Today may be detectably better than yesterday. For a start the temperature should reach a still rather cold 7° C in the afternoon. It was remain very dull, and plenty of drizzle is forecast. Tonight the temperature may drop to just 3° C by midnight. Tomorrow the misery continues, only a bit worse than today. The grey day may be an even darker grey, and the rain may be light rain, although some hours may only see drizzle. By late afternoon the temperature may reach 7° C again, but I guess it is still going to feel shivery cold.
 
  It seems that somehow I did better than expected yesterday. The miserable day made me want to eat far too frequently, but I seemed to have moderated that mania quite well, although unsurprisingly, not perfectly. Another amazing thing is that i reduced my electric consumption a lot.

  It may have been just before I started writing, with a hot breakfast inside of me, that I decided I would prefer not to afford to pay for the heater going full blast during the day, and turned it down to just 1kw. After a few hours the room started getting colder and colder. The answer, which may seem obvious, was to close my bedroom door to keep the warmth in. That was all well and good, but it meant the bathroom felt positively icy when I needed the toilet, and I could not face stripping off for a shower.

  After I finished writing I had my usual rest, and like some days, also had a snooze. My bedroom didn't seem to cold, but when I checked my temperature.....
I am well aware that 34.9° C was only the temperature under my tongue, and not my more important core temperature, but it is still a bit low. I think this was when I removed a load of t-shirts hanging on the door so I could close it full. It took quite a long time, maybe until at least mid afternoon, until my bedroom actually seemed cosily warm. The next time I went for a pee it felt icy cold when I left my warm bedroom, and went into the bathroom.

  It was even colder when I went down to the kitchen. There is never any heat in there, and what there is comes from the dining room. The dining room has seen no heating since we finished drinking on Thursday afternoon, and it was uncomfortable cold in there too. The logical thing should have been to have hot soup for my lunch, but I wanted to use up the last two rolls before they became stale. They were already noticeably drier than nice fresh rolls when I filled them with sliced roast pork and mustard. They were nice, but with hindsight I think ham would have been better than roast pork.

  I didn't just have the rolls. I also had some "no added sugar" butter biscuits, and some peanuts. I was trying my best not to allow my craving for food to get too out of hand. One problem is that there seemed to be no distractions for a lot of the day.  I felt too cold to do anything but stay in my bedroom except for visits to the toilet, or visits to the kitchen. I could, maybe should have done the video editing of The Simpsons episodes I keep saying I should do - instead the amount the need editing, and watching, just keeps growing.

  One good thing is that the book I am currently reading ("Heart Of The Comet" by Gregory Benford and David Brin) did start to get more interesting after a rather slow start where it was mostly just introducing the characters. I think I prefer the character introductions as and when needed in the story line, but maybe because the book is written by two writers, they felt it would be easier for them if they established the main characters before the real story started.

  I still find the book a bit hard going at times, and the extra-terrestrial creatures are starting to make it more like a horror story than a SciFi story. I can't seem to read non stop for hours on end like I used to, and have to come up for air now and then. It is during these breaks that my mind turns to food. Yesterday, with it being so cold, I did treat myself to a mid afternoon "snack" of two cans of hot soup. I made them even hotter (but only on the taste buds) with the liberal addition of hot sauces.

  That mid afternoon snack meant I had to, or at least ought to have put back dinner for an extra hour or something. I did have it maybe an hour later than sometimes. It was a pile of fruit, one small banana, two yellow plums, two "easy peeler" little oranges, and a golden apple. I think I had something before the fruit, but I can't seem to remember what. I do know I had a chunk of not very nice tasting angel cakes after the fruit. It had a very artificial, almost greasy taste.

  I ate while watching one or other Star Trek episodes yesterday evening. I would have tried to watch Star Trek: Voyager as well. During the end credits of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine it was announced that Star Trek: Voyager was on next, but just like the day before, the channel was taken over my Sky Sports who felt it needed to show a very American stylised  Darts Match. I most definitely did not watch that !

  I read some stuff on the internet, and while doing that I was also recording three (or was it four ?) episodes of The Simpsons on my little 10 inch TV. I now have even more episodes to edit and archive, and watch now ! The last recording ended at 9pm, and at that point I turned off the TV, stopped looking at my PC, and went to bed. I read for maybe hlaf an hour before I tried for sleep.

  One thing I am forgetting in this narrative was that at 7.30pm I turned the heater up to it's full 2kw, and opened my bedroom door. It was almost a waste of electricity at a time when it seems electricity is more valuable than platinum, but that escaping heat does percolate through to the bathroom. It does little more than take the chill off it, but that is enough to make sitting on the toilet a less Arctic experience, and so probably worthwhile.

  I think I did have a little indigestion when I tried for sleep, but a couple of Rennie's, antacid tablets soon calmed that down. I am glad I wasted the electricity keeping the worst of the chill off the bathroom. I was back to normal last night, and getting up for a pee every 2 or 3 hours (but mostly every 2). Not all were big pees, but it was better than nothing. I had some dreams last night, but all seemed to have escaped me now, and so I can't describe any of them.

  I woke up not long after 6am this morning, and I don't know why, but it felt like it was time to get up, although I was still considering going back to bed after a pee, and a poo as well. I needed both before I dared get on the scales. Fortunately there was good news - just about. It was very little, but this morning, despite all I ate yesterday, I was 200gm lighter, and heading back in the right direction to pick up where I had left off when it all went horribly wrong three days ago.

  I was not sure what to expect when I checked my blood glucose this morning. I thought it likely that it would be medium high, but thankfully I was wrong. The readings were not wonderful, but were more than good enough. The Contour meter read 7.8mmol/l, or just a little bit higher than my current target. The GlucoRX meter read a little bit higher at 7.9mmol/l. The Sinocare meter was the only disappointment with a reading fo 8.1mmol/l, but even that is probably still well under my most pessimistic predictions.

  This morning I am most definitely going to wash my hair, and have a shower. To make that less traumatic I have found an extension lead so I can use a spare fan heater to blow through the bathroom door. It is only on 1kw, and so will only take the chill off the room, but that is all I can ask for. It is also a test of the spare heater that I will soon need for the spare room.

  This morning I heard from Patricia. She has been in Plymouth with her sister for various reasons, but her plans are to come to London on Wednesday, stay the night, and get a plane back to her Italian flat from one of the London airports (possibly even London City Airport). Maybe starting Monday I will need to start airing the spare bedroom, and get it warm enough to drive any damp out. I will also need to remove all my cameras and stuff from the room.

  Another thing I will need to do before Patricia stays here is to re-do the patch over the crack in the bath tub. I may also change the shower curtains too. They are getting a bit scummy. It is all a lot of work that I don't really feel like doing at this part of the year. I'll also ought to do a lot of hoovering. Today I can almost take it easy - once I have had my shower and washed my hair.

  One reason, albeit a slightly poor reason for a complete scrub up, is that I think I want to go to Aldi today. That brings some temptations, but I principally want to get some of their (usually) nicely ripened fruit. While I am there I must remember to get a pint of milk for Patricia's coffee. I will get one pack of meat for a stew, and maybe some vegetable to go in it. I am sure there is a lot more I will buy when I see it. After that it will back to practising being lazy to get my style up to Olympic level.