There are two main features to today's weather, not counting that it will also be rather cool. One is that it may rain non stop to beyond midnight. Much of the rain is shown as light rain, but there might be some heavy rain this morning. The other main feature is the wind. I am not sure we have seen gust of 55mph yet because I have seen no wheelie bins flying around, but it most definitely is very windy, and it too will continue to beyond midnight. It will be another day when the temperature in the middle of the day will be lower than at the ends of it. This afternoon may only see 6° C. Tomorrow will see more rain and strong winds. The winds may calm down after 1pm, and the rain may stop after 10pm. Much of tomorrow may see a temperature of 7° C, but it may rise to 8° C from 5pm.

  Yesterday turned out to be better than expected in quite a few ways. My guts seemed tender after all the trouble I had the previous night (and early hours of yesterday morning), but that seemed to fade away quite quickly. A nice snooze, albeit maybe only lasting 30 minutes made me feel much fresher.

  I wrote 2016 words yesterday, a little more than average, and I started writing very late, so I didn't finish until gone 11am. I guess that is not all that unusual, but somehow it did feel very late. After I finished writing (and maybe shortly before I finished) I made two visits to the toilet to do the poo I should ideally have done first thing when I got up. That also made me feel more relaxed, and I then laid on my bed, read a few pages, and had my best snooze. It seemed to feel like it was longer, but I think it may have been as short as half an hour.

  I was feeling mildly hungry when I woke up, but I was sticking to my plan of a modestly small breakfast, and then fasting until dinner time. In fact I didn't make the fasting that long. I was drinking a lot of chilled water, and by 3pm I started getting a sort of acid taste which was unpleasant enough to make me break my fast, and have a small quantity of salted peanuts (which do not seem anything like as salty as they used to be thanks to schemes promoting human health.

  It was only about 1pm when I started doing a lot more than intended. It started with taking my noodle bowl into the kitchen. I didn't wash the bowl then because I had another distraction. I decided it was time I sliced up several boxes that had had beer in them as delivered. Now they were empty I could attack them with a Stanley Knife/box cutter to cut them into flat squares of cardboard suitable to be put into the recycling bin.

  A bit of wanton destruction is always good for the soul, or whatever that little hard thing in my chest is, and it enthused me to do more work. I did all the washing up, including all the glasses we had used the night before. With the sink and draining board empty (the glasses were drying on a tea towel on the dining room table) I sprayed white vinegar on the stainless steel draining board and sink to remove a thin film of limescale that was looking a bit dull.

  It felt good doing all that, and it enthused me to do another bit of work. I had decided I just wasn't very keen on going out anywhere yesterday, except for a slight possibility of going out in the evening. For the time being I didn't need to shower, and I made it temporarily impossible by putting some clothes in to soak in detergent. It was two t-shirts, a pair of lounge pants, and some underwear.

  Once that was soaking I could lay on my bed, and once again read a few pages before closing my eyes, and having another snooze. I don't think it was a long snooze because I wanted to get that laundry finished fairly soon in case I wanted to wash my hair and have a shower. At that time I was still mulling over the idea of going to a gig, although by then I guess I was already having even greater doubts I would ever go out - particularly with the forecast for a lot of rain in the evening.

   I seem to have lost all track of time yesterday. I am pretty certain it seemed a long time until sunset when I went back to the laundry, and so maybe it was 2pm. I had intended to then do the three rinses, and fabric conditioner in one session, but I got as far as getting it all in the third rinse water when I fancied a break. I don't think it was then, but it could have been when I had my small amount of salted peanuts.

  Maybe 20 to 30 minutes later I went back to doing the last two stages of the laundry before hanging it up to dry on the big clothes horse in the dining room. I don't know why I thought I could afford it, but I started the drying by blowing air from the fan heater, turned up full, on the clothes. After an hour I turned it down, and a couple of hours after that I switched to just using a desk fan to blow air at the clothes.

  It didn't seem long until the earliest I might have dinner - 5pm. I held out a bit longer than that, and maybe it was 5.30pm when I had the first part of my dinner. It was rice crackers with Stilton cheese. The other day I think I said that I didn't seem like the Stilton cheese as much as I thought I did. I have to say that it did seem very nice on fairly bland rice crackers. So nice that I scoffed the last bit of it by itself.

  I ate part one of my dinner while watching the last half of Star Trek: The Original Series. At 6pm I started watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It was a fair episode, and even had some mildly amusing bits in it. I ate part two of my dinner while watching the start of it. Part two was a "golden apple", a large orange, plus a chunk of cheese (Double Gloucestershire, I think). It was quite simple, theoretically low in calories, and even possible low in sugars.
  I was curious about where those rather tasty Golden apples came from. I had an idea that the tiny sticker on most of the apples would reveal it, but I could not read it with optical aids. That sticker, shown in the photo above, is about half an inch high, and the lettering which says Product of Croatia is about 2 point type ! That is great if you are 7 years old, with really sharp eyes, but at nearly 70 years old my eyes can no longer focus down that small. However, some of my cameras can, and that was the easiest way of reading it.

  After Star Trek: Deep Space Nine came Star Trek: Voyager, and I only half watched that while catching up with some stuff on the internet. It was a pretty lousy episode, although far from the worst, and I didn't miss much. As soon as it finished, at 8pm, I brushed my teeth and went straight to bed. I did read for about an hour, because I got a bit carried away, but I was fast asleep soon after 9pm.

  It seemed like I slept really well - even though I was waking up as frequently as once an hour (but mostly every two hours) for a pee. The good thing is that it seemed to only take a few minutes to get back to sleep again. I had many dreams, but the only notable one featured finding what seemed like an abandoned prototype reader for railway tickets - both mag stripe and contactless like Oyster cards.

  In the dream I tried reading quite an assortment of card and tickets. I was surprised at the details they revealed. It was obvious that the reader must have had a GSM (mobile phone network) modem in it, but if so it must have been well hidden, and pre-paid. My only trouble was trying to think how to hide it, because it was quite bulky, when carrying it on a train and bus on my way home.

  I did not get up until just gone 7am. After yet another pee, but no poo, I weighed myself. I think that yesterday I speculated that the weight gain I saw yesterday might be because of water retention (for some unknown reason). I most definitely was not retaining water last night. This morning it was as if I had lost a whole 1.6kg, and of course that is impossible as weight loss, but evidently not from water loss (although not eating much would have obviously helped in a more conventional way).

  I think so much water loss might have left me mildly dehydrated, although the colour of my urine didn't seem particularly dark. It is hopefully the best explanation for my blood glucose being high again this morning. As far as I am aware, the worst thing I ate was the large juicy orange, but I feel sure that was not enough to raise my blood glucose readings that much.

  The Contour meter read a very bad, but not quite disaster level, 9.8mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read a much better, and almost but not quite unremarkable 8.8mmol/l. To my great surprise, the Sinocare meter read the best with a reading of 8.6mmol/l, and that could be described as "high normal".  As is usual, my blood pressure was good again this morning. In fact it was slightly better than average with a reading of 100/44.

  It is such a horrible day today, even if it seems a little less severe than the most pessimistic feature of the weather forecast, that I would almost prefer to starve than go out today. If I get too bored I might possibly go to the local shops, but I would have to be very bored to do that. I can't think of anything to do today, and so I might get that bored, but I don't think I will make any real predictions, and just make it up as I go along.