Friday 3rd January 2025

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Friday 3rd January 2025

09:54 GMT

Yesterday was a very cold day, but at least there were some sunny spells, albeit starting a lot later than the forecast promised. I am not sure I remember the full sunshine forecast for 3 and 4pm. The temperature peaked at around 4° C, and the day ended with the temperature down to 0° C.

Only one of my outside thermometers read -1.5° C. The rest read 0° C. The forecast said it would be -1° C this morning, but I guess this is just irrelevant - the real temperature was ffffing freezing ! By 9am the forecast bright sun could be seen rising over the houses to the east, and now we are bathed in glorious sunshine, and I can turn the heater down in my south facing room. If the forecast hold there should be blue skies and non stop sunshine until sunset. The temperature may touch 4° C by mid to late afternoon, and then at 6pm it may start to cloud over, and that cloud will stop the temperature falling below 1° C - which is still bloody cold ! There may be a very few sunny spells in the first half of tomorrow, but once again the temperature may peak at only 4° C. At 7pm it will have been 3° C for several hours, and it will start to rain. Some of that rain may fall as sleet. If the temperature were to drop another degree, it could fall as snow !

Yesterday was a sort of awkward day. After my excesses the day before I was trying to not eat too much, and to try to reduce my sugar intake to a minimum (even though my blood glucose was not too bad yesterday morning). I mostly stuck to this regime......until I got drunk !

I started writing a bit late yesterday, and I wrote 2,658 words - which takes a bit of time, plus there were adding some pictures to it, which adds a little bit of extra time. I think it was approaching midday before I had finished, and then I needed a rest. I feel sure that rest included a snooze. It was 1pm before I had a shower and prepared myself for the day. The main thing yesterday was a beer tasting session, but that wasn't until after 3pm.

I had time to go back to laying on my bed, reading, and luxuriating in a couple of sunny spells that sprayed warm sunshine, through the windows, and onto my bed. I didn't want to disturb that little luxury, but I realised there were a few things I had to do - the usual things for a Sunday and Thursday when beer tasting happens, and I have guests (on Sundays just Jodie). I had to do a bit of washing up, glass polishing, and cleaning the main kitchen worktop so Jodie could splatter it with all sorts as she prepared her dinner/lunch.

I also had to, or at least it was prudent to, have some lunch prior to drinking beers. I kept it simple, and I believe "mostly safe". It was a bap with sliced cold beef, horseradish sauce, and a squirt of mayonnaise on one half of the bap. It was incredibly tasty, and I nearly gave in and made another one, but I managed to convince myself that I would use the rest of the sliced beef in another bap for lunch today.

It was almost full house yesterday. Before we finished drinking I had Jodie, Alan and Michael here and all drinking. We had some very strong drinks. One was a 15.4% barrel aged stout, and it was in a small bottle - maybe as small as 250ml. That only gave a taste when spilt 4 ways. I could have happily glugged the whole bottle down.....or probably just sip it down. Beer like that needs to be drunk slowly to savour it.

Prior to everyone leaving, which was close on 7pm, I started cooking, and by cooking I really mean warming up in the microwave, my dinner. It was to be two sachets of Heinz lentil curry. Like the one I had the day before, both had the same best before date of two years ago. Both were still in perfect condition as far as I can tell. At that time I had had no bad effects from all the high fibre stuff I had eaten the day before. In fact I hadn't had a poo all day, and only seemed to do a few isolated farts.

Had I left my dinner at the two sachets of lentil curry (with added hot chilli sauce) I might have got away with it, but maybe half an hour later I gave in to a stupid urge, that turned out to be double stupid. I manage to convince myself that maybe something let potent might make a good sort of dessert, and I had in mind a 30% reduced price Xmas themse quiche I had bought from Aldi, and kept in the fridge for the last few days.

I was really intrigued to know how a Brie and Camembert cheese quiche would taste. It was a stupid idea because I was just stuffing myself silly, and double stupid because if it hadn't said it on the box, I would never believe there was any cheese in it - and definitely not quite strong tasting/smelling cheeses. I ended up making myself feel ill for nothing !

I tried to go to sleep as early as 8.30pm, and I may have managed to drop off for a bit, but maybe some movement, such as turning over to my right hand side, gave me terrible heartburn. I took a glug of Acidex, antacid suspension, and that did help, but I still felt stuffed. I needed to go for a pee, and I thought that maybe I might poo as well - there were hints it might happen. It didn't then, but at 1am....

I thought that if I were careful I might be able to go back to bed after that. I got in, and it seemed just the action of pulling the duvet over myself was enough to get my chest aching, and so I got up again. I read some stuff off the internet, and maybe an hour later I went to the toilet for a pee. I think it was as I went to the toilet that the pain in my chest really peaked into a burning ball of fire. I am not sure if I have ever felt such a strong pain even when having a heart attack.

I did wonder if indeed I was having a heart attack, but another glug of Acidex calmed things down again. A bit later on I wondered if it would all end with throwing up. Fortunately that never happened, although it would actually have probably been the fastest, if most unpleasant, cure to how I felt. There was one other consideration to all this that I was really only slightly aware of, and it was that I had been effectively constipated all day.

It was 1am when after having another pee I detected some movement, and so sat down on the toilet, and squeezed a few internal muscles. After a bit I produced a large, very firm poo. It was uncomfortable, but not actually painful. I did feel a lot better for it, but it would be some time before everything moved down to fill the space that had become available. I still needed to take a couple of Gaviscon tablets to deal with the remnants of the heartburn.

I don't really know what time it was, but eventually I fell asleep in bed. One thing about last night was that it must hqave been the coldest night we have had for ages, and what with getting up to pee a lot in the night, and all the time spent out of bed letting the heartburn settle down, I felt obliged to run the fan heater on full through the night. It still felt a bit cool this morning, although as hoped, the bright sunshine is keeping it pleasantly warm with the heater on half now.

I had one dream that I wanted to describe, but that has now evaporated from my memory, but some details of one dream, from this morning still remain. In this dream I was talking to someone, and saying how good some of my teachers were (and also how some were totally useless). Although not actually part of the dream, I have had many good mathematics teachers, and they were good because they emphasised understanding and technique as a secondary consideration to accuracy - the former was important for passing exams, and accuracy could come later when it was needed in the real world.

Back to the dream, and I mentioned there was one teacher, a slightly eccentric Polish man who had survived one of the more notorious German concentration camps in WW2, who taught all sorts of shortcuts, and other ways of saving time. One such was his suggestion that when drawing a circle for illustrating some calculation, to just draw anything even if it looked more like a potato instead of wasting time with a compass to draw a perfect circle - it just wasn't needed to show that you knew what the calculations were.

Anyway, I made some sort of remark that it would be nice to thank him and a few other teachers, and whoever I was speaking to said why not do it. So I set off to walk to school (despite the fact my old school was demolished many years ago). When I reached a building on an unknown road, and looking nothing like my old school, I stopped to consider what I was doing. I knew in this day and age there would be electronically controlled doors, probably some old dragon on a reception desk, and who would ask me who I wanted to see, and why.

I considered all this, and realised I can't even remember how to spells the Maths teachers name, and I couldn't be sure I could pronounce it correctly. I then realised that when I was at school the best teachers were all in their 50s, and some probably older. I can imagine most would be long dead in the 50 years or more since I was at school, and so there was no point in this at all. I think I woke up then. It has probably taken 5 times as long to describe this than the time the whole dream took.

With no difficulty at all, I had a lie in this morning, and woke up after 8am. Two hours or so earlier I had got up to go for a pee, and before I got back into bed I refreshed the weather forecasts (both BBC and Met Office) so I could take a screenshot of each when I finally got up. It was the only way I could show the weather forecast from 7am onwards at the top of the page.

Once out of bed, and after checking my temperature (35.2° C) I went to the toilet. At first I thought I would only be peeing, but I had some hints.....after some patience I did a rather large, and very firm seeming poo. Like the one at 1am, there was no pain, but some mild discomfort. That was probably a slight surprise because it looked far larger than it had seemed to be when I passed it.

Despite the pee, and large poo, I seemed to have put on even more weight this morning. I guess that is no surprise after all I ate and drunk yesterday, and maybe also possibly some of what I ate the day before yesterday. I seemed to have put on 800gm, and that is a lot for a 24 hour period. Once again it could be the cumulative effect going back to what I ate on Thursday. It is going to take some time and effort to shift that lot !

My blood glucose is not too good this morning either, but then again, it is still not terrible. The Contour meter read 8.7mmol/l, and that is actually acceptable. The GlucoRX meter read 9.5mmol/l, and while that is still a small way under the red line, it is still far from acceptable. The Sinocare meter was sort of half and half. It read 9.2mmol/l - higher than desirable, but not quite at panic levels.

Being in some pain from heartburn last night, although not at the worst time, reminded me to check my blood pressure. To my surprise it was rather good, and just about identical to the previous night. Last night it was 108/52, and the meter diagnosed that as "Optimum" (which I assume is about the best it can be). This morning it is a little bit higher, but 111/48 is still "Optimum", and so I guess I am going to live a bit longer.

Today I think I am going to do nothing ! .... well maybe not really nothing, but I don't fancy getting my chest scar tissue exposed to the very cold air outside - either from the inside or the outside - so I am fairly sure I will not be going out....on the other hand it would be nice to take some pictures in bright light, and if I went out early enough I could still get snaps of frost rimed leaves and grass and stuff. I doubt I will. I will do some very mild housework, and spend a lot of time reading - either from screen or print.

2292 words today