08:39 BST
Yesterday was
one of those currently frequent days where the
essence of the weather forecast was right, but
the fine details wrong. I must admit it is
hard to remember exactly every hour of the
day, but I think some hours of sunshine, were
actually sunny spells, and some hours of sunny
spells were actually full sunshine. It was
fairly warm though, and the afternoon
temperature easily rose to 23° C, and possibly
higher.
This morning has started sunny, but it
also started off quite cool. However, the
temperature has already risen to 19° C. Much of
today will feature sunny spells, although just a
couple of hours (according to the latest
revision) at the start of the afternoon may be
light grey. It may take until 6pm, but the
temperature today should reach 26° C. It should
be a milder night tonight, and then a day of non
stop sunshine should get tomorrow up to 29° C -
the start of another heatwave.
Before describing most of yesterday I
feel I want to finish a small part of the story
of yesterday. I wrote how I had tried to remove
a spider from my bathroom, and got bitten by it
in the process. After the spider escaped I did
not see it again until about 8pm last night. It
had resumed it's preference of lurking where the
wall and ceiling meet. I'm afraid that after
being bitten in the morning I was not going to
mess around. Using what was once used as a
curtain rod, I squished the little blighter from
about 5ft away from those venom dripping fangs
(probably).
I took this picture of the spider
bite this morning, just before I started writing
this. Yesterday there was a feint mark where the
second fang tried to puncture the skin, but it
has faded now. In the red circle is the small
pin prick of the worst puncture. I have been
keeping an eye on it in case the venom started
to do anything bad, possibly even needing
hospital treatment, but it is looking like it
will heal with no additional trouble.
Apart from that spider trouble mentioned
above, yesterday was a mostly quiet day. I
thought I wanted to go out, but I never did. I
did do a few useful things, but mostly it was
all about eating and resting. I probably ate too
much, but it seems like it was all of the right
stuff.
Yesterday's breakfast was two packets of
Koka (brand)
Mi
Goreng instant noodles. It is a flavour I
have never seen from that make before, and I
didn't need to go any more exotic than Aldi to
buy them. The flavour basically translates to
"fried noodles". They were rather nice. The only
problem is that two packets only just fit in my
favourite noodle bowl, and they would have been
nicer if there had been a little more room for
liquid. This morning I had Koka "Stir Fried"
instant noodles. They were very nice, but not
quite as nice as the Mi Goreng noodles.
After I had eaten breakfast, and then
finished writing yesterday's electronic diary
entry (what you are reading now is the next page
in my electronic diary), I had an idea that it
would be good to go out for a walk. I was even
thinking of a long walk where I could probably
test my GTN spray (incorrectly called NTG of
something yesterday) by walking fast enough to
probably provoke the start of angina.
Before that I had my usual rest. I laid
on my bed and read for a while. I also felt like
closing my eyes, and I might have had a short
snooze. I certainly felt very relaxed. I then
went and had a shower - keeping a sharp look out
for the big black spider that had tasted human
flesh !! It was not a hot shower, and didn't
need to be, but it still seemed to relax me. I
went back to my bedroom to get dressed, ready to
go out, but.....
I sat down in front of my PC, and read a
couple of news items from
https://www.theregister.com/
and as I read I started to wonder if I really
wanted to go out, and started looking for any
and all weaknesses of my body as reasons not to
go out. I think the only truly valid reason was
some uncertainty about if I had finished pooing
for the day. Mostly I just thought "I can't be
bothered".
Not going out left me with very little to
do, and that would mean I would likely eat too
much - and a very nearly did. There were two
things I did do that didn't take very long, but
were quite useful. One was to order more test
strips for my blood glucose meters. I was going
to order them from Aliexpress, but they didn't
seem to have test strips for my older Contour
meter. I then checked Amazon, and they had test
strips for both my Contour meter and Contour
plus meter. One meant a £2.99 delivery charge,
but I could just about swallow that. I ordered
100 strips for both meters.
I then went to
Beer
Merchants web site to select some beers to
order. They are a very good place to order beers
from - except for one annoyance. Every order
earns you "Reward points" that are worth money
off another order. The annoyance is that you
really have to keep your eyes skinned to notice
when you are supposed to claim those points. My
77 points would have knocked off around £3 from
my order, but if you get past the point where
you redeem them there is no going back.
The points remain valid for the next
order - unless you once again miss the part
where you can redeem them. I don't think it is a
malicious thing, and is just poor web site
design. This time I had to pay full price, £107,
but at least it is free delivery. It is possible
my beers could be delivered in time for
Thursday's drinking session. For this order I
chose a lot of fairly weak beers - some as low
as 1.5%. I also bought a couple of very
expensive, but discounted, bottles of strong
beer.
My lunch was safe enough while it was
pâté with rice crackers, but the "afters" of
peanut flavour ice cream, even if it was
supposedly low calorie, was rather less safe. As
I will later explain every I ate was actually
safe in terms of blood glucose level, but less
so for my weight. I was probably eating in a way
that would have made a 3 mile walk a very good
idea.
As 6pm approached I made a sort of
chicken salad for my dinner. It was not super
healthy because as well as two ready cooked
chicken breasts (semi greasy, and also 1 day
past their best before date), I included a lot
of creamy coleslaw and potato salad. The
coleslaw was possibly only mildly bad, but I
think the potato salad was not that good. The
ironic thing was that it was not only not that
good for me, but it didn't taste that good. It
did not taste bad in terms of being rancid or
something, but it was a sort of oily/greasy
taste that did not seem good.
I turned on the TV expecting to watch the
BBC 6 O'clock news, and found bloody Wimbledon
clogging up the airwaves of BBC1. The BBC news
channel had a 6pm news broadcast, but that
didn't include the local news for London. It was
not great watching, but it filled a blank space
before Star Trek: The New Generation. Now the
strange thing is that I know I started watching
it, but a whole lot of it seems to be a blank
memory. I think that maybe once I remembered the
story I just sort of blanked it out.
I don't think I read my book, but I
probably read other stuff on my PC while still
listening to Star Trek. I think that was
possibly true of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that
followed. I can't seem to recall anything about
it. I think I did start reading my book while it
was on. As it was on I had two other
distractions. I glanced out of the window and
saw what looked like a drunk, or other hooligan
playing with a shopping trolley with a length of
string tied to it.
I took a wider look and saw as many as 30
people watching him from 20 feet away. Suddenly
it clicked. It was obviously a rehearsal for
some filming that is due to take place outside
on Sunday 20th July. A leaflet through my door
explains what will be happening. Just one scene
will be filmed, and it is of a "lone shopping
trolley rolling down a frosty street". It says
it has allowed 2 hours to film this single scene
using a cast and crew of 50 !!!! It will
be curious to see how they make the street
frosty. I believe the usual way is loads and
loads of washing powder. I an intending to take
pictures of much of it.
While looking out my bedroom window
I noticed a very full looking moon, although as
my photo shows, it is probably the day before,
or the day after the real full moon. The moon
was quite low in the sky, and I doubt I would
have seen it from road level. I had to wait
until the moon was in the correct position to
get a clear shot by the side of the open-out
window in my bedroom. The picture did include a
few lights from the flats in the distance, but I
removed them from the photo.
I don't think it was my best picture of a
full (or nearly full) moon. One curiosity is
that it includes either a plane, or maybe a
space shuttle leaving the moon (impossible) near
the top of the moon. It is not an ultra sharp
photo, and even when zoomed in, all I can see is
an object with wings. I think it is just a
plane, but the perspective seems a bit odd.
Soon after taking the picture I watched
the whole of an episode of Have I Got News For
You. That did not finish until 11pm. I went
straight to bed when it finished, and I am not
sure I managed to read even the whole of a
single page before I turned out the light, and
fell asleep.
I mostly slept OK last night, but at 4am
(I think) I woke up feeling almost cold despite
my room thermometer saying otherwise. I could
have, and should have just pulled the empty
duvet cover over more of my body, but opted just
to turn the heater on low. It was very warm in
my bedroom when I got up ! I had some dreams,
but they left little impression on me. My
biggest memory of the night was not peeing much.
I woke at what I thought was 6am, but it
was only 5am. I had a pee, and went back to bed.
I didn't think I would fall asleep again, and
was quite surprised to next see it was about
6.20am. I got up and went to the toilet. I did
seem to have a fair sized pee, but only passed
some wind.. well maybe a bit more than "some",
but definitely no solid. I was a bit annoyed to
see my careless eating meant I seemed to have
gained 600gm this morning. It would have been a
lot better if I had lost that amount.
I had several things to eat yesterday
that were theoretically not good for my blood
glucose. The worst was cake and ice cream.
I expected the worst, and indeed my blood
glucose was not as wonderful as yesterday, but
it was still exceptionally good. The Contour
meter and the GlucoRX meter both read 6.3mmol/l
- much lower than expected, and once again in
the sort of area the diabetes nurse bullies me
to achieve, It seems it is easier to achieve by
doing nothing. The Contour Plus meter let me
down this morning, although at any other time
7.0mmol/l would be excellent (for me).
The main thing for today is the pub at
lunchtime. Today is Ayse's birthday. she is 52
years old, but looks younger. I had bought her a
bottle of her favourite booze as a birthday
present. There is a small chance that Kevin my
join me. I mentioned it was Ayse birthday as
part of another exchange of message. He gave no
indication that he might come. I expect he will
decide this morning if he feels good enough for
an outing. There is a mini-microscopic
possibility that Angela might turn up. I
mentioned about today, but she never commented
on it. She is still not drinking, and so it is
unlikely she will come for that reason alone.