This morning started at just 6° C. It was a bit cloudy at first, but the cloud seems to be breaking up, and maybe today's forecast of sunny spells will come true. In fact, as I write these words, the sun has just come out. Whether they will continue through to sunset is anyone's guess, but it looks nice for now. Today the temperature should rise to 16° C by 2pm. Tomorrow should start a few degrees higher than today, but it may start a bit dull. If the forecasts are right it could end up sunnier than today, and the temperature could reach 17° C.

   My hopes of going out with a camera yesterday were dashed by the gloomy light outside. It seemed cold and depressing instead of the hoped for cheery weather (even if it would still be cool enough to need a coat). I did go out, but only as far as Tesco.

  One ongoing problem I am having concerns my hot water. The water pressure lately seems to be on a knife edge. The water from the hot water tap of the hand basin in the bathroom is currently rather hot. The water from the shower nozzle would be too uncomfortable at that temperature, but the slight restriction of the water going through the shower hose and head causes enough back pressure to severely reduce the heating in the water heater.

   I really need to adjust the thermostat on the heater, but the last time, a few weeks ago, that I stupidly touched that, for the first time in 10 to 15 years, started a leak from the sealing gland around the spindle from the mechanism. If I had not touched it I could control the temperature by just controlling the gas flow into the heater. I have feeling I will have to change the setting again, and that will make the leak worse again (after a few weeks the drip has fallen to just once every 15 to 20 seconds as the limescale around the spindle builds up again).

  All that build up is because I had a shower yesterday morning, and it was just tepid. Not unpleasantly cold, but not pleasantly warm. Oh well, I got myself clean, and after dressing I was ready to venture out into the gloom, and get some shopping from, Tesco. I may have don a slightly better job at selecting more healthy food this time, but not completely. The reduced price 4 pack of mini pork pies was probably an idea I should he resisted better.

  I feel I must blame the cold and dull weather for making the walk to Tesco mildly unpleasant. I don't think I would have fared well if I had tried to do much more walking yesterday....although, after walking enough I sometimes seem to free up the stiffest joints and stuff. The walk back from Tesco, carrying a very heavy ruck sack on my back, and medium heavy shopping bag, felt like hard work, and although neither half of the walk invoked any angina pains, I still felt very uncomfortable, and I was glad to get home.

  The heaviest part of the load was four x 2 litre bottles of Diet Coke, and the four cans of soup were second heaviest. Everything else was light by comparison, at least individually they were. I did find one ready meal that could be very healthy, although I have yet to try it. It was a salmon based meal with some sort of cheesy sauce and what looks like a few chips or potato wedges. It claims to be under 300 calories, and has only about 6gm of sugar in it - if I remember it correctly.

  My lunch was a fairly healthy sort of meal. I had bought a "simple side salad" to go with a couple of Tesco Finest scotch eggs that I had in the fridge from the last time I went shopping in Tesco. They were possibly past their use by date, but not by much. Those and the simple salad was not as healthy as it could be after I was very generous with mayonnaise on the salad, and hot chilli sauce on the Scotch eggs.

  Itw as while I was preparing that lunch that I saw it was raining. It was only a passing shower, that maybe lasted 5 or 10 minutes, but it was followed by fine drizzle that may have lasted another 20 minutes, although being so fine it was not easy to see when it actually stopped. I only knew it was raining by the way things outside were getting wetter and wetter. I could not actually see that drizzle from indoors.

  The rest of my afternoon was a very lazy time. I did contemplate going out for maybe a short walk, but it was like contemplating holding a finger in a candle flame - something you most definitely want to do ! I ended up spending a lot of time just reading, and while reading I probably allowed my eyes to close, and have a snooze. Most of my memory of the afternoon is a sort of fuzzy blur, and I can't say whether I did snooze or not.

  I did stop for a small snack, and it turned to be an interesting one. I have been looking at the almost side by side display of crisps bearing the Tesco logo, and crisps bearing the name Tesco use for their very cheap stuff (that I seem to have forgotten). The packets have the same three flavours, and seem to be of identical size. While eating two of six packs in the bigger bag, I noticed that each small bag was just 25gm.

   They seemed to be the same size as the crisps I said were 35gm a few days ago, but now I wonder if these cheap bags (80p versus £1) do indeed contain a lot less crisps. If so then they actually offer less value for money, and it could be a deliberate plan to swindle the buying public. On the other hand, it is only a matter of pennies, and maybe a few pennies is worth getting a small bag that looks like the bigger bag, and seems to be just as nice, but obviously has less of the things in it that are bad for me.

   My dinner was an interesting experiment. It was based on just three, from a pack of six, Bratworst German style (or possibly actually German) sausages that I had with a bag of tomato and basil flavoured heat in the microwave rice. The sausages were nice, but not fantastic, and they claimed to only have 0.5gm of sugar in per sausage. The rice was also said to be low sugar, but being a carbohydrate it would be converted to sugar.

  It seems that rice may have been converted to sugar in the gut (by enzyme action) very quickly. I did my first 9pm blood glucose test, and actually recorded it yesterday. I was using the Vivachek meter, that I am not sure is very accurate. I sort of hope it was very inaccurate because it read a horrendous 11.5mmol/l ! As I say, I actually recorded this reading, but I then tried to forget it until this morning.

  Last night was a typical night, or typical for the last few months or more, I was in bed after Star Trek: Voyager ( a completely forgettable episode), and I spent the next hour or so reading in the warmth of my bed. I didn't seem to feel very comfortable, and I didn't think I would get to sleep easily. If it wasn't for a load of dreams I would not have even realised I had fallen asleep for a few hours.

  The dream seemed to be about waking up to find my bedroom to be different. It seemed to have a light curtain down the middle, and on the other side was a small bed that I realised had my younger sister in it. She woke up, and said "my need is greater than yours" and leapt out of bed to go to the on-suit toilet cubicle. I had to wait in bed feeling like I was about to burst before she announced "all yours".

  I think I woke up for real then, and I am sure I did go for a pee. I soon fell asleep again, but a couple of hours later I was waking up again, and this time it felt like I had bad indigestion, I was also feeling cold. I put the heater back on low on my way to the toilet. When I came back I took a swig of antacid liquid. I then sat at my PC, feeling quite chilly, as I waited for the antacid to work. The ache did go away, but I am not sure if it was indigestion, but I suppose it could have been reflux.

  I guess I was trying to read news stuff on my PC for as much as half an hour. I almost fell asleep across my keyboard twice before I went back to bed. The indigestion like pain had gone, but it seemed to take ages to get comfortable in bed. With the heater on it was starting to feel a bit too warm under the duvet, but still very cold without it. I think I slept the rest of the night with at least an arm or a leg uncovered.

  I don't think I slept all that well in the latter half of the night. I never seemed to be perfectly comfortable, and I am sure I woke up a couple of times to re-arrange my bedding and pillows - and at least one of those times I didn't get up for a pee. I don't think it was the usual thing of getting cramps in a leg, but this morning I woke up almost at 6am on the dot, and I almost leapt out of bed. It was like it was a warm summers morning about 20 or more years ago when I could greet the new day with enjoyment - which certainly didn't apply this morning.

  The first thing I did was to go to the toilet (as usual) and I had a good pee, but no poo so far this morning. When I got on the scales I was delighted to see I had lost about 100gm, Now of course just 100gm is almost just random noise. It also must have been wrong. After dishing out all my morning and afternoon pills, plus vitamins and such, I went to the toilet again hoping for that elusive poo, but instead I had another pee. The very strange thing is that when I came back on got on the scales again, I expected to have lost (peed out) another 100gm, but instead it seemed I had actually put on 100gm compared to yesterday morning. That is very weird, and should be impossible !

  After my terrible late night blood glucose test I was quite worried what my morning tests would be like. One was a slight disappointment ! The Contour meter read 7.5mmol/l, and that was spot on my latest target. The GlucoRX reading was also in the right sort of area, but a little higher at 7.8mmol/l. The Sinocare meter reading was only very mildly disappointing at 8.1mmol/l, but on the positive side that is still well under my old target of 8.5mmol/l.

  This morning my blood pressure is a nice 105/48. I have finally had my first poo of the day (but I suspect there will be another before midday), and the sun is now shining nicely. I expect my bedroom, and the front room downstairs, will soon be warming up nicely. it seems I will definitely have to make the effort to go out for some of today. The plan I have in mind is to go to the northern end of the Jubilee line at Stanmore.

  Stanmore is one of the edge stations of the Freedom Pass area, and one I didn't get around to visiting when I was making frequent trips to visit the extremities of my Freedom Pass. As of 5th June 2023 I had only visited 26 out of 45 possible end points, and so it is high time I added a few more entries to my spreadsheet. Maybe today will be the day, but I can't say it is until I have actually done it. I intend to be out long enough to skip lunch, and what I hope will happen is that I will do a lot of short walks that will add up to several useful miles. My next big decision concerns the route I will take. The obvious might be a train to Waterloo East, and then go out the end of the station that connects to the Jubilee line at Southwark, but that might be boring. I think I might go to London Bridge, and change to  Thameslink train to West Hampstead. From there it is a short walk down the road (a minute or two) to the Jubilee Line station of the same name. There is also the same named North London Line, London Overground station that I might visit to get a few snaps before I head for home.....assuming I get out in the first place !