09:07 BST


  Today's forecast shows sunny spells for 7am. I am not aware of any then. It also shows some rain at 11am, and then from 1pm to 3pm. The Met Office forecast also said the day should have started with 2 hours of sunny spells, but I didn't see those either. It doesn't show and rain, but does admit that there could be a 30% chance of rain a few times during the day. It just shows the whole day (after 9am) as being overcast with grey skies. It agrees with the BBC forecast, above, that this afternoon should reach 22° C. Tomorrow there is a small chance of rain in the morning, and for late afternoon, but mostly it may be dull, although sunny spells are forecast from 11am to 1pm.

  Still on the subject of weather, my weather stations are saying we should be getting sunshine. The pressure was rising at 7:04pm yesterday, and was already up to 1001mb. This morning it said 1007mb. One of my other weather stations shows no more than an up or down arrow for the pressure, and it was pointing up this morning. This should mean good weather on it's way. The weather station display on the left shows cloud, but with nothing falling from it, and it shows a nice yellow sun. The other weather station display is only in black and white, but it was showing a big sun symbol. I think it can show the sun peeping out from behind a cloud, but this morning it was just the sun.

   Still on the subject of weather. As I write this at 9:54am, it is raining, and the start of it, a minute or two ago, seemed quite heavy. Neither the BBC, Met Office, or my weather stations said it would rain, although the BBC does admit to a 14% chance of rain, and the Met Office say a 10% chance of rain. This could alter my plans for today if the clouds are going to recklessly rain when not scheduled to !

   Yesterday was a day when the threat of really lousy weather made me want to stay in, despite some fanciful ideas that I might go out for a few train rides (with Canon 660D camera ready to shoot any trains I saw). I did not go out, and I didn't do much, but I did at least one useful thing.

  All my health indicators said I was in pretty fair shape yesterday, but.... Maybe it was the low atmospheric pressure that seemed to make me feel bad, where bad was not aching, or anything like that. It may have all been in my head, but by the time I had finished writing, I felt like I had no get up and go, and no desire to do anything at all - almost. On the assumption that it might just be a passing feeling, I did have a shower so I could go and mingle with the great unwashed public if needed.

  I must admit having a shower, as is almost always the case, did perk me up a bit, but not enough to make being clean and fragrant worthwhile.....although maybe I still had an hope that I might decide to go shopping in Aldi. That is something I have wanted to do since before the weekend, but I never did go there, or anywhere. I might go to Aldi today, but that recent fall of rain, when it was least expected, puts me off the idea again.

  I did end up doing one important thing yesterday, and I started it as soon as I had finished showering. I put a couple of t-shirts, and 5 pairs of underpants in to soak in detergent. I would get back to them in the early afternoon, and almost finished the job in one go. Despite wearing rubber gloves, my hands were starting to feel too hot and sweaty after the first two rinses and wringing out. After a break of maybe an hour, I wrung out the last rinse water, and then wrung out the fabric conditioner before hanging it all up to dry on the big clothes horse.

  I spent a lot the day, before evening started, reading. I finished one book, and started another. My lunch included some ice cream. I am unsure why, but I had a strong urge to have some. It was very nice, and it would have been easy to have eaten too much, but I limited myself to approximately two scoops - which I know to usually be safe if not eaten too late at night.

  One small diversion was an idea that came to me while using the toilet - always a time of deep thinking, and idle contemplation. For a long time now I had been meaning to buy a spare Catford t-shirt. I bought my original at a Catford Beer Festival (in The Catford Bridge Tavern 3 or 4 years ago). That original is still in pretty good condition, but some of the lettering looks like it will start to wear soon.

  That original t-shirt is liked by Ayse (my favourite barmaid), and she once said she would like one. At the time I found a pop up shop in Catford selling them direct and mail order. That shop was in Catford Mews, and that has closed completely. Yesterday I did a search and found somewhere else selling Catford t-shirts. The font used is not the same, and I don't think they are quite as good. I ordered one for me, and a smaller one for Ayse.

  My dinner was interesting/strange. It was a sausage salad. I had a ready made salad, and I had cooked the sausages over the weekend, but I didn't want to eat them then, and put them in the fridge. I had three cold sausages with salad, and it was not nasty, but it was not that good either. I ate the other three sausages with some really terrible squirty, American style, mustard on them. The mustard was probably 50% corn syrup, and may have never seen any real mustard.

   I can't work out why I have not thrown that mustard away. It contains dangerous amounts of sugar. It doesn't taste of mustard, and if anything it tastes more like custard. I think that when I go down to the kitchen next I will wash the container out, and recycle the plastic. I am sure that foul stuff was instrumental in my blood glucose mot being as low as hoped this morning.

  I am almost forgetting one other good thing I did yesterday. I changed the bottom sheet, and pillow covering on my bed. After all these recent sweaty nights, it was all getting a bit sweaty. There was also the problem of the cheap lower fitted sheet being made cheaply for a thinner mattress. I was forever having to tuck it back in. The new lower sheet fits much better. It was rather nice going to sleep on clean bed linen last night.

  The BBC 6 O'clock News was pretty tedious last night. Star Trek: The New Generation was a story I seemed to remember too well, and my attention kept wandering. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was an awful episode, and I turned it off after about 15 minutes. I turned the TV back on to watch have I Got News For You at 9pm. The guest presenter, and the two guests on the panel were not terribly good, but I did watch it to the end before going to bed.

  That was at 10pm and I though I still felt wide awake, but after reading a few pages of my book I suddenly felt tired. Once again I put the book down, turned out the light, and was very soon fast asleep. On this occasion "fast asleep" really meant it. I remember nothing at all until it was almost 3pm, and I needed, albeit not desperately, a pee. I was thinking my room was starting to feel a bit cool, but I still fell asleep within seconds of getting back to my bed.

  I am not sure even an hour passed before I was awake again. I needed another pee, but it was just a small one. The main thing was that I was definitely feeling rather cool. I had cleared the empty duvet cover off my bed, and so I could not pull that over me, although it was only two steps from my bed, but so was the heater, and I turned that on low. I was asleep again before it had begun to warm the room up, but it was definitely warm when I woke up just after 6am,

  In fact it felt so warm that I did not want to get up. I don't think I managed to fall back asleep, but it was well over half an hour before I got up, and turned the heater off. For all the time the heater was on, I think it actually only warmed the room by two degrees. I find it strange how sensitive I seem to be to such a small change. I suspect it is another artefact of getting old.

  After getting up I went for my usual first pee of the day, and tried to have a poo. I don't recall going yesterday, and so I guess I am officially constipated. Hopefully, like quite an few mornings, I will end up going once or twice before lunchtime, but that is annoyingly late - particularly on days like Wednesdays when I like to go out just before it would be lunchtime. On Thursday it could be very inconvenient because I have my echocardiogram at the hospital at 11:15am.

  I felt like I didn't pee as much as would have been useful in the night, and this morning. When I weighed myself the last digit flickered between the actual reading, and one lower for a second or two. If it had decided on the lower figure I could claim to have lost 100gm, and if I had had a good poo I might have added another 200gm of loss, but as its stands, I would seem to be exactly the same weight as yesterday - which is fine, although some loss would have been better.

  The difference before and after typing the full stop at the end of the last paragraph is amazing. For one thing the sun came out. The other thing is that I am officially no longer constipated. If it had happened before I had breakfast I might have even seen the scales drop by at least 100gm (poo seems to weigh a lot less than it looks !).

  Not seeming to pee much overnight should have meant that my blood glucose was nice and low this morning. It was OK, but not low. The Contour meter read 8.3mmol/l, and until most of the start of this months where I got a string of sevens, that would not be very good. The GlucoRX meter read 8.1mmol/l - a bit better, but I'm only calling figures less than 8.0mmol/l good now. The Contour Plus meter read 8.8mmol/l, and that was quite disappointing. When I first got the Contour Plus meter it agreed with the Contour meter, but it now seems to read higher.

  My plans for today are highly flexible, and range from doing nothing to going to Aldi. Going to Aldi, or maybe just Tesco, would be most desirable today. Tomorrow I am going for my usual Wednesday visit to The Jolly Farmers for a couple of pints of Guinness. After that I could go to Tesco, but probably wouldn't. On Thursday I will be having my echocardiogram towards the end of the afternoon, and in the afternoon I should be drinking beer with Jodie and Michael. Today is the most realistic day to go shopping, and yet I have a feeling I might not go out at all.