The sky is very grey, and it is raining, but I don't think I can call it heavy rain, although it could get worse. The BBC actually says just light rain, and thinks it will finish with drizzle at 2pm. The Met Office still says heavy rain until midday. After the rain it might get a bit less grey, but the chances of seeing the sun today seem very slender. It is going to be cold compared to earlier in the month, and the best temperature may only be 16° C, although in sunshine that could still be considered warm-ish. Tomorrow could be light grey from dawn to dusk (Met Office), or feature a single hour of light rain at 1pm, and sunny spells and sunshine from 3pm (BBC). Both forecasters predict 18° C tomorrow.
 
   Yesterday was fairly productive, and yet it didn't feel like the triumph it should have been. It was a morning when I felt like doing stuff a lot earlier than usual, and I was washed, dressed, and off to Tesco, to get some shopping, earlier than usual.

  I almost had an actual, although not written down, shopping list, and I kept to it except for the bits I couldn't find. The bits I was hoping to find were some bargains on the reduced prices shelves, but Tesco seems to have hidden where they keep the reduced price stuff. In a way that was good because it stopped me buying stuff like quiche or pork pies. Instead I stuck to the healthy, or hopefully healthy stuff on my list.

  Top of that list was ready made salads, although I did buy some ingredients to make my own, and possibly even healthier salads. The latter may have been a mistake because I ended up buying 4 ready made salads, and it might be another day or two before I have finished those, and then one more day before I build my own salad. By then the bag of "aromatic salad leaves" could be starting to wilt.

  One other thing I couldn't find was any tubs of Oppo low calorie and low-ish sugar ice cream. I checked several other makes of ice cream, including some that claimed to be low calorie. I guess they were lower calorie by the skin of the marketeers teeth, but they were still almost pure sugar ! I kept well clear of those. The one luxury item I did but was a Clubcard discounted bottle of Bushmill's Irish whiskey.

  While walking to Tesco my chest was fine, but I was getting feeling of impending rain in an assortment of joints and muscles. Walking home again with  x 2 litres of sugar free cola, plus a bottle of whiskey in my rucksack, put a moderate strain on my back, neck and other muscles. Fortunately my shopping bag was fairly light, but it was still a bit of a slog to walk home again, and it was a relief to get that rucksack off my back once I was indoors.
  One of the salads I bought was as shown above - Pomegranate Tabbouleh salad. I had bought one of these ready made salad a week or two ago. It had a reduced price sticker on it, and the reduced price seemed about fair for it, but yesterday I bought one full priced to see if I really did like it, or if the first just had novelty value. The nutritional information is slightly misleading because it refers to a quarter of the pack, but I can't believe it was anything except a single meal. That made the sugar content a tiny bit high, but it was still very low calorie, and it seemed to be a nice lunch.

  During the afternoon I did a lot of intensive resting, but I did break my professional level laziness to do two jobs. Early in the morning I washed a single hand towel. It was partly to test some new detergent I had bought the other day. It seemed pleasant enough, although ultimately it still smelled like washing powder (but was a liquid). I was almost tempted to hang it on the washing line to dry, and with hindsight I probably should have.

  Much later in the afternoon, almost early evening, I did another laundry job. It was to hand wash a pair of jeans. As can probably be imagined, it was quite a taxing job. It was made worse because I knew I had to dry it indoors. It was far too late to dry last night, and I knew that this morning was going to be wet. I had to use extra effort to try and wring those jeans as dry as I could get them before hanging them on the clothes horse with a desk fan blowing at them.

  I must confess that I did have a naughty little snack during the afternoon. It was a single small packet of crisps, a couple of no added sugar yoghurt cereal bars, and a single real dark chocolate covered biscuit. To make matters worse, after wrangling those wet jeans, I started to feel that the single salad I intended to have for my dinner, didn't feel like it would be satisfying enough. I made the unusual choice of a pot of instant noodles as a sort of starter. For some reason it was unusually enjoyable.

  I watched a bit of TV last night, and I was thinking along the lines of an early-ish night. That never happened. It was about 9pm when my "friend" Lee phoned me with a simple question, but then he had an attack of verbal diarrhoea, and wouldn't shut up. I wouldn't have minded so much if anything he had to say was interesting. I couldn't see the point of him telling me so many boring things.

  It was about 10.30pm before I was in bed, and then I read for maybe another half hour. I don't recall any difficulty in getting to sleep one I turned the light out, and turned over. I had no acid reflux/heartburn pains, but I could feel a few assorted muscles mildly complaining after doing all the laundry. It seemed I must have been sleeping very solidly, and like he night before, I can't seem to recall much about my night.

  Like the night before, I did wake up feeling a bit cool at 3 or 4am, and I turned the heater on low before having a pee, and almost instantly falling asleep again. Once again I woke almost on the dot of 6am, and once again I turned over to go back to sleep again. This morning that was exactly what I did. It seemed like it took around a single minute to get to sleep again, and I slept for almost exactly an hour.

  I only remember some of the concept of a single dream. I have no idea how it started, but I do know it ended because I woke up. It was about a huge thing, but almost "presented" as pieces of paper. It was about aircraft (or possibly spacecraft) runways somewhere. There were two parallel runways that could be used singly or at the same time, and they showed plenty of signs of wear and tear. Between the two was an emergency runways that had never been used, and it was in text book condition. I have no idea what may have triggered this dream, or even if any dream before it had anything to do with it. It was all very strange !

  Despite my slightly suspect eating yesterday, my scales said I had lost a single 100gm this morning. Such a small figure could mean anything in reality - it is less than a good poo, and medium wee, but that is what the scales said ! There was no good news about my blood glucose this morning. It was back up again. The Contour meter read 8.1mmol/l. I guess that is actually moderately good, but the GlucoRX meter read 8.6mmol/l, and that is not so good, but still sort of OK. The Sinocare meter had one of it's fits again, and came up with a much higher reading of 9.3mmol/l. That has really spoiled my readings for this morning.

  Today.......well, it's cold and wet, and so I don't fancy going outside at all. That leaves indoor amusements. I could do a bit more laundry - just a couple of t-shirts and some underwear, but there is no urgency about it. On the other hand, it might stop/reduce a future backlog that could be annoying to clear, plus the weather forecast for the next week or two seems to show an autumnal tendency - no sunshine to dry stuff on the washing line. In reality I will probably do a lot more reading, and maybe I'll edit a TV recording or two.

  Tomorrow morning I have my appointment with the Cardiologist. Hopefully they have diagnosed why I am suffering from so much angina again after minimal exercise, and even more hopefully they will have a proposal for a cure - even t involves lasers, operations, and such like. I need to get out early tomorrow, and so I intend to have a shave, and wash my hair early this evening. Tomorrow I'll just need a quick shower before going out. I may not have time to write anything before I go out.
        







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