08:15 BST

 
  There were two bits of good news yesterday, but neither made much of an impact on a terrible day. One bit of good news was a notification of another Premium Bond win. I don't know how big it was yet, but the notification says they have reinvested the win as more Premium Bonds. To do that it had to be less than £100, and most likely just £25.

  The second bit of good news was maybe more a surprise than good. It was an old Amazon order finally being fulfilled as much as 20 days early. The original estimate was for about the 23rd of this month. The best bits from the order were delivered a week or so ago. Yesterday's delivery, at the unheard of time of just after 11am, was a couple of memory thumb drives which I added to the order to top it up to be sure of free delivery (over £35 now).

  One of those thumb drives was potentially useful because it was from a known and hopefully trusted maker, and it had a normal USB connection one end, and a USB C connection the other end. The latter could be useful for transferring stuff to and from mobile phones which now have USB C connectors as standard. The final item was a 5 way 13A extension power cord with a couple of USB charging ports in it - not essential, but useful.

  I can't remember if it was before or after I washed my hair, and had a shower, although before was more likely, that my Amazon delivery arrived, and upon unpacking it I decided to put the 5 way power cord extension into use. I used it to replace a very slightly too short power cord in the dining room, and to do so meant moving a couple of boxes on the floor. Bending over to lift/move those boxes caused some pain.

  It was not back ache as might be suspected, but a pain much more like angina. It seems like, based on later events, that it was angina. I experienced several twinges before going out to walk to the station on my way to going to the pub. Before I got to the station I was feeling bad. My chest was hurting, I seemed to have a cold sweat, and I was sort of short of breath. I wasn't anywhere near struggling for breath, and it was not significantly different to what I usually get when walking.

  By the time I got to the station I was feeling awful. I had got there early enough to get the previous train to my usual train. I stayed on the wrong platform to rest, and waited until that earlier train had arrived and then departed. had I not felt so unwell I had plenty of time to have crossed the footbridge and been ready to board that train before it even arrived, but I could not face that. I took picture of both the front and back of the train - two 5 car units so different numbers front and back.

  I later checked and found I didn't need photos of those two 5 car units. Once I had taken the last photo I went home again instead of the pub. The walk home was quite an ordeal. The angina was very uncomfortable. The only (hopefully) good thing is that the single useful thing that came out of my MRI scan back on 16th April was that that the bits of my heart being starved of oxygen were not critical to it's operation, and thus not lethal.....hopefully !

  It was a huge relief to get home, although it took some time before the angina pain diminished. I was so pissed off that I poured myself a very large whisky (maybe equivalent to two trebles in one glass), and started drinking it in anger.....sort of. I actually sipped it rather than gulped it. When it was finished I went back down to the dining room and poured another. Gradually I could feel the warmth seeping into my body, and numbing the angina pain.

  I guess I finished the second glass around 2pm, and despite intending to try and fast until dinner time, I felt I needed something to eat. I went for a both safe and unsafe option. It was rice crackers, which are both safe calorie and sugar wise, and sliced Double Gloucester cheese which is still low in sugar by high calories and probably very bad for my cholesterol levels.

  During the drinking and eating I tried to do the crosswords in The Metro, but I was having difficulty with even the quick crossword. The cryptic crossword clues completely bamboozled me. I think that was because I was then drunker than I would be if I had only had a couple of pints of Guinness, and partly because I was feeling very edgy. The idea that my angina had taken a possible big turn for the worst was really annoying. If every day was as bad as yesterday I would have a lot of difficulties just going to the local shops.

  Once I gave up on the crosswords I laid on my bed and read my book. I wanted to have a nice snooze, and maybe I had one, but I can remember feeling very uncomfortable. I guess I was sensitised to any discomfort, and discovered many lumps in my pillows and mattress that I hadn't noticed before. At about 5pm I got off my bed, and sat at my PC to read a few tech stories, and ultimately to watch some Star Trek episodes.

  Now the peculiar thing is that I would say that none of the Star Trek episodes I saw was particularly engrossing, but it seems that Star Trek: Enterprise may have been quite watchable because it was not until gone 6pm that I ordered my dinner. My cupboard was far from empty, and yet there seemed nothing to make up a good dinner. Well that was one excuse, but I think the idea of what came next had been fermenting in my skull for maybe the previous 24 hours.

  I ordered another delivered takeaway from the Tai Won Mein Noodle House. In had been impressed with the food the last time I had ordered from there, and it seemed that unlike much Chinese cooking, they did not use a lot of sugar (at least not in dishes that were not "sweet and sour"). Once again I ordered a Singapore Fried Noodles because the last one I thought was really nice, and it didn't seem to cause any distress to my blood glucose readings the next day.

  I only ordered two dishes yesterday, and the other was Fried Beef in Black Bean Sauce with Noodles. That was what I had for dinner last night. It was good, but not as good as the Singapore fried noodles. It used small and thinner noodles, just like those in instant noodle packs, for one one thing, but at least the fried beef in black bean sauce was 500 times better than that in the Tesco "Chinese style" ready meal I ate some days ago.

  Once again, it was an enjoyable dinner, and almost filling enough that I only topped it off with a small palmful of salted peanuts a bit later. One oddity of late is that I have been drinking a lot of chilled water. It is mostly to help make my last bottles of Diet Coke last longer when I have got behind with my shopping, but also to reduce my ingestion of gas - and later expulsion of gas. One hope was that it would make me less burpy when going to bed, and so lessen the chance of heartburn.

  It didn't work this time. When I eventually went to bed, after watching, and recording, an episode of The New Avengers, at about 10pm, I started to suffer some heartburn after laying down. I guess it was only mild, and that is why I didn't really notice it until I tried to relax. I think it was heartburn, but the pain shares so much in common with angina that I didn't know what I wanted to treat - So I treated both, and neither treatment made me feel comfortable.

  It was always worse when laying down trying to get to sleep, and so I spent about three hours sitting at my computer desk. During that time I checked my blood pressure, and it was higher than normal. It was still in the "High Normal" area on my wrist blood pressure meter. As such that was fine, but it was higher than usual, and was saying something was wrong. As I relaxed, and almost fell asleep at my desk, my blood pressure dropped back down.

  When the systolic pressure was down to 111mmHg I felt good enough to try to get some sleep. It took a bit longer to actually get to sleep, maybe just before 3am, and I doubt I slept that well. I have a vague recollection of getting up to pee once, but it wasn't until just after 7am that I woke up, and got up still with a sleep deficit of 3 or 4 hours. I must admit I don't seem to feel that bad this morning, although I do seem to have a mild headache, It is not a hangover because I suffered the pains of that late in the afternoon after my earlier two very large glasses of whisky.

  There is mixed news this morning. Getting up and having a decent poo straight away is always a good idea, but it did nothing for my weight. I seem to have put on a huge amount in the last 24 hours. I have a suspicion a lot of it is water retention. I was drinking a lot of chilled water yesterday - more than if I had been drinking Diet Coke - and although I have had several good pees since yesterday evening, I do wonder if I have complete drained my system.

  On to better news - my blood glucose is firmly back in normality again, although sadly not low enough to be very good. The Contour meter read 8.0mmol/l. Like the difference between £4.99 and £5, it just needed to cross the threshold, maybe down to 7.99mmol/l to be classified (by my own metrics) as very good. Close, but no cigar ! The GlucoRX meter read 8.4mmol/l, and that is below my old target of 8.5mmol/l, and so should be good, but is only very ordinary. The Sinocare meter read 8.5mmol/l - spot on my old target, but now also just sort of ordinary. However, of course these "ordinary" readings are still good in comparison to the higher readings I have had lately.

  My blood pressure is once again nice and low. The first reading was good, but I thought I could better it with a few deep breaths and other relaxations exercises. 111mmHg became 107mmHg, or good became better. My diastolic pressure actually went up from 48mmHg to 49mmHg on the second reading, but that is almost expected. My pulse rate was a very usual 55 beats per minute on both readings.

  The rain has now started, although it is not very heavy. It is one of two three four excuses why I may not go out shopping this morning. Firstly is the rain. Secondly is that I fear that I might get another angina attack, and that could be very uncomfortable. Thirdly is that I already have my dinner for tonight, Singapore Fried Noodles, from yesterdays takeaway delivery, and there is nothing I really need from the shops today (tomorrow will be different). Fourthly is that I am expecting my new super, but possibly crap, Chinese made, paparazzi style super zoom lens, to be delivered today, and if like yesterday, it could come a lot earlier than expected.

  Later on, if Jodie is brave enough to face the cold grey and wet weather, we should be having a beer tasting session this afternoon. I will put out a lure for Michael and see if he makes a late appearance like last week. If he comes he will bring many more tales of woe, but even those can be better than Jodie stuck on her phone ignoring me. Before the drinking begins I have cooked, or maybe cremated, some sausages to give some fatty barrier to the beer. I put them in the mini oven to cook when I made my instant noodles for breakfast (just a single 85gm pack this morning). Unfortunately the timer stuck just a few minutes before the estimated cooking time was over. A quick peek, without taking them over, showed them to a be a very deep brown colour - maybe black in places !