Today may not be very warm, but it could be very sunny. The sun is shining now, and the sky seems clear enough that we may well get full sunshine for a time, and maybe until sunset. The afternoon may only see 6° C, but the full sunshine (if it happens as forecast) may help it feel not too bad. Tonight the temperature will drop to just 1° C by 11pm. Tomorrow is shown as starting at 2° C, but through the day it may slowly climb as high as 9° C by midnight. The morning may feature some sunny spells, but from 1pm light rain may fall. Later on there could be the odd hour featuring heavy rain.
 
  Last night was another night where, initially, sleeping didn't go quite as hoped for, but I did get sufficient sleep that I could rise early, and so it wasn't so bad. Yesterday was not exactly an exciting day, but it had it's moments, and some of those moments lasted 10 or more minutes !

  I said I felt like I was feeling much better yesterday morning. That was not exactly a lie, but neither did it turn out to be the full truth. I never did get to get to explore my limits, and maybe I was fitter than I thought, but I can't help but to explain my feeling of being OK by keeping nice and warm, and doing nothing to test my limits. I never thought any more about some of the things I imagined I might do at the end of my writing, yesterday.

  After a very lazy morning, or at least lazy once I stopped typing this electronic diary, one of the first things I did was to make some lunch. I thought I was hungrier than I probably was because there was nothing to occupy my mind. Even the book I am currently reading, "What If ?" by Randall Monroe is the sort of book that is only good in small bites, and not a novel that you can get lost in.

  My lunch was the second two, from a pack of four, crispy tiger rolls that I filled with sliced beef, horseradish sauce, and mixed babyleaf salad leaves. They were, as expected, rather delicious. It was that expectation that urged me on to have them. After eating them I laid down and read another short chapter or two, and then I actually did something !!

  That something was to repair one of my garden solar lights. It had stopped working as much as a year ago, maybe even more. It is a type that uses a standard rechargeable AA cell (probably NiH, but it could have been NiCd). I had put in a non rechargable cell, and if it was the same light, it seemed to work for ages. Non rechargeable cells can accept some recharging provided it is a low current, and applied while the cell still has a fair charge in it. It would be fair to say they can be topped up rather than recharged.

  Eventually that cell would have died, and it looked like I had put a brand new cell in it, but it didn't light up. I am quite surprised I didn't notice it at the time, but maybe a year later when I looked at it again yesterday, I saw that one wire to the battery had become disconnected. A years worth of rain badly corroded the wire, but there was enough slack to cut off half an inch to find less corroded wire under the plastic sheath.

  I got out my soldering iron, something I have not used for ages (I used to use one or other soldering iron all day while at work, and sometimes at home too), and resoldered the wire to the battery connector. Then I put in a high capacity NimH AA battery that was fully charged, and as soon as I shaded the solar cell the light lit up nice and bright. This morning, before there was enough light outside to cut it off, it was still shining brightly in the garden.

  I hope that the solar cell is producing enough power to keep that battery charged, but I think the reason I had originally put in a non rechargeable cell was that it didn't seem to the recharging the proper battery....but maybe the proper battery had gone faulty, and the new battery will charge just fine. Time will tell. This job reminded me that I wanted to buy a few more rechargeable cells.

  Yesterday was an opportune time to do so. There are some things I don't like to run out of, and yesterday I wanted to top up my dwindling supplies of test strips for my Contour and Sinocare blood glucose test meters. I added to my order a couple of rechargeable AAA cells with solder tags on them. They are for my beard trimmer. After many years the two cells in it lost nearly all their capacity. I replaced them with some AAA cells that I had to solder to, and that is not recommended because the heat can damage the cell.

   The "new" cells were  were a bit old to start with, and while they proved the point that is was the batteries at fault, they got to the point where they would lose all their charge after a few days. I hope the brand new cells will last a long time - the original calls probably were good for maybe 5 years. The other cells I ordered are known as 2/3rds AAA cells - because they are 2/3rds the length. They are also for some of my solar garden lights - hopefully they will resurrect some dead ones.

  All that spending money made me feel sort of hungry, or maybe it was just the feeling that I had nothing more exciting, or distracting to do. At the risk of spoiling a run of good blood glucose readings, I had some fruit, plus the usual small chunk of cheese to enhance the flavour of the apple. The apple was a small "jazz apple" and while they look as if they might be nice, the one I had yesterday was not nice, and even tasted a bit odd.

  I expect, that like a lot of fruit from Tesco, they will taste better if caught between ripening, and going manky. I also had a a very nice orange, and I am pretty sure I bought it from Aldi, and not Tesco. Aldi fruit usually has a shorter shelf life, but is usually a lot tastier. The third bit of fruit was a Persimmon. I seemed to have taken a big liking to these fruits. I wonder how long it will be before they are yesterday's news ?

  It was about 4pm when I had that fruit, and it meant I could watch the first Star Trek of the day. I did, and I didn't. It was slightly annoying that the brief description in the electronic programme guide made me think it was a different story, and the few minutes I watched at the start reinforced that idea. I tuned away to watch an old repeat of The Simpsons. When that finished I tuned back and realised it was not the bad episode I thought it was.....although it was probably not far behind it in romantic slush.
  Just after 5pm I put my dinner in the mini oven/grill to cook. It was, as pictured above, a Tesco Finest Cottage Pie.
 I seem to have a built in resistance to buying anything from Tesco's "Finest" range. It often seems overpriced, and some of the price increase comes from fancier packaging, although this probably is not a good example. Being reduced from £4.50 to £2.84 seemed like it was good value, and so of course I had to buy it. Having now tried it, I will definitely get another or more if I see it on the reduced price shelves.

  It was rather taster, and far better than the Shepherds pie I had recently. This actually seemed to have some real meat in it, albeit not that much. I am not sure if the 6,4gm of sugar in it was high or not, this morning I think maybe not, but it did worry me a little as I ate it - particularly on top of the sweet fruit I had eaten earlier. Evidently I did not worry too much because I had a dessert of just 70gm or a fairly low(ish) sugar chocolate flavour ice cream. It is sort of odd that I seem to have come to accept I can enjoy quite small portions of ice cream.

  There was other stuff I could have watched on TV last night, but I thought I felt a little bit sleepy at 8pm, and so I turned off the TV, brushed my teeth, and headed for bed. I read for a while, and I think I managed to go to sleep no later than about 9.05pm. That was rather good, but it was spoiled by waking up at 10.20pm. Just waking up to have a pee, was not that bad, but it was what happened after that messed everything up.

  It is, or maybe was now I've seen the weather forecast for tomorrow, my intention of going to a late afternoon gig tomorrow. It is Caz and Steve playing in The Lord Homesdale pub. It is fairly easy to get to if you don't get the direct bus because it is far from direct, but get another bus that is more direct until you have to change bus as the bus nears Holmesdale Road.

  My big mistake was to start imagining some pictures I would like to take. If I am there early enough, and the pub is not too busy, I hope to gets some posed pictures of Caz (Carrie) and Steve before they start the gig. Things like sitting on a table back to back, and looking away from each other, and also both looking at the camera. I know they will be happy to try a few poses, and probably Carrie will even suggest a few.

  The only trouble, apart from the weather (maybe copious rain) putting me off going, is that it is a small pub, and could soon fill up very quickly. On the other hand maybe the rain will put other off, and I'll be able to get cleared shots - except when William gets in the way, and starts to take hundreds of selfies of his gurning face and anyone he can get to stand with him. The guy gives me the creeps.

  My mind had become so active that I could not shut it down, and get back to sleep. For a while I got up and looked at some stuff on my PC. I think it was around midnight when I went back to bed. It still probably took 20 minutes before I could get to sleep, but once I did I seemed to sleep very soundly. At one time I think I slept over 3 hours, maybe almost 4 hours before I had to get up to do a very large pee ! I know I had them, but I seem to have forgotten any details from the dreams I think I had.

  It was very soon after 7am hen I was woken up with cramp starting in my right leg (I think it is usually my left leg). It seemed a good time to get up, and thought I had had enough sleep (although as I write these words I can't seem to stop yawning !). I had a fairly big first pee of the morning, but it seems I was not ready for a poo. I did seem to be ready for something else though.

  When I got off the toilet I noticed some blood, and from it's position in the bowl I knew exactly what it was. I had noticed some very slight soreness on my inner thigh, but it seemed to slight to be something like a developing diabetic boil. Unfortunately that was what it was, and is a legacy of some of my high blood glucose readings, although I haven't had any readings that high since last Sunday.

  it turned out that it was not a developing boil but a fully grown one. It was actually an old one that I never bothered to get treated properly, and that left a cavity that could refill with blood, and it was all blood with no obvious pus. To my mind it was only a big deal for the amount of mess it left. It was all but painless except when squeezed hard, but I had blood running down my legs, and it has made a mess of my fairly new bathroom mat. As usually happens, once the cavity was empty it quickly dries up and it is all over until next time. It seems it fully emptied itself this morning, and there is no more blood or anything coming out of it.

  There was probably a few grams of blood, but not enough to improve my weight, but it has improved as a result of trying to eat more carefully. This morning, without doing a poo, it has dropped 600gm, and is heading in the right direction - if I can keep up what I have done for the last couple of days. That should be easy, although yesterday it seemed suspiciously easy, and I am not sure quite how I managed it.

  Also this morning, my blood glucose is down to quite good readings The Contour meter, and the GlucoRX meter both read a rather good 7.9mmol/l. With better weather and maybe more things to do, I would hope to improve on that when ever that better weather comes. Even the Sinocare almost agreed with the other two meters, but although it is only a tint increase on them, 8.0mool/l just crosses the threshold, and just misses getting a light green in my spreadsheet of results.

  My blood pressure is still very good, or even "optimum" according to the blood pressure meter, but 108/51 is not quite as excellent than I was managing, but past days have been high enough to make it exactly the average for the month (so far). I was tempted to say that there has been a small increase lately, but looking back over the month I can see that a systolic pressure of 108mmHg is actually around my best readings. I don't really know why I should think I should be able to do better. Maybe it is just over caution looking out for something that might be a sign of upcoming heart trouble.

  Today is not forecast to be warm, but at least for now it is very sunny. I ought to be going out for a walk in the sunshine - it should be ideal for photography except the sun is still very low in the sky still. Half of me says emphatically I should go for it, but half says that I don't fancy it. I am not sure how this will work out. Maybe the best I will do is to go to Aldi. There is nothing I really need from there, but some things could be handy, plus you never know when you might find a surprise in there. It would be good if they had new supplies of sugar free dandelion and burdock drink in again. I guess it is a seasonal thing, and if it feels like they haven't had any for a year then maybe it is time they had more.