a lot after the gassy beers and gassy sugar free colas.

  I guess it was probably around 11pm when I put down the book I was reading, and turned out the light. Seconds after getting into my usual laying on my left side for sleeping, I started to feel heartburn, or was it angina developing. The pain started to get rather annoying, and it seemed to be spreading up my neck, and as fas as into my shoulders. That seemed like it was more like angina than heartburn, but I took some antacid tablets, and initially they did seem to help.

  I thought the pain was receding a bit, and immediately tried for sleep again, and just as quickly the pain came back. It was time to try an angina remedy - a 300mg soluble aspirin tablet dissolved in water. I took that, and waited for some affect while sitting at my PC reading more stuff offline. The aspirin seemed to help a lot, but it took some time, and I eventually took a couple of different antacid tablets. I was still not feeling 100% pain free when I went back to bed, and tried to sleep again.

  This time I did sleep, but it was not until gone 1am, and it was very light sleep. I seemed to wake up several times in the next two hours before I started to get deeper sleep. I woke up at just gone 6am, but felt so bleary that after checking my blood glucose I went back to bed until I got up very late (for me) at 8am. I felt less sleepy, in think, but I definitely still felt really crappy. I blame the drop in temperature, the horrible grey light, and the rain for it.

  My blood glucose readings were, and so far are still the best things about this morning. The Contour meter read 7.9mmol/l. I would have preferred a bit lower still, but that is still very good. The GlucoeRX meter read 7.4mmol/l, and that realaly is a good figure. The Sinocare meter decided to be a bit different again, and gave a reading of 8.5mmol/l. That is still in the OK sort of area, but I would be happier if it was more similar to the other two meters.

 Also on the subject of measuring things; Last night, when I was in a lot of discomfort, I checked my blood pressure an with a systolic pressure of 145mmHg it was rather high. I gave it a minute or two while I did some deep breathing, and tried to relax. That brought the systolic pressure down to a medium high 133mmHg, but my pulse rate, up in the sixities was still rather high. It was still high on my first blood pressure reading this morning, but I tried again about half an hour later, and the systolic pressure actually went up a couple of points to a still very good 107mmHg. The diastolic pressure was better at 45mmHg, and my pulse rate was a more relaxed, and more typical 57 beats per minute.

  One amusing thing I must write now before I forget it, concerns my bottom ! While I have been writing it felt like my chair had got very uncomfortable. I decided to stop and re-arrange the fairly thin cushion pads on it. Underneath one pad was a USB memory stick that I seemed to have lost some time ago. After putting the USB memory stick back intonthe drawer where it belongs, my seat is once again mostly comfortable !

  On such a bloody horrible, wet, dull and none too warm day, I do have some definite plans for today, and none of them involve going out. Once I have finished writing here I intend to lay down, read a page or two of my book, and if the feeling comes, I shall close my eyes and snooze for as long as I can. I'm not sure of the best order of the other two things. One is to finish washing the towel I started yesterday. With luck it may only need 5 or 6 rinses before I am happy to hang it on the clothes horse to dry.

  I might do that towel in the middle of doing my banking stuff. I have two credit cards that need to be paid off NOW ! I also want to log on to my bank to see how my current account stands, and note down my pension payments. I should have got a "pay" rise on both of them, and one or both may have already been paid at the higher rate. While paying one of my credit cards I can also check and see what the final cost was of paying for my train ride to St Thomas's hospital by credit card.
        







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