At  6am the temperature was just 9° C, but like yesterday it is bright and sunny this morning. I must admit the sunshine is a surprise because most of the sky is covered in thin cloud. The first half of this afternoon should see some sunny spells, and that may help the temperature to rise to 15° C. Tonight will not be as cold as last night, but it is still going to be chilly. Tomorrow may start at 13° C, and also with thick cloud. Not a single ray of sunshine is forecast for tomorrow, but a lot of light rain is forecast.....although the chances of that rain are fairly low for most of the time, and just one single hour shows a still low chance of 42%. The afternoon may be 17° C, with a brief peak of 18° C at 6pm.

  Yesterday I admitted that while I could do a few things, I had the choice of being very lazy all day long. That was the route I took.

  I have done so little walking since my last stay in hospital that it seems my legs have completely atrophied. I keep hoping I will be able to push through the barrier to getting my legs working properly again, but so far I have failed. I am happy with walks to the local shops, but find it very hard to enjoy a walk in the park. It is rather annoying, and very worrying too. Am I heading for an immobile life for the rest of my years ?

  I did do some armchair shopping yesterday. Having checked the Compact Flash card I bought from China, and found it seemed to be good, I decided to buy a few more. I wanted a couple of small 4GB cards to go in a couple of my less used cameras, like my old Cannon 300D camera. It frees up a larger card to go into one of my more used cameras like the Nikon D300s which uses the Compact Flash card as a backup for the SD card (or vice versa if set like that in the menu). I ordered two 4GB cards and two 32GB cards. Provided they are good quality they were not too expensive. All memory products are really expensive at the moment, but I couldn't wait until prices drop again some time in the indefinite future.

  At the moment I have run out of Furosemide tablets (until I get my next repeat prescription). They are a diuretic, and useful to stop my left leg swelling because of water retention. The right leg can swell a bit, but the left leg is the one they took the vein from for my heart bypass operation. I have to admit that draining excess water from my body makes my weight look better when I weigh myself in the morning. I decided to see what was available "over the counter".

  I found that Amazon sell the real thing - which is odd because I thought it was prescription only - but they were charging an eye watering £66 for a box of 28 tablets ! I checked herbal options, and the one herb known for it's diuretic properties is the common dandelion. I found capsules with powdered dandelion root were modestly cheap, and ordered two bottles of them. I'll give them a go, and see if they have any effect on me. They should arrive by Thursday, but by then I may have my next repeat prescription containing the real thing. Still, it might be still handy to have the herbal offering on hand.

  On the subject of my weight, it seems I must have eaten in a semi healthy way yesterday. I know I had instant noodles for breakfast, and they are usually benign. I think lunch was a couple of sandwiches. My dinner was the second half of the Pizza I had the previous day. Once again, I added more grated cheese, and also so corned beef. It was dripping with oil (mostly from the cheese as it melted) and hardly seemed healthy at all. I chased it down with a couple of plums and a nectarine. I also had the rest of the strawberries and cream ice cream at some point yesterday. It may have been for a mid afternoon snack.

  There were gigs I could have gone to yesterday, including the afternoon gig in the Bromley Churchill gardens, but I found I just did not have the enthusiasm to even go out shopping yesterday. I did see some photos taken at the Churchill Gardens yesterday, and I have to admit the setting was far from spectacular. It was described as an Amphitheatre, but it looked more like a path with a couple of small tents on it. I feel a lot less sorry I missed it.

  Rather than an evening gig, of which there were two moderately interesting ones to choose between, I took the easy way out and not only filled my face at dinner time (which would have made it harder to walk), but spent the evening watching TV as usual. I did do some reading as well. Talking of which, I think I have mentioned that I am now reading the first sequel to Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. It was written a decade or two after the original trilogy, and it is a far more interesting read. The original 1950s trilogy is a bit turgid in my humble opinion. The sequel just seems more fluid, and it is less of a chore to read it.

  I am undecided as to whether I had a good or bad sleep. Sometimes it seemed bad, but there were also good bits like waking up to see several hours had passed without leaving any hint that time had passed. At other times I had some dreams. One dream concerned crossing live railway lines to deliver (or take home ?) strawberry ice cream. At one point in the dream a stationary diesel hauled train had to give me a long blast on his whistle to warn me he was just about to move while I was still crossing the tracks. There was more to that dream, but that is about the limit of my memory.

  One thing about the dream was that it triggered a memory from my childhood, and the only connection was ice cream. I have a vague memory of being offered coffee flavoured ice cream, without being told what it was. I remember it as revolting. I have the very vaguest, most flimsy, almost transparent, memory of the flavouring being a teaspoon of Camp (liquid instant coffee) being poured over vanilla ice cream.

  This morning I had two visit to the toilet to "open my bowels". The first was to relieve mild constipation, and the second was more normal. After those two I found I had lost one whole kilogram compared to yesterday morning. I don't think I passed a kilogram of poo, but it must have helped. It seems that my diet yesterday was not as bad as I feared.

  My blood glucose was not quite as good as yesterday, but it was still good this morning. The average of all three meters was 7.7mmol/l, and just a tad higher than my target of 7.5mmol/l. My blood pressure is, once again, pretty good (in my own opinion). It is (was, just now) 113/72 with a heart rate of 82. And that was my first and only measurement. I could do some breathing exercises, and possibly get it lower, but it seems good enough to me as it is.

  The main "entertainment" today should be a beer tasting session with just Jodie, and so may be slightly boring. A lot will depend on whether I am in the right mood for beer drinking. I do seem to be less keen lately. It is possible that we may be joined by one or more others, but I doubt it. Before that there could be a different type of entertainment. If I have time I may go to Savers and then across the way to Poundstretcher for a bit of shopping. The shopping is very low priority, but it is an excuse to stretch my legs.