This morning has started off looking very wet, but it doesn't seem to be raining now, and maybe not for a few hours. The forecast shows the rest of the day as being dry with just light cloud. It may be just medium grey, but that cloud looks like a complete blanket across the sky at the the moment. Today should reach 15° C, and it looks like I will be burning kilowatts of electricity again. Tomorrow may start with sunny spells, but the forecast says they will finish at around 1pm, but it should stay dry for the rest of the day. The temperature should peak the same as today at 15° C.

  I did not feel good yesterday, and I am not sure why. The symptoms were quite vague, but maybe a bit similar to something like an extremely mild 'flu. I know that Angela has been suffering from her cancer treatment, and as woo woo as it sounds, I can almost believe that most of my bad feelings were just long distance empathy with Angela.

  After the usual writing, and then a rest, yesterday morning, I had a shower. That didn't help me much because the water started to run very cool soon after my shower started, and I was too wet to get out and adjust the water temperature. In the end I didn't exactly wash at all, and just had to be satisfied with a quick rinse ! Afterwards I made sure the water was nice and hot, too hot for a comfortable shower, and put some laundry in to soak.

  With some deodorant spray, a clean t-shirt and clean underwear, I felt clean enough to go shopping (although not really clean enough in the highly unlikely event I would be getting even mildly intimate with a close female friend). I made sure I wrapped up warm, or at least did my coat up (one of the slightly thicker coats) before I walked to Tesco. I felt a bit rotten when walking to Tesco. I still managed to keep a fair pace up, and the peculiar thing is that none of my aches and pains was anything to do with angina, or any of the usual aches and pains.

  I had a fair idea of what I wanted in Tesco. Two litre bottles of Diet Coke was probably the top of my list, and maybe cans of soup the next thing down. I also wanted to top up my instant noodles stocks. One slight oddity was a strong desire for some ready cooked chicken. I could just imagine chomping on some greasy chicken thighs for my dinner in the evening. I actually got a small tub of chicken thighs, and a small tub of spicy wings. I have yet to open them.

  That list almost all I bought from Tesco, but I am ashamed to admit that I was suckered in to buying some almost half price sandwiches. Curiosity also made me buy a small slab of a Swiss or French cheese. It was a name I didn't recognise, and I thought it had to be tried. It was a bit expensive compared to Cheddar, but later I found it had a flavour a bit like some blue cheeses, but without being blue.

  My walk home was very much the same as the walk to Tesco. Carrying quite a weight seemed to make almost no difference. I think I kept up a fair pace, and once again no aches and pains seemed to be related to typical angina and similar pains. One easy to locate pain was my chest, but it was almost certainly just my operation scar tissue that was aching, and probably because I chilled it when showering. Maybe that cold shower accounted for many of the aches.

  Once I had put all my shopping away, except for what would be my very naughty lunch, I had my lunch. It was a pack of two spicy bean wraps, and two packs of smoked bacon and chicken in a sort of small and soft submarine roll. The latter were nice-ish, but the spicy bean wraps were nicer by a fair margin. By then I was feeling warm. I had not skimped on heating in my bedroom, and yet I still did not feel good.

  By then I don't think I could identify a single spot and what kind of pain it was. I just felt yucky all over. I did sneeze a few times as if I had a cold, but my nose did not seem to run. It is hard to remember it now, but with hindsight I could maybe describe it as the lingering effects of very, very mild 'flu. Maybe I had the yet to be discovered 24 hour 'flu !

  After a fairly lazy morning, and then the brief interruption of going shopping, mostly had a very lazy afternoon. I never did get back to the laundry I had left soaking, but I did spent a long time, most of it on hold, phoning the Phlebotomy department to make an appointment to give some blood samples. The nurse printed out the request back in mid July, and we agreed I would sort out the actual testing at my convenience. It will be on the 12th Of November, and it will mean giving two tubes of blood for a whole host of tests that seem more than usual.

  One thing that took me completely unaware was the delivery I was expecting. The official estimate was roughly between 4pm to 6pm, and the natural feeling was that it would be around 5pm - half way between the estimated times. I was almost snoozing when the doorbell rang at 3.45pm. It was the man from Evri with the big pack of paper plates I had ordered. They may not be ecologically sound, but they are damned handy for all sorts of little uses.

  When it finally got around to dinner time, at approx 6pm, I was going to have the ready cooked, but heated up, chicken I had bought from Tesco earlier, but after the sandwiches for lunch I thought something healthier would be better. It probably wasnt ! I decided two golden delicious apples and some cheese would make a safer, but still filling dinner. The flaw in this idea only came to light when I noticed that one of the apples came in packaging, which on closer inspection said each apple typically had 15gm of sugar in it. Two apples was as bad as eating a bar of chocolate - but only in terms of sugar content.

  As usual, I watched some Star Trek episodes last night, although it would probably be more true to say I half watched them. All the epiosdes were not gripping/interesting enough to warrant my entire attention, and I found myself also looking at stuff on the internet at the same time.  At 8pm I switched off the TV, and retired to bed to read. I thought I would be reading for a couple of hours because I was getting near the end of the book, but I started to feel tired.

  While I was reading I had actually got my bedroom quite warm just using the heater on low. That probably made me feel sleepy earlier than otherwise. I think it might have been 9pm when I put the book down, and soon after that I was fast asleep. I still felt a few mild aches left over from earlier in the day, but I was most happy I had no heartburn or acid reflux. In fact, those apples might have been sweeter than desirable, but they didn't seem to cause any problems otherwise.

  I can almost remember some dreams this morning. The first I remember was directly influenced by the book I was reading. I dreamed I was in space. I knew I was weightless, but I never lost the idea of up and down, and I didn't suffer from any of the affects of weightlessness. The dream did really feature any action at all. I was doing little more than visualising the route through the spaceship from the lower cabin areas through to the main hatch to leave the spaceship.

  There was marginally more action in the next dream. I was at a station to photograph, and maybe ride on a "heritage train". It was running in a rarely used line that was to my left (or to the west), and which passed the station, and then looped around to come into the terminal platform pointing back to the direction it had come from. It was extremely frustrating that I never could get a clear view of the train for a photograph. On the way to the station there were trees and shrubs in the way.

  Once in the station there were a lot of people in the way at one end, and the other end was partly blocked by another train. The intention was to get on the train to take a ride back to the station it had come from (I think it was Camden Road station). I don't think I managed to get on the train because the dream seemed to fade out at that point. The next dream was about someone's suggestion that a new Routemaster bus would be going through the market in Lewisham, and it might be interesting to take a look and get a few snaps of it.

  Things were very confused at that point, and I think the view of the brand new routemaster bus was blocked by a vintage bus ! I think I took a picture of that, and I can definitely recall it's number plate OB 20. OB was a good choice for a "vanity" plate as it would stand for Old Bus, and maybe 20 was the year it was built (1920). I am unsure how that dream ended or even if there was a logical end before I woke up - probably for a pee.

  Although I did get up to go for a pee about as often as usual, I seemed to think that I didn't pee much. That made me fear that my weight would be high this morning - mainly from water retention. To make matter worse, I only seemed to manage a very small poo before I got on the scales. It was some surprise to see that my weight had gone down, and by a useful amount. After a recent peak, I am now back down to where I was a week ago.

  Once again a loss of weight has coincided with a gain of blood glucose. No reading was actually bad, but all spoiled a run of far better readings, and ironically the reason for booking my blood tests. The Contour meter read 8.8mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read lower at 8.1mmol/l, and was the only reading I could say was actually good-ish. The Sinocare meter knew it had competition and so read 8.7mmol/l. It was in competition with my new Exactive meter, and that read 8.9mmol/l. That is still a wide spread across all 4 meters, but all being in the old "OK" zone was rather good. (The new desired zone is with readings starting with a 7).

  My blood pressure is very slightly up again this morning. I am seeing lots of small peaks liken this, and I don't really know why some days are worse than others. The silly thing is that this is mostly nitpicking. My actual measurement this morning is 110/53. I only say it is mildly bad because often it is lower, and yet this is still diagnosed by the blood pressure meter as "Optimum", and that is one better than "Normal". I am very sure my doctors would still be extremely happy with this readings....although I do wonder if doctors are ever happy and just demand lower and lower readings of all tests until they all drop to zero, and they never have to worry about you ever again.

  There are just two things I need to do today, although "need" really only applies to the first. I really must finish doing the laundry I left in soak yesterday. Once that it is done, and the bathtub clear of my big washing buckets, I should at the very least have a warm shower. Washing my hair would be good too, and having a wet shave would be nice, even if less essential. A lot less important might be to go to Savers to get more vitamin tablets that are soon to run out. I would expect I would end up buying more than that, and it would be almost certain I would pop across the way to have a rummage in Poundstretcher. That still leaves a lot of the day to be possibly bored, but at worst I could find some more TV recordings to watch and/or edit.