I#m unsure if today really started at 7° C - it was 8° C when I first checked ! One thing about this morning was that there were a few gaps in the cloud, and for a few minutes one such gap allowed a few rays of sunshine through. The cloud has since thickened up. Today may only be light to medium grey (although I am seeing slightly darker grey clouds at the moment), but it should stay dry, and the afternoon temperature should reach 11° C - which is still very cool, but better than yesterday. Tomorrow may actually see full sunshine for quite a few hours, but the temperature will still not climb above 11° C.

  The weather may have been cold and grey, but yesterday got off to a good start....err maybe a fairly good start, with one bad bit may be closer to the truth. I didn't manage to raise the enthusiasm to wash my hair, and it did need washing, but I did have a nice scrub under the shower.

  It was gone 11am when I was dry and dressed, ready to go out. I had a plan to just go shopping, but from a shop that is generally good, but which I rarely go to because it is a slightly longer walks than my most used shops. Once upon a time that was mild laziness, but these days it would be more because my current health puts limits on how far I can walk, and the shop I went to pushes the limit a bit.

  It was all made worse by the fact that I was testing a pair of Converse trainers I had bought 5 or 6 years ago, but had hardly worn because they seemed uncomfortable. They are, or look like they have leather uppers, and in theory they should adapt to the shape of my feet given sufficient time. I did find that my left foot did feel almost comfortable, but my right foot, with it's bunion, and wonky toes, was very uncomfortable.

  It is possible that it was mainly the pain from my right foot that slowed me down enough to stop my chest pains getting all that noticeable. I really don't know if I have adapted, by maybe walking a little bit slower, or if there has been some improvement in my blood circulation, but it now seems a bit rare to feel full scale angina pains. I do get a bit of tightness in the chest, but it is currently rare for those pains to go up my neck, into my shoulders, and make my teeth tingle.

  The shop I was going to was the Metro Food Centre, and it is probably an extra couple of minutes of walk compared to Tesco. In many ways it is the same as the little supermarket on Catford Bridge in that it has foods from all over Europe and beyond, and things like cans are often mostly labelled in foreign languages, and sometimes using non Latin alphabets. It is a great place to discover new stuff.

  Apart from the pain from my right foot, it was a fairly easy walk there, and if it had been warm, bright, and sunny, it might have even been almost pleasant. Once inside the shop I looked for all the usual sorts of things I buy from such shops. The first thing was the fruit section where I bought 3 large oranges that I have yet to try, but I hope will be rather nice. I then found the instant noodles, and found a few flavours, including mushroom, that I have tried before, but rarely seen.

  One very mild mistake was buying some Koka branded tomato flavoured instant noodles. I had them for breakfast this morning, and although still nice, they were nowhere near as good as Vifon branded tomato flavoured instant noodles. I found some sugar free biscuits in there, and grabbed a few. In the beer section I found a Polish beer, Warka, that I haven't had for a long time, and got a couple of cans of that. I think the only other thing of note was a couple of small cans of Greek giant beans style baked beans in tomato sauce.

  I decided to make it a sort of circular walk by walking home by going past The Black Cat pub. I noted they had what may have been music in there last night. The only name given was "Chelse", and I have a terrible idea she was a so called DJ playing the most awful music ever invented - possibly even worse than Elvis Presley !! I didn't feel any urge to go along and see what it was all about. In fact I actively decided to stay away as far as possible !

  I didn't take my rucksack for my shopping, but a strong "bag for life" instead. It was not terribly heavy with all I had bought, but it seemed heavy enough, and when I was halfway home I stopped for a 30 second breather before continuing. It was nice to get home, and within 30 seconds of doing so I felt fine except for the pain from the bunion, and a couple of toes on my right foot. They didn't fade until I took those trainers off when I got changed into indoor clothes.

  It was lunchtime when I got home, and apart from getting changed, and putting my shopping away, the first thing I did was to prepare some lunch. It was to be giant beans on cheese on toast with a splash of hot sauce. It was nice, but not the very nice I hoped for, and I am not sure why. Maybe my tastes have changed in the last 10 to 40 years since I last had something similar.

  Once I had eaten my lunch I had almost nothing to do, but that was no problem at first because I had a lie down, read for a bit, and then had a snooze. It was after that when I had to scratch around for things to do. I did a few almost insignificant things like washing my lunch plate up, and reading more stuff on the internet. Perhaps about three hours passed before I gave into the temptation of a snack. I mostly ate the final half of a bag of strange crisps.

  Those crisps were more like strips of thin tortilla chips. The significant thing is that their edges were quite sharp - a fact I discovered the hard way when some over exuberant eating made me slash the inside of my cheek. At the time it was merely an annoyance, but later, when eating dinner, it felt quite sore if I allowed food to come in contact with it - which was far too easily done when chewing on chewy food.
  One small diversion was checking a couple lenses for my Canon Cameras. In the picture above is the Tamron lens I recently said seemed to be producing soft pictures under poor lighting conditions. It is exactly the same, apart from the fitting, to one for my Nikon cameras, and that I gave up on because some pictures gave a sort of soft focus picture. The thing I could not work out was why it was only the Nikon version, and until that gloomy day last week, and not the Canon version that was causing trouble.

  The answer became clear when I had a look at my lens collection, and I realised I had two different Tamron lenses for my Canon cameras. The bad lenses seem to be 28 to 300mm zoom/telephoto lenses. The lens on the right (in the picture above) is a 18 to 200mm lens, and I feel very sure that it produces very good pictures, although I have yet to prove that by going out into the gloomy weather and taking a few test pictures.

  I cured the soft focus looking pictures on my Nikon cameras by purchasing a genuine Nikon "Nikkor" 18 to 200mm lens. As expected that produces nice crisp pictures. I thought I would miss the extra bit of zoom by using lenses that only go to 200mm, instead of 300mm, but maybe that is offset by the wider angle at the other end - 18mm instead of 28mm. I don't think I will go to the expense of buying a genuine Canon lens to replace the Tamron, because it seems the 18 to 200mm Tamron lens is perfectly OK - or I think it is.

  My dinner was an interesting experiment - pork chops with grilled apple. It was almost a success. I specifically bought the pork chops for this experiment. Over a week ago I had bought a pack of six small, and not very nice apples from Aldi. I wondered what they would be like if treated as very small cooking apples. I cored them, and then sliced them into rings. After grilling a couple of pork chops until just about done, I covered them with the apple rings, and grilled them for about 10 minutes.

  I thought it would be better if I did not over cook those apple rings. In fact they were well undercooked, but some were partly cooked, and they were as hoped, softer, and sweeter tasting. I am tempted to repeat this experiment, but make sure they apples are grilled for as much as 30 minutes. It won't matter if they are overcooked and go pulpy because I'll probably end up with something almost like apple sauce, and that goes well with pork.

  I would have enjoyed that dinner a lot more, even as it was, if I hadn't slashed the inside of my cheek earlier on when eating those thing, tortilla like crisps. The pork needed a fair bit of chewing, and doing that while trying to keep the food, and maybe even my own teeth, away from the cut was not easy, and it was a bit of a painful meal. The cheek is still tender this morning, but I felt no pain when eating my instant noodles for breakfast.

  I thought I would end up having an early night last night. There was nothing to do that would keep me from my sleep - or so I thought.... I practice I could not calm my mind down, and it insisted on thinking about camera lenses, and how I was going to take the test pictures I wanted to prove that the 18 to 200mm Tamron lens was good. I am sure I was also thinking of many other things as well, although only the photography thoughts are clear in my memory.

  One thing I forgot to mention was that before dinner, during it, and a bit after, I had just two beers. One was a nice ale, and the other was a can of Guinness. They didn't seem to make any effect on me, but late in the evening I seemed to get a mild headache - almost as if I had a hangover.  I also had some very mild indigestion - so mild that I could have ignored it if it weren't for other things keeping me alert.

  It all seems very confused now, but I think it was like a few times recently when I eventually got to sleep for a couple of hours before waking up for a pee, and then was unable to get back to sleep again for an hour or more. It was probably after midnight until I started sleeping normally again - if getting up for a pee every 2 or 3 hours can be considered normal now. Despite the interruptions it felt like I was sleeping well, and I even had some memorable dreams.

  One dream was very memorable because it ended up strongly erotic. It started innocent enough. I was trying to prove that the end of a silk scarf, moistened with just a bit of spit, was enough to corrupt a data stream if it was in contact with the exposed connections. Having proved it I went in search to see if it was something similar causing data corruption on a PC used my a woman who gave the appearance of a stern librarian, although I have no idea what he actual job was.

  Her PC was under he desk, and I had to squirm my way under it, and had to brush past her legs. She seemed to enjoy it, and moved to increase the contact. She also seemed to open her legs more and more. She must have been wearing a miniskirt because before long I could see her white knickers almost just inches in front of my face. It seemed such an open invitation that I gave her a kiss right between her legs. I think I got a positive reaction, and could have expected more, but Sod's law meant I woke up just as things were looking good.

  Another dream was about being back at College. It was in a very strange building. The bottom floor was a shopping mall, and the next floor up was mostly just a large void, but with a cafeteria for students at the end. The next floor up featured a long corridor with classrooms either side of it. The floor above was for staff and other administrative people. My dream seemed to start at the end of class on the day before the Xmas break. Then it seemed to skip to after the break, and I was trying to find where I should be.

  I had made a note of the right date to return, but not to which classroom I should be in. I went to the classroom I thought I should be in, but after a while as more people came in I realised I didn't recognise anybody. Eventually a lecturer came in and spoke to me. I couldn't seem to remember the name of the last lecturer, or even what I was supposed to be studying. I decided to go out and walk down the corridor, and see if there was anyone I recognised in any of the other classrooms.

  I got to the end of the corridor, and for some reason I decided to go up the stairs to ask someone on the next floor up. Unfortunately it was one of those nightmare buildings where the stairs only go to select floors, and the staircase I went up would only go to an even higher floor. I then went down it again, and this time, despite it being the same staircase, I had to go all the way down to the ground floor. I saw a way out, and outside it was pouring with rain, and I then realised I had lost my coat somewhere - probably back in the classroom I had initially gone to. It seemed like a very good time to wake up.

  Once again, I woke up at about my usual time of getting up, or at least what I think of my usual time, but that seems to have slipped a lot recently. About an hour before that I had turned the heater on full because it was very cold this morning. After an hour at full blast my bedroom was feeling nice and warm, and I decided to go back to bed for "just an extra 15 minutes" ! Two hours later I got up.

  As usual I had a pee, and once again I didn't have a poo. When I weighed myself I found I was exactly the same weight as yesterday. That is better than being heavier, and my thoughts are that if I had a poo (that I expect will actually happen nearer midday for some stupid reason) I would have been at least a couple of hundred grams lighter.

  My blood glucose measurements were a mess this morning. Once again I changed the order of taking them, and used the Exactive meter first. I usually use that one last, and it always gives a very high reading. This morning it read a reasonable 8.8mmol/l. I then used the GlucoRX meter and that read a very good 7.5mmol/l - spot on my current target. The Contour meter, which usually is in close agreement with the GlucoRX meter read a horrendous 9.1mmol/l, and to get it that low I had to take a second reading using a finger prick in a different finger. I now have no idea if my blood glucose is good, bad or something else.

  At least my blood pressure is good this morning. It was good enough that I didn't even try to take a second reading to see if I could improve on it. It read 104/45, and in my mind that is pretty good for a first attempt, and I think my doctors and nurses would agree.

  I have just heard from Jodie. She has the sniffles and other cold symptoms, and so won't be coming for a beer tasting session this afternoon. Even if she had come it would only be a short session because she is (still) going to a gig early this evening. She is seeing Gilby Clarke, one of the original members of Guns and Roses, and he may be using the tribute band Guns 2 Roses as his backing. The two will definitely be performing together for some of the gig.

   With Jodie not coming today, the most exciting thing today should be an Amazon delivery, and the most annoying thing will be not knowing when the delivery will arrive. Nothing in the delivery, except one thing will be very exciting. The one thing that will be sort of exciting, although really it is ju7st a tool that i may use on odd occasions, is a USB to M2 solid state hard drive adapter. Two PCs I own, but currently not in use, use these M2 solid state hard drives, and it will be useful to do stuff to those drives, such as cloning from a SATA hard drive to an M2 drive.

  Just I was typing that last paragraph I got the official notification that the stuff is now out for delivery, but of course no clue as to when that may be. I very much doubt that I wouldn't still have plenty of time to wash my hair and have a shower, but I am not sure I want to take the chance of being caught in the shower. Now I am not seeing Jodie it really doesn't matter if I am smelly and scruffy. Of course If I knew it would be here at about 1pm I would wash my hair and have a shower, and once here I might force myself out for a quick walk in the park to take test shots using what I believe to be the good Tamron lens on my Canon 600D camera.