The forecast sunshine is also late today. I can see some blue areas of sky, but they are all in the west instead of the east where the sun is. Hopefully the clouds will split up, or thin, later, and we shall get the promised sunny day. Once again the temperature will only rise to 11° C. Tomorrow may also only see a maximum of 11° C. It may be a mostly dull day, but with the chance of a few sunny spells in the afternoon.

  I covered just about all of yesterday morning yesterday when I resumed writing after getting back from the Group Practice where I gave me blood and urine samples, and picked up my repeat prescription (except the test strips for my nurse issued blood glucose meter, which they seemed to forget).

  After I had finished writing I felt really tired, and I am not sure why. It was only a small walk to and from the Group Practice, and even losing two test tubes of blood was no reason to feel so tired. Maybe it was just a reaction to getting up extra early (or at the right time as I used to call it until my standards slipped). Maybe it was going out before breakfast, but that doesn't sound like an excuse either.

  What I do know is that soon after I had finished writing, and uploading the pages to my web server, I laid down on my bed, and read for maybe 10 or 15 minutes before I put down the book, and then snoozed for maybe a full hour (although I have no real idea of how long it was). I do know that when I woke up I was feeling hungry. I don't know if it was real hunger or not.

  Once again, one of the few facts I am sure about was that my lunch did seem to be filling enough to stop any hunger pains. I guess in some ways it was almost a large lunch, even if I didn't think of it like that at the time. It was basically beans on toast. The difference was that they were Heinz, heat in the bag, (alleged) Mexican style beans. Much of it was kidney beans, but there were some haricot beans, as well as some slices of very cool chipotle chillies. It was nice-ish, but nothing to make me want to buy more if I ever see them again. I bought the bag I had yesterday at least a few years ago.

  My original plan was to go to Tesco yesterday. I felt too tired to go out, and far less inclined to try after eating. It left me with little else to do except to ration my Diet Coke because I was down to just a bottle and a half. That was the biggest reason for originally wanting to go to Tesco. Until there was something worth trying to watch on TV, I basically did nothing except read from my book, and also stuff on the internet, and to feel peckish again.

  My next snack (actually my first I think) was quite a big bag of crisp like things. It may have been a big bag, but these crisp like things were so light and airy that I doubt they weighed more than 50 grams, or about two packets of ordinary crisps. That was not my last snack. I later had some rice crackers with cheese. At some point I also had a portion of instant noodles which came in their own "cup, or mug". It is possible that I had the noodles earlier in the afternoon after I woke up from a snooze feeling cold, and wanted something hot.

  Maybe I lost a few braincells when the blood was extracted from an artery in my arm in the morning. I say that because my memory after getting back from seeing the vampires seems very hazy, and I am obviously having trouble in remembering what order I did things. It is possible the rice crackers with cheese was actually my dinner, because if it wasn't, I can't seem to remember what it was !

  I do remember that whatever it was I had for dinner, I ate it while watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It was another poor episode, and another episode about an alternative reality. The writers really wrote themselves into a corner when they decided to set it on a space station. I then watched some or all of Star Trek: Voyager. It was so "exciting" (not) that I was easily distracted, and may have only seen about half of the episode.

  I had my usual break from TV between 8 and 9pm when I turned on again to watch an edition of Have I Got News For You. I think it was originally broadcast in 2021, but more news or just reminders of how crap Boris Johnston's reign as prime Minister were still very funny in a sad sort of way. When it finished at 10pm I went straight to bed, but it may have been an hour before I got to sleep.

  I seemed to sleep as well as i usually do these days. I still seemed to wake up for a pee about every 2 hours. I had several dreams, and my dim memory of them was that they were all dreamed as if I was reading a book, or watching a play. I could see stuff, but I didn't seem to be actually taking part in the dream. At least one dream, that I have some partial memories of, was obviously inspired by the book I was reading.

  The story was set in a dystopian, not too distant future. The weather through the book was like an extended winter, much like the real weather in 1963 when snow lay on the ground until mid March. Although there was a nominal Prime Minister, the country, and maybe much of the world, was run by a faceless dictatorship.  The heroes were resistance fighters, and I seemed to be watching through their eyes.

  One very odd thing that formed the only bit of the dream that I remember with a modicum of clarity, was about small bombs and statues. It seems that to prevent damage to public statues they were all surrounded by small moats. For less important statues there were small touch sensitive bombs in the moat. These were about the size of half a king sized cigarette, and could do some damage to hands if they exploded while the hands were in the water.

  More important statues had bigger bombs in them. They were tubes about 6 or 7 inches long, and half an inch thick. They were seen as a good source of explosives by the resistance, and they had worked out ways to safely extract and defuse them. I watched one such operation take place. The small bombs were also occasionally taken to be used as fuses. It was a dream, or dreams, where nothing really happened physically, but lots of ideas were learned before waking up made most of the ideas fade to nothing.

  I woke up at about 5am for a pee, and before I went back to bed I turned the heater on full. It was nice and warm when I got up at about 6.50am - a little later than I might have, but quite good enough. I went for the first pee of the waking day, and also managed to have a poo as well. When I weighed myself i found I was a mere 100gm lighter than the day before. That was a bit disappointing, but at least it was still going down - just !

  As I mentioned a few paragraphs back, I did seem to pee as often, and in the usual quantities to suggest my blood glucose was probably not as low as hoped. I was wrong. I got two very good, and one good enough readings. The Contour meter read a very good 7.6mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read very close to the Contour meter at 7.7mmol/l. This morning was one of the rare mornings when the new Exactive meter didn't go completely out on a limb. It still read higher than the other two, but 8.3mmol/l is very acceptable.

  I am happy to say that my blood pressure was nice and low on my first attempt just now. It was 104/52. That is definitely well good enough. I am not sure how I feel this morning. My lower back was very stiff for the first 15 or 20 minutes after getting out of bed, but is perfectly OK now. One bothersome thing is that I feel sort of tired again, and I am looking forward to  spending a bit of time quietly reading after I have finished writing this. Another bother, although it is not unique to this morning, is a tendency to need very little irritation at the back of my throat to start coughing. This is becoming of particular concern because tomorrow I have my diabetic eye scan in the hospital. I don't want to start coughing during that.

  The main even today is to go to The Jolly Farmers for a lunch time drink of Guinness, and to do as much of the quick and cryptic crosswords as I can do in The Metro. As usual I will take just a small camera to get a few snaps of trains and anything else that catches my eye. Anything interesting I will show tomorrow.