It is very wet out this morning. There must have been some rain in the early hours, and I think there might even still be some light drizzle even if the forecast says zero chance of any rain in the last hour. The forecast actually says no rain at all today. The morning will feature thick cloud, but the cloud should thin a bit after sunset, and so there is still zero chance of seeing any sunshine today. Most of the daylight hours will be 6° C. Tomorrow is currently forecast to start with some drizzle, but the afternoon may see some sunny spells, and it could be 8° C - which is still pretty chilly.

  One way of looking at it is that yesterday was a disaster, albeit a slowly acting disaster. That will be explained in due course. Another way of looking at it is that yesterday was a nice day, and that will be explained too.One definite thing is that I missed a lot of good sleep last night. That too will be explained.

  Yesterday morning was good and bad. The bad was simply that I was a bit miffed to see I had gained weight, and the good is that there was very little I needed to do, and I could be thoroughly lazy almost the whole day. I had got up earlier than recently, and so having a short snooze after I had finished writing partly made up for losing about an hour of sleep in the morning.

  That extreme laziness didn't actually last long because I suddenly decided I should put my Xmas lights up in the dining room. That meant wobbling on top of a chair to get my mini Xmas tree down from the cupboard on the top landing (perilously close to the full drop down to the bottom of the stairs), and a bit later to pin some fairly lights up in the dining room. I think it was after that when I made sure the beer glases were clean and polished. One thing I didn't do was to do  all the washing up left in the kitchen sink, although I did do a few things I knew I would need later.

  Nothing much happened then until after 3.30pm when Jodie arrived for our beer tasting session. Michael, who as always I had to prompt, despite him knowing he has an open invitation, arrived fairly late at about 5pm. My Xmas lights were (probably politely) admired, and we drunk several Xmas beers. The only possible negative thing is that most of the beers were English ales, and they can sometime have a fair bit of unbrewed malt (= sugar) in them.

  For once Michael was fairly cheerful, although he did bring me a letter to look at because he was very suspicious of it. He seems to be taking warnings about fraud, scamming, and computer/phone viruses to almost paranoid proportions, but I guess he has no counterbalancing information about such things. The letter he was very suspicious of was indeed a sort of scam, but not one that was  illegal, and only slightly not quite moral.

  It was actually a letter to his wife about eye tests, and it included the NHS logo. It was about free, in home, eye tests. That part seemed to be totally legitimate. Where it fell down was that there was no obvious warning that any glasses prescribed would not be free. I think this is the same everywhere, but in a shop you sort of know that because a shop is obviously there to sell you stuff. I gave my opinion to Michael, and he seemed happy with that.

  In the last 20 to 30 minutes of drinking, we had a visit from Mark. He was due to give Jodie a lift to some boozing place they would be meeting Alan (Jodie's boyfriend). Mark didn't want to stay long because he was worried that some mad parking enforcement person would be patrolling in the dark and rain, and would target Mark's car. He only expected to be parked outside for 10 minutes or so, and didn't think it worth paying, by phone, for a full hour of parking.

  It was about 6.30pm when everyone had gone, and I could watch a bit of Star Trek while my dinner cooked. My dinner was to be a couple of home made burgers - aka ready made burgers in a ready made bun. The bun was actually a large wholemeal bap, and the burgers were made by (or for) Tesco. Despite the addition of sliced cheese, and sliced gherkins, I found them to be not nearly as good as hoped. Maybe if I had grilled the bun it may have improved it a bit.

  I had also had a couple of wholemeal rolls, with cheese and tomato in them, for my pre-drinking lunch. I thought that the wholemeal bread would be fairly safe, but it seems that it was not. The very worst thing is that the two big baps with burgers in them, plus the two remaining burgers in the pack, eaten with a sprinkle of grated cheese, seemed to give me terrible acid indigestion later.

  I watched the rest of Star Trek: Voyager (a pretty poor episode), and I could almost have gone to bed after that at 8pm. I didn't for two reasons, although I suppose reason 2 was a follow on from reason 1, and that was the start of feeling bloated. It was worse than that. I started belching, and on one belch I came close to vomiting. I felt acid reach the top of my throat. In consequence I decided to watch Have I Got News For You to delay when I would try for sleep.

  In the meantime the acid indigestion turned to what ended as really bad heartburn. The short result is that it was not until 3am before I was OK to sleep properly. I did end up getting a few odd snatches of sleep before that, and one of them was while sitting in front of my PC. Had I been near the toilet, or some other suitable receptacle, it would probably all been over a lot quicker if when I belched up the acid to the back of my throat, I had just let in continue, and vomit up the content, or at least some of it, of my stomach.

  I passed the time until 3am by reading stuff on the internet, taking antacid remedies, and at about 1pm, having a poo. If it wasn't so cold in the bathroom I may have gone back to try for another. On the whole the entire experience was rather boring, but worse was that I definitely felt extremely tired, but I could just not lay down in bed comfortably. I seem to recall that I was not perfectly comfortable when I think I fell asleep from pure exhaustion at around 3am.

  It was just normal when I woke up a few times to pee between then and when I got up. I am sure I remember that the first time I woke up for a pee, I was still not feeling that good, but on subsequent times I think I felt OK. At this point I would describe my dreams, but while I feel sure I can remember dreaming, I can't seem to recall a single thing about them. Maybe the effort at finally getting up at 8am erased my memory.

  After getting up I went for the first pee of the day, and even did a very small poo. It was far from enough because it seems I managed to put on another 500gm since yesterday morning. That is very bothersome, and the only solace is that subsequently I did have another poo and another pee before I had breakfast, and ruined any chance to weigh myself again accurately.

  On this occasion, not only had my weight risen, but my blood glucose had gone up a lot too. I'm not sure whether to blame the English ales or all the wholemeal bread, but the Contour meter read 9.1mmol/l. That is higher than is desirable, but still not too bad. The GlucoRX meter read 9.5mmol/l, and that is definitely in the worrying area. The Sinocare meter really hit the bone with a terrible reading of 10.5mmol/l - well inside the danger zone.

  It all means that today, a really dull and miserable day, and in consequence probably a very boring day, I have to try and fast all day until dinner time. Even dinner has to be very restrained if I want to get any acceptable readings tomorrow.  Even my blood pressure is up a little bit this morning, although 114/55 is still classed as optimum. This really very small increase is most probably a reaction to the stress of having to try to be very disciplined today.

  There is one thing I need to do today, and it is to finish washing a small hand towel that I left in soak after my shower yesterday morning. It will probably need as many as a dozen rinses, but being small that should not be too arduous - just boring. Ideally I could do with taking a walk for a couple of miles today, but looking out the window I just see misery - cold air, dull light, and dampness. I could still possibly go to the shops, but that would probably be unwise when I am trying to fast - I can't think of any shop I frequent that doesn't have some sort of food in it ! So I have to think I am not hungry, and don't want to snack, while being bored stiff !