Today definitely started off cold, but I think it was just a tiny bit higher than the forecast 5° C, maybe 5.5° C. You'll notice in the screenshot above that not a single ray of sunshine is offered. As seems to be common now, The Met Office's white cloud can let some sunsine through, even if it is a bit watery sunshine. As I write this the sun keeps finding little gaps in the cloud. The BBC weather forecast actually predicts sunny spells for a few hours this morning, and some from 7pm, the exact time that The Met Office have revised their forecast to show dark grey clouds ! Both forecasters say we should see 12° C today. Both forecasters agree that tomorrow will be dull and wet, but the temperature could see 13° C.

   Yesterday was mostly a good, or satisfactory sort of day, although it did have a few bad sides, but they were mostly revealed by hindsight. Although I described yesterday as dull, at the top of the page, there were a few short lived sunny spells mid morning, and they enthused me to some activity.

  By the time I had showered, and dressed, we had lost the few sparse sunny spells, but I still felt sort of enervated by them (whatever that means), and pressed on with a plan to go out shopping. I certainly didn't need any sun glasses when I went out, and walked south into where the sun should have been shining, but wasn't. My first port of call was Savers. I only wanted a few spare vitamins and stuff, and all I bought fitted easily in the small compartment of my rucksack.

  Apart from shopping in Savers, and then Poundstretcher, which is directly opposite across the pedestrian thoroughfare, it is rare I do two lots of shopping in one session. Instead of Poundstretcher I went into Tesco. I had two possible items on my shopping list. One was some bottles of cola - two Tesco own brand, and two genuine lemon flavour Diet Coke. The other thing was some chalice, or balloon style beer  glasses. They didn't have any, but I did buy two (faux) cut glass whisky glasses.

  I couldn't go around Tesco and not get suckered in to inspecting, and buying some stuff from their "Reduced Price" shelves. In fact I think most of the other stuff I bought was all reduced price. I bought two chicken and mushroom "slices", a quiche Lorraine, and a pack of two "Tesco Finest" smoked haddock fishcakes. I think I have probably now described my entire shopping basket. I do know it was an unusually cheap bill.

  When I got home, which incidentally I walked with no ill effects, I put my shopping away, and then stuffed myself with the quiche. As I ate it I started to think it was not a good idea. For one thing it was not delicious enough to excuse the probable sugar and calorific content. Also, I was constipated all day yesterday, and something egg based may have been playing with fire !

  I spent a little time tidying the dining room table, and washing the new glasses I had bought in case we used them for anything, but mostly I was very lazy until Jodie arrived for a beer tasting session. She arrived a little late because she went via Lidl - where I learned they were having a Greek fortnight with all sorts of Greek produce. While Jodie was fussing around with her dinner, I rushed upstairs and sent a message to Angela about Lidl. She said she would be going to investigate it.

  For once out beer tastings session was a fairly light session. Jodie had arrived late, nearly 4pm, and she said she had to leave for the 6pm (17:59) train because she needed to meet Alan, and drag him along to a "tap takeover" by some brewery or other at Craft Metropolis (a bar/craft ale shop) in the Penge area. A couple of the beers we shared were nasty, cloudy, and rather sour - just like I don't like them, but Jodie does.

  When she left I considered myself relatively sober - so much so that I hadn't even bothered to precook my dinner, although I had precooked some boiled new potatoes to go with the core of it - the two smoked haddock fishcakes I had bought earlier in Tesco. It was a fairly nice dinner, but some peas, and maybe even better, some baked beans would have made it better. I had some sugar free choc chip cookies for dessert.

  At the end I did feel a bit full, but otherwise OK, and I suspected some of the fullness was from the gassy beers, and also because I was still constipated, and hadn't "gone" all day. Later on all these things would cause trouble. I was OK while I say at my PC, reading a few bits and pieces, and in the end using as my TV to watch the first 10 minutes of an episode of QIXL I considered it to be not a great episode, and because I was feeling tired, I switched off and went to bed.

  I read in bed for maybe 20 to 30 minutes, and I thought I still felt OK, but as soon as I put the book down, turned out the light, and turned onto my left to go to sleep, something must have shifted and I got what I think was just heartburn. The trouble with heartburn is that it feels a lot like the early stages of angina, and I am a bit sensitive to that at the moment. I had to get up, and the first thing I did was to take a couple of Rennies antacid tablets. They seemed to make very little difference.

  I took some deep breathes, and did my best to be relaxed, and then checked my blood pressure. I think the best I can manage was something in the region of 128/51. That is still well into the "normal" area according to my blood pressure meter. At least I knew my heart was not about to explode. I took a couple of paracetamol tablets to see if they helped deaden the pain, although ache, and a mild ache at that, is better description than "pain".

  I also trying going to the toilet, but apart from a small amount of pee, nothing else happened, although it did feel like something should happen. Some hours later I did take some laxative tablets, I there was always some silly hope they might work a lot faster than "next morning". They didn't.  I then took a couple of Gaviscon antacid tablets, and they did seem to work. The pain faded out (except for in the bottom area), and I was able to get to sleep 3 or so hours later than intended.

  Once asleep my sleep seemed to be fairly good. My dreams were all about railways. I dreamed there was a lot of freight traffic suddenly going through Catford Bridge station. There is a branch off the line towards Hayes (Kent) that joins the mainline just before Beckenham Junction station, but I don't think it is passed for heavy freight trains. I got curious about all the freight trains (which may have only been two) I had seen in the dream, and decided to go look for their source.

  I walked up and over a hill, and at the bottom I could see the railway again, but there was nothing on it to see. That dream ended, but another seemed to start straight after. In this second dream I thought I was at work, then it was a college, and then it was a hospital. I only knew t was a hospital because I had to stand aside as a patient on a bed was wheeled down a corridor.

  At the end of that corridor I expected to see an office where I was going to ask someone, whose name I think was Khang, something about the trains, but the office had a reception rook, or outer office that I had to go through. In that outer office were maybe half a dozen students who I didn't know, but maybe they knew me because they said "sit down, this may interest you".  It was a typical dream situation where many words were spoken, but only a few individual words could be heard clearly (like listening to people in a noisy pub). The words I heard, and that triggered a feeling were things like "class 707" and "class 230", which were train types. The dream finished or maybe I woke up, before I made any sense of what was being said.

  I woke up at just gone 6am needing a pee. I thought after my lost sleep it was too early, but I couldn't resist going for a pee. On my way back to bed I did stop to refresh the web pages for the latest weather forecasts from the Met Office and BBC. Then I went back to bed. I told myself that it didn't really matter if I slept until 9am, but I barely slept at all, and got up just before 7am.

  I am happy to say that the laxative tablets I took last night seemed to do their job. I did a modestly large poo, and less tha half an hour later I did another. I concluded, rightly, that that took care of what I had eaten the day before yesterday, and there would be more to come, but it did take a couple of hours. I reckon I had passed half of what I would have done if things were normal. I expect I'll go once more before lunchtime.

  It could have been the quiche, it could have been the fishcakes and potatoes, it could have been one or more of the beers I had, and even the constipation could have left it's mark, but this morning my run of very good blood glucose readings came to an end with a bang ! Actually the figures were only in the pink, and not in the red, but still very undesirable. The Contour meter read 9.2mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read 9.5mmol/l, and the Sinocare meter came out the lowest (for a change) with a reading of 9.1mmol/l.

  These readings are high enough to warrant some positive action. I still had a normal breakfast of tomato flavoured instant noodles, using the excuse that I need some food as recommended for one of the drugs I am taking, but more importantly to hold down the taste of the fish oil capsule I took, Burping up fish oil flavour is disgusting ! However I shall try to limit lunch to maybe a couple of small apples, and maybe a small chunk of cheese. It is possible, if I keep thinking of those blood glucose figures in the pink, I may skip lunch completely.

  Tonight I may have a very light dinner because there is a slim chance I might feel like going out. There are two gigs on this evening that I would slightly like to see (more importantly to point my camera at), and both are relatively easy to get to. Maybe I just won't bother when the time comes. It probably depends on what the weather looks like this evening. At the moment the latest revisions to the forecasts look very bland, but I guess bland is better than wet.

  Other things I was going to do today include finishing washing a minging kitchen hand towel that has now been soaking in bio detergent for 24 hours. That one is a certainty. I might set up an external USB and Ethernet hard disk to make sharing stuff between my main PC and the computer on the dining room table a bit easier. Most of the work for that is already done apart from a couple of security tweaks. It is mainly just a case of where I am going to put it.

  Another thing I feel I ought to do is to go through some more of the TV recordings I have on what I have now dubbed USB stick ONE. Stick TWO is currently plugged into the TV, and must have piles of recordings on it. I need to clear Stick ONE so I can swap sticks over  to see what I have on stick TWO. Ideally I will edit and save each recording, but some I might just delete because I am getting far too behind even just simply watching these recordings.

  There was one other thing I was going to do today, and it was to go to Lidl and what they have in there in a general sense, and what specifically special Greek food they have in as part of the Greek Fortnight. I fear much of it will be high calorie, and  high sugar luxury foods, but there might be something I can eat safely. I have decided to put off going there today because while my blood glucose is so high, the last thing I need is temptations !
        







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