All the snow had gone this morning thanks to warmer, and a lot wetter air moving in. This morning the temperature is up to 9° C (at 09:41am), and still rising. It is not exactly bucketing down with rain right now, but the rain is still moderately heavy. It could stop at 4pm (although the Met Office Forecast says a but earlier), and by then the temperature should be 12° C. The rain may resume a few hours later. There seems zero chance of seeing the sun today. Tomorrow may start with rain, and at 12° C, but the temperature will start to fall very early, and the light rain should stop by midday. The afternoon should be dry, but only 5° C.  For a few hours after the middle of the afternoon there could be some sunny spells, but the temperature could be down to just 3° C by midnight.

    I feel reluctant to say it, but yesterday was a just about OK day. It was nothing spectacular, and maybe the only good thing about it was that it was better than the previous days. Some of the change was that I didn't seem to have a cold any more - a cold that I was not sure I really had, but with hindsight I must have had.

  I felt good enough to treat myself to washing my hair, and having a good shower. Getting all clean and shiny further boosted how I felt, and it was probably about as good as it can get on a cold and gloomy day - which is not really good at all. After seeing my weight gain and high blood glucose, I knew I had to eat very carefully yesterday, and initially the idea of going shopping for food seemed insane, but I went anyway.

  For simplicity I went to Tesco. I more or less succeeded in no buying anything too damaging to my aims, but one exception was another three pack of Persimmon fruit. This time I checked the sugar content, but only after I got home. As expected it was rather high. The packet said the average Persimmon fruit contained 16gm of sugar. Of courser there are many things that are far, far worse, but now I am aware I feel I can manage the occasional Persimmon provided I have taken care of the rest of my food for the day.

  I also bought a 6 pack of Golden Delicious apples. They are a bit sweet, but it doesn't seem like they have a high sugar content, but one day I ought to check it to make sure. I bought a pack of diced beef, and a rather expensive pack of diced lamb to make more very simple stews like the one I pictured yesterday. I may have an almost identical beef and broccoli stew tonight, and lamb and cauliflower stew tomorrow night.

  I was very selective about what I selected from the reduced price shelves. Much of it was stuff for desserts and pudding, and stacked with sugar and calories. I avoided those, but I did buy two packets of sliced beef that had been reduced from over £2 to just 86p a pack. The original price seemed quite excessive to me - particularly being very small packs compared to the cheaper pack I bought from Aldi recently.

  One impulsive buy, but not until I noticed that it was supposed to have a very low sugar content, was a pack of what were once called Chicken Kiev, but were just described as chicken with garlic and herbs on the packet. They looked very nice in their breadcrumb coating, and allegedly only needed 25 minutes in the oven to cook. When cooked they gave off huge puddles of oil/fat/butter/hydrogenated oils.

  I can't say I enjoyed the walk to Tesco, nor the walk back. I was getting discomfort from my legs and feet, and just felt very stiff and lacking energy and enthusiasm. I was very glad to get to Tesco, and even more glad to get home again, and into the war. I expect it was warm inside Tesco, but I didn't unzip the front of my thick coat to find out. Once home I put all my shopping away, and thought about lunch.

  I had one (or was it two) wholemeal bap(s) to use up before it started to go stale, and I made another of the beef baps with horseradish sauce I have had recently. The pack of thin sliced beef I got from Aldi easily made two generously filled baps, but the smaller packs from Tesco were only enough for a bap and a half. I ended up stuffing the whole lot into the bap. It was rather tasty, and I had to exercise some discipline not to make a second one up.

  I didn't have any plans to do anything at all yesterday morning, but as well as bathing and shopping, I found one more little task to do. It was to take down the LED fairly lights, mini Xmas tree, and Xmas cards from the dining room - the only room with any hint of Xmas in it. I was going to take everything off the table in there so I could give the PVC tablecloth a wash, but I've save that job for another day.

  I spent a fair bit of the time reading yesterday. It was during the afternoon when I got some good news. A parcel of stuff ordered from Amazon, which I was very inconveniently expecting to be delivered on the worst day possible - a Wednesday - was despatched yesterday, and expected to be delivered tomorrow. This morning it was reported to have arrived at my local depot in the early hours of today, and I would not be surprised if it is delivered later today.

  By mid to late afternoon I was feeling peckish (or was i just a bit bored) and so I had a snack. it was a dozen small rice crackers with some Dutch smoked cheese on them. I had bought that cheese in Tesco yesterday, and it looked like it could be very nice. It wasn't ! If I had turned it over before buying I would see that it was "processed cheese", and so probably half palm oil or something. It might have had some redemption if it had been really smoked, but it just seemed to be a small hint of artificial smoke. It wasn't actually horrible, and once I got my head around the idea of what I should have expected, it could finally have been judged as OK-ish.

  I decided to keep my dinner simple. In fact it was a bit too simple. After cooking the previously mention chicken with herbs and garlic they seemed to shrink quite a lot (the result of half a gallon of oil coming out), and to make matters worse, the chicken seemed quite tough. That is another product I have learned to avoid, although if I was able to, and could afford to, and felt the need to, I could probably have bought a much nicer version from somewhere like M&S, or another of the posh supermarkets.

  I guess they might have been a bit nicer if diluted by only having one, and surrounded by something like mashed potato and peas. My decision to have the two bits of chicken on their own was partly because it was easy to see the nutritional info for just the one product, and not only that, but I didn't have any potatoes to cook and mash. I do have some frozen peas in my new freezer - at least I think I do.

  There was very little on TV last night, but I did find two back to back episodes of Yes Prime Minister on "That's TV (UK)" last night. That was some nice entertainment last night, although they were only average episodes. "Average episodes" is still very good, but some episodes of the series were really side splitting. I was reading in bed before 9pm (I think) and I think I was fast asleep before 10pm.

  I slept well last night, apart from the 2 to 3 hour ritual of getting up for a pee. I think I even had some good dreams. One dream was about making a rocket using re-purposed fireworks. There is not a lot about it I can describe, apart from it being a fun failure - although I don't think there was any expectation it would do much, and so I guess we actually achieved our aim - which was generally to have fun !

  I woke up around 6am, and went for a pee. I might have got up then, but I weighed myself, and saw that if I could manage to sleep for another couple of hours, and have another big pee when I then got up, I might get a rather good weight reading. I don't think I slept all that much more, and it was about 7.30am when I got up. It felt like I would have a poo, but that didn't happen, although I did manage a useful amount of pee. When I got on the scales I saw that I had lost a whole kilogram. That seems very unlikely unless some of my problem over the last couple of days was something like water retention - it would not be for the first time.

  The next thing was to see what my blood glucose was like. I must admit I had hopes it would be a lot lower, but it was s small improvement on yesterday. The Contour meter read 8.4mmol/l. That is not too bad, although lower would be nicer. The GlucoRX meter read 8.7mmol/l - still in the safe area, but once again, lower would be better. The Sinocare meter read 8.5mmol/l, and that is good enough.

  This morning I feel good enough, although I do notice some cold damp weather sort of aches when I go to anywhere unheated - like the kitchen. My blood pressure remains as good as usual, and so even if it feels like I am dying, I'll know that it is not because of any cardiovascular problem....possibly. This morning my blood pressure is another diagnosed as "Optimum" by my blood pressure meter. It is 108/51.

  Most of my plan for today is very simple, although a bit of it is complicated. Among the simple is to have a shower, and then have a ham, and tomato bap for lunch. I may possible have something else too to help buffer some later beer intake. That is the start of the complicated bit. I should try and moderate my beer input to avoid any food mistakes later, but I expect that like every other time, I will just go with the flow (of beer down my gullet).

   1924 words today