09:23 GMT

  The sky was probably clear for most of the night, and this morning started off with a thick-ish frost, although the air temperature only seemed as low as 3° C. We have had some sunshine, but the sky is looking quite cloudy now, and we have said goodbye to the last sunny spell. From about 3pm it could start to drizzle, and then there will be mostly light rain to the end of the day, and into the night. This afternoon may see 9° C. It will dip a bit, but by midnight all the warm and wet air, giving all the rain, will raise the temperature to as high as 11° C. Most hours tomorrow are shown as having a greater than 20% chance of rain, and quite a few hours are shown with actual rain. On the plus side the temperature may reach 12° C, although with no sun it won't even start to feel warm.....probably.

  Yesterday was good and bad again, but the good was a different sort of good, and the bad was also a different sort of bad. I seemed to be suffering from mild "man 'flu", and that was bad, but I looked after myself well, and that made me feel good.

  Yesterday morning I wrote that I didn't feel that good. My health readings showed no problems apart form my weight being a bit high, but that could not be responsible for how I felt. It was quite hard to work out just why I felt bad, and so I lumped it all together under the general banner of man 'flu - that illness that most woman don't believe exists, but most men recognise it as being very real.

  It tended to vary through the day, but two constants were a load of small, but niggling aches, and a feeling of weariness. I did have some real headaches. That sounds like I mean plural, but it was more like one headache that waxed and waned, but continued for a long time. Had I been still working I would have probably gone into work, and ended up feeling even worse.

  Fortunately I had the luxury of retiring many years ago now (more than 5 years ago, but less than 10 - I can't seem to remember an exact figure). It meant I could stay in, out of the cold wet weather outside, and pamper myself with lots of rest, any snooze I could manage, and ultimately using two powerful healing things - whisky and Paracetamol. While resting in the warm I felt fine, but going down to the cold kitchen, for instance, revived/amplified a heap of aches and pains.

  In common with 98% of all known illnesses, my man 'flu had no effect on my appetite. What did give a very small effect was the knowledge that my weight had recently gone up and showed a great reluctance to come down. I did manage to resist great helpings of comfort food. I must admit I was looking forward to lunch, and I think I managed to keep that almost, but not quite a light lunch. The trouble is that I can't remember what I had....I do remember some of what I ate yesterday, but not which meal they were in.

  I was almost wondering if my illness was/is affecting my memory, but I think it is just the usual thing of not having sufficient stimulus to make a point of remembering routine, and often bland things. I do know I ate a pack of ready cooked, bbq flavoured, sliced chicken. I also ate a chicken and pasta "salad". It is when I ate these things that is a mystery. I might have a very slight excuse for forgetting some stuff later when whisky was involved.

  After I finished writing until about 6pm I spent most of my time laying on my bed with heater on. I was tempted to turn the heater up to "2 bars" (2kW), but I left it at 1kW with the thermostat set a bit higher so my bedroom did slowly warm up a bit warmer than usual. While I laid on my bed quietly reading, or having a snooze (which I only think I had - and maybe even more than one snooze) I felt quite good except for a mere hint of unneeded, and undeserved guilt.

  As mentioned in an earlier paragraph, I was given and almost harsh reminder that I was not cured when I went down to the kitchen. There was no heating on downstairs, and I could feel I was entering a pocket of cold air as I walked down the stairs. First my feet would feel cold (I was only wearing flip flops) and then my legs (I was wearing shorts) and then my middle would feel cold (from the knees up I was fully dressed, but only with a t-shirt on my chest).

  I didn't care to spend too long in the kitchen, possibly the coldest room in the house, because I could feel my joints creaking and starting to ache. It was lucky I didn't need to do anything like any washing up, and I didn't need to spend much time cooking. As mentioned, I have almost no memory of my lunch, but there is a good reason to think I would have had another helping of my new instant noodles, and a different flavour than beef Randang.

  I think it was after lunch that I did one very small job. It was to log onto Amazon and order some new test strips for my GlucoRX blood glucose meter. Being a medical supply they do seem to try and get them out early without having to sign up to Amazon Prime. I am expecting them to be delivered tomorrow - and possibly by Royal Mail - so there should be less waiting around for the delivery. I have at least a weeks worth of tests strips left for that meter, and so I am in not great rush to get them.

  It was probably mid to late afternoon when I decided that some whisky would be good for some "inner warmth". With hindsight I probably satisfied the conditions to break out the expensive whisky. I was not aiming to get blotto so it would not be a waste of the posh stuff, but I stuck to the cheap and nasty. I had an unopened bottle of Whyte & Mackay whisky, and it was unopened because I knew it was not nice at all.

   For some stupid reason I decided it was time to open the bottle, and check it was as awful as I thought it was. There was one silver lining, and that was it was not a whisky I was going to drink in silly quantities, and make myself feel more ill, and not less ill. I did end up drinking maybe a third of a 70cl bottle, but I paced myself and it took as much as 5 hours to drink that lot.

  It seems likely I did have a snooze at the end of the afternoon because it seems I was almost caught unaware that I only had about 10 minutes to prepare dinner before eating it watching the 6 O'clock news. While writing this I have firmed up my idea about what I had for dinner. It is possible there may have been 2 packets of crisps involved in it, but I am sure it is when I ate the pack of bbq flavoured sliced chicken I mentioned earlier. I followed that with some ice cream, and because there was not much left in the tub, maybe a portion and a half, I ate the lot.

  After dinner I was feeling generally OK, but maybe a bit fragile. Another exposure to cold air when I went back to the kitchen revived many of the things that made me feel off colour. Fortunately I was quick to recover from that. I spent the evening watching the usual stuff on TV. I think it was before the last programme, a rather poor edition of Have I Got News For You, that a I took a couple of Paracetamol tablets.

  They had not obvious effect because I was not feeling bad at that point, but I was feeling tired. The last TV programme of interest finished at 11pm, and by then I was feeling so tired that it would have been very unlikely that I would attempt to watch more if there had been anything to watch. My whisky glass was empty, and I went straight to bed. I would have stayed there if laying down didn't trigger an acid tasting burp. I got up long enough to chew a couple of Rennies tablets.

  I am fairly sure I was asleep very quickly after that, and I seemed to sleep well. I had left the spare heater, with the thermostat turned a bit low, blowing warm air into the bathroom, and so I was comfortable when I got up to pee a few times in the night (although I was burning through my mere £200 winter fuel allowance very quickly).

  At some point in the night I did have one dream that I part remember.  I was visiting an old girlfriend, and was helping her move to Scarborough (I have zero idea where I would have got that idea for that place). As we chatted she said her mum had had a dream about long boats, although the picture that formed in my mind was that she meant long canal boats rather than Viking longboats. I said that I too had had a dream involving a boat. It was an offshore pirate radio boat, and in the dream of a dream I had been doing something technical on that radio ship.

  I had helped take the last big box up from the basement, and put it in the back of her car, and she asked if I want to go with her (and, unfortunately her new boyfriend) and see her new house. I said yes, but only if we stopped off at a pub on the way. The events of the dream might only have lasted a few minutes in real life, and yet it seemed like a long dream. There was no actual ending. The dream just seemed to fade out, or maybe I just woke up.

  I managed to sleep late this morning. I initially woke at around 5am, and I got up to go for a pee. After that I refreshed the weather forecasts on my PC so I could take screen shots later. Then I went back to bed. It did not feel like I would get back to sleep, or at least not into a deep sleep. It was quite a surprise when I saw the time next. It was as near as dammit to 8am - rather later than I sleep on most days.

  This morning I managed to go for two pees before I weighed myself and recorded it on my spreadsheet. It was looking a bit better than the day before, but not by much. I had managed to lose 200gm since yesterday, but it is still far too high. Now and again it feels like I need to poo, but so far nothing has moved this morning. I am not sure I went much, if at all yesterday. It remains a small possibility that some of my weight is due to being "full of crap" as some might say.

  My blood glucose was better than yesterday this morning. I scored one extremely good reading of 5.8mmol/l on the GlucoFix meter. The Contour meter read 6.4mmol/l, and that is very good. The GlucoRX meter almost scored a 5, but 6.0mmol/l was as close as it got. That is still very close to excellent. The average of all three readings was 6.07mmol/l. That is one of my best average readings since 19th October when I got a 5.87mmol/l, but that was a one off among a sea of higher readings.

  My other important reading was my blood pressure. It was 105/45. If anything that is a bit too low. I know that when it gets too low it can (allegedly) reduce my "Renal function" (how well my kidney's are working). Getting my blood pressure this low is quite rare since I was taken of Indapamide. For now I will just assume it is just one of those things, and not worry about it.

  As I sit here typing I am feeling nice and warm. The sun was shining strongly until a few minutes ago, and that was really warming my room up when added on top of the contribution from the fan heater on low (1Kw). I should be feeling fairly good in this warmth, but my shoulders feel a bit stiff, and mildly protest when I make some movements. Other joints have less profound aches and pains. My temperature is 36.2° C, and while that is well below fever level, it is a little higher than my typical temperature at this time of day....or so I thought, but I have a lot of readings taken at a similar time last September, and with that as a datum, it is perfectly normal at the moment.

  Maybe my worse symptom at the moment is a headache. It could be eye strain (possible) or haemorrhagic brain fever (unlikely). I think that the first think I do once I have uploaded this writing to my web server is to have a lie down for a while. Maybe I might even snooze - I certainly won't stop myself if it seems likely. Later on I want to have a shower, and possibly wash my hair. After that, maybe only if I am feeling foolish, I would like to go shopping, and this time it might be to Aldi (but it could be just to Tesco). After that I have doubts I will do anything more than rest and be bloody lazy (maybe with a Paracetamol). 








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