The forecasts for yesterday, including some revisions half way through the day, didn't really show what the weather was really like. There was indeed a lot of rain in the morning, and a torrential downpour (and some reported hail in it) or twon in nthe afternoon, but they thing that was completely missed were all the sunny spells. At times it looked like how a June day should look, although the temperature remained very low. I'm unsure if the temperature ever made 15° C - the highest I remember seeing was a very poor 14.4° C.
       

  Both forecasters (BBC and Met Office) seemed to underestimate the amount of sun this morning. It looks like we'll lose it soon, but as I write this it is still sunny - a full hour after it was supposed to stop. Once it does stop it will probably stay dull for the rest of the day.  The BBC says there will be a lot of light rain from late morning onwards, and The Met Office has added a couple of hours of light rain at 4 and 5pm. Once again the highest temperature today will be a definitely non June 14° C. Incidently, the temperature at 6am this morning was reported as feeling like just 7° C.  Tomorrow may be a tiny bit closer to warm with 16° C possible in the afternoon. It will probably be dull all day, and some light rain could fall later in the afternoon.

   Yesterday's forecast cold and dull weather could have reduced me to doing very little, but the occasional sunny spells, with a lot of the sky looking nice and blue, did seem to spur me on a bit, although the first unlikely thing I did while it was still very dull, and looking like it could rain at any minute.

  That unlikely thing was to go out on a shopping expedition to Poundstretcher. With the possibility of being rained on it seemed wise to wear a coat. With my recent small weight loss it seemed like a good time to wear my rarely worn new biker jacket. It did seem to feel slightly more comfortable than last time I wore it. One thing was that it didn't seem to feel too hot with the zip on the front done all the way up from the time I left home, until I arrived home again. I have to admit it still felt a bit like I was wearing a corset - not a very tight one, but snugger than I would like.

  One of the things at the top of my shopping list was a couple of bottles of bleach. I like some of the scented toilet cleaning gels, but they need more scrubbing than just simply pouring bleach in the toilet pan. Later on I would use it a bit more than that. I got my bleach OK, but one thing I could not see was any "Vanish" stain remover. I am very much a convert to that after it did a perfect job getting the blood stains out of my shorts after a silly accident had me dripping blood on those shorts without initially noticing I was doing it.

  The other things that were on my shopping list (an imaginary one in my head rather than written down) was some foodstuffs. I wanted, and bought quite a lot of instant noodles in pots (not the same as Pot Noodles), and I also bough 5 packs, because they only have 3 in each pack, bitter orange chocolate biscuits. They are remarkably low in sugar content for a chocolate coated biscuit. Also, with each biscuit individually wrapped, there is less temptation to eat too many.

  I also got some stuff from the drug section - some paracetamol, Rennies antacid tablets, plus the two different types of hay fever tablets. Finally there were a few cans of drinks. I spotted some sugar free Tango mango flavoured fizzy drink. I bought two cans, and after chilling one, back at home, I tasted it. I think it was probably very nice, but I am not sure I would want to drink that much of it, and not too frequently.

  I forgot to mention that before I went out I had a shower. At the end of the shower, as I was drying myself, I detect a slight sweaty smell from the small bath towel I was using. I probably could have used it several more days before it became too smell to use, but I made the decision to put it into soak in Bio detergent as soon as I was dry. A bit later in the afternoon I would have to go through the hardship of multiple rinses and wringing outs before I could hang it up to dry.

  Before I started that hard work I had a sort of rest, and I had an unhealthy, but quite light lunch. It was two small bags of crisps, and two of the previously mentioned bitter orange, dark chocolate coated biscuits. I did consider other, bigger options, but I was planning quite a big dinner later.  I spent some time reading, and I tried for a short snooze, but I don't think I actually went to sleep.

  It was a couple of hours into the afternoon before I returned to the towel I had left soaking. It seemed to me that I had not used it long enough to capture any bits of soap left on my body, when drying my body, but it still seemed to need an awful lot of rinsing before I thought the rinse water was just about clear enough to say the job was done. I actually did the job in two parts because I heard my phone bleep, and went to see what that was. It was another 15 minutes before I was back to rinsing the towel

  Once I thought that the towel had been rinsed enough, although if I had the energy another couple of rinses may have been better, I hung it on the small clothes horse in the dining room with the fan heater on low, blowing at it. On such a chilly day I didn't really worry about burning an extra bit of electricity. I went back to the bathroom to take off my long sleeved rubber gloves I had used for doing the washing, rinsing, and wringing out, but I decided to leave them on for one more job.

  That job was to use some bleach to clean a lot more of the toilet bowl than usual - including the seat and the lid. I couldn't bend down enough to clean the pedestal bit, but the interior of the bowl, the rim, the seat, top and bottom, plus the lid came up nice and shiny. I also cleaned the back of the rim that is usually partly hidden by the seat or lid when it is up - and it is most of the time. What I found was most unpleasant. I am not quite sure how it got there, but it was the last evidence of the time I violently threw up a few weeks ago. The toilet now smells much more pleasant !

  I also did some cleaning in the kitchen after I had finished the first part of preparing my dinner. That was mostly just rinsing some diced chicken that had started to "sweat" as it got perilously close to it's use by date, and to clean and cut up some baby potatoes. I would cook the two things in some chicken stock as the base of my dinner. Once they were cooking in the microwave, I had a good scrub up in and around the sink using some spray antiseptic cleaner, and a scouring sponge. It all looked a lot nicer for that.

  I think I put my feet up again after that, and didn't really do anything but read until much closer to dinnertime when I added the final ingredient to my stew - some frozen mixed vegetables. It was all almost healthy. In fact it probably was fairly healthy, although maybe it was too big to be truly healthy. If I had had a bigger container to cook it in I might have added another baby potato or two, and a lot more mixed vegetables, and made two dinners out of it.


  While getting the stock cubes I used in my dinner, I took a closer at the vintage packet of Aspro, pictured on the left, that had been stored in between packets of stock cubes for reasons I can no longer remember. I saw that they were "best before" 2002, and were now 22 years late for use. I noted that they were described as "soluble". I don't know if they are still available. All the aspirin I have seen lately are described as "dispersible", and not soluble.

  I wondered how age might affect them, and so I opened the still sealed packet, and found each tablet was encased in a plastic lined foil pouch. That should have isolated them from the outside world, oxygen, and other gases that might react with the aspirin. As an experiment I dissolved one in some tepid water, and drank it. It seemed perfectly normal, but later on the is a chance that it could have had a negative reaction, but I think it was probably coincidence.

  There was a bit of watchable TV on last night, and I spent a few hours glued to the gogglebox. The very first thing was an old episode of The Simpsons. That was slightly amusing. Potentially more entertaining was a brand new episode of "Abandoned Engineering". The presentation of the programme is always really annoying - they try to make it all mysterious and sensational, but could present the simple facts in half the time, and be just as educational. I generally avoid these programmes now, but last night one of the features was about the Radio Caroline boat, The Ross Revenge. Hmmmmm.......

  It was hardly abandoned, and they way they described the history seemed basically correct, but not in the right order, and barely mentioned the previous boat Caroline used, The Mi Amigo, although they did show a picture of it sinking. I don't think I learned anything new at all from that segment of the programme, and anyway, I have actually been on the boat while it was in Tilbury harbour, and heard most of the stuff direct from those who were there.  I then watched QIXL, and that was one of the better episodes.

  I think it was 10pm when I went to bed, but it would be two hours before I managed to sleep. I seemed OK while I was reading in bed, but as soon as I turned on my side to go to sleep I got a horrible pain in my chest, it was not a strong pain, but was still very annoying. At first I thought it was heartburn, but antacid tablets did little for it. Then I thought that maybe it was some sort of angina, but that usually spreads, and this pain seemed to stay still.

  I wondered if it was some sort of reaction to the vintage Aspro I had taken earlier on, but while possible, it seemed unlikely. One interesting thing is that when I got out of bed, and sat down in front of my computer, the pain seemed to fade away after a time. That suggested something to do with posture, and sure enough, when I went back to bed the pain returned. I now suspect that maybe I had pulled a muscle, or something like that (maybe the impossible "twisted rib") while I was putting all my strength into wringing out the bath towel earlier in the afternoon.

  One definite trouble is that after heart attacks and angina, I am particularly sensitive to chest pains. If I had no history of chest pains I might have done my best to ignore it, and gone to sleep anyway. Being, or seeming to be be posture related, it was a lot like, maybe identical, to the troubles I had for ages when things like my operation scar tissue, plus bits of skeleton wired back together, and slowly healing (I hoped)  would get inflamed - sometime by cold weather, and last night was not exactly warm even with the heater on low.

  It was probably around midnight when I managed to fall asleep, but I was awake again after about an hour, and I was still rather uncomfortable. In fact it wasn't until I got up, and had spent 5 or 10 minutes on my feet before In was pain free. The next time I woke in the night was after another hour or so of sleep. That time I definitely needed a pee, but I think I managed to fall asleep so quickly that the pain had too little time to build up after laying down.

  On the whole, while I did have some good hours of sleep, and even a few dreams that seemed to be about drinking in pubs, on the whole it feels like I had a lousy night. Not having any pains soon after getting up was good, but I still felt pretty crappy when I got up, and I don't really feel that good now. It is nothing specific, and the bad sleep, and maybe the autumnal weather account for most of the negativity.

  My weight is up a little this morning, but I think it is just typically oscillating about a general downwards trend. Maybe tomorrow it will be back in a downwards direction.  My blood pressure, on the first attempt is very good this morning. It is 106/45, and my blood pressure meter puts that in the "optimum area". My blood glucose could be very good, good, or boringly normal depending on which meter to believe. The Contour meter gave a very good 6.9mmol/l. The Sinocare meter gave a good 7.2mmol/l, and the GlucoRX meter gave a run of the mill 8.0mmol/l reading.

  Despite what the forecasts may say, it is still fairly sunny, with lots of small patches of blue sky. The BBC say it should be raining right now, and the Met Office say it will soon get very gloomy, with rain in an hour or two. I am almost tempted to go out for a walk, but if I do I think it more likely it will just be to Tesco, rather than anything resembling exercise. What I probably should be doing is some more housework. It could be little more than 3 or 4 weeks, and even possibly just 2 weeks before I might get a call from Patricia to say she will be on a plane from Argentina, and will be wanting to base herself here for a day or two so she can visit all her favourite London sights - most importantly the National Gallery. It would be nice to get some of my home looking clean and tidy for her stay.


 





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