08:37 GMT

  As I write this the sun is to the east, and we have had some sunny spells, but over to the west the sky looks a filthy shade of grey. The wind is supposed to be blowing from the south, and so what happens next can only be seen in the forecast. It says sunny spells until midday, and then mostly light cloud for the rest of the day. Not a single drop of rain is forecast despite some clouds being shown as very dark in the evening. The maximum temperature may be 11° C after an 8° C start to the day. The whole evening could be a constant 10° C. Tomorrow is forecast to be cloudy, and the afternoon may feature some drizzle. There may even be (but probably won't be) a sunny spell at 3pm. The afternoon may see 12° C.

  Some of yesterday was good, but overall the day was a mild disaster which has left a hangover today - but not an alcoholic hangover. This hangover is more to do with a bad night with missed and/or poor sleep. I do not feel great this morning.

  I am going to attempt to keep this short today because I feel another snooze coming on. The highlight of yesterday, and also the cause of some discomfort, was my usually regular Wednesday lunchtime visit to The Jolly Farmers. I made two errors going there (and later on, going home). I thought I would try a pair of Adidas trainers that I was not sure were good for walking any further than to the local shops. They weren't that bad for walking to Ladywell and back, but not good either, although maybe they showed promise if worn enough to "wear them in".

  The second mistake, but there and back, was not trying hard enough to walk slowly. By the time I got to the pub, via a small diversion to pick up copies of The Metro from inside Lewisham Hospital, my chest was feeling very uncomfortable. The ironic thing is that just as I left my house I bumped into the postman. He has had a similar medical history to me - heart bypass etc - and we often exchange a few words about how we are doing.

  I said to the postman that it felt like my faulty heart valve may have somehow recovered a bit, and it was giving me less problems. With hindsight I was basing that idea only on short (5 or 6 minute) walks to the shops. The walk to the pub has been as little as 15 minutes in the past when I was feeling sort of fit and healthy. Today I would allow at least 20 minutes, and more to make it with little discomfort. I have no idea how long it took to walk to the pub, but I do know I was feeling terrible when I got there.

  Some booze sometimes helps and sometimes hinders. As well as my usual three pints of Guinness I had a few shots of a Caramel Vodka - booze that Ayse had brought back from her holiday, and was sharing with he favourite customers. It was nice stuff, and I was not expecting a "one for the road" shot after buying a double brandy "to keep the cold out". I had to walk back via the pharmacy, and once again I was in a lot of pain when I got there - because I was trying to walk too fast, and not taking an occasional minute or two rest.

  When I arrived at the pharmacy it was good to stop and rest while waiting to be served, and then waiting for them to try and work out what was going on. I am not even sure they knew what was happening with my repeat prescription. They had already bagged up 4 of my usual drugs, but seemed to need approval for the rest....or something like that. I took away all they had put in the bag, and I will go back tomorrow morning to see if everything else is ready for me. Fortunately, as of this morning, I still have 3 or 4 days left of my previous prescription.

  The walk from the pharmacy to home very quickly revived the heart pains I was getting, and I was very happy to get home. I was also very much looking forward to some lunch. The booze and fresh air had made me feel ravenous. I can't remember all I had, but I am sure it involved a pasta and tomato "salad", and not much more....although I seem to recall I had a single Pannini roll with some ready to eat, sliced BBQ chicken in it. It did seem to be slightly filling, but thatw as what I thought I wanted.

  The trouble was that it was about 3pm when I had that lunch, and dinner was only 3 hours away - not really enough time to let lunch settle down. I whiled away the 3 hours reading and snoozing. As 6pm approached I prepared my dinner. It was to be a Chicken Korma ready meal. I was going to add an onion bhaiji to that, but I didn't. I was thinking that maybe I would have the onion bhaji as a snack a bit later.

  I followed the curry with some ice cream. I guess it must have been because I had dinner only 3 hours after lunch that I felt really full. The problem was worse because of the way Mounjaro slows the release of food from the stomach (and later on from the bowel). I never did have an onion bhaji last night because I was too busy feeling bloated, and burping up a lot of gas (and on one occasions some bile too).

  I had heated/cooked the onion bhaji in my mini over the night before, and they were still in there. I added some Jalapeño "bites", which needed some cooking to the baking tray, and turned the oven on again. I set the oven timer to 15 minutes or whatever the recommended time for the Jalapeño bites was, and than took my curry away to eat while watching the BBC 6 O'clock news.

  I thought that maybe I mind find room for an onion bhaji or a Jalapeño bite a bit later, and I didn't check the mini oven for about half an hour, maybe longer. I expected the timer to turn the oven off, but the mechanical timer has got some grease in it over the years, and now sometime sticks. It did this time, and when I checked much later it had started to cremate the stuff in there. I don't think they are actually charred, and should still be edible if I try one today, but they were very close, and a smell of burning food was wafting around the house all night.

  I never did get to try any of the burnt food because I was feeling unusually, and uncomfortably stuffed. As mentioned earlier I was burping a lot, and it all meant that I had trouble getting comfortable enough to sleep for a long time last night. I did not have a good sleep at all, and that is one reason why I don't feel good this morning. I can foresee I will be snoozing for the rest of the morning once I have finished writing this.

  I think my lunch and dinner has finally left my stomach this morning, or maybe not.... That maybe is one of the reasons why I am skipping breakfast today. The other is a huge weight gain this morning. I don't think I actually ate a lot yesterday, and I want to blame how I felt on leaving only 3 hours between lunch and dinner, but I must have eaten an awful lot more than I remember because I seem to have put on one whole kilogram since yesterday morning. Some of that, but not much, may be attributed to the fact that I didn't poo yesterday, and I only did a very little poo this morning.

  This morning was one of those semi rare morning when my blood glucose was up as well. Fortunately it is still fairly good, and all three readings were similar enough to suggest they were accurate, The Contour meter read 7.7mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read 7.6mmol/l, and the GlocoFix meter read 7.8mmol/l. Until Mounjaro improved things a lot, I set my target at 7.5mmol/l - so all this morning's readings were above that target, but only by a little. I suppose that makes today's readings "good", but only by the skin of their teeth.

  One measurement is good, at least I think it might be, and it is my blood pressure. With very little effort it is just 109/52. That may be marginally a bit low, but my blood pressure meter describes it as "Optimum". It seems that with some extra sleep, and some good management of my appetite, I could be feeling very healthy tomorrow - except there is little chance of that !

  The main thing on today's entertainment will be a beer tastings session with Jodie, and probably Michael too. Lots of booze is always a recipe for disaster - a disaster of the eating kind ! My only hope is to duplicate what happened last week (or at least one recent Thursday in the last month). If I remember correctly I enjoyed some boneless beef ribs in a sticky sauce, followed by some ice cream that last time, and my weigh and blood glucose were OK the next morning. I have the ingredients to duplicate that. Fingers crossed !!








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