08:41 BST

 
  Yesterday was one of those days that was not good. Bits of it were OK, but I definitely did not feel in the right mood to more than slightly moderate my food intake. I had several snacks, and other wrong choices. I seem to have put on over half a kilogram overnight, which means this morning had started depressing too.

  The dull and damp morning yesterday did nothing to inspire me, and left me feeling miserable. After writing here I did my usual of laying on my bed quietly reading. I think I also had a quick snooze. By midday I had given up on the idea of going out, and I was sure I would not be seeing anyone, and so I didn't bother having a shower. Instead I went straight ahead with doing some laundry.

  It was only a few items, but two of them demanded extra strength to wring out. They were a pair of long lounge pants, plus my favourite, generally indoor, shorts (although I have worn them to go shopping in the past). The other item was just a pair of underpants. It was several hours before I came back to them after leaving them to soak in detergent. I hung them up to dry on the clothes horse to dry in the front room.
  It was only with hindsight that I realised I could have dried those items outside on the washing line. I stupidly believed the weather forecasts gloomy predictions. The picture above, taken at 12:47, shows what most of the afternoon was really like - lots of blue sky and sunshine ! Oh well, it didn't really matter. I probably only used a few pennies worth of electricity to use my desk fan to speed up the drying indoors.

  It was between putting the laundry in to soak, and doing the rinsing, conditioner, and hanging it up to dry that I had some lunch. Maybe the appearance of the sun had cheered me up a bit because I had what was supposed to be an almost zero sugar content bowl of instant noodles. It should have been quite sufficient to see me through to dinner time, but it didn't because I was starting to get bored again.

  There are always things I could do if correctly motivated, If nothing else I have a couple of doors I would like to paint one day, but one day never seems to arrive. What I did do was akin to basket weaving - in myth, if not in reality, a favourite pastime for those in mental asylums - and it was video editing. I think I probably topped and tailed, plus removed the adverts, from at least 6 episodes of The New, and Old Avengers that I had recorded on my big TV ages ago.

  It is now a well practised skill, and I feel quite proud of my abilities, but even so my mind would often wonder why I was doing it. The chances are that I may never watch my nicely cleaned up episodes ever again. After doing a couple I wanted to have a snack or something. I did choose something with some degree of being healthy, but maybe not as low sugar as would be ideal. It was two very ripe apples that have been ripening in the kitchen for maybe a couple weeks, and a chunk of cheese. The apples were very nice, but that was probably because they were quite sweet.

  I finished my last editing job at just gone 5pm. It was time to turn the TV on, and to get my dinner cooking. I knew that even as I was buying it, with it's reduced price sticker on it (about 30% off) it was complete madness. It was an alleged Chinese style chicken in black bean sauce with rice. Most supermarket Indian curries are now very good (or at least the betters ones are), but supermarkets have never quite got the hang of Chinese cooking.

  That Tesco, Chinese chicken in black bean sauce with rice was not exactly horrible, but I can't think of any positive words to say about it. The rice was almost the worst rice I have ever had, and the gloop that was supposed to be black bean sauce was insipid. Even the few chunks of chicken in the gloop might have been arse meat. On top of everything else it seemed a tiny portion - maybe big enough for a pre-teen kid.

  I'm jumping ahead of myself here, and have to go back an hour or two for an event that left me deeply depressed on two levels. I got a message saying there was a new appointment letter for me from the hospital "click here to read". It sounded a lot like a scam, and so I tried to be very careful, but eventually I clicked on the link. I'll add I was doing this on my mobile phone, and once the web page opened half of it was obscured by a pop-up about cookies, and and a pop-up about "going paperless".

  It also had a panel to click to read the letter - still very spam like. I clicked it, and it opened another web page, and this one wanted me to confirm my identity - even more spam like ! At first I declined, but I backtracked and started again looking even more for any clues it was some sort of scam, but it seemed as if it was probably all above board. All that bothersome stuff left me feeling terribly depressed.

  What came next just ground the depression in deeper. The letter was not exactly a new appointment, but a change of date. If it were not bad enough that the next appointment with the Cardiology department was not until May NEXT YEAR, it was even more depressing to read that it had been changed to October next year. It all made me think they were hoping I might die before the appointment, and stop bothering them. Oh well, if I do get a particularly bad angina attack  I can always pop into A&E and spend another couple of days being cared for in hospital.

  Back to Watching Star Trek, and it was less than an hour after eating my miserly dinner that I wanted more to eat. Maybe if one of the Star Trek episodes had been good ones, instead of some quite tedious episodes, I might have been distracted from hunger, but I wasn't, and I was not feeling terribly happy either. I had maybe a dozen rice crackers and all of a little tub of cream cheese.

  At 8pm I watched secrets of The London Underground. Even that was slightly annoying. The featured station was Old Street. It was a station I became very familiar with during my years working for BT because it was the nearest station to their London training school. I knew it was  an interesting sort of station because it also had platforms for the mainline railway sized "Northern City" line. My season ticket was not really valid to take ad hoc rides on the National Rail service to Moorgate, but I did have a look around inside the public areas of Old Street station.

  The annoying thing is that my memory of the station is now quite dim, and I hoped that the Secrets Of The London Underground section on Old Street would revive some of those memories, but if anything it confused me more, One day, armed with my Freedom Pass, so I can jump on any train or tube inside London, I must revisit Old Street and see if it looks familar to my point of view, and not the Camera's point of view.

  Secrets of The London Underground may have finished a minute later, or The New Avengers started a minute early on it's channel. All I know is that I missed the very start, and so it didn't seem worthwhile recording it. I did watch it though. It was a fair episode (actually part 2 of a 2 part story), but I still wondered why I bothered. I certainly didn't bother watching any more TV when it finished, and I was in bed a few minutes after 9pm. I think I was asleep by 9.30pm.

  Last night was another night where I seemed to sleep well, although I wonder.... I did seem to have lots of dreams that I remember having, but can't remember any details. I feel sure that although some of my sleep may have been very light, there was no time I was awake longer than it takes to go for a pee and get back to bed. I guess I felt vaguely all right when I woke up and got up at about 6.15am.

  One positive thing was that I didn't have to worry about anything like constipation, or it's more ugly anti-brother this morning. I had a pee, and a text book poo when I went to the toilet after getting up. Unfortunately it didn't do anything for my weight. All my over eating yesterday seems to have piled on about 700gms this morning.

   There was no good news about my blood glucose measurements this morning. There was something odd about my readings this morning. The first reading I took, using the Contour meter was very high, and so I did it again. This time it read 8.9mmol/l, and while better, it is still not good. The GlucoRX meter read 8.7mmol/l, and that is a bit better. The first reading on the Sinocare meter was really terrible and so I did it again, and the next reading was still terrible, but I had to record it at 10.5mmol/l, and well inside the red danger zone.

  Even my blood pressure may not be so good this morning. It was 93/42, and I wonder if that might be a little too low. Oh well, it gives a bit more leeway for when I go out later. My pulse rate is just a steady 56 pulses per minute, and about normal for me.

  Being a Wednesday I have the pleasure of going out for my usual Wednesday lunchtime drink in The Jolly Farmers. I think today will just be the usual 2 pints of Guinness, but if I make any headway doing the cryptic crossword in The Metro, I might stay for another pint. Some good banter could be another reason for a third pint, but the threat of rain might be a good reason to not stay too late.....but the latest revision to the forecast does not show any rain until 5pm, and thatcould be a thunderstorm !!!