This morning seems to be very cloudy, but some rays of sunshine have managed to shine through some small gaps in those clouds. These rather poor sunny spells are forecast to finish at 10am, but I am not so sure they haven't finished 2 hours early. Apart from maybe at 8pm, the rest of today will be dull, but maybe not fully gloomy. The afternoon may see 14° C, but like last night it will be a cold night. Tomorrow may see sunny spells for most of the day, and the temperature could rise to 16° C. Summer could return on Friday !

  I felt quite bad yesterday morning, but I slowly started to feel better in the afternoon. I could blame a lot of it on my drinking and eating on Sunday, but I suspect the bigger culprit could have been the weather. In fact that may have even contributed to my excesses on Sunday.

  I always used to find it weird, and almost unbelievable when as a kid I would hear much older relatives complaining how a change to bad weather would cause them all sorts of discomforts. Now I am one of those older relatives I know exactly what they meant. We may have only had one single, mostly light, shower yesterday, but until that was over I felt really creaky. On top of that was the general dull weather depression.

  In fact there was a combination of things that made me feel under par yesterday morning. One was my high blood glucose. Although that has no obvious symptoms beyond a tendency to pee more often, and maybe a small loss of energy. It meant I had to expend (brain) energy trying to moderate my eating choices. My breakfast was a couple of the Kimchi flavour instant noodles that claim to have zero sugar content.

  Another thing was that I was a bit pissed off about missing the Petts Wood May Fayre....or maybe I was relieved about that. I had been hoping to go to get a bit of photographic practice at their live music stage. There was only one band who I knew, and worth a few snaps. Maybe there was another one or two worthy of a few snaps, but I knew nothing about them. With my aching legs and the weather forecast threatening rain (possibly more in Petts Wood than here) any intention to go quickly faded to nothing.

  Writing yesterday's piece, and the usual lie down and rest afterwards seemed to almost take me to lunch time. If I hadn't felt so lousy, and mildly depressed, and if the sun was shining, I might have tried to fast until dinnertime, but I had two Ciabatta rolls with sardines and salad leaves in them for lunch. They were, once again, rather nice. After that I had a rather blank and boring afternoon to look forward to.

  Reading my current book, and having a snooze, was my initial answer to nothing to do. The current book, as mentioned yesterday, or the day before, is "Moon Dust" by Andrew Smith. It is about what happened to the last living astronauts who walked on the moon. As such it is not about the technology, but about the people and how their lives changed after the highs of walking on the moon.

  One or more of the astronauts who walked on the moon had two flights in the Apollo series, and one of them was as commander of the Command Module - the bit that stayed in orbit when the lunar lander landed two astronauts on the moon. The Command Module commander was all on his own for a few days, and once every 90 minutes (if I remember it correctly) his craft would go behind the moon, and he would be out of touch of earth and the astronauts on the moon.

  It has been cited as the ultimate in loneliness or isolation. The writer of the book asked how that felt. I think he was expecting some very negative answers, but most said it was exhilarating, and even a revelation. In a curious way I can very much agree with it. On the 25th July 2012 I went for a coastal walk, and at one point I was several miles from any human habitation, and possibly any human at all. I was aware that if I had an accident there would be no one to help, and yet it felt so liberating to be there all on my own. Even these days, when I feel far from indestructible, would love to have the capability of doing that walk again.
  I took this picture on my walk to remind me how empty it was. On the left it is salt marsh (although apart from some ponds it is very dry), and not far to the right is the sea. The path I am on is about 1.7miles long, and I am roughly at the halfway point.
  My walk was in the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, and the path I walked is roughly between the green and red markers on the map above. You'll not that further inland there are some much bigger ponds, and some are quite deep. You wouldn't be wanting to walk around there in the dark ! I walked 7.46 miles between Winchelsea station and Rye station, and it was only at the ends of the walk that there were many people around. Maybe 5 of those miles were walked in complete solitude (except for sheep !), but it was only that bit along the coast that the isolation was so stark.

  After spending some time reading, and I am sure I had a snooze, I found something different to do, and something that was semi useful. I am unsure what spurred me on to look in the most difficult drawer to open of part of my CD collection, but I did, and was amazed to realise that I had not ripped anything from the drawer into more convenient to use mp3 music files.

  Many, if not all those CDs I had bought from charity shops. It was because they were very cheap that I bought quite a few from bands I didn't really like, but knew that had recorded at least one good song. In total I ripped 19 CDs to mp3 music files. That can also be looked on as making backups because some CDs do deteriorate over time, and can even become completely unplayable. That would not matter all that much for some of the CDs, but I do like to have backups for everything where possible.

  Ripping a CD takes a couple of minutes, or sometimes a bit longer if my computer CD drive has trouble reading bits of an already deteriorating CD. That meant getting a lot of exercise - get off my bed to change CD and then getting back on while that one ripped. I did end up reading quite a few pages of my book one or two minutes at a time. That is not ideal if I wanted to soak up any of the book, but this was not like being at school, and being tested on it. It seemed enjoyable, even if forgettable in small chunks, although I have to admit that it was annoying having to stop in the middle of an interesting bit.

  A bit over halfway through the afternoon I stopped for a snack. I knew it had to be something slightly safe, and I now think I chose wisely. That snack was rice crackers used to scoop up apple cider farmhouse style pork pâté. I don't think I had ever tried that pâté before. I found it quite nice, but I don't think I would make a habit of it. I continued with the CD ripping until two things happened almost, but not exactly at the same time. I was ripping the last CD at 6pm when I turned on the BBC 6 O'clock news.

  It was an unusually short news broadcast (national and local in just 30 minutes) and most of it was about VE day celebrations. While I watched I ate my dinner. It was a second Aldi "Indian inspired" salad. It was once again curious that it should be so enjoyable for just a bunch of raw vegetables with some crunchies and a sort of curry flavoured dressing. While I was waiting for Star Trek: Voyager to start I prepared my dessert of a Conference pear, a Kiwi fruit, and a Red apple with the obligatory small chunk of cheese.

  Voyager was not a great episode, although good in parts. In other Star Trek series the main person is the captain, but they seemed to give that up in Voyager because Captain Janeway is such an awful character. In last night's episode, and many others, the star is the Emergency Medical Hologram. It was just a shame that he special talent this week was as a classical singer.

  For the rest of my evening I flicked around the TV channels and read more. It feels like very little happened, and yet the evening seemed to slip away quite quickly. I thought I was finally more than ready for sleep by 11pm, but sleep didn't seem to come because I was mulling over the idea of being isolated. It was almost midnight when I decided to get up and find the picture of that long empty road/path I used above, and it was gone midnight when I had it ready to use this morning.

  I think I quickly fell asleep once I had the picture ready to use, and had gone back to bed. It seemed a very uneventful sleep. I can't recall any dream, although I seem to somehow know I had some. I seem to think I woke up less regularly to pee, although I probably woke up as many times as seems normal now. The only notable bit of my sleep time was when I woke up at what was actually 4:50am. I could not understand why it was still dark because I thought it was a lot later.

  I got up not too long after 6am. I was very happy to have a big pee after getting up because I had seemed to be retaining water in my legs the morning before last, and my weight had risen by a ridiculous weight. Some of that was actually constipation, and I did end up having a few just about decent poos during yesterday. I didn't manage to poo this morning, but probably soon will. This morning it seems I have lost 500gm, but I still have some way to go before my weight returns to what it was a few days earlier.

  It is sort of interesting that I seemed to pee as much as usual last night. That could be taken to suggest my blood glucose was still high, but it wasn't. This morning it is really good. The contour meter read a very good 7.2mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read 7.5mmol/l - spot on my my current target (although really there is no target, and the aim is as low as possible). The Sinocare meter astonished me with a fantastic (if it is true) reading of 6.6mmol/l. It is very rare to get readings in the sixes !

  I am very unsure what I am doing today. The dull, and rather cool weather is very uninspiring. It feels highly unlikely I will go out for pleasure today, but it may be useful to go to the station for a copy of The Metro, and then go home again via the little supermarket on Catford Bridge. Some fruit and more packets of instant noodles would be very desirable. I might spot other stuff in there, but I would have to be firm against being tempted to anything unsuitable for my diet. Maybe a lot of today might be like a lot of yesterday in some way.