My screenshot of the weather forecast begins at 7am. 3 hours earlier the temperature was close to zero, and so I woke up to see frost on cars and the neighbours shed roofs. That was not bad compared to what is coming. From midday we can expect gales force winds, and although the air temperature may be 5 or 6° C, it is predicted it will feel more like 1° C in that wind. The wind will calm down, and the temperature will rise to 9° C, but only 8pm may see a lull in the rain (and feels unlikely). There will be more rain tomorrow, but most of it will be light rain, and there could even be a sunny spell or two. The big feature tomorrow will be a lot more blasts of gale force winds. The afternoon temperature may reach 8° C, but the strong winds will make much of the day feel like it is just 4° C.
 
  Yesterday was mostly OK, and sometimes good. With nothing special to do I had a fairly lazy morning, and maybe even a short snooze after I finished writing this electronic diary. I think it was gone midday when I had a shower, and prepared to go out for a walk to Aldi.

  I had quite a hot shower, and that made a pleasant change. Just recently it seemed like my water pressure was low, and I was showering in little more than lukewarm water. I tried turning up the gas supply, but it made no difference - it was still being throttled by the low water pressure. I have no idea what the pressure was low, but I do know that sometime the day before yesterday the pressure went back to normal. It meant the heater could fully use the extra gas I had allowed, and the water was coming out only a few degrees below what would be uncomfortable.

  I hope it is not just old age creeping up on me, but the lingering effects of whatever bug I seem to have caught. It is hard too say just what that bug is, and I can only compare to watered down 'flu. All I know for definite is that I did not enjoy the walk to Aldi yesterday. The sun was bright and dazzling, and that should have made it a good walk, even if it felt quite cold around my face, but it seemed my leg muscles were lacking power. That made the walk seem twice as long.

  There was nothing special I wanted from Aldi, but there were a few things I wanted, and those included some more meat and vegetables for nice warm stews. I was also on the lookout for new stuff that might be interesting to try, and there were quite a few things I had not seen (or noticed) before. All went into my shopping trolley, along with the traditional 4 two litre bottles of Diet Coke (I drink the stuff in the same way you might drink tea or coffee - neither of which I drink).

  Some of the new stuff I found was a couple of small tubs of ice cream, plus a couple more to buy another time. There were also a couple of frozen ready meals that seemed to have very low sugar content. I found three different flavours of instant noodles in a cup that had Aldi's own brand name on them, but looked very similar to Soba instant noodles pots. I think I even spotted a few beers in the store I had not seen before, but I thought I was carrying quite enough, and left them for maybe another day.

  The walk home, laden with heavy shopping, was really quite arduous. I know I could have done it, but I was glad I didn't have to walk any further when I got home. If I assume it was some sort of bug/infection/virus, then it is a very nasty in so much as it feels perfectly fine when relaxing in the warm, and then feels close to devastating when being active. As I sit here in the warm, just typing, it is totally symptomless, but I know when I stand up to walk anywhere I shall creak like a rusty gate (or something). I must admit that does just sound like old age.

  Once I had put all my shopping away I made some lunch. It was around 2pm when I ate it. It was a couple of Aldi style tiger rolls. They were not nice and crusty like the Tesco version, but quite soft. Both were very nice, and I am unsure which to say is better. For my lunch I had two rolls filled with thinly slice brisket beef, plus the usual horseradish sauce, and mixed babyleaf salad leaves. It seems stupid, but I still find it amazing how something so simple can taste so good.

  After lunch I had a rest and I feel sure I had a snooze. I may not have actually needed a snooze, but it is a great way to pass some time when there is nothing else to do. One thing I did do a bit later on was some washing up, but there was nothing on TV, I was running out of stuff to read on the internet, and as I mentioned yesterday, the current book I am reading is factual stuff, and not a riveting novel. Boredom was juts a hairs breadth away.

  One small distraction from reality was a snack of rice crackers and some cheese. I also had a single plum. One other thing bought from Aldi was a pack of four nice ripe looking plum coloured plums. It was indeed ripe but not sweet ripe, just soft ripe. It definitely was not horrid, or anything negative, but it was not terribly positive either - just nice-ish.
  I almost forgot I had taken this picture at 2.22pm to show just how the sky was a lovely blue, and how bright the sun was. I took it using a camera I rarely use. It is an Olympus X42 camera that I bought from a second hand shop ages ago. It was only recently that I noticed it has a 12Mp sensor, which means there are plenty of pixels if a picture needs cropping, or straightening. Olympus make pretty good lenses (more commonly encountered on scientific/medical instruments) and that makes for good pictures.

   Another plus point is that it runs on two ordinary AA batteries, and seems to only sip power from them. It's main downfall is that it is not a lover of less well lit scenes. The x5 zoom is not a lot, but still useful. I probably ought to go through it's settings a bit more carefully to see if it can use a very fast shutter speed suitable for train, and other moving things, photography.

  My dinner was just a couple of cod and parsley fishcakes. They were sort of nice, and may have been better if I had taken the time to microwave some mixed vegetables to go with them, but I guess I was trying to keep my food intake low - which did seem to have worked this morning. However I did have one more thing after dinner - a dessert.
  I had some chocolate ice cream. That sounds like it is the last thing I should have, but the top of the tub boldly says 0% added sugar. The nutritional panel says the sugar contant is just 3.8gm per 100gm of product. That would be quite low for most foods. I used my scales to dish out just under 100gm (I think it was actually 94gm). It was very nice and very enjoyable - even in such a small portion.

  The first bad, but maybe good news arrived at 6.24pm. It was an email from Amazon to say my latest order, the one with extra supplies of blood glucose meter test strips, had been despatched, and I could expect them today. The original estimate was for delivery tomorrow. Arriving today would interfere with my plans for today, or my old plans for today...they have now been modified.

  With nothing on TV, and nothing to read that would really fully grab my attention, I was in bed, and reading a couple of chapters of my "What If ?" book soon after 8pm. I didn't have any indigestion, and although I had some minor back aches, I had nothing to stop me falling asleep, and I may have fallen asleep slightly before 9pm. I did my usual waking up for a pee every 2 or 3 hours hours (3 hours being less frequent than my current normal).

  The only slight impediment to sleep was that at one time in the night I felt cold. The room thermometer said my room was quite warm, but it did seem to coincide with the outside temperature dipping low enough for frost to form. It was almost as if I could sense the temperature outside through my warm duvet, and through a warm room, and double glazing. All I could do was to pull the duvet a bit tighter around me. When I woke up next time I actually felt slightly too warm.

  I had an interesting sort of dream last night. It was interesting in so much that there was absolutely no action, and any characters were just people in my imagination. I'm not even sure if the dream contained any moving images. It was dream about imagining stuff. In this case it was about a resistance movement in a world where the government had banned elections, and wanted complete control of everyone and everything (a bit like America seems to be heading for).

  In my dream the resistance movement decided to act as complete nerds and communicate most of their thoughts in  completely open ways, but from a point of view of those who like to dress up and role play people form comics and films. The idea being that if they plotted to kill the president it would only be the president of Star Wars (or whatever they had in Star Wars), and not the real president, and yet that might be their ultimate aim. Such ideas would also be discussed face to face in private - and then only when there was a very high certainty that there were no bugs in use.

  Apart from imagining what could go on, nothing actually did go on in the dream, and no conclusions ever reached. The dreams just sort of faded away. Later on I did have anther dream that seemed to be set in Nazi Germany. The only significant thing in that dream was that it seemed I could speak and understand German, although it did seem to be standard English. Even a few French resistance workers seemed to speak English as their native language. It is a shame that aspect it not the same in the real world.

  I seemed to get so much good sleep last night that I felt fine to wake up, and get up, at about 6:20am. I went to the toilet and had a good pee, and then waited an extra minute in the cold, and then did a small but perfectly formed poo ! All that meant that when I weighed myself I found I had lost a very useful 500gm. Like my blood glucose spreadsheet, I record my weight and colour code each whole kilogram in a small, but typical range. That weight less changed my weight from red to orange. If I can manage another full kilogram loss it will change to light green, but at the moment it is a very big "if".

  This morning I thought my blood glucose level might have risen a little bit. The Contour meter read 8.0mmol/l (yesterday is was 7.9mmol/l). The GlucoRX meter read 8.0mmol/, and it too was just 7.9mmol/l yesterday. The Sinocare meter saved the day. It read 7.9mmol/l, and yesterday it was 8.1mmol/l. The average for all three meters is 7.97mmol/l, and yesterday it was exactly the same. I would like to do better, but this is really good compared to some weeks ago.

  My blood pressure is unusually low this morning. It might be because I took it within a minute or two of having quite a big pee. It was 92/47. I wonder if a high pressure bladder being emptied can lower blood pressure for a some minutes or more ?

  My great plan for today was to go out soon after 3pm to go to The Lord Homesdale pub to see and photograph Caz (Carrie) and Steve. That was until the reality of today's weather forecast sets in. To quote from the very latest revision, 3pm will see 40mph winds and heavy rain. The temperature will feel like 2° C even if the actual temperature is 6° C. At 2pm the rain and temperature will be about the same, but the wind could be blasting at 44mph. By 5pm the wind may have dropped to just 18mph, and the rain may have changed to light rain. The temperature will have risen to 8° C, bust still feel like it will be just 5° C.

  I don't think I could enjoy myself going out in that filthy weather, and I am not sure it would do me any good if I did. On top of all that I am now expecting a delivery from Amazon - any time from typically 1pm to 9pm. I really hope it is not as late as 9pm, and recent experiences suggest it could be close to 3pm. I've told Jodie I will be in today, and although there are no trains today, she says she may brave the weather on a bus so she can also take a look at any bedraggled remains of the monthly Catford Food market before coming here for some nice beers for a few hours.