As I write this it is dull, but dry. The Met Office predict we will soon be getting some sunny spells, although The BBC say no sunny spells until mid afternoon. Both forecasters agree that the temperature will rise to 18° C, and possibly 19° C. The BBC predict more sunny spells tomorrow, The Met Office say less. Tomorrow's temperature will probably be similar to today.

   Yesterday was an odd sort of day. During the morning when it was very dull and wet it seemed like it could be a very slow, very boring day. It was neither, but only when looked at, at a certain angle. I did one good thing, and one thing that was could ultimately be pointless, and another thing that was definitely worth doing.

  I started the day as if I was going to go out, but that was not the case. I wrote yesterday that Ayse, my favourite barmaid was probably on holiday, and later on I got confirmation by seeing a picture of the view of where she was holidaying. I still considered that I might go to the pub at lunchtime, or maybe go on a few almost pointless train rides, and so I did the full shave, shampoo, and shower in the morning. I didn't go out in the end, but I still felt good for having cleaned myself up.

  One thing I did after my shower was to leave a white hand towel in to soak in detergent. A few minutes later I thought I may as well add a white t-shirt. I wear few white t-shirt, even in summer, and so it was good to have the white towel to wash with it. It was quite a few hours before I returned to that laundry, did all the rinses, and hung it up to dry on a clothes horse.

  My afternoon was spent mostly alternately reading, and doing some heavy downloading. I discovered that the Internet Archive considers TV programmes older than 50 years to be out of copyright. Someone suggested that might not be the case in The UK, but nevertheless, I discovered they have a wealth of 50+ year old TV programmes. They include almost all the Gerry Anderson "Supermarionation" programs from Four Feather Falls through to Captain Scarlet.

  While downloading gigabytes of the stuff I was thinking that my friend Kevin might like copies, and that mead me on to think of what other programmes of the 1960s we both liked. The only one I could think of was "The Man From Uncle". I was surprised/delighted, that the internet archive had four complete seasons of it. Back in the day we only had black and white TVs (the BBC colour service started in 1967 if I recall correctly) and so it was not surprise to see the first two seasons were in black and white, but it was a surprise to see seasons 3 and 4 in colour (or color -  because it was all American).

  The internet archive only stores these old TV programmes in CGA = 640x480 definition. It looks a bit small on a big PC screen, but it does closely match the definition of broadcast TV at the time most of this stuff was originally broadcast. For some of the stuff available on DVDs they would often re-scan the original film negatives for the very best quality, but so often when watching stuff that you haven't seen in 50 years, you get engrossed, and provided the quality is not awful, it just looks sort of "natural".

  In the end I downloaded 116 GB of data yesterday. The downloading itself looked after itself, but it too little bits of time to look for, and select what I wanted to down load, and there there were more little bits of time when some of it was downloaded in .zip format, and needed to be unzipped after download, Others were downloaded as bit torrents in simultaneous video formats, and I had to select the versions I wanted, and throw away the rest. Then there was all the housekeeping stuff - making sure the files were in their correct folders, and making a backup of the files.

  Many of the "little bits" added up to taking up a lot of the afternoon, and I got less reading in than I expected. I can't say it was enjoyable, but still rather satisfying to download more nostalgia than I can probably watch in the rest of my lifetime. Apart from reading during the breaks, I also stopped for a few snacks. I had some rice crackers and cheese, and I also had a small instant noodles. The latter was nice because it was spicy and hot at a time when it was feeling remarkably cool with the heater off for as long as I could stand it.

  My dinner was a home made salad, admittedly based on a core of ready washed, and ready to use, mixed salad leaves. I added some cherry tomatoes, and a couple of small sweet peppers, some ready prepared, sliced, piri piri chicken. I gave it all a good sprinkle of Aldi's read made oil and balsamic vinegar salad dressing. It was rather nice, but didn't seem that filling. I followed it up with a dessert of two small apples - one very slightly sweet, and te other slightly tart.

  It was gone 9pm, and seemingly lighter outside than it had been for nearly all the day, when I went to bed. I read for some time, and at a guess I turned out the light at 10pm, and quite quickly fell asleep. The fact that I remember very little of the night suggests I slept rather well. I know I turned the heater on low at some time, maybe an hour or so after midnight, and at 5am I turned it on full. I can barely remember getting up for a pee, but I am sure I must have done so a few times.

  I only remember one bit of dream, although I am certain there was a lot more of it, or on a similar theme. The part I remember was about a bridge across a river. The bridge was known to be rotten, and due to fail. I am sure I crossed it one time and it was fine. The next time it seemed that one side was drooping a lot. It was just a timber bridge, and so it was not surprising that it was rotting. The curious thing that I only noticed with hindsight, was that the worse the bridge got, the lower the river seemed to get.

  When the bridge finally collapsed the river was no more than a trickle, and it was easy to walk across in ordinary shoes if care was used to avoid some of the deeper puddles. I was about to cross the river again when I heard a strange noise that was a bit like the noise a crow makes. Suddenly a fox ran into view, and picked up something from the river bed. The noise stopped, and I though the fox may have caught a frog or something. Once the fox realised I was not going to chase it, it dropped it's prey. It was a huge snail. The dream seemed to end at that point, but it looked like the fox had caught itself a substantial snack - if you like eating raw snails !

  This morning I am technically constipated again, although I don't feel uncomfortable. This could be a problem later. It was a problem this morning in so much that it distorted my weight when I got on the scales. I am sure, at least I very much hope so, that it is not for want of a poo that my weight seems to have gone up a whole kilogram this morning. That is a little bit in line with some of the food I have eaten lately - low sugar, but not always low calorie.

  Watching my sugar intake while indulging in several munchies while bored in this dull weather, has definitely paid off. This morning the Contour blood glucose meter read a wonderful 6.8mmol/l - into the dark green zone (according to my own invention of coloured zones). The other two meters, the GlucoRX and Sinocare didn't have such wonderful readings, but one said 7.0mmol/l, and the other 7.1mmol/l - both in the light green, and both extremely good.

  Having a nice low start to the day would have been very important if I had not messed it all up by having a 100gm portion of instant noodles. At 10.20am, this morning, I should finally be giving an elbow's worth of blood for my annual diabetic blood check. My breakfast has raised that lovely 6.8mmol/l to a bad 11.0mmol/l. Fortunately the diabetic blood test, although measuring the instantaneous blood glucose level, is really judged on a sort of average over about 2 months. My current average is nothing to be proud of, and yet again I think it is probably better than my last blood test.

 In other medical news: I received a letter from the cardiology department of the hospital yesterday. I now have an appointment for a CT angiogram scan. This is a bit different to my MRI scan in that it uses beams of X-Rays to build up a 3D picture of my arteries to the heart. As such there is a bit of a radio risk, and for an angiogram it is one of the highest for CT scanners. The radiation risk is of no real concern, and the actual scan will probably be like my MRI scan - interesting, but ultimately boring ! The real bother is that it will be at 8am on a Sunday morning (in June). At 8am it is, based on days like today, very unlikely that I will have emptied my bowels, and will be farting like a trooper, and probably feeling quite uncomfortable. I'll have to try to eat very lightly, but with lots of fibre, the day or two before !

  Once I have given my blood samples today, I will probably go to Tesco for more salad ingredient, but this time, having given my blood samples, I can treat myself to something naughty. I won't know what it is until I see it, but I expect it will provide a nice greasy buffer to this afternoon's beer tastings session with Jodie.
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