I don't
think this morning started as low
as 4° C. It could have been as
high as 6 or 7° C, and as I write
this at 9:42am it is just about 8°
C. That is higher than the
afternoon high which is only shown
as 6° C. The last couple of hours
of daylight
might feature
sunny spells. By midnight it may
fall as low as 2° C. I am left
wonder what today's weather will
really
be like. Tomorrow may be extra
cold. The forecast says it will
start with mist, and just 1° C,
and it may only warm up to just 3°
C.
Another late morning after
another terrible night last night.
However, until it all went wrong
at bed time, yesterday was
generally an OK day. Like
many better days it started with a
shower. The downside is that it
gave me ample reason to strip out
and re do the patch over the crack
in the bathtub.
Not a lot of water escaped
through that bathtub crack, but it
was annoying enough that I had
terrifying thoughts that sooner or
later I will have to put my hands
very deep in my pockets,
and get a plumber in to replace
the bathtub. I fear it may cost
multiple thousands of pounds. In
the meantime, I will strip off all
the patching, clean the old glue,
limescale, and remnants of soap
and detergent off, and start
afresh. What I ideally need is
some good waterproof glue, and a
strip of rubber cut from an old
inner tube. I doubt that would
look any more crap than layers of
duct tape that I currently use,
but the big problem is finding an
old inner tube. I can't think of
anywhere near here that changes
tyres and stuff.
One thing I was going to do
yesterday was to go shopping in
Tesco. I think I mentioned that it
would not be essential when
writing yesterday, and so I
couldn't be bothered to make the
time for it. That turns out to be
a shame because today it would be
most handy ton go shopping, and
yet today I may not do so even
when I should have plenty of time.
The problem today is that I could
do without extra temptations to
get stuff and eat it when I should
probably try to fast until
dinnertime.
I did find time to do a lot
of washing up, and some of it was
very greasy things - not ideal
when the hot water tap only gives
out slightly tepid water. The
reason for that is the bore of the
pipe into the tap, and possibly
the tap itself, does not allow
enough water flow to activate the
on demand water heater to run at
full power. The taps in the
bathroom use a bigger bore, and I
get plenty of quite hot
water up there. Oh well, it's
better than a really bad dripping
tap (as the previous one was).
It is now 10:10am, and
sometime in the next hour I
should be getting my beer order
delivered. I estimated it might
just arrive by Sunday, but Beer
Merchants (dot com) have done a
splendid job, and DPD say they
have my order, and it will be
delivered today ! As it says in
the screenshot to the left, it
will be delivered in an all
electric vehicle. They are
quite large, transit van plus,
size vans, and seem to be very
nippy. Quite often the
deliver a bit earlier than the
estimated time, and so I am on
high alert at the moment.
Back to yesterday,
and after a bit of rest, and
almost a snooze ( I think it was
"almost") it was time to head to
the dining room and wait for
Jodie. I knew there could be at
least another 10 minutes wait for
Jodie to arrive, and when she did
she would (and did) spent 10 or 15
minutes fussing around with her
lunch/dinner. I made an early
start and opened up a strong can
of Skol lager. I almost finished
it by the time Jodie arrived. For
some unknown reason she forgot to
get off at Catford Bridge, and got
of at Ladywell.
She then waited for the
next train back to Catford Bridge,
and then went shopping in the
little supermarket of Catford
Bridge, and then went to Lidl for
further shopping. (I consider Lidl
to be a bit too far away for
shopping when Tesco and Aldi are
so much nearer). I think Jodie was
about 45 minutes late, and as
expected she had to heat her soup
up, deconstruct some of roll,
taking some stuff out and putting
stuff it, not to mention adding
extra cheese to her soup.
Finally the beer drinking
started, and we opened a bottle of
a wheat based bock beer. It was,
but it seemed like it might have
been brewed in a Belgium abbey. It
was nice, but maybe not enough to
deserve "very nice". The next can
we, or rather Jodie opened was a
cursed fruit sour from (I think)
the Vault City brewery in Glasgow.
Sadly it was like a nice fruit
flavour dissolved in battery acid,
and in anticipation of this I
asked Jodie just to pour me a half
inch of in the glass. It was
enough to taste, and then quickly
pour another beer that Jodie was
not interested in ("had it before
!"), and use that to wash all the
acid out of my mouth before my
teeth dissolved.
It was probably around 5pm
when Michael arrived to have some
beers with us. He usually brings
some of his favourite cheap lagers
with him because while he is
curious to try some of the weird
and wonderful beer, he mainly just
wants to drink. By his own
description he is now a borderline
alcoholic. Every time he comes
home from another all day visit to
his wife in the care home, he just
hits the bottle and can. he says
he freely mixes lager and wine. No
wonder he probably has a hangover
until midday, although he doesn't
admit it is a hangover.
To my surprise we were due
a visit from Mark. Jodie said as
such about half an hour before he
arrived. He and Jodie were then
off to meet Alan who had booked a
table in The Three Hounds (a few
shops away from Clockhouse
station), where he would have a
bit more birthday celebration.
Michael, as usual, left in time to
walk home, and then watch Star
Trek: Voyager, and his beloved
Captain Janeway.
Another real time
update: My beer delivery was at
10:40am, or about midway between
the higher and lower estimated
time. I noted it came in an
ordinary white van, and not the
customised electric vans that
DPD usually uses.
I think I was too busy
watching something else, and
eating my dinner, to watch Star
Trek: Voyager. I think I was
watching an unusually early
episode of QI on Dave. Dinner was
a bit different to normal. It
started with a small plate of oven
chips, and in an ideal world I
would have eaten nothing more. I
thought I had eaten a bit too much
earlier in the day to have a big
dinner. For instance I did have
the threatened two bap rolls with
beef, salad and horseradish sauce.
Later I did have a few
other snacks, one of which was a
small bag of crisps, and a very
small bag of Hula Hoops. I decided
to keep dinner simple, and it
almost was. Maybe the error was to
have the chips. I had had it in
mind that I was going to keep
simple with a couple of cans of
soup before I started cooking the
chips, and with the benefit of
hindsight, it was a bit stupid.
The cans of soup, one Oxtail, and
the other Mulligatawny, with added
hot chilli sauce, might have been
OK.
I think it was the
Mulligatawny soup whose sugar
content was over twice that of the
Oxtail soup that was one fly in
the ointment, even though it was
not a lot of sugar. What really
caused problems was the hot chilli
sauce I added to both soups. I
felt mildly bloated with two cans
of soup on top of the earlier
beer, swilling around inside of
me. When, a few hours later, I
tried to go to sleep I started to
suffer bad acid indigestion.
I already had some muscular
aches around my neck, shoulders
and upper arms (and right elbow),
plus a strange sort of chest pain
that seemed muscular in origin,
but could have been skeletal on
the right side of my chest. Adding
chest pains from the acid
indigestion really put the cherry
on top. If all the pains had
happened at the same time I might
easily have walked to Lewisham
Hospital and booked myself in as a
suspected heart attack.
Fortunately some of the
muscular pains had been happening
at odd times much earlier in the
day. I knew it was not any heart
problem, but it was still bloody
annoying, and I ended up getting
out of bed again, and taking a
couple of Ibuprofen to help calm
the muscular pain, and a few doses
of antacids to calm the acid
indigestion. By 1pm I felt like I
could fall asleep on a pile of
rocks - even though not every pain
had gone. I went to bed, and it
still took maybe 20 minutes before
I fell asleep, I did fall asleep,
and from then on it was a fairly
normal night.
I even had one of my dreams
about possibly being back at work.
It was actually more like being
back at college, but on a probable
work related course. It was about
TV and other "brown goods"
repair. I semi remember the
dream starting with a lecture
ending, and then picking up out
chairs, and taking them through to
a lab for practical work. There
seemed to be a lot of waiting
before I was handed a mains
powered cassette recorder to
diagnose and repair.
The silly thing is that
there seemed to be no tools
available, nor test equipment, or
even a tape to play and record on
in the cassette recorder. My first
observation is that it had a very
strange power plug on it, and it
did not look safe to me. I was
going to replace it with a stand
13A plug, but I didn't have a
plug, or the tools to change it.
While waiting for an instructor to
come by, who I could ask for the
things I needed, I pushed the play
button on the machine, and it
seemed to start up with no power
connected. I then looked to see if
I could find a pair of headphones
to see if it produced sound - if I
ever found a tape to play on it.
There was no indication that it
had any batteries in the thing,
and maybe it was just magic.
Like many dreams, that one
faded away with no conclusion. I
managed to sleep a little bit
later this morning, but I was
aware that my beer delivery would
be happening, and I knew that DPD
can sometimes arrive quite early.
I did not want to answer the door
in my underpants, and so I got up,
and got dressed enough to answer
the door when the time came (which
was a couple of hours later).
I didn't think I had peed
much in the night, although the
first one after getting up was
moderately big. I have no had a
poo yet, although it feels like it
can't be long now. When I weighed
myself it included however much
poo there is in side of me, and I
hope it is a lot because it looks
like I have put on quite a bit of
weight - 1.2kg - and that seemed
an impossible weight gain in 24
hours.
Maybe it was a mix of the
beers, the Mulligatawny soup, the
chips, and something I can't
remember in the afternoon, but my
blood glucose was a bit, bit only
a bit high this morning. The
Contour meter read 8.9mmol/l -
just inside the OK area. The
GlucoRX meter read a rather
better, and even very slightly
good 8.3mmol/l. The Sinocare meter
was the one that had crossed into
the pre-danger area with a reading
of 9.3mmol/l. It seems only my
blood pressure was something I am
happy with. It was 107/47, and
that is nice and low, and maybe
not too low.
I really don't know what I
am going to do today. It is back
to being rather chilly out, plus
it is also rather dull. I don't
fancy going out, and I also am not
sure it would be wise to even just
go out to Tesco today. I semi need
to, but these days I have plenty
in my new and bigger freezer, plus
some other stuff in the larder
part of the new fridge. I don't
feel relaxed and happy enough to
do it, but I feel the need to try
and fast until just a very light
dinner tonight. Ideally I should
go out and try to to a 3 mile, or
more walk today. The trouble is I
have no enthusiasm for that, and I
don't even feel I could enjoy even
a walk to the shops - partly
because it is so cold and grey
outside, and partly because I
don't feel well enough for it.
"Not feeling well enough
for it" is a sort of catch all
phrase that is both meaningful and
meaningless. I do have a few
aches, and my knees seem
particularly a bit stiff and
creaky this morning. Maybe until I
have the fabled poo I am owed this
morning, I feel a bit bloated.
Anther sort of oddity is that I
seem to be feeling a bit hot and
cold and also sneezing a lot. Have
I finally, really, caught the bug
that is going around at the moment
? At the moment it feel like the
only proof would be when I realise
it for what it was when I get over
it - if there is anything to get
over. Sometimes life is so
complicated !
1
