09:12 BST

 
  Yesterday was another morning when I believed I had had a good sleep, but after taking a rest of after writing my 2013 words, I ended up having another snooze. I am unsure if this is a getting old thing, or getting ready for a long cold winter sort of thing.

  Having had my snooze I went to the bathroom where I trimmed my beard (but didn't actually shave), washed my hair, and had a shower. Once I had finished with the shower I put my big builders buckets into the bathtub, and started soaking some laundry in detergent. It would be some time before I did the rinsing and conditioning because it was than around midday, and I stopped for lunch.

  The original plan was to try and skip lunch because of not losing any weight, and my blood glucose being unacceptably high (although not past the red line, and into the danger zone). The really crazy thing is that my lunch could be classified as a small dinner. It started off as just a few sausages, but I thought some mixed vegetables would make it a healthier meal. I looked in the freezer and found a bag of mixed vegetables, and behind it was an almost empty bag of peas.

  Behind the peas was an almost empty bag of oven chips. I did a mixture of mixed vegetables with added peas, and cooked those in the microwave. After all the ice had melted, and the resulting water boiled off, it was a much smaller portion than intended. I cooked the oven chips in with the sausages. They were also a very small portion, and because they were slightly over cooked they had shrunk too. My lunch was still more like a dinner, but not quite as bad as feared.

  It was probably round 3pm when I considered I had allowed enough time to get digesting my lunch under way, and went back to my laundry. I knew I had to dry it indoors, and so it was a slightly smaller amount than I might have done, but it was two t-shirts and four pairs of underpants - about the maximum that can be hung on the big clothes horse without any item touching another item, and thus allowing a free flow of drying air - mostly from the desk fan I had blowing at it.

  On reflection, it may have been more like 2pm when I finished the laundry. That would allow almost an hour of reading to relax my body and mind before tackling my next job. It was as I suggested when finishing writing yesterday, more video editing. I edited (top and tailing, plus advert removal) one long episode of The Outer Limits, and maybe 5, possibly 6 episodes of The Avengers - all recordings done on my big TV weeks if not months ago.

  Curiosity lead me to do one probably mad, but maybe useful thing yesterday. It was some days ago when checking the progress of an order from Amazon, that I started lusting over some camera lenses that I can't afford, and probably don't even need, when I noticed something incredible. It seems that the Chinese have brought out some super zoom lenses for various DSLR cameras.
  The thing about these lenses is that they are incredibly cheap. If the were good lenses, and maybe branded Nikon or Canon you could expect to pay north of £1500 for an 800mm lens, but the one pictured above, and which I ordered, was only £72.22. There is an obvious catch. There are several very similar specced lenses on offer, and they are all manual focus, and the aperture size is quite small. I would imagine that the glass may produce some unwanted effects.

  Manual focus is a bind, and I am not very good at it. On the other hand, I would not be using an 800mm lens at a gig where very quick focussing is essential. I can imagine that I will be using the lens outdoors, and maybe only in bright sunshine. That will mean I can wind the ISO sensitivity up to max, and select a very fast shutter speed, maybe more than 1/1000th of a second.

   That will reduce motion blur - which could be huge on such a long distance view. In fact it would be better, where possible, to put the camera on a tripod. Strong sunshine will compensate for the very small aperture. Of course, most of this is currently guesswork based upon typical lens operation. I hope that the promised delivery on Thursday happens so I can at least see what crap I have bought, but maybe I'll have to take it out for a walk to something like the top of Blythe Hill to really put it through it's paces.

  My real dinner, eaten while watching one or other Star Trek episodes shown yesterday evening, was almost calculated to be a bit safe. It was the pack of 4 ready roasted chicken thighs I had bought from Tesco before I had second thoughts about them. I microwaved them for much longer (about 12 minutes) than recommended on the pack, and I think that may have driven a bit of extra fat off them. It certainly made them shrink, and my meal was smaller than expected - which was good. I followed them with 6 sugar free choc chip cookies.

   After the last Star Trek I was going to wait, with the TV off, until QI started at 9pm on Dave. I did actually do that, but once I saw who the guests were on the panel, my enthusiasm waned in a big way, and I turned the TV off and went to bed. I think I only read for about 10 minutes before I turned the light out, and 5 minutes later I was fast asleep. With my persistently slightly high blood glucose readings, and the need for a lot of sleep, I do wonder if I am fighting some sort of illness - maybe something non obvious like a cancer.

  I seemed to sleep well last night, but there were periods were either I was having repeat dreams, or I was awake thinking about my dreams. I seem to think I may have been awake despite the dreamlike quality of my musings. The theme of the dreams I seem to remember some snippets from was a visit to India. I can't seem to think of anything in real life that could have inspired the idea.

  What I remember from the dreams is that someone had a spare ticket to India, and asked if I would like to come along. I said yes, and as far as I was aware I travelled with just whatever I had in my pockets when asked to come along. The first bit of dream was actually being on the land side of an airport. It was interesting seeing all the bi-lingual signs, and particularly the signs for the toilets. Each gender had two descriptions in both English and Hindi, plus pictures - two for each gender - one showing "western dress" and the other "native dress".

  The next "marvel" was an Indian cash machine. It wasn't obvious where to put your bank card. The most obvious slot was a square hole, and I assumed it was for some sort of novel cash/credit/debit card. There was no way I could bend and fold my card that small. Suddenly I noticed a flap, and I flipped it open, and there was where you put a card. That got looking for other openings, and I found several, and started poking about with my favourite hardened steel tweezers (a favourite tool when working on surface mount PCBs). I managed to render my card void, and would have to find a way to order a new card.

  The new card could wait because I seemed to have a lot of cash on me - although only about £100 of British money, but that seemed to go a long way in India. I felt peckish and bought some tasty looking food from a street vendor. It was a toasted cheese filled bun with some extra vegetables and spices. It seemed to be really tasty. That was the main bits of my dream. It was not said explicitly, but I feel my intention was to wander around for the day, and then get the next plane home - a bit like my trips to the seaside by train. I haven't actually spent a night by the seaside since about 1968 !

  Once again I seemed to need more sleep than seemed normal. I woke up at about 5.55am, and decided to get just another 10 minutes sleep.....I woke up at about 7.45am ! It was handy being that late because when I went to the toilet I not only had a pee, but I passed a quite reasonable poo. Upon weighing myself I discovered I seemed to have lost 300gm since yesterday morning. I hoped that might suggest my blood glucose readings might be good too.

  I think it was pure fluke that my average of blood glucose readings this morning was slightly lower than yesterday. The first reading was, as usual, on the Contour meter. I could only just squeeze enough blood out of my finger prick for the one reading. It was a fairly good 8.4mmol/l. I do not believe it was accurate because I made another finger prick for the next reading, and this time it was easy to squeeze out enough blood. The GlucoRX meter read  a lot higher at 9.0mmol/l. The Sinocare meter reading was even higher at 9.3mmol/l.

   None of these readings was a disaster, but they were still disappointing. I believe that they should have been lower based upon what I ate yesterday - maybe more evidence of some underlying problem. I guess it was just luck that the first reading, using the Contour meter, dragged the average down so it was a fraction below yesterday's average. I suppose the only positive is that my choice of food does seem to have been OK for a little bit of weight loss. I am now back to where some more effort could result in some low weights I haven't seen for a long while.

  Today I probably ought to get out to do some shopping. There is nothing essential I need today, but I won't be able to go out tomorrow because tomorrow is my lunchtime pints of Guinness in The Jolly Farmers. On the other hand.....the weather forecast has suddenly made a dramatic change. There are now thunderstorms predicted for 1pm and 2pm, plus rain is forecast for midday. I don't fancy going out in the rain.

   I may stay in and do more video editing. I still have at least ten more possible episodes of The Avengers on the memory stick recorded on my big TV, plus maybe a dozen other recordings to considering editing and archiving. Incidently, thunderstorms have been added to the forecasts for tomorrow and the day after that. I would not be surprised if none of them, including today's actually happened - at least not here. The usual drill is that they may happen somewhere is SE England !