Today's weather forecast has got off to a very bad start. It is very cloudy, and that has kept the temperature up to 10° C this morning. It also means no sunny spells, and from the look of the sky there won't be any for hours yet, if indeed there are any today ! Considering it is already 10° C now, it make me wonder what the afternoon temperature will be. Maybe it will be a flat 10° C until it starts to fall at sunset. Tomorrow is set to start where today leaves off, 6° C, and with not a ray of sunshine predicted it will only rise to, once again, 10° C. From 7pm there might be light rain.

  Yesterday did not end up well, but I did manage to get home from the hospital at about two minutes after 4pm - the time I told Jodie I would be home. The bad thing was that I had some bad chest pains in the evening, and I am very sure they were not heart or indigestion pains.

  I finished writing so late yesterday that there was no chance I was going to be able to wash my hair, have a shower, and go to Tesco before going to Lewisham Hospital for my yearly diabetic eye retinopathy exam. Obviously I would have to go to Tesco another day (today). After washing my hair, having a shower, and blow drying my hair I theoretically had time to dash out to Tesco, but I wanted to cool off, and I knew I didn't have the energy, or enthusiasm for rushing around.

  I allowed half an hour to do a slow walk to get to the hospital for my 2.45pm appointment. In fact I hoped I would walk fast enough to get there at least 10 minutes early. I actually left a bit earlier than intended, and I did arrive 15 minutes early, but that just meant a longer wait to be seen because they were, as always, running almost 15 minutes late. Fortunately I picked up a copy of The Metro at the Hospital entrance, and sat there doing the crosswords.

  Eventually I was called in for the preliminary stuff of a basic eye test using a chart on the wall, and then having the eye drops put in that dilate the pupils so give a wider view to the inside of the eye. I took the photo on the left that not only shows me looking awful, but also shows my pupils starting to dilate. I never did remember to get a picture of when they were fully dilated.

  I then had to wait about 20 minutes to allow the eye drops to do their worst before being called in for the scan proper. It is a procedure I am well used to over the last 15 or more years. You rest your head on a bar, and stare into the camera. There are virtual lights you have to focus on, and once focussed there is a bright flash, and a picture of the back of the eye is taken. It is done from two angles for each eye, and so four pictures are taken in total.

  It all taken little more than 5 or 10 minutes. The official diagnosis is done by experts, and I'll hear from them in 3 or 4 weeks. Usually the technician will give a the pictures a good look, and they can spot anything obviously bad, but the experts do go in for finer details. The good thing is that the technician said she couldn't see anything obvious to her, and now there is a very good chance I will get a duplicate of the same letter I get every year that says they can see some background retinopathy (usually blood leaking from capillaries in the retina), but they are of no significance now, and will be checked next year.

  I was finally released with just 18 minutes to get home. I thought I might make it with a whole minute to spare, but later I realised that on a good day it was 15 minutes from the entrance of the hospital to home. I still had to get out the building - maybe another 2 minutes - down two flights of stairs and then down a long corridor before emerging into the very cold feeling air.

  I knew from my walk home from the station the day before, that the very cold air would cause additional pains from my chest, and interfere with my breathing. I think I had to stop three times, each lasting not much more than a single minute, plus one very brief stop, on the way home. It seems I made better progress than I suspected. Despite ending up in a fair bit of pain, My estimate of 17 minutes turned out to be a reality of closer to 20 minutes. On a warm day, and when not suffering from Angina, I could have made it in 17 minutes easily, and possibly less.

  I had left the heater on low, with the door shut to the dining room, and it felt so good to take a breath of warm air, as well as feeling the warm air on my body. In fact it was initially a bit too warm after coming in out of the cold. With the dining room door open it seemed to cool off quite quickly, but some of it was just me becoming acclimatised to it. Jodie arrived just a few minutes late after spending extra time in Lidl.

  The silly thing was that Jodie did not seem to be in a drinking mood, and didn't drink all that much over the complete session. The whole point of her coming here was to drink ! Michael turned up about half an hour later, and he drank more than Jodie did. He was in one of his very emotional moods. I would speculate that one of his troubles is that for years and years, and maybe always, he has lived for music and nothing else. If there is no music he has no life. Some songs will actually have him in tears, and while caring for his dementia suffering wife he is so close to the edge all the time now.

  An odd thing happened towards the end of the drinking session, and I think it happened while trying to read some small sized text on the National Rail departures from Catford Bridge station. There were two problems. One is that my eyes may still not have recovered from the eye drops at the hospital, but another thing is that I could not see the computer screen face on. I had to part bend of the table, and twist around to see the screen better.

  I never felt anything happen at the time, but some minutes later I became aware of a pain across my chest. It seemed to be just a thin line of pain just under my man breasts. Later on I would have a few clues that I had done something like dislocating a rib. It was not bad enough to make any difference while I was still drinking, but it would also not let me forget about it.

  Jodie intended to leave for the 6.30pm train, but that was cancelled, and she had to get the next. She left to get that, and then 5 minutes later she sent a message to say she had forgotten her sandwich, and would back in a minute - she was. I don't know what time she actually got the train. In theory she still had enough time to get the 6.42pm train, which was running a few minutes wait, but she might have had a cold wait on the station for the 7.04pm train - and she was originally supposed to be meeting Alan at 6pm !

  Michael left maybe half an hour later, and I immediately started to get some dinner together. All I had for lunch was two small packets of crisps. I wanted something warm and filling. I did contemplate getting a takeaway, but then decided a can or two of hot soup would be a lot quicker, and a lot cheaper. It was so nice that I ended up having three cans, and then realised I had over done it - particularly because I had fortified each can with the addition of some cheese.

  Later on, and it was maybe only about an hour and a bit later, I was heading to bed feeling terrible. Three cans of soup, although low in sugar, and modestly low in calories, was still enough to make me feel bloated, and particularly when laying down in bed. I also had a bit of acid indigestion, and there was still that pain across my chest. I could not get comfortable in bed, and the weight of the duvet made it feel worse. It was time to put the heater on full, and kick the duvet aside.

  It was also time to get out of bed, and sit in front of my PC, and wait for some pain killers to do some good. After maybe half an hour I seemed to feel OK, but that was only when sitting fairly upright, and not moving around. I was just about to go back to bed when I noticed that I had a notification for an update for my PC. They usually don't take more than a minute or two (unlike what I have heard about Windows 10 and 11), and so I went for it. Before I could start the update I had to put my password in. As I lifted my right arm to enter a character from the left of my keyboard the pain across my chest returned with a vengeance !

  I had to wait another 20 or more minutes for that to settle before I tried going back to bed. I hoped I might be able to get to sleep, and so I turned the heater back down to low, and got back into bed. It took a bit of time, but I did get back to sleep, but not for long, and I woke up feeling a bit cool. I reached out and grabbed the duvet to pull it over me. As I did that I felt a definite click from my chest. It was that that made me think that I had maybe dislocated a rib or something. The chest pain returned again, but maybe this time it was not so bad, or perhaps by then I was so tired that I fell asleep again anyway.

  Maybe it was around 3am, but I wasn't really keeping track of time, when I turned from my left side to my right side, and as I did so I heard and/or felt a definite clunk from inside my chest, and if I had dislocated a rib somehow, that was when it popped back in. It was a bit painful as it happened, but not terribly painful. Since then I am still feeling some tenderness from my chest, but no distinct pain.

  I was still getting up for a pee the usual 3 or 4 times in the night, but each one did not seem to be very big, and usually there was no urgency at all. In theory, if I were brave, I might have ignored every second visit to the toilet. Even when I eventually got up, after sleeping until 7.20am this morning, I felt no urgency for a pee. If anything I felt more urgency for a poo, but as yet nothing has happened in that department, and that is a shame because I seem to have put on an awful amount of weight in the last 24 hours.

  With so little peeing it made me dare to thing that I might score some very good blood glucose readings this morning. Alas not, although two were OK. The Contour meter read 8.2mmol/l, and that was good enough. The GlucoRX meter read a bit higher at 8.6mmol/l, and that is just a little bit higher than I would desire, but still OK. The cheap Chinese Exactive meter was back to it's old tricks with a definitely not OK reading of 9.2mmol/l. Oh well at least it was still under the read line at 10.0mmol/l.

  On the whole, I don't feel all that good this morning, and that is reflected in a slightly raised blood pressure. It is 110/50, and although slightly raised, is still deep in the "Optimum" area. In some ways it is good I have no major pains, but just an assortment of aches, or which none is new or unusual. I suppose the tenderness in my chest is a bit unusual, but compared to last night's pains it is only a slight annoyance. Another slight annoyance, the idea that I would suffer from constipation today, has only recently gone away.

  After my two experiences of walking in the cold air, now matter how well insulated most of my body is, I have no great desire to spend much time outside now until next spring ! That does not include going shopping. That is an essential, and after putting it off for three or four days now, I really must go to Tesco today. I did have some thoughts about going to a gig this evening, but I feel that would be a foolish idea now, and besides I would probably be thinking about bed an hour before it even starts. Apart from going to Tesco, I see a lazy day ahead - which isn't ideal after seemingly putting on so much weight in the last 24 hours (although having a very large poo just now must account for a bit of that gain).