The forecast said 9° C after daybreak, but I reckon it was only 8° C, and two of my thermometers said closer to 7° C. As far as I am aware, there has not been a single hint of the sun so far this morning, and as I type this the sky is a very depressing grey. Maybe the sun will eventually break through, but I'm not holding my breath. Maybe with the help of possibly imaginary sunny spells, the temperature will reach 14° C this afternoon. After sunset we can look forward to more rain, although it is forecast to be just light rain. Tomorrow will start a bit warmer than today, maybe 14° C, but it will be because of heavy clouds that will start the day with heavy rain. It could change to light rain at 9am, and stop at 1pm. By as early as 11am the temperature may reach 16° C, and stay that way until 3pm when it will slowly drop to 13° C by midnight.

   I can't decide if yesterday was a good or bad day. I did do a couple of useful things, and so I guess I better call it a good day......but it wasn't a good, good day. I have similar indecisions about the evening. That too was good and bad, although the bad was not apparent until this morning.

  I could say that yesterday got off to a good start - eventually. I knew I was going out, and that out was almost certainly going to be to Tesco. I needed a shower before doing that, and I also washed my hair at the same time.  Once I was dressed I put my best foot forward. That was a lot better than my second best foot forward because even my best foot turned out to be not very good at all.

  The walk to Tesco seemed like hard work. Maybe that slowed me down enough that I never got any hints of angina. It was like my legs had seized up, and each step needed a lot of effort. I suspect it was at least partly due to it being cold. I didn't feel cold as such because I was wearing a coat, and there was some nice sunshine. My coat was black, and it was soaking up the sun to the point where I was worried about getting too hot.

  My shopping intentions were to only buy stuff that should be safe for me, but inevitably I didn't stick to that plan 100%. One slip was a pork pie, and another was a small tub of tuna and sweetcorn sandwich spread. Two hoped for good things were a couple of low calorie. and low sugar ready meals. Much of the weight I had to carry home was 4 two litre bottles of diet coke - two ordinary Diet Coke, and two lemon flavour.

  I think what made the walk home so bad was that the bright sky and sunshine made it feel like it should be enjoyable, but I didn't enjoy it a bit. Once again I didn't suffer any angina pains, or any other pains as such, but it did feel like I was getting to the end of a really long walk. I could have joyfully laid down as soon as I got home, but I had shopping to put away, and then to consider lunch.

  Ideally I should have skipped lunch. I don't think I was actually hungry, but it was part force of habit, and partly because I had bought that pork pie in Tesco. I ate that pork pie with two small (35gm) packets of crisps. The really ironic thing for such and unwise, unhealthy lunch was that I don't think I enjoyed it. I had half eaten the pork pie before I realised it was actually tastier without putting mustard on it, and the crisps were totally superfluous.

  After my lunch I did have a lie down. It was not exactly warm in my bedroom, but the sun coming through the window did give the impression it should be warm, or at least warming up. I'm pretty sure I had a short snooze before waking up feeling a bit cool. One way of warming up was to continue a job I had started at the end of my shower - some laundry.

  That laundry seemed like a lot, but it was just one t-shirt, one pair of lounge pants, plus 4 or 5 pairs of underpants. Like the walk to and from Tesco, it seemed harder work than it should have been. I plodded on, and did the wash, three rinses and conditioner before hanging it on the big clothes horse in the front room. As usual I put the desk fan on to help blow dry it all. This morning it doesn't feel fully dry. These cold nights and days means I will probably have to start using a fan heater to help some of the drying in the future.

  Writing that last paragraph, and thinking about how hard the walk and the laundry was, makes me think I was not in good health, and I am not sure in what way it could be. I know my blood pressure was good, and although I did get one high blood glucose reading, the other two were perfectly normal. I did note my body temperature was often a degree lower at times. Maybe it is this recant fast change in seasons, plus all the rain, that is getting me down physically as well as mentally.

  After finishing the laundry I almost had nothing to do, but there was one unusual job to do. It all started when I looked at the dusty heap of a Pentax DSLR camera I once bought in a second hand shop. It was all white, and looked rather nice. The reality was that it seemed like it had lived it's life in a greasy chip shop or something. When I first bought it (for maybe only £50, I had to liberally dowse everything in alcohol to un-gum everything.

  I managed to get the options selector to work on most settings most of the time, and after a lot of effort I got the inbuilt flash to pop up with a little bit of gentle help. It seemed to be mostly working, but the shutter was still sticky. Sometimes it would take a reasonable picture, but mostly it didn't. I attempted to clean the shutter mechanism, and ended up making it far worse !

  Yesterday I decided I would keep the lens, because that seemed to be OK, and throw the rest away. Obviously I kept the memory card, but I deleted everything on it for some future use. I also decided to keep the neck strap, even though I don't really have a use for it. It was almost slimy to the touch, and so along with a couple of old camcorder neck straps, I gave it a wash in detergent plus some "Vanish" liquid. I think I got most of the greasy slime out, and if nothing else, the name "Pentax" now shows out in red. Before it was a sort of indistinct muddy colour.

  One of the things I found in Tesco was this (alleged) "Beautifully balanced" ready meal. With just 6.9gm of sugar for the whole meal, and also 364 calories, it seemed like a good choice for my dinner last night. I can't say it was that nice, but it wasn't bad, and maybe just about OK enough that I would consider buying another.

  Maybe the big mistake I made was having a starter. It was a small tub of tuna and sweetcorn sandwich filler that I just scooped up using rice crackers. I have a bad feeling it might have been an unexpected source of sugar.  I don't think I can account for some high blood glucose readings this morning in any other way......unless it was the Esomeprazole tablet I took yesterday.

    After a few bad nights from heartburn I thought maybe I ought to give those tablets another go. I took them for a week, and that seemed to be a temporary cure for the heartburn, but I didn't like the way they seemed to effect me. I'm sure that one effect was on my blood glucose readings. If indeed that was the problem it is a tricky thing finding some sort of balance between higher blood glucose readings, or getting a decent night's sleep.

  Last night it did seem I got a decent night's sleep (although maybe I am having second thoughts as I type this). I did my usual of reading in bed, and I put the book down around 9pm if I remember correctly. I think it was no more than 10 or 15 minutes later that I was fast asleep. One thing about last night was that I don't remember peeing much, and that should suggest a nice low blood glucose level.

  One thing about last night was that I had turned the heater off about an hour before I got into bed. I felt nice and warm, but not too warm, under the duvet. By about 3am, maybe 4am, I was starting to feel a bit cool, and I turned the heater on low. It was still on low until about half an hour ago when I began to feel cold writing this, even after a hot breakfast, and so I turned the heater up full for maybe 15 minutes. The heater is now on low, and I still feel fine.

  I had one dream last night, but it is hard to describe it because it is all a bit confusing. I seemed to be dreaming about being in bed, and possibly dreaming that I was imagining a very sexy woman...to dream about ! Another dream may have been from last night, or possibly the night before. In the dream I was at home, but it was not quite like my actual home apart from one feature. In cold weather I have to be careful that the door latches when I close it. In the dream I was struggling to get the front door to latch. It was as if there was something stopping it closing. I could see nothing in the way, and ended up putting my whole weight on the door to force it to close enough for it to latch.

  After apparently sleeping well I woke up just before 6am as if ready to get up. I managed to turn over, and sleep for another half hour. I got up, and as usual, went to the toilet, and as not always usual, I had a poo as well as a poo. That seemed encouraging, and went I got on the scales I found I had lost 300gm. I still have some way to go before I get my weight back down to where it has been a few times in the last few weeks, but at least it was still going in the right direction this morning.

  The drop in weight suggests I didn't eat too bad yesterday, and the lack of peeing in the night (if I remember correctly) also suggests that my blood glucose should have been lower this morning. It wasn't. It was higher ! The Contour meter was not too bad with a reading of 8.7mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read a terrible 9.0mmol/l, and the Sinocare meter was even worse with a reading of 9.3mmol/l. It feels like it was too soon after taking the Esomeprazole tablet for that to be the culprit, but I wonder....

  Even my blood pressure is higher this morning. It is up in the "Normal" area with a reading of 123/54. That, in itself, is not bad, but an upward trend could be. Hopefully this is just a one off, and tomorrow may see things back to normal. I must say, I still feel very off colour at the moment, but it is nothing specific enough to put a name on it. I just feel "yucky" !

  Today's main event should be a beer tasting session with Jodie this afternoon. She said she would definitely be coming over even if the trains weren't running. The reason being is that on Monday (I think) she is off to Finland for gigs and beer for two weeks, or at least she won't be here this coming Thursday, next Sunday and the Thursday after that. After my recent beer delivery she will find a lot of new beers here, and I am sure she will disapprove of many of them. I did mostly select them to hopefully tickle my taste buds !