The day before yesterday the forecast for yesterday showed a long dull period in the early afternoon. That did actually happen despite all the later forecasts saying there would be at least sunny spells through the whole day. After an hour or two of dullness the forecast was hastily revised to show the cloudy weather. The start and finish did feature sunshine or sunny spells, and the temperature rose to the forecast 27° C.
       

  It is bright and sunny, and the temperature is already over 20° C. This feels a lot like summer ! The latest revision to the forecast says non stop sunshine until mid evening when it might be throttled back to just sunny spells for the last few hours before sunset. The temperature should rise to 28° C by 4pm. The BBC say only 27° C and only sunny spells this afternoon. Tomorrow should see 28° C, and there could be non stop sunshine until 3pm when there may be just sunny spells for the rest of the day.

   Yesterday could have been a bad day after all my missed sleep the night before, but it was actually a quite a good day. I did a whole four things that I didn't expect to do, and I probably did those things because I didn't seem to feel as tired as expected. Maybe all the hours of daylight in mid summer reduces my need for sleep.

  I certainly started yesterday with the idea I would be having a very lazy day, and where the most exciting thing I thought I would do would be a lot of snoozing. It was quite late in the morning when I did two very important things. It was to pay my credit cards. With two credit cards to pay off I have classified it as two jobs to make it sound like I had done even more jobs for the day.

  The other two jobs were something I had been thinking of doing for some, even though I thought it would be just a single job. It must have been almost midday when I filled one of my big builders buckets with hot soapy water, and started the action to clean double duvet cover. Such a task is not one to take lightly. It is really heavy going washing a double duvet cover by hand, and I was only doing it because I knew it would need to be hung on the washing line in full sunshine to day.

  Of course I had barely got started when the sun went in. It had been getting cloudy before that, and it almost looked like it could rain for a short time, but it remained warm and dry, even with no sunshine until 4 or 5pm when the sun returned. As I said, it takes a lot of manhandling to wash a double duvet by hand, and I confess I took a breather in the middle, but that didn't last all that long, and I think I had that duvet lightly dripping (because I could not wring it out all that well) in the warm outside air.

  Knowing how badly the previous salad I had eaten had affected my stomach - lots of acid indigestion - I decied to eat the other salad I had in the fridge for lunch instead of dinner. I had coleslaw with this salad, instead of potato salad, which seemed the dominant flavour when I was burping half the previous night. I also had fish sticks instead of chicken with it.  Fishsticks are not as innocent as they would seem to be. When you look at the very small print you see that the nutritional information refers to each fishstick instead of the more tradition "per 100gm". I didn't dare add it all up, but I must have consumed two days ration of both sugar and calories when eating those fish sticks.

   I didn't seem to suffer any negative reactions to that salad....or at least not much. One hoped for effect when washing the double duvet was that all the actions associated with it might pull my chest back into shape. This was based on the idea that the chest pains I had had during the night were problems with my ribcage and sternum, plus inflamed scar tissue. My hoped has seemed to be realised, and although I had a similar, but different (opposite) pain for a while yesterday, I am hoping that it was just the pain of all my chest anatomy getting back to then places it should be.

  The fourth, and rather unexpected job I did was a bit more washing. What I thought was the double duvet cover on the top of the laundry bag turned out to be a double fitted sheet. They are much easier to hand wash, and initially I left it until later. "Later" turned out to be later in the afternoon. I washed the sheet, but once washed I hung it on the big clothes horse to dry. I have to admit I couldn't be bother to clean more washing line to dry it outdoors, and besides which, the sun had still not come out from behind the clouds at that time.

  It may have been a bit after 4pm when the sun seemed to return to full strength. An hour or so later I brought the double duvet in. It was stone dry, and feeling lovely and warm. Perhaps another hour passed and I found the double fitted sheet had also completely dried. I like this summer weather !  I rougly folded it up, and put it away with the double duvet. Incidentally, the matching pillows I had washed months ago.

  From then on I had nothing more to do but prepare and eat dinner, and also watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager. Both were fairly reasonable episodes of series I don't rate very highly. I had my dinner a bit early, around 6pm, and at the same time I switched to drinking plain water to try and not have any indigestion problems when I went to bed. My dinner was two cans of soup. One can of soup was a couple of years after it's best before date, but the Baxters Lentil And bacon soup still tasted fine. It was also rather pleasingly very low calories, and with a very low sugar content. The other soup was a Bramwell (Aldi own brand) cream of tomato soup, and although it's sugar content was much higher, it was still moderately low compared to other makes of tomato soup.

  There was a big gap between TV programmes, and I could have gone to bed before 9pm, but somehow I didn't seem to feel very bad, and stayed up to watch an episode of QIXL. That finished at 10pm, and I went straight to bed. I didn't even bother to draw the duvet up or aside, and slept on top of it. It was a hot night, but I still closed the window and curtains. By about 4am the thermometer said it was still plenty warm, but I was actually feeling as if it was getting close to the point where I would need to cover an arm or leg with the duvet, but ultimately I didn't need to.

  I had no indigestion problems at all last night, and I felt comfortable enough to get to sleep quite quickly.  I seemed to mostly sleep very well, although I did wake up quite a few times during the night. On one occasion it did seem that I was going to have a spell of insomnia, but what seemed to feel like a long time before I got back to sleep again was quite probably less than 10 minutes. I remember doing a lot of dreaming last night.

  Only one dream seems to have left enough memory to describe it, although it will have to remain a brief description of what seemed to be quite an rich dream. I have no idea where I was when the dream started, but I think I was bored, and so went for a walk. I must have been in Forest Hill because the first landmark in my dream walk was once an unmade road close to here my dad's shop was in the 1960s. Today that road is fully made up and has houses built both sides of it.

  In the dream the bottom of the road was still unmade, but it gradually narrowed until it became a narrow path. I followed that path until it emerged on a main road. It seemed to be a familiar place, but maybe just a sort of generic place - a main road with sort of heathland/common land/grassland  along one side. It was also a hill with a few ponds on flat parts of the hill. I decided to go up the hill, and it seemed easy work. Towards the tops the grass gave way to just muddy gravel. I decided I would run up that last bit.

  At the top there was a small side road, and I knew that if I went right I would be heading towards Crofton Park.  After walking for a while I came to what looked a bit like a shop front blocking the road. There seemed no other way out, and I wondered what was going on. There were a few other people there, and I asked what was going on. I was told that it was all OK, and that the shop would open at 9am. It was about 9am when a man who I identified as a manager came along, and did some stuff, and the two halves of the shop window opened like a double gate. I could then see Crofton Park station at the end of the road.

  It felt like I had walked a long way, and so I thought I might as well get the train the one stop back to Catford station. As I approached the station it seemed far more complicated than it should be. It was modelled a bit like a tube station despite all being painted in Southern Region Green. Instead of two, it seemed to have four lines and four platform faces. I didn't know the best entrance to enter. The one I chose looked very neglected,and sort of dusty. I went down some stairs which sort of curved around, and some steps very very low, and some were very high. I then came to a closed door, but which opened easily enough. I found myself on a very thin platform maybe just 6 inches wide, and with a very long drop down to the platform below. It seemed like a good time to wake up.

  I could have got up soon after 5am this morning, but I did my best to keep going to sleep until it was almost 6am. I think I was out of bed just in time to take screenshots of the weather forecasts just before they were revised at 6am. I'm not sure how I feel this morning. I guess my biggest complaint is that I have yet to have a poo. It hasn't caused any discomfort, but it would mess up my weight if I was bold enough to weigh myself.

  It was probably too much to hope that my blood glucose measurements could be as wonderful as yesterday again, but this morning they are still fairly good. The Contour meter read 7.7mmol/l, and that is pretty good. The GlucoRX and Sinocare meters read exactly the same, just 7.5mmol/l, and that is spot on for my latest target. I guess that makes those readings excellent - but not as excellent as yesterday. My blood pressure is pretty good as well at the moment - just 114/45 - and that is from a single reading without trying for a second better reading.

  I feel I want to make some sort of effort and get out in the hot sunshine today. I am going to take the other of the angina pill I took this morning (I think I can spare a few full pills until my next repeat prescription when I hope they will have doubled the dosage as I thought the last repeat prescription should have done). I will also take a 300mg aspirin tablets dissolved in water. Those two doses should slow the onset of angina, and maybe I can do a bit more walking in the sun without being in too much pain.  Maybe it will only be a walk to the shops, but hopefully I can psych myself up for something a little more ambitious.


 





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