08:55 BST

  When I add them up it doesn't seem to come to much, but it felt like I was doing lots of useful household chores yesterday.  It felt good to achieve what I did, but it also felt good to down tools and read some more of my book from time to time. Overall, I guess I had a fairly good day - maybe better considering the dull and depressing weather.

  I wasn't expecting to go out, or to see anyone yesterday, and so I didn't need a shower, but I had one anyway, and I washed my hair. Once I was out of the bath I put my big buckets in it, and prepared to wash my favourite bath towel once I had used it to dry me. I tried the newly bought Surf "Winter Indulgence" detergent, and it seemed fairly nice. Maybe that was more because it was not a strong scent, but just enough to smell.

  I would come back to that towel a bit later, but first I needed to blow dry my hair. The hair dry was the only heat I had on all day (I'm going to wait until I am on the verge of hypothermia before giving any of those energy robber barons any of my money). It was nice boiling my head with the hair dryer, but all good things come to an end. It's odd how washing my hair, showering, and towelling myself dry can be like hard work, but once my hair was dry I laid on my bed and read for a while before having a short snooze.

  I think the next thing I did was to prepare some lunch. It seemed like some internal heating might be good, and so I opened a can of tomato soup. It was no ordinary tomato soup. It was a can of Baxters soup, but the only significant think about that was it's high sugar content was still a lot less than Heinz tomato soup. Another significant thing is that I had been so put off by it's sugar content that it had been sitting in the kitchen until a good few years after it's use by date. It still tasted good, and even better when I added a few course gratings of cheddar cheese and some garlic and herb croutons.

  After another half hour or more to let the soup digest (sort of) I prepared to do more housework. Before returning to the bath towel I did a bit more work on the hand basin in the bathroom. The day before I had treated the whole basin to some scented white vinegar to clean off some of the thin, but as I discovered when it had dried out, not some really stubborn limescale at the edges of the basin. There were a few other places where it was less than shiny, and I cleaned those OK, but it is going to take another session to get rid of that thick limescale at the sides of the basin.

  It was probably 3pm when I got back to the bath towel, although maybe it was earlier because I did note the detergent and water it was soaking in was still slightly warm. I think I gave that towel about 8 rinses, and by then I was fed up with the job. Ideally I could have done another 3 or 4 rinses, but after the eight the water was not that soapy/foamy. I hung the towel up, after wringing it out to the best of my ability, on the big clothes horse in the front room. I used the desk fan to blow air over it, and I was quite surprised that in only a few hours it was mostly dry apart from one slightly damp edge. This morning it is bone dry and ready for use when I have a shower.

  I did have two snacks in the afternoon. One was a ready-to-eat smoked sausage that was not as nice as I remember basically the same thing I used to buy in the 99p shop (or was it the Pound shop ?) some 10 to 20 years ago. The other snack was a small chunk of cheese and some cheese and onion crisps. I deliberately poured the crisps onto a small plate so there were not that many, and I didn't have the bag they came from within reach if I felt tempted - which I could easily have done.

  It was around 6pm when I had my proper dinner. It was another Iceland "My Protein" ready meal. This one was a meat feast pasta. It's calorie content, and sugar content was a bit less than the day before ready meal from the same "My Protein" range. I think it was a bit nicer too, although I am getting bored with pasta now, and I won't be visiting Iceland for more of these "My Protein" ready meals for a while. I have ideas for something better.
   In theory I should not have needed anything after that pasta meal. It was sort of stodgy, and theoretically filling, but I found I did want more. Maybe it was really because the meal did seem a bit rich and spicy (particularly when I gave it a good sprinkle of hot pepper sauce), and I was worried about heartburn. One solution may have been to have a nice glass of ice cold milk, but I had no milk. I did have a tub of "My Protein" vanilla ice cream, and that is very low in calories and sugar. I initially enjoyed it but got bored with it after eating over half the 500ml tub. I jazzed it up by pouring sugar free raspberry and dragonfruit, sugar free Vimto over it. That was nice !

   I watched the usual Star Treks yesterday evening and then had the usual hour break before watching and recording what I believe was the last ever episode of The New Avengers at 9pm. I believe the real reason why it was the last ever was because they ran out of money, and the hoped for extra money from Canadian TV didn't happen. Of course the other reason may have been because they were really scraping the barrel for story lines. Last night's episode was very silly, and even included comedy music over part of it. It seems like today they will be showing the first episode of The New Avengers again. That could be good because I didn't get to see and record every episode, and now I have the chance to get the complete series archived, but it does mean most episodes will not be worth watching a second time so soon after the first.

  I did seem to be occasionally burping the taste of my dinner, and maybe I did have a slight hint of heartburn when I tried for sleep at about 10.30pm. Fortunately it did not stop me falling asleep. Once again I seemed to sleep quite well, and once again I seemed to have a jumble of dreams, and none of them was memorable enough to remember. I do have vague memories of what seem like 1 or 2 seconds of dream, but none seemed to provide a story I could describe.

  Maybe some of the times I got up to pee were dreams. It did seem like I was peeing a lot last night, and yet the clock said they were every 2 or 3 hours, and while not normal for non diabetic, and maybe younger people, that is now quite normal for me. I guess the frequency increases when you get older, and it also increases when your blood glucose is higher than normal. The good thing about it is that pee is mostly water, and water is heavy.

  After getting up I went to the toilet as usual. I had a pee, but didn't poo. Even without that poo I seemed to have lost 400gm this morning. That seemed rather good - particularly after I thought I had eaten rather a lot yesterday, or maybe just a lot more than I would ideally liked to have eaten if I had the restraint I wished I had.

  The weight loss might mean that I would also have a low blood glucose this morning, but all the peeing I did in the night pointed in the other direction. In fact my blood glucose measurements were a lower this morning. The Contour meter  read 8.3mmol/l, and that is less than my old target of 8.5mmol/l, but a lot more than my new target of 7.5mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter did hit the new target spot on with 7.5mmol/l. The Sinocare meter sides with the Contour meter with a very slightly higher reading of 8.4mmol/l. Well it's not perfection, but headed in the right direction, and definitely safe.

  My blood pressure is a bit higher than usual this morning, but the blood pressure meter's internal diagnostics still puts 116/52 still inside the "Optimum" area. So that's OK then. Apart from feeling cold, I guess I feel pretty fair this morning. Maybe not terribly dynamic, but good enough for most simple things.

  There is only one simple thing I want to do today, and it is go shopping again. This time I will be going to Tesco, although I guess it could be Aldi instead. I mainly want to get some meat - nothing too special because it will be soon time to get the slow cooker in action again for some nice hot, home made meals for these colder and colder days. Aldi's meat is not always as good as Tesco's, but sometimes, for some cuts, it can be the other way around.

  Today's dinner, at least in my imagination, could be roast diced lamb with roast sprouts and some boiled new potatoes. It all depends on if Tesco has some diced lamb. The last time I was in there they didn't seem to have any. To be honest, I have no shopping list - just a few possible ideas of what might seem a good idea. Mostly I will just look around and see what is on offer - particularly the reduced price shelves.