There was rain in the small hours of this morning, but not at 8am as shown above. Light rain for 10 and 11am is still predicted, but at the moment it looks like the cloud is breaking up rather then getting denser. Sunny spells from 3pm are still forecast. All my thermometers say it is roughly 21° C now, or a couple of degrees above the forecast figure, and so it is possible it could actually rise to 25° C by late afternoon. Tomorrow is currently shown to be a bright day with lots of sunny spells, maybe even sunny periods, and it should reach 25° C in the afternoon.

 Yesterday was a slightly strange day, and it was not until late afternoon/early evening that I discovered one of the main reasons for it. Initially it just seemed to be an extension of the day before when I felt like I was still recovering from all my activities last Friday. It is possible that last Friday may have had something to do with it all.

  It wasn't until later in the day that I realised all I felt yesterday was not classic symptoms of depression. I felt sort of lethargic in both mind and body. It took ages before I could raise myself from a sort of stupor, where I just laid on my bed readings, and occasionally trying to snooze, and get up to finish rinsing the bath towel that I had half rinsed (about 5 times) the day before. I finally got the towel hung up to dry.

  Even after freeing the bath of my hand laundry buckets I still could not be bothered to take a shower, and ideally, wash my hair. I could be bothered to have a very slightly early lunch of plain, salted, tortilla chips with cream cheese as a dip. From past experience I knew it was a far from healthy meal, and ironically I didn't even enjoy it much. I think it was about this time that I got the first hints of what was really ailing me.

  Those hints became more pronounced when I started a little job in the garden. One small hindrance to rehabilitating my garden was a lot of solar powered LED lights cluttering up the left and right flower beds (or "intended" flower beds). Some of those lights had stopped working ages ago, but I had no idea which worked, and which did not. Some had been almost completely covered by vegetation, and that would stop them charging. In turn that might have discharged their little rechargeable batteries below the point of no return.

  My little garden job was to pull up all those lights, and see if any of them still glowed when I took them into the dining room with the doors and curtains closed to simulate night. There were about 6 that definitely showed signs of life, and I set about mounting them in a row on the fence. That meant drilling pilot holes, and screwing in some hooks to hold the lights (with the aid of some silicone sealant as a sort of glue.

  I hoped that some of the other lights might recover if exposed to enough bright sunshine, and I used an old flower pot to hold them up, and looking at the sky. Last night, after dark, I did see at least one glowing in the flower pot, and maybe a little job for today will be to identify which one it was, and mount that on the fence. While in the garden I could hardly avoid being aware that my nose seemed to be dripping a lot.

  At first I thought the dripping was hay fever. As a rule I am not affected by anything during the summer when others are suffering badly. I do get some mild symptoms in spring, probably from tree pollen, and in autumn when it is probably fungal spores. It was not very hot working in the garden, but I still felt a bit sticky, and so I opted for some plain vanilla ice cream after I had come back in, and cleaned up a bit.

  It was something after eating that ice cream, and probably not related to it, that I began to feel a very tickly throat.  It became very sensitive, and I needed to try and keep it wet to stop myself coughing. It seemed like I had come down with the common cold, albeit a fairly mild, but still annoying version of it. I could not think of any distractions from the cold except for laying on my bed, quietly reading... and just being splendidly lazy !

  It was not a long wait until another distraction appeared - Star Trek episodes in the Sky Mix channel on freeview. There were, on the whole, four rather dull episodes one after another to watch.  They were so "exciting" that I didn't mind missing some of one of them while I prepared my dinner in the kitchen. Dinner was some ready cooked chicken thighs that I double cooked in the mini oven/grill with added spices. I had them with some "heat in the microwave for 2 minutes" red and white rice.

  That dinner could have been nicer with something like mashed potato, or even chips. The rice just didn't seem to add anything to the taste, but it did add one annoying thing. A single grain of rice landing on the back of my throat really irritated it, and I did a lot of drinking and coughing. I eventually partly calmed it down with initially whiskey, and then, a bit later, with some cough mixture. It was a bit of a desperate option because that cough mixture is almost pure sugar, and I only allowed myself one dose.

  There was a gap of an hour in the middle of my TV entertainment, and I spent that hour mostly reading. At 9pm there was a repeat of a 2 year old edition of Have I got News For You. That was followed by a "best of" Have I Got News For You compilation. That finished at 11pm, and I seemed so tired that I did not anticipate any difficulty in getting to sleep, How wrong I was !
   I took the above picture at 9.36pm last night. This was the view to the north, and those dark looking clouds seemed to be perfectly still (and I think they looked even darker to the eye).  In fact they were moving incredibly slowly. 10 or 15 minutes later the clouds showed a completely different pattern.

  My tickly throat didn't help, but it was a minor problem compared to the sudden attack of heartburn that I suffered from as soon as I turned on my side. It had been hours since I had eaten my dinner, and I was expecting my stomach to have settled down by then. Watching TV to 11pm, even when feeling really tired, was to give extra time for my stomach to settle down, but something must have triggered it.

  I had to follow what has become the usual drill, and sit up in my desk chair while reading some stuff off the internet. I think it was around 1am when I tried to refresh a page, and found my internet connection had gone down. I checked this, that and the other, and eventually I had to go down into the front room, dressed only in underpants (and with the curtains open) to reboot the Vermin Media router/modem.

  After a while it became apparent that there was an external problem. At a guess it was Virgin doing some sort of upgrade at a quite time when few would notice it. I am uncertain of the exact time, but I think it was almost 3am before my internet connection was up again, and it seemed like my heartburn had faded away.  I went back to bed, and after a few sips of water to calm a bit of dry coughing, I managed to fall asleep.

  It seemed I still needed to get up to pee a few times before I eventually managed to sleep until almost 8am before getting up. I did not feel good, and it seemed to be a mix of bad sleep, and my throat. This morning it seems my nose has mostly dried up. On top of everything else, I also seemed to feel a bit bloated this morning, and was despite feeling like I had not eaten a huge amount yesterday. I had a fair, but not huge poo this morning.

  Some of my health indicators are looking OK this morning. My temperature is about a tenth of a degree below the usual. My blood pressure is still safely in the "Optimum" area, although just very slightly higher than the last couple of days. The bad thing is my weight. I would appear to be just over half a kilogram heavier this morning, but that is probably the bloat I was feeling earlier. Another visit or two to the toilet may help, and it will probably help when I can drink a little less when my tickly throat needs no extra "lubrication".

  Of course it probably doesn't help that I stacked three possible bad meals on top of each other, and that has certainly left it's mark on my blood glucose measurements....although they are not actually that bad. The Contour meter read 8.7mmol/l. That is a fair bit higher than I try to aim for these days, but is otherwise the "old normal". The GlucoRX meter read a slightly higher 8.8mmol/l, and the Sinocare meter read 8.4mmol/l. That is a fair grouping of readings, and while I have a good idea of why they were higher than my recent best, I am not worried about them, but may still try and get better readings tomorrow. At least this morning's readings were a lot better than Sunday morning's.

  Today is a day when I only know of one definite thing, and that is my latest beer order is due to be delivered between 1.20pm and 2.20pm. Before that was confirmed I though it might have been earlier, and so one thing I have already done today, before breakfast, and before writing this, was to have a very much needed shower.  Another thing I have already done was to phone the pharmacy to order my next repeat prescription - hopefully with the new doses this time, although I won't be holding my breath. I should be able to collect that prescription on Thursday.

  One past experience I expect my beer delivery will arrive nearer to 1.20pm, and possibly slightly before. Once I have taken that in I am free to do as I please. having showered this morning that could include going out, but while my throat is tickly, and I could start coughing at any time, I don't think I want to go far. If only I could remember exactly what it was I needed, I could pop out to Savers, and then call in Poundstretcher where I can always find stuff to stock up on. Generally speaking I think I will devote most of my time to being lazy in an attempt to through off this bug I have picked up before I go to the pub tomorrow dinnertime.