08:54 BST

  Yesterday was another day that was both good and bad, but it was also I day that I will describe as very bland. In other words, it was mostly grey and almost nothing happened. Perhaps the only good thing was another shopping trip, but prior to that I had a nice shower, and that was good too.

  Once again I made no preparations at all with regard to angina and other possible pains, when I went out shopping. It was not raining when I headed to the shops, and so I could have walked at a slower pace, but as I have remarked many timnes in the past, I have never developed the knack of walking slowly, It is boring ! I didn't exactly go full tilt, but I probably went at my usual walking pace.

  The first shop I was heading for was Savers, and I arrived there with mild hints of shortness of breath, and maybe even milder hinters of incipient angina. All symptoms faded to noting within 30 seconds of getting in the shop, and maybe even less than 30 seconds - I wasn't using a stop watch. The first thing I wanted was on the bottom shelf, and bending down when short of breath is not easy, but all I recall is my back putting in a very slight complaint.

  I thought I had hit gold dust (sort of) when I picked up the first item in Savers. It was a bottle of Acidex - an antacid slurry. The bottle I picked up was peppermint flavour, and not the aniseed flavour I had previously bought. I immediately spotted it said sugar free on it, and assumed I had made the right decision. Sadly, when I got home and looked at the old, aniseed flavoured bottle I saw that it too said "sugar free". Oh well, I can't blame high blood glucose readings on that !

  Other stuff I bought in Savers was some Paracetamol, some shower gel, and then it was onto the last aisle to have a look at possibilities for laundry and other cleaning stuff. I bought another bottle of spray on white vinegar. This one had floral scents added, and I'll use that in the bathroom to remove limescale, and bring a shine back to the hand basin (for instance).

  I wanted some more laundry detergent, and maybe some new fabric conditioner. I am unsure why, but I seem to prefer Surf detergent, and I found a bottle that seemed to have a nice scent. I saw some half sized bottles (sort of trial sized) of Lenor conditioner. I find many conditioners seemed to have an over powering smell, and quite often an unpleasant smell. I bought that small bottle of Lenor, and didn't smell it until I got home. I hope it is not so bad when diluted, but the whiff straight from the bottle was....phew !!!!

  After Savers I crossed the way, as is almost tradition now, and went into Poundstretcher. One of the first things I saw was a winter scented bottle of Surf detergent. I didn't smell it in the shop, but I did when I got home. I think it might be quite nice.  Most of what I bought in Poundstretcher was food items. One was a box of alleged "no added sugar" biscuits with chopped hazelnuts on them. I was not convinced they were that sugar free, but I knew that the box only contained just 5 biscuits, and so they couldn't do that much wrong (but maybe they did - more later).

   Other food bought there included the inevitable instant noodles. They had "spicy chicken" flavour instant noodles from Mr Noodles for just 20p a packet for clearance. I should have heaped my basket with them, but I just bought 4 packets of 60gm each. There was other stuff that I put in my basket, and once it was all paid for I walked home again. My rucksack and shopping bag was only half the weight of my shopping the previous day, and so it hardly slowed me down at all, but because it was dry I felt no need to race home. I still kept up a fair walking pace though.

  Maybe I was just starting to feel the strain when I got home, but nothing to stop me putting my shopping away, and then making some lunch. I decided it was time to break out the small wholemeal finger rolls I bought from Iceland the previous day. I used two to make another couple of cheese and onion rolls. They seemed quite tasty, but being quite small rolls, I was very tempted to use the other two, but somehow convinced myself to save them for today.

  Before I forget, the spray on white vinegar I bought was scented with Gardenia and vanilla. In the middle of writing the last paragraph I stopped to go to the toilet. While in there I tried that spray vinegar for the first time. Judging by the gentle fizzing it was doing a good job of dissolving some light limescale stains on the hand basin. The scent seemed quite strong, and I think I made the right decision to use it in the bathroom, and not use it in the kitchen near food or plates etc.

  After my lunch I dropped into laying on my bed quietly reading, and probably snoozing, lazy mode. I was only in that mode for 30 to 40 minutes before going back into action. One of the things I said I would do yesterday, and I did do, was to clear the sink of some washing up, plus a few other bits of kitchen work - like wiping the work surfaces down with work surface disinfectant cleaning wipes.

  After that I realised I had nothing to do, or more correctly, nothing I wanted to do. I read a bit more book, and checked a few things on the internet, and finally decided I should watch something from my video archives. Initially I was thinking about maybe watching a couple of old episodes of Yes Minister, or Yes Prime Minister. Then I changed my mind and thought I might watch a film.

  I settled on watching Monty Python's "Life Of Brian". I started watching and I was not happy with the file I was playing. The video quality was not too good, and it was quite a small picture. The sound seemed atrocious.  I thought this was rather strange because I was sure I had a DVD of the film. I stopped playback, and went down to the from room to check my DVDs. Sure enough I did have a copy of the DVD, and it was apparently the "remastered" version.

  The first, and obvious thing is that the picture size was almost double the other file. The sound was perfect, but the video quality was a bit rough. I was surprised that for a "remastered" copy they had not done some cleaning up of what was obviously film grain. I'm guessing that some of the film was shot under less than ideal conditions because only some scenes seemed to suffer from film grain.

  As expected, it was an enjoyable experience, and also I saw bits I had never really seen before. Once I had finished watching it I decided I would rip the DVD to an mp4 file (the old file was an avi file - which probably shows it's age). My new rip was far better than the old. Now I wonder when I am ever going to want to watch it again, but I expect I will one day.
  Last nights dinner was an Iceland "My Protein" Piri Piri Chicken with rice. It was one of those oddities that had not many calories for what should be a complete meal - just 550 calories - but not such a low amount of sugar - 11.7gm. It was also one of those meals that was sort of good, but sort of bad. Bits of it seemed quite tasty, but the rice seemed to make it all a bit bland. Perhaps because of it not being as tasty as hoped, it also didn't feel all that filling.

  It was definitely a stupid thing to do, but I topped it off with the whole pack of just 5 "no added sugar", hazelnut crunchy coated biscuits. The real stupid thing was having them late in the evening where their small amount of sugar (on top of the moderately high amount of sugar in the Piri Piri chicken with rice) would have the maximum impact on my blood glucose measurements this morning.

  I think I was in bed reading well before 9pm, and I also think I was fast asleep soon after 9pm. Despite having a new bottle of Acidex to test, I didn't need it because I didn't get any heartburn last night. That was good news, but maybe a bit surprising because my dinner was quite spicy, and I had added a sprinkle of hot pepper sauce to it's alleged "three chilli" hot spicy sauce.

  Getting up every 2 or 3 hours is so common place that it is barely worth mentioning these days. Having dreams that seem to have left no solid or meaningful memories is also not really worth mentioning, but being woken up by a thunderclap at 2am is worth a mention. It may have actually been the flash that woke me. The thunder didn't seem that loud, and I wasn't even sure it was thunder at first.

  Lightning and thunder seemed last for about 2 hours, but I managed to sleep through some of it. It possibly kept me in only a light sleep because I think I went for a pee at 2am, 3am and 4am. The 3am pee didn't actually seem big enough to warrant waking up without the aid of a thunderclap. I estimate the nearest the thunderstorm came to me must have been at least a mile away, and most of it was probably a few miles away or more.

  I think I woke up at 6am, but being a Sunday I decided to force myself to get some extra sleep. I managed about 25 minutes before I got cramp in my left leg, and had to leap out of bed. Once the cramp pain had quickly faded away I sort of felt OK. I can't quite bring myself to say "good", but maybe I could admit to "fairly good-ish". It was one of those slightly rare good mornings when I had a poo as soon as I went to the toilet. Unfortunately I forgot to have a pee at the same time.

  I weighed myself and found I had lost maybe 100 or 200gm. That was good, just not very good. Ten minutes later, and fortunately before I had any breakfast, or anything to eat, I went back to the toilet for the pee I should have had. After that I weighed myself again, and this time I was a rather good 700gm lighter than yesterday morning, and the terrible slow decent to how low I got my weight a few weeks ago, is getting closer.

  This morning it initially looked like my blood glucose level would be satisfactory. The Contour meter, now with fresh batteries in it, read 8.4mmol/l. Not a nice low figure, but low enough to be considered ignorable. Sadly both the GloucoRX meter (also with brand new batteries) and the Sinocare meter agreed my blood glucose level was a high, but not dangerously high, 9.2mmol/l. I think my dinner and biscuits for dessert was working against me.

  Even my blood pressure is a little higher this morning, although 109/50 is firmly in the "Optimum" area according to the blood pressure meter. It is the highest systolic pressure recorded in the morning since the start of this month. The running average is just 102. I am actually quibbling about tiny amounts here. I don't have to worry until I get readings over 139mmHg - and I am a long way from that.
  I took this picture just before 10am (about an hour ago as I type this). It is the view to the north, and it shows quite an interesting array of clouds, plus some blue bit of sky. The view to the south has always seemed a bit more cloudy, but the sun has peeped through those clouds a few time in the last hour. The weather forecast said it should be raining now Or at least during this hour), but the sun, after a brief dip behind a cloud, has come out again. It could almost look nice, but there are still some rather grey and threatening clouds to be seen, and the idea of rain sound very believable.

  I have no idea what I am doing today. I can think of one small thing. Having sprayed the scented white vinegar in the bathroom hand basin, I suppose I should go back, put on then rubber gloves, and do a proper cleaning job in there. If I really and truly did the job properly it co0uldn take hours. I expect I won't devote much more the 20 minutes to it, but you never know....

  In about an hours time I will use the other two small, wholemeal, finger rolls to make cheese and onion rolls for lunch. After lunch I expect I'll read my book for a while, and after that I could do the video editing I was going to do yesterday. Of course if the threat of rain actually turns into sunshine, I could go out for a walk. I could do, but I bet I won't.