This morning has started very cold and dry. By my reckoning it was 1° C rather than 0° C, but there was a frost. The claim that there could be sunny spells at 9am, or as I actually write this, seems hugely unlikely when I look at the thick cover of grey clouds. The highest temperature today should start at midday, but my thermometers say the temperature is just over 2° C right now, and so maybe the afternoon temperature will reach 3° C. From 4pm it may rain, and the forecast say it will include sleet. If the temperature dips by a single degree it could fall as snow, and snow is forecast in places just a few miles away ! Tomorrow could see clear skies and so extremely cold, but also very sunny. The temperature is forecast to peak for a single hour, 3pm, at 3° C, but more of the day will be just 2° C.

    Yesterday was one of those days that was good in places, but ultimately not good. It seemed more boring and depressing than normal, although I often hardly noticed it except upon looking back at some poor eating choices. In terms of sugar intake, I really blotted my copy book yesterday.

  I did have a brief shower yesterday. I had intended to have a long shower, but the water was running too cool to enjoy it. On this occasion it was my own fault. I did something I rarely do so I could save some time. While I was using the hot tap on the hand basin I turned the hot tap on the bath a little way. I just wanted a slight trickle of hot water through the shower hose, and pipes to the tap to pre-warm everything. When I came to have my shower I forgot the bath tap was not full on, and I had to shower with quite low pressure water, and water that was cooling down because the flow was not enough.

  I still managed to get clean enough to go shopping in Aldi, as I thought I might do earlier. I managed to walk to Aldi at a pretty good pace, and I seemed to feel fine - except for my fingers. The air was just 4° C, and my hands felt really cold. With hindsight I should have worn gloves, but there would have been one annoying difficulty with that - the coat I was wearing had the sort of pockets that gloves could easily slip out of.

  One thing I was looking out for in Aldi was any remaining heavily discounted Xmas stuff. They did have a fair bit of high sugar and high calorie stuff with up to 50% off, but that sort of stuff doesn't interest me....well it sort of does, but I have to avoid it like the plague. My more expensive purchases were a few packs of meat, and some vegetable to go with it. I am quite looking forward to diced lamb and sprouts stew in a day or two.

  Aldi is probably not known for its vegetarian/vegan stuff because they don't have a dedicated section for it. It tends to be scattered all over the store (apart from raw vegetables which have their own area). Now and then I spot something new, and just occasionally it looks like it might be interesting. Yesterday I bought a pot of vegan instant noodles (that I shall report on further down the page) and a couple of pots of so called Korean rice. I haven't tried the latter, but they look like they may be nice.

  I suspect I have already mentioned it, but the bamboo toilet paper I bought on my previous visit to Aldi was not great. The chief problem is that each sheet is far too small to wipe a big bottom, and the brown colour seems at least odd, and sometimes maybe not nice. I had a look in the toilet paper section of Aldi yesterday, and they still have none of the old 9 packs I used to buy, but now they do 6 packs of allegedly much bigger rolls that should be as good as the old 9 pack rolls. The did have some huge packs of Andrex toilet paper, but the price wasn't obviously shown. I expect they may have been rather expensive, plus they were a bit too big to carry home anyway.

  In contrast to my walk to Aldi, the walk home seemed like a slow slog. My shopping was not as heavy as on some occasions, but it seemed to weigh me down more. By the time I got home I was just starting to get the first hints of angina pains. That is the first time I have felt those in weeks or more. It was good to get home because of those pains, but also good to get into the warmth of indoors.

  Once I had put my shopping away I had a small lunch of a single bap filled with many slices of very thin sliced beef. I also added the traditional horse radish sauce, and I opened a freshly bough bag of spinach, watercress, and some other green leaf, and added a thick layer of that. Even f I have to say it myself, it was a most delicious bap, and the magic is still working, and my brain said just that one bap was quite filling.

  I had a lay down after my lunch, but I could not relax for too long....but I did anyway ! Eventually I went to tackle my bigger bath towel that I had left soaking in detergent after my shower at the end of the morning. I am not 100% sure what the problem was, but I think some of it was my muscles starting to weaken as I approach 70 years old. Lifting that waterlogged towel out of the bucket seemed slightly hard, and wringing it out was very tiring.

  I have wondered if some of the muscular pains I get now, particularly upper arm muscles, are some sort of legacy of Covid, or as some would say, a legacy of the vaccinations for it. What I do know was that having to battle that on a dull and nasty cold day was more than hard, it seemed very boring too. After managing 6 wringing outs, I had to take a break of nearly an hour before I could bring myself to continue.

  It was well gone 3pm when I took that break, and the boredom, discomfort, and general malaise made me want to have something to eat. I semi played safe, at least as far as calories went, by having a Persimmon fruit, plus a large, but slightly less than "big" orange. Of course the trouble here was the amount of sugar in that fruit. It may have given a temporary small boost to my energy, but it's legacy was not so good. Anyway, I gave that big towel another 6 rinses and wringing out, and hung it up to dry.

  By then it was time to start watching Star Trek: The New Generation on Sky Mix, and also to start looking forward to dinner. The Star Trek episode was mildly bland, but it helped to painlessly pass the time before dinner. At 5pm it was time to change channels to the Legend channel, and watch an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, and to think even more about dinner.

  I decided to add a bit more to my dinner by trying out the pictured (on then left) "Spicy No Beef Noodles". Things got off to a bad start when I opened the lid. I saw that instead o nice noodles there were those flat, semi transparent noodles that usually taste nasty, and look like tapeworms. I tried to break the noodles up a bit because otherwise I might have been trying to suck two feet of noodle off my chin.

  The instructions said to add boiling water, and to stir well. That was a bit unusual until I realised that all the flavour was in the gritty powder in the bottom of the carton, and unless stirred it was just set like concrete in the bottom. I gave what I thought was quite an excessive amount of stirring, but it still was not good enough.

  The now just very hot water turned brown, and that seemed like it was good, but it wasn't. I let it stand for the suggested 5 minutes, and then stirred again. It seemed impossible to stir enough without slopping noodles and liquid all over the place, and I still couldn't get everything off the bottom. As I ate the stuff it became very gritty towards the bottom, and even worse was that there were some very concentrated dry bits.  The whole experience was extremely disappointing, and I shall avoid these in the future.

   My main dinner was an Aldi ready meal of Rogan Jhosh with pilau (like) rice. It was nothing like one I have ever had form a real Indian restaurant, but was still fairly nice. It claimed to have a moderately low sugar, and calorie content. After that, and the noodles, I expected to have have had quite enough to eat, but that was not so. It was mainly a matter of forcing myself to watch TV that was not sufficiently distracting.

  Star Trek: Deep Space Nice was an episode I had not seen before (as far as I can remember) and praise the prophets (sic) it was not another story involving those bloody Bajoran prophets and their screwy religion. It was an episode with Nog, the young Ferengi taking almost the lead role. He ends up commanding a small Starship after a space battle. Star Trek: Voyager was the second part of a two part story, and it was probably one of the better stories of the whole tedious series !

  It was while watching Star Trek: Voyager that I got the munchies, and ended up eating the second half of a big, but very light, packet of weird crisps. They were not potato based, but something else (although I suppose it might have been processed potato), and a major ingredient was Scottish sourced seaweed. They were weird - quite piquant (if that is the word I am looking for) - sort of hints of spiciness and quite savoury. They claimed a low sugar content in small quantities, but maybe not for scoffing the whole bag as I did.

  Star Trek: Voyager was followed by two episodes of The Simpsons on the E4 channel, and that was followed by Have I Got News For You on Dave (U+Dave as it identifies it self now). That finished at 10pm and I went straight to bed, although I read for maybe half an hour before turning out the light, and very quickly falling asleep - although it didn't seem to feel quick at the time. It was a case of "oh dear I can't get to sleep" and maybe 2 minutes later I was fast asleep.

  It was in the first hours of sleep that I had a nice, or potentially nice dream. Unfortunately I woke up to go for a pee just as it might have got very interesting indeed ! I think I might have been staying in a hotel with three other friends. Two of those friends didn't even appear in any bit of the dream I remember, but I knew they were there in their own rooms. The room I was in seemed fairly big, and somewhat old fashioned.

  The best bit was the king sized bed with a very firm, but also incredibly comfortable mattress. The long flat pillow seemed to be really comfortable. I think I was probably reading when I got a phone call. It was from a woman I think wasn't exactly a girlfriend, but we were very close. She asked if she could come and see me. I said yes. She came into my room, and stripped off her clothes (although somehow I didn't see it happen - maybe I was still reading) and then she got into the bed, and cuddled up to me - feeling all warm and naked !!

  That was not the best time to wake up needing a pee ! I did have one more dream that almost left a memory, and some sort of shadow of memories of more dreams, but none of the other really left anything to describe. Overall I seemed to sleep very well last night. I even managed a perfect lay in. It must have been 6am when I woke up and went for a pee. I then went back to bed, and almost instantly fell asleep again. An hour or so later I seemed to wake up very gently.

  After another visit to the toilet for a pee, and a poo, I got on the scales. Despite what I thought was not a very careful day of eating yesterday, I seemed to have lost 600gm since yesterday morning. Another 600gm and I would be back to where I started the month, and that seemed to be a good enough start. Today is going to be a very cold day, and will involve beer, and keeping track of what I eat could be very, very tricky.

  There is an added incentive to be careful with what I eat today - this morning my blood glucose level is up, and it is now getting a bit close to critical. The Contour meter read 9.8mmol/l - very close to the red line. The GlucoRX meter was a fair bit better at 9.2mmol/l, but even that is undesirably high. The Sinocare meter read 9.7mmol/l, and not much better than the Contour meter. Maybe I should blame the two very sweet bits of fruit I had yesterday. The tricky thing is that I don't think I can ration that fruit of it will start to deteriorate before I finish it.

  Two things could happen today. The first could be the delivery of my new camera lens. I know it was out for delivery at 9.30am this morning. It is possible I will be out when it arrives. If so it might be taken in by next door, or the postman will try again tomorrow. The reason for being out is because it is Wednesday, and Wednesday is lunchtime in The Jolly Farmers day. I assume that Ayse, my favourite bar maid, will be back from her holiday today, and it could be a fun session. It is possible that Kevin my drop in, but unless he forewarns me, I won't be lugging his Xmas present there this time.

  I got curious about something yesterday. In a matter of around 2 hours (not including some interuptions) I wrote 2,488 words. That works out to roughly 70 words per minute. That seems an awful lot, but that is what the maths say. According to a few web sites I checked, 70 wpm is classified as a very fast typing speed. Of course I would earn minus marks for accuracy, but I am still somewhere in the pleased/astonished/ almost smug sort of place !

   2610 words today