Today has been another very wet day, although between about 8 and 9am, contrary to the weather forecast, it was grey, but dry. From sometime between 10:30 and 11am it started to rain, and within another 10 minutes it was very heavy rain. At some point, but I am not exactly when, the rain seemed to fizzle out. This evening even featured a nice sunset. The temperature today fluctuated between 10 and 12° C. By 8pm it may be down to 9° C, and stay there for most of the night, which incidentally is forecast to be very wet again. Much of tomorrow will feature sunny spells, and they may raise the temperature to 14° C by 3pm.

  Yesterday was was a sort of mixed day. The morning included a visit to the vampires to give a couple of tubes of blood for analysis. After that I sort or relaxed - a lot ! Unfortunately I also relaxed any discipline I might have over what I ate. It did not help that I had been shopping in Tesco, and so I had some bad temptations to be seduced by.

  There is only one thing notable about yesterday. Cous Cous wanted to visit and have a few cat treats. I left the back window open so he could go out when he was ready. Meanwhile I spent hours reading and snoozing, or looking at stuff on the internet.

  I think it was a few hours later I checked on Cous Cous, and he had gone out - possibly he needed to dig a small hole for his business or something. I closed the window, and got on with my intensive resting/laziness. Sometime later I started thinking about cameras, and the new lens I had ordered from Ebay. I went into the back bedroom when I keep my cameras, and started fiddling about with them. I was particularly interested in which lens were suitable for the couple (now three) full frame cameras. I was worried that the new lens I had ordered would not be suitable for my newest camera, the Nikon D700.

  I was standing near the window when I either saw movement, or heard a meow (it was probably both). Cous Cous came running along the garden fence, meowing all the way. Then he leapt up to next doors, kitchen extension before leaping across the void to do an all four feet landing on the windowsill. I am sure he could easily leapt back if I ignored him, but for safety sake I opened the window and let him in.

  I ushered Cous Cous downstairs to the dining room. After a couple more cat treats he settled own, and told me in o uncertain terms (or so it seemed) that there was no way he was going to go back out into the rain. Once again I left the back window open so he could go out if he wanted to. He eventually curled up on my chair, and probably slept several times. I think it was getting dark when he decided, with a few words from me (!) that maybe he should go and see if his real owners had put his dinner out.

  Meanwhile, my dinner was sausage rolls - as in a pair of chilli flavour sausages in a "Tiger roll". I think I had two of them. I also had some ice cream, and almost half a walnut cake. The latter had been opened for a few days, and I feared if I left it any longer it would dry out. I scoffed the lot. The problem with all that lot was that my original intention was to try and keep my sugar consumption very low because I had a fair idea I would be giving more blood for testing this morning. I felt guilty all night.

  I did not sleep well last night, and it was for many reasons. The guilt over probably ruining my blood glucose level was one thing, but that was just a minor thing among probably other minor things. Another, but itself, semi minor thing, was worries about getting up in the morning with enough time to empty my bowels, and generally be comfortable for a visit to the ambulatory care centre for my follow up ECG and other heart stuff.

  Oddly enough, I seemed to wake up at a good time to fit in several visits to the toilet, plus having a shower (although I didn't have time tow ash my hair, but I felt that was not important).  This morning I found I was 200gm lighter than the previous morning. That was not great, but it was in the right direction, and so it was good.

  My blood glucose, on the other hand, was pretty terrible. I got readings of 10.1mmol/l, and that is awful, plus 9.3 and 9.1mmol/l - both not good, but at least still under the red line at 10.0mmol/l. There was no time this morning when I felt relaxed enough to check my blood pressure, plus I knew it would be high anyway - it always is if I have to go and see doctors and nurses.

  My appointment at the Ambulatory Care Centre (an offshoot of A&E) was for 9am, and I think I was actually 1 minute late after an unpleasant walk through the park. As well my my legs aching a bit, I found I was short of breath, and while it was nothing like Angina pains, I could feel some mild discomfort from my chest. I took my Pulse Oximeter with me, and as I neared the exit from the park I checked my blood oxygen saturation. It was 98% which is very good, and it makes me wonder why I felt a bit short of breath when I had that much oxygen in my blood. I also noted that my heart rate was actually very slight less than when I am relaxed.

  At the care centre I spent most of the time sitting around waiting and bored, but between the boring bits I did get an ECG. The nurse who took it said it was an interesting trace, but only a more experience cardiologist could say exactly why it was interesting. I also gave a couple of blood samples. I challenged the nurse to find some blood from my left arm. The phlebotomist who took samples the day before yesterday, could not find blood in that arm, but the the nurse who took I saw this morning attacked me from an unusual angle, and found blood with ease. Like all those wonderful nurses/phlebotomist who do this a lot, it was an almost painless procedure.

  After another wait I was seen by one of the doctors. He sat me down in one of the cubicles and started by listening to me heart with his stethoscope from my front and my back. I forgot to mention that just before the ECG I also had my blood pressure checked. Armed with those figures, plus a printout out of all my home blood pressure readings, he had a very quick chat before saying he as going to consult a cardiologist.

  He was gone a fair time, and when he came back, he said that my home readings proved that my heart was mostly OK, but they still would like to catch some of the irregular periods. I was supposed to have had an echocardiogram, but that never materialised. They have now resubmitted a request for an echocardiogram, and asked for it to be made urgent. I can also look forward to a 24 heart monitor - a box that is strapped on me, and I carry it on me for 24 hours. That was also supposed to have happened by now.

  The final words of the doctor were that they really want to get to the bottom of my heart trouble even if at the moment it causes very little trouble. Basically, they want to sort out a problem while it is minor, and before it causes a bigger problem. That sort of thinking makes me think of engineers rather that doctors ! The final bit of news was that I was free to go home until next time. I can expect to be notified of when to report for the echo cardiogram, and to be fitted with the 24 heart monitor box.

  It was just starting to rain when I left the hospital, and 10 or 15 minutes later it was really chucking it down !
  I had barely entered the park when the rain was getting annoying. I would have like to have spent a bit more time composing this picture. It was taken on my mobile phone, and unfortunately the light was dim enough that it chose a fairly lone shutter speed. That gave some slight motion blur that spoils the picture, It is also spoiled by not being able to get a clear shot of the left hand side of this electricity substation that opens onto the park, but is sort of sat in someone's back garden. The leaves of the vine like plant were vivid red (to my eyes) on the left side of the building.
  As I walked through the main body of the park the rain was coming down in sheets. This picture shows it as a sort of misty effect in the distance. If I had switched the phone camera to "Pro" mode, and increased the shutter speed to maybe 1/1000th second (if that allowed enough light) the rain may have been visible. Even if it could not be seen by the camera, I could most definitely feel it. I had a coat on, but no hood, hat or umbrella. It was not nice !
  Once again a picture which may have looked so much better if I was using one of my "proper" DSLR cameras. What it is supposed to show is small leaves blowing off one of the trees on the left of this path. They were too small and too far away to be captures by the phone camera. At least the picture shows how wet the path was. When walking to the hospital it was dry as a bone, but when taking this picture it is all puddles.

  When I got home it was obviously wonderful to get out of the rain. It was mainly my head that was soaking. My coat kept my torso dry. Taking a tip from my previous postman, I was just wearing shorts. I asked the postman if it was such a good idea to wear shorts in the rain, and he said it definitely was. As I confirmed just this morning, legs dry quickly, but soggy trousers are horrible !

  I was very keen for a late breakfast when I got home. Not only was I starving, but a hot breakfast would help warm me up a bit. I opted for instant noodles even if it was more brunch than breakfast. I had two pots. One was a Shin Rami, and that had seaweed in it. It was sort of nice, but I there are many better flavours around. The other was an alleged Chinese Chow Mein flavour Pot Noodle. It was nice enough, but I could detect no flavour that even made me even think of any Chinese food.

  I totally relaxed after eating, and I am sure I had a snooze. I couldn't let myself relax too deeply at that point because I was expecting the postman with my new camera lens I had bought from/via Ebay. I expect the rain was the delaying factor, but the postman was later than usual, and that made the excitement, and later disappointment a bit fierce.

  I didn't realise it, but when I compared the new lens to one of my existing lenses, I realised it was almost identical to one I already had. The main disappointment was that the new lens was no good for my two professional cameras which are full frame cameras (in other words they need a bigger image to cover the sensor, and only lenses designed for that work without leaving a black outline around the photo. If the lens had been much more expensive I would have been very disappointed, but I have two Nikon cameras that I can use it on - so it is usable, and even handy.

  Most of my afternoon was a fairly lazy affair, but after not sleeping well during the night, it was good to catch up on an extra sleep that came my way. One bad thing is that I seemed to feel very hungry....or maybe not hunger, but an irrational desire to eat, and I did have a few naughty snacks before my dinner.

  Dinner was something I had prepared for over a week ago, and I was looking forward to the right time to have a dinner of baked beans with grilled bacon, with some grated cheddar for extra deliciousness. I don't need to get up early tomorrow, and it will not matter if I spend half the morning on the toilet and farting all the time !! I might want to go shopping later, but not if my guts haven't settled down.

  It has now gone 9pm, and this most the latest I have finished writing one of my daily diaries, but at least I haven't left it half finished to be finished tomorrow. The last time I did that, just a few days ago, it all went very wrong. Just before I upload this to my web server, one last picture. After a rotten afternoon, the view was very pretty towards sunset !