The very dull weather yesterday sapped any enthusiasm from me. I guess it left me depressed, but it was not the sort of depression that I can get on rare occasions for other reasons (BT phone bills, breaking up with a girlfriend, and Aldi and Tesco not stocking sprouts with bacon at Xmas time). I don't think I did anything of note yesterday.

  "Nothing of note" is not the same as nothing at all. I managed to keep myself amused all day - to some extent or another. One thing I did not do was half of one thing I thought I would do, and not doing half of it stopped me doing the second half. The first half was to wash my hair and have a shower, and because I was sure I must be quite smelly, and looking bedraggled I decided not to go shopping to Tesco (or Aldi).

  The only thing I did do, and which I suppose was notable, was to be quite careful about what I ate. My breakfast was just one packet of instant noodles instead of the two I frequently have. I fear I may have to find an alternative to instant noodles because I have an unsubstantiated  theory that they may be the cause, or one of them, for my frequent occasions where I am constipated in the morning (and sometimes most of the day).

  After breakfast I wrote yesterday's piece, and while writing I kept glancing out the window, and thinking how horrible it looked. Although I wrote at the top of the page that it didn't rain yesterday, I have a nagging feeling I may have seen people with raincoats and/or umbrellas outside, but I'll admit I might be confusing that with a different day. Even if it didn't rain it still looked like it might pour at any minute, and maybe it was that which sapped any enthusiasm I had.

  Once I finished writing I had intended to go to the bathroom to wash my hair and have a shower. Instead I laid on my bed and started reading. I read until my eyelids started to droop, and that may have only taken 15 minutes. I then had a snooze. I have no idea how long it lasted, but I know I woke up again in plenty of time to go down to the kitchen to do some cooking and washing up.

  To say "cooking" sounds a lot grander than the reality of putting in some ready prepared (and sprinkled with basil oil) root vegetables (only carrots and parsnips) in to roast for a simple, but high fibre (I think) lunch. I had them with some grated cheese, and once again I was mildly disappointed with it because it was only the two vegetables. I developed the liking for roast root vegetables when in hospital. I saw it on the menu, and thought I would try it as an accompaniment to what ever else I had. Their root vegetables probably included potato and something else - possibly a squash (not really a root vegetable, but roastable).

  After lunch I had another liedown, and probably a snooze, although I was mostly reading. After a time I felt like some alternative entertainment. I got one of my back-up disks out of my video collection. It included copies of most (but not all - another job for the future) of my camcorder tapes. It was both annoying, and good to see a lot of poor quality video of some of my adventures on the railway and tube network.

  I had always intended to edit the best stuff into short videos, but my camerawork was always pretty shaky. Even worse was that I was shooting ad lib, with no coherent idea of what I really wanted to show. For me it was a great reminder of some railway rolling stock that has been scrapped, and some places I visisited. These days I stick to (sometimes) carefully framed still photos, and they are much higher resolution than the standard resolution camcorders I used to use. They were "standard definition" - designed to show on TV screens, and so the best was about the same as 640 x 480 pixels (and the analogue camcorder was about 352 x 288 - which looks tiny on a PC screen). These days. for high definition, I would just use my mobile phone !

  Another distraction was listening to a couple of late 1950s Goon Shows - most written by Spike Milligan whose war memory books I am reading, and have almost finished them. When originally broadcast by the BBC, the Goon Shows were ground breaking comedy, and often featured topical stuff (people or stuff in the news of the time). I know many people find them hilarious to this day, but while still funny I find some of the humour to be a bit strained, and different to modern humour. I sort of enjoyed the episode (or was it two) that I listened to.

  I had originally thought In might watch some old BBC TV comedy - maybe something like Yes Minister - but I could not decided what to watch. It was then that I remembered I had downloaded many episodes of the Goon Show from the internet archive that had unfamiliar titles. It was one or two of them that I listened to instead of watching old TV programmes. The Internet archive currently lists 151 episodes, and all can be freely downloaded in various formats. The Ogg Vorbis encoded files my be a tiny bit higher quality than the mp3 files, but it has to be remembered that many of these shows were only recorded on 14 inch shellac, 78rpm style records.

  I did more reading and probably more snoozing before getting up to start my dinner cooking. It was a large sweet potato that I "roasted" in the microwave. At 6pm I ate it, smothered in grated cheese with a sprinkle of white pepper and salt, while watching the very depressing news on The BBC news channel (being a weekend there is no 6pm news on BBC 1 like on weekdays. It still seems Donald Trump has fired the first shots of WW3.

  There was some less depressing, and even a bit entertaining TV on last night. I can't remember exactly what it was I watched, but I know it included a couple of episodes of The Simpsons. I can't remember when it was that I gave up on TV, and retired to bed to read more of the 5th book of Spike Milligans war memoirs. I've got up to the point when he is starting to recover from "Shell Shock" and the next part I'll be reading is how his career in show business got started, and how the foundations of The Goon Show got started.

  Last night was another night where I seemed to sleep well, or where I didn't have any insomnia no matter how brief. I have hazy memories of getting up to pee a few times, but I seemed to waste no time getting back to sleep after each visit to the toilet. This morning I can't seem to remember if I had any dreams. All I do know for sure is that I had a "false morning" - in other words I got up at about 6am, went to the toilet, took screen shots of the weather forecast, and even weighed myself. I then decided it was too early, and went back to bed for another hour (actually almost 2 hours).

  This morning I can't say I feel wide awake, and I will probably have a snooze after I finish writing this. I mentioned I weighed myself, and it didn't look too bad, but after my extra sleep I had another fairly large pee, and so I weighed myself again. This morning I am happy to say I am 700gm lighter than yesterday morning. My blood glucose is good, but slightly higher then yesterday. Rather than give all three readings I'll just give the average. Yesterday the average was 6.2mmol/l, and that was very good. This morning it was 6.43mmol/l. That is only a tiny bit higher, and so still very good.

  There are three things on the agenda today. The first and second is to do what I meant to do yesterday - wash my hair, have a shower, and go shopping in Tesco. The third is the usual late Sunday afternoon beer tasting session with Jodie. I think I'll take my current Spike Milligan book down with me so I can read and ignore Jodie while she ignores me as we both get engrossed in what we are reading - me from my book, and her on her mobile phone !