Todaywas originally forecast to be as bad as yesterday, but now a few hours of sunny spells are shown for the afternoon. Even the Met Office forecast shows them. It will still be cold, and just 13° C is expected. There is a big difference between the forecasts on the BBC and Met Office for tomorrow. The BBC says thick grey clouds all day, but the BBC says lighter clouds, and as much as 5 hours of sunny spells in the afternoon. Both agree that it will be rather cool again, maybe even cold if the clouds are dark grey. Just 13° C is forecast again.

  Yesterday's weather had all the ingredients for another horrible day, and indeed the weather was very depressing, but somehow the day was nowhere near as depressing as the day before. I didn't really do much, but I didn't seem to be particularly bored and miserable.

  I could have potentially gone out yesterday. As I think I suggested I might do, I had a wet shave, shampoo (and of course conditioner) plus a nice warm, but not too hot, shower. I was probably scrubbed enough to mingle with kings and queens, but I looked outside, and decided that was not the place for me. Not going out made it harder to control all I ate, and on the whole it would seem my control failed far more than I expected.

  For lunch I finished off the last of the wholemeal rolls, the big red onion I had been using for a couple of days, and also two lots of cheese. I used some low sugar tomato ketchup instead of butter. One cheese was a mild blue cheese, and that seemed to go well with red onion. The other cheese was an artisanal sort of cheese that tasted a bit ripe like blue cheese without the blue, and that too went well with the red onion.

   My main, and maybe only big distraction in the afternoon was to do a bit of hand laundry (all my laundry is done by hand). It was not a lot of stuff, just a single t-shirt, a pair of lounge pants and two pairs of underpants. I was not sure if I wanted to do it all in one go, but once I got started it seemed easy enough. One of the things about yesterday was that I was not feeling unwell like the day before.

  I can't recall if I had a mid afternoon snack or not. If I did it might have been something like a small portion of peanuts. I know that I was feeling peckish when dinner was still over an hour away. I started munching Twiglets. I believed, and still believe that they are fairly harmless, although I did end up eating quite a lot of them. That may not have been ideal.

  When it came around to dinner time I had several choices. I had sausages and chicken Kievs in the fridge, and both have reduced price stickers on them because they were on their sell by date when I bought them. Both should be used soon, but last night I had a slightly silly idea that cans of soup may be a bit safer. I had one can of Heinz minestrone soup that was well past it's use by date. With a good splash of hot sauce it was a lot nicer than I expected. I had a second can of Heinz lentil soup, also with some hot chilli sauce, and that was nice, but no as nice as hoped for.

  There was nothing on TV yesterday that I fancied watching, although while checking through the electronic programme guide I ended up watching maybe half or a quarter of "Train Truckers" - programme about the hauliers who specialise in moving whole steam or diesel locomotives. It it partly interesting, but it is one of those programmes where it is padded out with boring bits to get it up to the needed length of an episode. Plus it is my belief that it is the sort of programme where watching one episode is like watching most of them.

  I had no desire to go to bed early last night because I didn't think I would be able to get to sleep very early. I spent a lot of time reading in bed, and carried on until I finished the book. I was just having a final pee before trying for sleep at almost 10.30pm when I heard by phone bleep. It was a very short message from Angela. The poor girl said she was back in A&E at St Thomas hospital because she couldn't stop vomiting.

  Nausea and vomiting can be the worst side affect of cancer therapy, and it sounds like Angela was very sensitive to it. I have yet to hear if Angela was kept in. I suspect she will be so they can feed her glucose and supporting vitamins, minerals and other supplements from a drip. She will also need hydrating that way as well to keep her strength up because I think it unlikely they will want to pause or stop her radiotherapy, and today she will also be getting another dose of chemo-therapy - a strong reason for more nausea and vomiting.

  I replied with a couple of messages I hoped would help her, but I have not seen a reply. Maybe they just made her feel worse, but I hope not. I think I managed to get to sleep soon after, maybe around 11pm. From then on I seemed to sleep quite well. I do remember enough fragments of a dream to try and describe it enough that it sort of makes some sort of sense.

  In the dream I was still working despite getting my two pensions. This does seem to be a common theme, and I do wonder if it is some sort of perverse idea that I should still be working for something to do on these awful boring, short, cold and dark winter days. If I felt up to it, which I don't, it could almost be fun. In many ways I would be bullet proof - if I got pissed off I could just wave goodbye and only lose a bit of money that I don't really need, although of course it would still be very easy to spend it !

  Back to the dream...I have no idea where I was working, but I knew that huge redundancies were coming, and we had been officially warmed to start looking for alternative jobs. I saw an advert for a company that was hiring, and I asked a career adviser what they thought. They got back to me and said it was worth trying. Now the very odd thing is that it didn't say what the company did, and what sort of skills they were after.

  It was also sort of dodgy because after writing or phoning the company I was told I had to go to an address, that was different to the companies address, and sign in to show my interest. I smelled a rat, but it was an afternoon's adventure and chance for a bit of train spotting. The station I got a train from was a bit like Hither Green station, but back in the day when each platform had a slope down to the subway at the bottom.

  I don't remember getting on a train, and I don't remember arriving at my destination, and I have no idea where it was. I evidently found the address OK, and went in. There was a reception, but no receptionist. There was just a clip board where you were supposed to leave you name, date and time. It didn't even ask for any contact details, but presumably they had those details from my original letter. After that time jumped again, and I was in what I think was a work canteen, but it did seem like a high street café.

  While in there a woman who knew me, and where I had been, but I didn't seem to know her, asked how I had got on. I said how it all looked highly suspicious, and wondered if they were recruiting money mules or something. The woman asked if that worried me, and I said not yet, but if it turned out to be dubious I would just walk away. She asked how I would survive without a new job. I said "don't forget I am 69 and a half years old, with two fair pensions, and extra pay was only useful for occasional luxuries". That seemed to be the end of the dream.

  I think I had other dreams, but they seemed to have slipped my mind. In woke up maybe 10 minutes after 6am, and I felt like it was probably a good time to get up. I seemed like I would not be able to get back to sleep if I tried. I was not disappointed when I went for a pee and poo. Both seemed moderately substantial, but despite that it seemed like I had put on 100gm since yesterday morning.

  I know I did not eat super carefully, but I thought that at worst I would weigh the same, and there might be a fair chance I would have lost something. had I put off breakfast before I had another very substantial poo, probably something to do with the lentil soup I had as part of my dinner, it is entirely possible that the gain of 100gm might have changed to a loss of 100gm, and maybe even 200gm.

  There was no good news about my blood glucose this morning. Two of my blood glucose meter gave almost the same acceptable readings, but once again the new Chinese meter gave a very high reading. The Contour meter read 8.6mmol/l. A couple of months or more ago that would be nothing unusual, and the GlucoRX meter read a slightly better 8.5mmol/l. That was my old target until I found I could do better. The new Exactive meter read a terrible 9.3mmol/l. At least it was under the read line at 10.0mmol/l, but I still don't like it a bit !

  Even my blood pressure has turned weird. It is still very good but getting a systolic pressure of 108mmHg three days running is unprecedented. It is an extremely average blood pressure from me these days. The diastolic pressure was a good 47mmHg, but that has been similar but different over the last three days. It seems to be one of the things I don't have to worry about these days.

  Now, what shall I do today ? I think I will have a shower for a start. After two large poos this morning it is unlikely that I will be inconvenienced later if I want to go out, but you never know.... I think I am going to make another effort to try and get out to take my new leather jacket for a walk. I don't know if it would be just a walk, or if some trains might be used. I have no idea how far to aim for, or how long I want to stay out - assuming I do go out, The distance and time may depend on how the new leather jacket feels. I am happy it will be a comfortable fit, even when the front is zipped up, but I don't know if I will overheat while wearing it.