Yesterday was another day that seemed far better than forecast. Once again it was like a summers day with mostly sunny spells, except for an hour or two around midday. I think the temperature forecast got it right at about 20° C.
       

  Today has started out bright and sunny, but rather cool after clear skies in the night. Every single hour of daylight is forecast to feature full sunshine except 10am when only sunny spells are expected. The latest revision predicts a peak of  22° C today. Tomorrow could see 23° C, but maybe only the morning will feature all the sunshine. It does feel like summer has actually started now.

   Yesterday was one of those days that was good in places, but averaged out to a not good day. I think I made some very poor choices in the evening, and that dragged the average down a lot. Oh well, the middle of the day was quite good even if only "quite good".

  The bright morning was quite encouraging at first, but then I realised that later on I would face the trials of walking just slightly more than I currently can without the angina pains starting up. I didn't let that spoil having a good shave, shampoo and shower. It did seem that the morning went very smoothly, and I didn't have to rush, and still had time to allow a bit of extra time to get to the station on my way to The Jolly Farmers.

  I left early enough that I could have walked a lot slower than I actually did. I just can't seem to get the hang of very slow walking. I arrived at the station still with plenty of time to pick up, and carefully rip the advertising sheet off a copy of The Metro for me, and one for Ayse (my favourite barmaid). I could have, and should have rested a bit at that point, but chose to cross to the "up" platform almost straight away. That just took me over the edge, and I was in some discomfort after walking over the bridge.
  The first train I saw was 707002, as pictured above. It was the Hayes (Kent) service, and I snapped it just coming into the down platform. It was a train that I already had a picture of in it's blue Southeastern livery, and red South West Railway livery, but as can be clearly seen on the front of the train it also, like 707001, has a new mysterious attachment on the front. In the front window of the train there is a yellow/orange sticker that if I remember correctly, warns against coupling to other trains. Maybe the new thing on the front is some sort of detector that reminds drivers/shunter if they try and couple to another train, but that is pure speculation.

  As usual, I arrived at the pub early. I assumed I would be there early enough to make a start of The Metro's quick crossword, but Dik, who I was meeting there, almost followed me in. The meeting was specifically for him to give me a large bottle of whisky, unfortunately not one of the 1.5 litre bottles, of Tesco Special Reserve whisky that I swapped for my old Canon SX40 camera.

  Dik had stuff to do in the afternoon, and so only stayed for two pints. I stayed on for one extra pint of Guinness, and managed to almost complete the quick crossword, and even solved 3 or 4 of the cryptic crossword clues. It had been slightly dull when I arrived at the pub, but there was full sunshine when I left. I would have liked to walk all the way home in the sunshine, but I knew I would not really be able to enjoy it, and would have to stop once or twice to let the angina settle down.

  I have to admit that was one of first times that the idea left me really quite pissed off. I was thinking "summers finally here, and I can't use it". Going home on the train is not much shorter than walking home, and it probably takes longer. I guess I may have got more exposure to the sunshine than if I had walked all the way home. That was the logical situation, but not the emotional situation.

  I guess my angina had not fully settled down by the time my train arrived back at Catford Bridge - even though it was very mild when I reached the end of the platform at Ladywell. All that means is that I was getting quite uncomfortable when I got home. Even before I got home I was feeling very hungry - not the hunger from lack of food, but a hunger for comfort food. I could happily devoured something like fried chicken and chips, but that was not available.

  I could only eat what I had already at home. That turned out to be two packets of alleged prawn cocktail crisps (which just tasted hot and spicy without a single hint of shellfish), and another quarter of a one litre tub of ice cream. I must admit that making a big tub of ice cream last 3 or more days is quite an achievement for me. Maybe I still disbelieve that it doesn't affect my blood glucose as much as it probably should.

  Once I had eaten I quickly started to feel not depressed, not even quite miserable, but I think the word "deflated" works best as an emotional state. I was basically bored, and while there were things I could potentially do, there was nothing I wanted to do. I laid on my bed and read until I think I dozed off. I woke up an hour nearer dinner time. It was probably then that I made a bad error in planning my dinner.

  Dinner was going to be boiled potatoes and sausages, and indeed that was what it was. The portion of potatoes was a bit big because I wanted to use up some new potatoes that were just starting to deteriorate. I made the stupid decision to cook and eat the whole pack of sausages, and then to make matters worse I added some ready made, crispy fried onions plus tomato ketchup and mustard. It was quite big, and very rich, but somehow it didn't seem very satisfying even if it was a bot too filling.

  I stayed up to watch QIXL, and that finished at 10pm. I went straight to bed, but even before I laid down I was starting to get indigestion form my dinner - including lots of fried onion flavour burps. As soon as I laid down I got terrible heartburn. I took the usual remedies, but they only helped a bit, and it was possibly 1am before I was almost comfortable, and able to get to sleep. Even then I had a pretty rough night. At one time I woke up with some sweat on my pillow, and decided it was because I had wrapped the duvet around me too tightly. I kicked it off, and turned the heater on low...and then felt too cool for a while.

  I know I had some pretty wild dreams during the night, and I thought I could still remember one well enough to describe it, but it seems all I can remember is that it involved a one to one conversation with somebody about something. It is all quite annoying because I felt sure it was something interesting and worth describing when I first woke up. It probably did not help my retention of the details when I woke up because I woke up feeling lousy. It felt my chest was still aching, but it was more like the muscular/skeletal pains I still get to some extent from the site of my operation in 2013.

  At least there was one form of good news this morning - no hint of constipation. There was mixed news about my blood glucose this morning. The first reading I took with the Contour meter was very high. The readings from the GlucoRX and Sinocare meters were identical and pleasantly low - just 7.3mmol/l. I concluded that was the real reading, and did the Contour meter reading a second time. It was still higher than the other two with a fair reading of 8.3mmol/l, and at least that was a lot better than the original, very bad, 9.4mmol/l.

  I did briefly get on the scales earlier, and it was not looking good. I have made the decision to eat less today. I am off to a good start in so much as I only had a single, albeit a 100gm packet of instant noodles for breakfast. That seemed a positive thing, and another positive thing is that my blood pressure, which I just checked before the start of this paragraph, was nice an low at 100/43.

  This afternoon should be a typical Thursday afternoon beer tasting session with Jodie. I am going to see if I can get Michael to take one afternoon off his hospital vigil, and join us for a few beers. I fear he has become too "institutionalised" and won't even consider spending another afternoon with his wife who at the last count, didn't even know who he was. I guess it is sort of odd that some miserable news from Michael could be more interesting than watching Jodie spend half the tile glues to her phone like a very old teenager.

  It is perhaps unfortunate that the very day when I want to do some very strict control of my eating is the same day when I will probably get drunk. I hope that cheese and biscuits (probably, but maybe not, rice crackers) will work well enough to "line my stomach" before pouring beer on it. My dinner could possibly be no more than some boiled new potatoes followed by the last of the tub of ice cream. Hopefully that will be gentle enough to not cause any heartburn tonight, and although it seems counter-intuitive, it might even give me some good blood glucose readings tomorrow morning.


 





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