t08:22 BST

  I have a feeling that today's forecast probably describes yesterday. It is now 8:47am and although seeming to get brighter, we have not seen any actual sunshine yet. Even my weather stations can't agree. One says sunshine and the other says sunny spells. Maybe the clouds will go away at 4pm to give strong sunshine, and the temperature will rise to 24° C. Incidentally, my thermometers say it is currently 19° C, but the forecast thinks it should be 17° C. Tomorrow may see full sunshine all day long, and the temperature rising to 26° C. Most of next week may be hot and sunny !

  Yesterday was probably quite a good day. I didn't get everything done as intended, but I did enough, and the day seemed somehow pleasant.  I hate to admit it, but maybe after a less then ideal start, I seemed to feel quite good, almost like being in good health, yesterday.

    I must admit I had a slow morning. I didn't start writing until later than usual. and it feels like it took longer to write yesterday's 2,178 words. By the time I had finished writing, had my usual rest, and then had a shower, it was gone midday. I then got dressed ready to go out, and it was the going out that provided a sort of clue to my state of health.

  The purpose of the outing was to go to the surgery to pick up a brand new blood glucose meter. I have no idea why my last one is now out of support. It seems to work as well as any others I have, and new test strips seem freely available from Amazon.

  It is only a 5 and a half minute walk to the surgery, and to my surprise it was the same coming home. That sounds logical because it should be the same distance because it is just the same walk in reverse. I only query it because I thought I had pushed myself a bit too much when walking to the surgery, and intended to take it a bit easier walking home.

  There is a small discrepancy in the distance walked, 0.288 versus 0.293 miles. That is mostly likely caused by a small delay getting the satellite GPS data when first staring the tracker. The real significant thing is my walking speed. In both directions, to two significant digits, it was 3.1 mph, and that was roughly my walking speed when walking to work. I could do faster bursts in those days, but it always seemed to average out at 3 mph.

   For a walk longer than 5 minutes it will always be a bit slower (unless I can get an operation to fix my heart) because I have to start taking short rests after 5 minutes, or about a quarter of a mile. I was only home for long enough to inspect my new blood glucose meter, and I was out again. In the short break I not only tried out the meter, but once I had used it I had a very brief flick through the instructions to see if there was anything I missed - there wasn't in terms of doing a basic measurement.

  Incidentally, along with the message to say I should get the new meter from the surgery, it also said there were classes at one of their other premises to teach how to use the meter. I guess they may be useful for those who have never used a blood glucose test meter before, but as a veteran of using them I seem to be able to use a new meter with my eyes closed !

  My second walk was to go shopping - initially to Savers. This was the shopping I had meant to do the day before yesterday when I had to turn around and go back home because I felt movement, and realised my constipation was suddenly coming to an end at high speed ! Savers is a good source of vitamins, hand washes, toothpastes, shampoo and conditioner, plus other household cleaning stuff. I got at least one of all those things.

  I then crossed the (pedestrian only) way to go in Poundstretcher. The most significant thing I got in there was two 4 packs of Kimchi flavour instant noodles - at only £1.49 per 4 pack, or just over 37p per pack. They are fairly nice, and also only have a very small sugar content. I also bought some cans of sugar free drink. They included 2 cans of sugar free Cherry Pepsi - OK-ish, but not recommended. One other thing was a packet of chilli flavour crisps whose makers name is in a really squiggly font that makes it hard to read, and so remember.

  I took a slightly different route home after Poundstretcher. Soon after leaving Poundstretcher I would loose clear sight of the sky, and absolutely no sight of the sky as I went through the multi storey car park. In case the tracker was not fully synced to the GPS satellites I went the shortest distance through the car park. It only added 0.03 of a mile, but felt more. Maybe the bigger effect was carrying shopping. It slowed me down from very close to 3 mph going to the shops to just 2.68 mph going home. Of course both walks were far faster than my longer walks through the park (as a for instance).

  Even though my test of the new meter before I went to the shops suggested my blood glucose was quite high, and in fact far higher than it was when I first got up, which was before I had what I thought was quite a safe breakfast, I still felt very hungry, and very much looking forward to some sort of lunch. My lunch, albeit at gone 2pm, was the big (100gm maybe) packet of chilli flavour crisps I had just bought. They were nice enough, but seemed far from hot. I think I also had some ice cream.

  After my very late lunch I fancied lying down and doing some reading. I am currently reading "Shadrach In The Furnace" by Robert Silverberg. It is a strange book. It is essentially SciFi, but it was written long enough ago (1976) that what was once the future is actually the past now. It makes it seem more like an alternate universe story. The writing style seems strange, but it is still very readable. I am just not sure if it enjoyable. This will be the second time I have read it, and it is telling I can't remember a thing about it.

  After my break, which could have been as long as an hour, I was just about to start some photo editing when the phone rang. It was my friend Keith, and he started off saying "just a quick one"......maybe an hour, probably 90 minutes later his phone call finished. It was time for him to feed his cat, and it was also time for me to feed myself. His original short query was why he was seeing pictures of London trains in the north of England. The answer was "The Greatest Gathering" - a special event for Railway 200 celebrating 200 years of railways in the UK.

  My dinner was a microwavable cottage pie for one. It was fairly nice for something made with minced spare bits from some animal, and some very basic mashed potatoes. Some chilli sauce improved it a lot, although a good sprinkle of common white pepper would probably have done the job just as well. I deliberately had a theoretical bad dessert of ice cream to finish my dinner. Although theoretically bad, it did seem to work as a sort of appetite suppressant - I knew I should not dare to eat any more after that.

  I watched the 6pm news while I ate, and one I had finished eating I checked the electronic programme guide to see what else was on. None of my usual fare looked worth watching, and so finally I started the photo editing I should have started many hours ago. It was the band Chain at Petts Wood Calling. My initial thought was that I had not taken many good pictures, but I soon found that just a few simple tweaks and quite a lot of picture were very usable.
  Over the next hour or two I finished about a dozen picture, and they were just from the first 20 snaps out of 120 I had taken of Chain. I thought I had produced more than this one shrunken picture to show here, but it seems that is all I did. This is not even the best of the 12 I did at full resolution (where full in this case means 1600 pixels wide). It seems that the previous week at Chatt Fest provided all the practice I needed to start taking good photos again.....or maybe it was just that the light was right !

  After doing the first 12 complete pictures I knew I could carry on until my eyes went blurry, and I would be missing good sleep, or I could do the sensible thing and go to bed to start again, fresh, today. I read in bed for a while, but I was probably fast asleep by 10pm, and possibly earlier.  I seemed to sleep a lot better last night, and apart from a few vague memories of getting up to pee, I can't really say I remember much about the night. I do remember turning the heater on just before 5am because my room was cooling down by then.

  I got up soon after 6am this morning, and as usual I went for my first pee of the day. Ideally I would have like to have the first poo of the day too, but this was another morning when nothing happened except for a bit of wind. Somehow, and I find it hard to believe that 20 minutes of (walking) exercise could do it, and I can't remember eating carefully yesterday, almost the opposite, but when I got on the scales I found I had lost 800gm. Another 200 gm and I would have been in rarely seen lower figures !

  While I don't remember much about last night, I feel sure I was getting to pee the usual quantities at the usual times during the night. Nothing made me think that my blood glucose would be not only low, but (in some cases) magnificently low. I even have a photo to prove it.
  On the right is my brand new meter. It is giving the second highest reading of all four. The second highest meter is the Contour Plus meter I bought direct from Chine via Aliexpress. It often seems to read high compared to the two on the left. Those two broadly agree (and from time to time agree completely) and that suggests to me that I can trust them. It is looking like the brand new one may be trustworthy, but I will see how it fares of the next week. Next week I will be ordering my next repeat prescription, and it will include more test strips for the new meter (it only came with a miserly "get you started" 10 test strips. If It seems to broadly agree with the other two, I may make it the permanent 3rd choice on my spreadsheet.

  This morning, once I have finished this writing, and had my usual rest, I think I will wash my hair as well as have a shower, and possibly shave as well. With that done I will be free to go out to get some shopping from Tesco, and possibly go to a gig tonight. The gig felt like a good idea a day or two ago, but maybe not so much now, and I have strong doubts I will be going. I might possibly go for a walk in the park today if the sun ever comes out ! Other than that, I ought to knuckle down and get more of my photo editing done. Another reason for not going to the gig tonight is that I don't really want any more photos until I have dealt with all the photos waiting to be selected and edited.