08:24 BST

  Today is going to be almost a repeat of yesterday with bright sunshine all day, but  the temperature may only peak as high as 28° C.  Tomorrow may be different because most of the day will only feature sunny spells, but the temperature will still reach 28° C for a couple of hours. Nothing is shown on the forecast, but I am sure that on TV they said that a shower might be possible today or tomorrow (or maybe it was even the day after tomorrow).

  Yesterday was not a good day. In fact it was quite a bad day. There were times when I wondered if a visit to A&E might be prudent. Fortunately by taking care, keeping as cool as possible (which was not easy) and using what medication I had, kept me from taking that extra step.

  Yesterday morning my blood glucose was not fantastic, but it was still pretty good. It was my weight which bothered me. It had shot up again, and the previous few days saw small increments - small as in not very big by themselves, but when added up it was like several weeks or more of hard work had gone down the drain. Some of the gain was undoubtedly water retention, and that was easy to see on my left leg. At worst ot was sort of soft and squidgy.

  Additional weight gain from being too free with what I was eating was something I could do something about, and yesterday that was started by skipping breakfast. It was finished by having a very late breakfast because my stomach was growling, if not howling ! All this was happening after a night where I had suffered from chest pains and bouts of very high blood pressure. I most definitely did not feel good yesterday. The worst was in the morning, but the afternoon had it's share too.

  At 06:51 my blood pressure was a very dangerous 170/76. It was not until 10:41 that I got it down to 127/55. That was not long after giving in to my noisy stomach, and having a late breakfast. I did not have my usual instant noodles, but what I did have was similar apart from the (believed, but not checked) was probably sugary tomato dressing on a small tub of pasta.It was a Tesco tub of ready made pasta with herb flavoured tomato sauce/dressing.

  Before and after late breakfast I laid on my bed trying to doze off, but mostly failing. I did read a fair bit, but sometime my reading was a bit mechanical, and I only took in the bigger details. The trouble is that it was some of the small details that are important to the storyline.  After a few hours my blood pressure would start to creep up again, and I think it was around 2pm when I had a snack of cheese with sourdough crackers. I also had a serving of choc chip ice cream.

  It still seems that it might be just ice cream that helps my blood glucose go lower (the next morning). It is a paradox because ice cream contains a lot of sugar (and some luxury flavours that I try to avoid contain huge amounts). I sometimes wonder if it is some useful property of sodium alginate (aka carageem or Irish Moss when refined) that somehow blocks, or slows down sugar absorption in the gut.

  Based up what I had eaten, prior to dinner, I would have expected my blood glucose to be a lot lower this morning, but it wasn't. I think I will put the blame on my dinner. It was a Tesco ready meal of "Chinese style" chicken in black bean sauce with egg fried rice. Chinese takeaway food is notorious for most of it having a very high sugar content, but I think Tesco try and reduce the sugar content of most of their own brand foods. I didn't check that ready meal yesterday, but it seems like it must be the most obvious culprit.

  With my blood pressure going up and down all day, although I never saw another reading as high as the early morning reading of 170/76, I was not feeling good. it is unusual to feel high blood pressure - except that many years ago, while scaring my doctor with similar, or worse, very high readings, I thought I felt good. Yesterday was definitely different, and it was the odd aches and pains that added to the negative feelings.

  Some of those aches and pains were like the precursors to angina pains, and I knew that doing any form of exercise would make things worse. Even going up the stairs after being downstairs in the kitchen, seemed to trigger some slight negative feelings - almost a sort of wobbly feeling. I began to think that if things took a turn for the worse I would be unable to walk to A&E, and might have to resort to dialling 999 for an ambulance.

  Fortunately it never got that bad, and by early evening I was feeling just better enough that I could have chanced a walk to the hospital (it is only a 15 minute walk away on a good day, and I could probably manage it in 25 minutes yesterday even when it was starting to get a couple of degrees cooler. Just in case, I thought I had better have a shower after a very sweaty night, and not washing at all during the day. I did not go as far as washing my hair, but I did rinse it through. At least I would not have the shame of arriving at the hospital stinking if I had needed to seek medical advice.

  I'm not sure if I needed my GTN spray during the day, but I did need it at night a couple of times, and it did help a lot. One thing I did do yesterday was to read the leaflet that came with the spray. I was looking to see if there was any limit to the times it could be used. There was no actual statement of that, but one paragraph mentioned three applications might start to have a lesser effect. I am sure I definitely used it twice in the night, and possibly a third time, but I did leave several hours between doses.

  One odd thing about last night was that I was feeling desperately tired. I was not as if I had managed to get much sleep during the day. In fact I am not sure I got more than about half an hour in total. I deliberately did not rush to bed last night, but stayed up watching TV. I was feeling fairly stable by then. I had taken a swig of antacid solution soon after my Chinese "style" ready meal, and so I didn't seem to suffer any heartburn last night, or through the night.

  I think I was watching TV until 11pm last night (Have I Got News For You, and QIXL). I went to bed, and assumed I might read more of my current book. I read about half a page, or should I say re-read it so I could refresh my memory, and then put the book down, turned out the light, and I may well have fallen asleep almost instantly. I left the window open, and the curtains partly open so that the fan could draw some of the cooler night air and blow it over my body.

  Later in the night I decided to change the direction of the fan a bit because my middle was feeling cool, but my face was still hot. I also put the fan on a lower setting to reduce the chance of chilling myself. I ended up sleeping really well. I woke up just a few times for a small pee, but a few times towards morning when I did bigger pees. I think it was just after 5am when I woke up as if I was going to get up, but I fought that notion, and forced myself to maybe get another 30 minutes of sleep, perhaps more, and finally got up at just before 7am.

  I am happy to say that this morning, thanks to eating more appropriately yesterday, and also doing lots of poos yesterday night and morning, my weight has fallen by about 900gm. If, and as always it is a big if, I can keep up whatever I have done, my weight spreadsheet entries may leave orange, and get back to light green as early as tomorrow. If the last couple of days was just a glitch, and it is now over, I might even get back to dark green soon. After that it is dark blue in my crazy colour scheme, and I had a few dark blue entries before it all started to unravel on me. Each change of colour is a one kilogram interval.

  I thought I had eaten sparingly, and semi carefully enough to get another set of very low blood glucose readings this morning, but sadly not. The Contour meter was the best with a reading of 7.8mmol/l. That is good, but not good enough to reach my current target of 7.5mmol/l. Incidently, the previous few days made me think I could make my next target 6.5mmol/l, but that definitely seems to be too ambitious now. The GlucoRX meter read 8.0mmol/l, and while still good, it is not very good. The Contour Plus meter, which did seem to mirror the Contour (not Plus) meter at first, read 8.4mmol/l, and that is neither good nor bad - merely "OK".

  I tried taking my blood pressure before having breakfast. My stomach was complaining a bit, and I probably could not relax properly. That reading was 143/57. The meter calls that "mildly high". Having breakfast (Kimch flavour, allegedly zero sugar content, instant noodles) made all the difference. The reading then was 123/54. Compared to what I was getting a week or two ago, I would regard that as slightly high, but under the new regime it is possibly even very slightly low, although I think the last doctor I saw thought the other doctor was giving too high a figure. I suspect it is just about perfect.

  If my blood pressure can stay down there is probably no reason not to start doing stuff today. One thing I wanted to do, and I may still do it, is to go the The Jolly Farmers very early in the afternoon before it starts getting busy in there. I think Ayse (my favourite barmaid) will be running the bar, and I could give her, her birthday present. My current thinking is that maybe it might be pushing things a bit doing a long walk in the rising heat. My thermometers say it is already 24° C, and still warming.

  It might be more prudent to do a lesser walk to see how it goes. I still want to go to Savers for a few things, and that is a suitable short walk (about 6 or 7 minutes) to test my body out. Before that I think I will wash and condition my hair, and have a good scrub under the shower. Once I am finished with the bath tub for washing me, I can get the big buckets out and do some laundry. I know I have a heap of underpants to wash, and probably a couple of t-shirts - although currently I am hanging up t-shirts to air if I have only worn them for an hour (for instance a shopping trip) and I haven't dribbled gravy down the front !