Yesterday was actually a rather nice day despite every revision to the weather forecasts predicting heavy rain, possibly thunderstorms and general doom and gloom. The reason for this was that the forecast for the borough of Lewisham was not localised as is should have been. Both forecasters can show a "weather radar" as a low frame rate film show. It clearly showed the awful weather predicted passing by miles to the north west, and to the south east of us. In the middle, where I am it was calm weather with loads of sunny spells through almost the whole day. It was even nearer 21° C than the 18° C forecast.
       

  The early version of the forecast says sunny spells. I would call it sunny with a clear blue sky. The latest revision says the sky will be mid grey, and it will be raining by 9am. I guess it is possible, but like yesterday, it seems possible that I am in a charmed location, and all the foul weather predicted will pass several miles away in probably the south east, and north west. Once again the forecast says it should be 12° C, and my outside thermometers says it is just about 14° C. Oh well, time will tell, and it will be easy to tell if we are lucky again, or if we will have to suffer black skies and torrential rain in the middle of the day. If there is any point in mentioning tomorrow's forecast...It may be dry, possibly with sunny spells, and 18 or 19° C expected.

   Yesterday was like the more I decided I would not go out, because of the foul weather forecast, the brighter and warmer it got. Maybe if I had gone out for some exercise I would have been drowned under torrential rain. Who knows ? I do know that I had a weirdly pleasant day, and I did achieve a few useful things.

  I did two useful bits of housework. One was to wash an old towel that had been used to protect the seat in front of my computer. It had caught the occasional bit of lost food, plus other unpleasant stains. I also washed the one seat pad that had a zip so the padding inside could be taken out. After many years of sitting on it that padding was compressed almost solid. I hope I can replace it with some foam rubber that was used to pack a box of beers !

  The other bit of housework was more cleaning in the kitchen. After the mixer tap was replaced, and looking all shiny, plus not leaking water everywhere, I have been slowly cleaning up around the sink. It would be handy if I had some wall mounted cupboards to store some of the stuff that usually lives on the sink draining board, but I haven't, although I have moved everything to elsewhere in the kitchen, and I hope I can keep up the discipline of keeping it all there.

  To do this move I had to do some serious cleaning of some of the stuff. It was all theoretically clean, but years of water splashes had left lots of limescale on things. I used up quite a bit of white vinegar to remove that limescale. I also used a lot more to scrub the draining board (actually part of the stainless steel sink) to a nice silvery shine (in most places). It was all surprisingly hard work, but the results seemed very satisfactory.

  I did do a few more very minor bits of housework, but none were noteworthy, and not really even memorable. I guess I am trying to make my day look more productive than it really was ! It is odd that one thing I didn't do was a lot of reading. reading generally makes the hours fly by, but I seemed to find other stuff to help the day almost fly by. One thing was actually just another form of reading, but fact not fiction. It was reading multiple stories, plus the comments on them. The comments are often more interesting than some of the technology news items in/on https://www.theregister.com/.

  One other thing In did yesterday was to mostly eat carefully....although how I can say that when I scoffed two cold and greasy "steak slices" for my lunch. A steak slice, if you are unfamilar with them, is a sort pastry envelope that is very poorly filled with a sort of brown gooey stuff that possibly does include steak, or beef. I ate mine cold because sometimes they taste better that way. I'll admit the filling is probably nicer when warm, but then the pastry can turn sort of soggy.

  My breakfast was two small (55gm) packets of pork flavour instant noodles. I have had them before, but bought another two packets to make sure that my opinion of them not being very tasty was still correct - it was ! Lunch I have already described. It was dinner that was most interesting. It was different to anything I usually eat, and tested my theories about sugar content to it's limits.

  I started my dinner with the rest of the tomato and red pepper flavoured rice I had the previous day. There was a lot of it left to eat, and it was fairly filling. The rice being risotto rice, was very starchy, and had almost set in a big lump. I added a small amount of water, plus a crumbled Oxo cubes, and finally some crispy fried onion before zapping it in the microwave. The water helped to "dissolve" the solid blob of rice, but I am not sure the added stuff added much flavour.

  Part of the idea of this dinner was to see if something moderately bland like rice would help stop the acid indigestion I keep getting when I go to bed recently. I added a dessert to the meal, It was about a fifth of a one litre tub of plain vanilla ice cream. It was selected to have less sugar than many ice creams, but the amount of sugar listed still seemed very scary. I was prepared, for the sake of experimentation, to accept a disastrous blood glucose reading in the morning - both from the ice cream, and from all the carbohydrate of the rice.

  There was nothing on TV that caught my attention last night, and I resorted to watching a couple of old recordings. I considered turning on the TV at 9pm when there was a choice of two programmes I might watch, but I opted to go to bed instead. I wasn't reading for very long before I felt sleepy enough for sleep. I am fairly sure I was asleep well before 10pm, and I had no indigestion. It seems I have found one cure for it (although a one off is not conclusive), but it does make me wonder if it is indigestion I have been suffering from, or possibly some sort of ulcer.

  On the whole I slept well, but after a few hours I woke up for a pee, and to turn the heater on low because I was feeling cold. Later in the night, the heater on low didn't seem warm enough, and I somehow managed to sleep under the duvet without feeling too hot. In fact, towards morning I was feeling very comfortable and cosy under the duvet. It is a shame that I can't seem to do that at the start of the night.

  I only remember bits of a series of dreams, and it is hard to describe the fine details because only those who have worked in a telephone exchange would recognise some parts of it where most of the dream took place. Basically the dream was that I was seconded to a telephone exchange where a member was off sick at the same time as another was on holiday. This happened to me a lot during my career working in telephone exchanges. I think the powers that be thought I was good and motivated and stuff.

   I was good, but I was actually as lazy as I could get away with. I was actually taught by a very experienced, and very clever, and lazy man. Many didn't like him because he seemed officious, but they never listened to what he said. I did, and it was that that if you worked quickly and accurately, you could have loads of time spare for hobbies, larking around, or just doing the crossword. If you did it right the fault averages went right down (and they were not something you could rig), and you got praise for doing a good job.

  It was really a matter of learning what were the most likely cause of failures, and attend to them early. There were laid down procedures for this sort of stuff, but personal knowledge worked a lot better. The basic aim was to get everything done during the morning, and then relax during the afternoon - which was sometimes good on those occasional times when a pint or two at lunchtime went down well.

  Some of this "relaxed attitude" was sort of reflected in last night's dreams. The most significant thing was that in one corner of the exchange was a bed instead of the more traditional work bench. Some, maybe a lot (it is all a bit vague now) was about rushing about trying to finish stuff so I could lay on the bed, and have a snooze. Having said that, another memory comes to mind. When I first arrived at the exchange I seemed to spend ages trying to work out how I could charge my phone !

  I woke up before 6am again, and again I did my best to sleep longer. Maybe that was less of a good idea this morning when tomorrow I need to be up, washed and dressed before 7am. More about that in a minute. I am not sure if I did sleep, but I definitely had my eyes closed for maybe 20 minutes before I got up. I seemed to feel moderately OK this morning, but I was a bit pissed off when I weighed myself.

  All I ate yesterday was as good for putting weight on as it was, rather surprisingly, at keeping my blood glucose readings nice and low. This morning the Contour meter read a magnificent 6.9mmol/l. The GlucoRX was just a tiny bit higher at 7.0mmol/l, and the Sinocare meter read an even better 6.7mmol/l. It was a shame about the GlucoRX meter just spoiling a "three cherries" of all in the dark green (which is better than light green !). These readings are only a fraction over what a non diabetic person might get. It is just a shame about the weight gain that came with it, it is also goes against logic, but it is all a great mystery.

  It is getting quite cloudy now, and maybe the forecast torrential rain could fall today. Once again I shall play it safe, and not go out, although I may make a possible dash to the Poundshop, or maybe Savers. A spare bottle of "Vanish" stain remover would be useful, but not essential, although I do like to make sure I have spares of everything important.

  Much of today will be preparing for tomorrow morning's early morning CT scan. There is some stuff I have to do that is orders from the Cardiology department, and some of that does tally with one of my biggest worries about the scan. This time tomorrow I should be about halfway through the entire thing preparation, the scan itself, and probably a compulsory post examination to make sure that some drugs that will be pumped into me have no ongoing effect. The big problem that I see is that I have only just passed a rather large poo. I hope I can do similar several hours earlier tomorrow !

  One order is that I don't eat 4 hours before the scan. If I can manage it I will not eat after about the end of the afternoon - maybe 4pm. Another order is no caffeine containing drinks the night before and in the morning. Basically this means I will have to switch to nothing but water, and I may as well start that after lunch. Lunch is going to be just salad, and maybe only one ready made salad, but probably two. Dinner will be more at teatime, and might be nothing more than ice cream.

   If I can do it I should try to be asleep as early as 8pm so I can easily be up, and fully refreshed at 5am. That will give plenty of time for a leisurely shower, getting dressed, and if I can restrain myself, a slow walk through the park to the hospital. Obviously I will have to start writing this electronic diary when I get back from the hospital, and probably after a double helping of instant noodles.


 





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