Yesterday was actually like an early summer day. There was sunshine or sunny spells all day, and the temperature rose to 22° C according to my thermometers.
       

  So far the weather seems to be following the Met Office forecast perfectly. The sky is white with 100% cloud cover, but that white is very bright, and it almost doesn't feel like it is cloudy. There is a possibility that small holes may appear in the cloud, and show some blue sky, or maybe let a few rays of sunshine through now and then. It should be another warm day with 21° C forecast. Tomorrow could feature some sunshine, but possibly mostly in the late afternoon. The temperature may be the same as today.

   Yesterday I amused myself doing some useful or needed things, and that was quite satisfying, but ultimately I felt frustrated that the day didn't bring better entertainment. Ideally I wanted to go out and take pictures somewhere, probably somewhere green, but I just couldn't really bring myself to manage myself to limit the inevitable angina pains,

  I did go out just once, and then not very far, or for a long time. After I had a shower I got dressed, and went out to Tesco. At the top of a very vague and imaginary shopping list was things for my experiments of using microwave in the bag, flavoured rices. Principally this meant some bags of rices, and some meat to go with them. Ideally I would have got something green to go with the meat and rice, but I had an imagination failure at that point.

  Others stuff I bought were a couple of Soba branded instant noodles. They are expensive compared to my usual choices, but spending £1.50 instead of 85p now and again for extra tasty noodles is occasionally worth it. I also bought some basic ice cream, and of course more fizzy drinks. One novelty was a small pack of crayfish tails. I also bought a small pork pie, and a small jar of pickled herring in dill vinegar.

  The walk to and from Tesco was quite pleasant. It was warm and sunny, and nothing really hurt, although my right knee felt a bit stiff and sore for the first minute of walking. Also my Aldi, own brand, trainers seemed very uncomfortable for a  minute, but after that I forgot I was wearing them. Before I forget, there was one other item I bought, and I would be using it later - a small squeegee for cleaning windows.

  Once I got home, and had put away my shopping, I had some lunch. It was the crayfish tails. They were nice, but not as exciting as hoped. I then had a pair of Tesco Finest Scotch eggs that I had bought from the reduced price shelf the previous time I had been to Tesco. Most stuff on the reduced price shelf is near or on it's sell by date. I think those Scotch eggs may have been on it because they had been mildly squashed - just enough to break slightly open on of the eggs. They still seemed perfectly nice.

  I let my lunch go down for half an hour, maybe more, before I tackled my first bit of housework sort of stuff. After my shower I had put in a small hand towel to soak in detergent, and also half a capful of Dettol. I had only used that hand towel for less than a day when I noticed it smelled very stale. The Bio detergent, and the Dettol hopefully killed the smelly bacteria. I noted that with so little use, it seemed a lot easier to rinse the towel out. Just 6 rinses seemed enough to get the water almost clear. Some bath towels seem to need a dozen of more rinses.

  After I had hung that towel up to dry, on the small clothes horse, in the dining room with the window open - and with a desk fan blowing at the towel, I embarked on another job. It was to clean the back kitchen windows, and clean behind the microwave oven, and the mini grill/oven. It was not a job I was looking forward to, but had to be done.

  The windows were particularly filthy, and there was a lot of black mildew around the bottom of them. Some of the filthy glass was wear I had blasted it with fly spray, and the rest was just from build up of condensation during the cold months - which effectively means through the winter and almost up to yesterday !Before I could clean the windows I had to move the microwave oven, and mini oven/grill. I was scared about what I might find behind them.

  At worst I wondered if I might find a dead mouse, and at a minimum I expected there to be a lot of mouse droppings. To my great surprise, the worst I found was a few dead flies, and maybe bits of flies. The window glass came up nice and shiny, although as it later dried I did notice a few smears I had not noticed when it was still damp. The small squeegee I bought worked well (except for the bits I later found I had missed). The black mildew seemed to come off really easily, and pretty soon the glass was sparkling on both sides, and the frames looked clean (or clean enough).

  It all felt a great accomplishment, and another bit of my kitchen was looking clean and shining. I am proud to say that I am being disciplined enough to keep the sink area bright and shiny since the mixer tap was replaced. The work surface to the left of the sink is also looking pretty good as well.

  After doing that cleaning job I put my feet up, and as I relaxed, and read some pages from the latest book I am reading, I began to feel a bit depressed. I wanted to do more, but I couldn't think of any job I could do, and finished in the immediate time. I wasn't even sure I had the energy for something like some hoovering that really should be done sooner or later.  Maybe a boozing session would have been a wonderful distraction, but not with Jodie. Someone I could talk complete bollocks with while getting slowly drunk on something as simple as Guinness would have been ideal.

  I stopped reading while thinking about all this, and while I did so I closed my eyes. Time seemed to become very fluid, and I think I probably had a snooze, but it started and ended so gently that I wasn't really aware that I had slept. The only clue was the way the clock seemed to leap forward 20 or 30 minutes. I guess the next thing I wanted was for it to be dinner time, but that was still a couple of hours away. I got stuck into the book again, and that helped to melt away some of the time.

  Half an hour before dinner, which I set at the arbitrary time of 6.30pm, I put some bacon in the mini oven/grill to cook until it was almost starting to get crispy on the edges. 20 minutes later I put a bag of chicken flavoured rice with sweetcorn in the microwave. The packet said just  one and a half minutes was all that was needed to warm it through. I allowed some extra time for it to cool off a bit until I poured it onto the bacon which I had drained off, and put on a plate. It was a pleasant enough dinner, but it was not nearly as wonderful as hoped for.

  That dinner did fulfil one wish even if it seemed blander than desired. On the other hand it was the blandness that was later a good thing. I wasted an hour and a bit watching a recording of an old episode of Bottom. I could have watched another episode, but I was starting to feel a bit sleepy. I brushed my teeth and went to bed - initially just to read for a while.

  It seems the rice and bacon I had for dinner almost didn't give me any indigestion/heartburn. I say almost because I did get a hint of it, and this time I wasted no time taking a couple of antacid tablets. One delay in getting to sleep was that my guts were rumbling a bit, and it seemed it was mostly wind. It was sort of strange that it was so easy to fart while in bed, but nothing, absolutely zero would happen when I went and sat on the toilet for 5 or 10 minutes, although I did fart again when walking back to my bedroom.

  It was not fully dark when I went to sleep. It was very cloudy at the time, and so it was possibly some time before sunset at 9.20pm last night. Once asleep I did seem to sleep better than for ages. I think I may have only got up to pee once in the middle of the night, although I suppose I did have to get up to pee almost an hour before I intended to get up. I did have some dreams, and they were all set in a work environment. I can't really remember much about them apart from one bit of dream seemed to be about repairing an old Nokia phone - which were basically unrepairable, although I guess some modules could be replaced.

  Part of my experiment with rice being a substantial part of my dinner, was also to see how it effected my morning blood glucose measurement, as was as it's effect on my indigestion problem. I was quite disappointed with my blood glucose measurements this morning. For one thing the three meters seemed to give very different readings for some reason. The Contour meter read 8.1mmol/l, and that is acceptable. The GlucoRX meter read 9.0mmol/l, and that is OK-ish, but not acceptable. The Sinocare meter read a neither high nor low 8.6mmol/l, or really, slightly high. Maybe I can blame the rice, or maybe something else.

  I am unsure what I am doing today. Once again I am caught between the idea of going out while it is fairly warm and bright (the sky looks very cloudy, but it is still sunny outside), and wanting to avoid angina pains by staying in, and doing something useful. I think I can convince myself that I can't put off hoovering under my desk today. There are so many crumbs under there that I am surprised pigeons aren't flying through the window to feed there. One possible, maybe unlikely, destination if I do got out is the South Norwood Country Park (or the old sewage farm as I once know it). It is right next to Elmers End station, and there are options to cover bits of it by tram services, and thus reduce the amount of walking I would have to do. Oh well, there is plenty of time to come to some sort of decision.


 





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