One thing is for sure - it is going to be wet today. The BBC say light rain or drizzle for the whole day. The BBC concentrate most of the rain as heavy rain until the afternoon, and then allow a few non raining hours before more heavy rain later.  I suspect the real answer is nobody knows when and how much rain there will be, but where a rain coat at all times !  Today was originally forecast (yesterday) to be a degree warmer than yesterday, but the reality seems to be it will be another degree colder. Just 15° C is forecast. Tomorrow could be dry with a few sunny spells, and it could be 17 or even 18° C.

   Yesterday was a very miserable day. The weather was most depressing, and I decided to follow suite by being depressed as well. Time seemed to drag, except it didn't really. When I think back it didn't seem to be a particularly long day, and I did manage to do a few useful things.

  One thing that made yesterday even more miserable was that the grey sky seemed to suck all the warmth from my bedroom, where I spent most of the day. It was quite weird because I seemed ultra sensitive to the temperature. One degree more and I felt too hot, and one degree less and I felt too cold. I was constantly turning the heater on and off during parts of the day.. At other times I could leave it off for an hour or more, and at other times I had it running for an hour or more.

  One thing I was sure of was that I wasn't going to go out yesterday, and so I didn't bother to have a shower. That meant I could get some laundry in to soak earlier than usual. It was also an unusual load of laundry. It was two tea towels, and three bar towels. It was actually a very light load, and it didn't even take a lot of rinsing before I hung it up to dry on the clothes horse. Unlike bath or hand towels it seemed very easy to rinse out all the detergent. It tends to bolster my theory that I am not rinsing myself after a shower as well as I could, and the bath towels in particular, are soaking up a lot of shower gel during use, and it is that which makes it so hard to rinse them out.

  About the only other thing of note that I did yesterday was editing about 3 episodes of Fireball XL5 that I had recorded on the TV. One difficulty about those recordings is that they were broadcast at 16:9 with black borders. My video editor insists on rendering them at the wrong aspect ration, and I have to use another application to get them into their original 4:3 aspect ratio. I have just this minute realised that I have been wasting my time - every single episode is available on the internet archive - https://archive.org/details/FireballXL5.complete This page also shows links to download other ancient TV shows. Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireball_XL5 for information about this 1960s children's TV favourite.

  On such a boring day, or maybe a day without good distractions, the temptation to eat too much was extremely high. I did partly give in to it, but I still did my best to keep my sugar intake as low as possible, and on the whole I think I did OK. Through the day I did eat 4 35gm packets of crisps. They claimed to have 45% less salt (compared to what ?), and the nutrition panel did seem to say their sugar content was very low. The fat content was....well, I don't care to know.

  It is hard to define exactly what my lunch was because I had several snacks in the early afternoon. Maybe it was the two small, easily peeled, oranges I had. That sounds like it was probably healthy, and so I claim it was my lunch. My dinner was another of those salads with tabbouleh and pomegranate seeds. The first seemed quite weird, but they seem sort of nice now. I added some ready cooked, sliced and piri piri flavoured chicken to it, and it seemed a good combination.

  I filled in a lot of time during the day by reading. My current book is "I will Fear No Evil" by Robert A. Heinlein. It's quite of  research about brain transplants he has his brain transplanted into the body of a young woman who had suffered fatal brain trauma. A fair bit of the book is about how he has to learn to be female, and "actively female" (in other words, to have sex with men).

  During the evening I only watched 30 minutes of live TV, I spent two hours watching some recent TV recordings. They were two editions of Have I Got News For You. I was supposed to edit them, and maybe I will some time, but they were very enjoyable as just time shifted TV. Both were repeats of shows originally made during the Covid 19 years, but were still very amusing (at least in places). They possibly went down a bit better with a couple of large whiskies.

  There was one other thing I did in the evening that didn't take up a lot of time, but was useful. I think it was after seeing some news footage that included some other cameramen. I think all the cameremen's camera had an LED video light attached. That made me wonder how well my very under utilised video lights would work as an alternative to using a flash gun on my still cameras. I think that bright light would soon get complaints if used at a gig, but it could be useful for other stuff. While having a quick play I decided to top up the rechargeable batteries that have been gathering dust for too long.

  I was in bed reading before it got dark outside (sunset is at 8.56pm tonight). I think I ended up reading for a good hour, but once I put the book down, and turned out the light, I seemed to fall asleep very quickly. I think I slept well with no periods of insomnia, and no need to keep turning the heater on and off - I think I had it running on low all night. I didn't seem to get up to pee much either. I only remember one singe thing from one dream. It was a camera bag with a purple lining. I have no idea what the dream was about.

  This morning I was hoping to do a nice big poo after not going at all yesterday (after my explosive output the day before), but as I write this all I have managed to pass is some wind. I don't actually feel constipated, but I hope it is not too long before I have a productive visit to the toilet. Sadly, after having eaten my breakfast (a 100gm pack of instant, spicy, noodles) I won't be able to get a true picture of my weight, but at worst I have put 200gm on, and if I made the mad prediction that I could have done 300gm of poo, it might be that I have lost another 100gm. Maybe tomorrow I will get a real idea of how my weight is doing.

  It seems that my attempts to limit my sugar intake while eating more than I would have wanted to on a nice day, almost worked. My average blood glucose reading for today is just a tiny bit higher then yesterday. The Contour meter read the highest at 8.1mmol/l. That is still a very good reading. Both the GlucoRX and Sinocare meters agreed on a reading of 7.7mmol/l. It is a shame that just a few days of very high readings have ruined my rolling average for the month, but I think I may just get away with it, by the skin of my teeth, when I give my blood samples tomorrow for my annual diabetic check up.

  I am in two minds about what I am going to do today. Staying in would be boring, and going out in the rain would be horrible. It is Wednesday, and by tradition I should be going to The Jolly Farmers at lunchtime to have two pints of Guinness, and do as much of The Metro's crosswords as possible. Angela is back from her Greek holiday, but has now definitely retired for work, and so no longer working 5 minutes walk away from the pub. I can't see her ever going to the pub again. Also, I think Ayse, my favourite barmaid, is on holiday this week. I still fancy going out just for a break from the same 4 walls, but going through the rain just to do a crossword doesn't appeal much. I may still go, or I may just jump on a train, and take some random rides to pass a few hours....or I may just stay in, and mope.








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