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Wednesday 9th July 2025
 08:39 BST

    Yesterday was one of those currently frequent days where the essence of the weather forecast was right, but the fine details wrong. I must admit it is hard to remember exactly every hour of the day, but I think some hours of sunshine, were actually sunny spells, and some hours of sunny spells were actually full sunshine. It was fairly warm though, and the afternoon temperature easily rose to 23° C, and possibly higher.
  BBC_weather forecast  
  This morning has started sunny, but it also started off quite cool. However, the temperature has already risen to 19° C. Much of today will feature sunny spells, although just a couple of hours (according to the latest revision) at the start of the afternoon may be light grey. It may take until 6pm, but the temperature today should reach 26° C. It should be a milder night tonight, and then a day of non stop sunshine should get tomorrow up to 29° C - the start of another heatwave.

  Before describing most of yesterday I feel I want to finish a small part of the story of yesterday. I wrote how I had tried to remove a spider from my bathroom, and got bitten by it in the process. After the spider escaped I did not see it again until about 8pm last night. It had resumed it's preference of lurking where the wall and ceiling meet. I'm afraid that after being bitten in the morning I was not going to mess around. Using what was once used as a curtain rod, I squished the little blighter from about 5ft away from those venom dripping fangs (probably).
spider bite
   I took this picture of the spider bite this morning, just before I started writing this. Yesterday there was a feint mark where the second fang tried to puncture the skin, but it has faded now. In the red circle is the small pin prick of the worst puncture. I have been keeping an eye on it in case the venom started to do anything bad, possibly even needing hospital treatment, but it is looking like it will heal with no additional trouble.

  Apart from that spider trouble mentioned above, yesterday was a mostly quiet day. I thought I wanted to go out, but I never did. I did do a few useful things, but mostly it was all about eating and resting. I probably ate too much, but it seems like it was all of the right stuff.

  Yesterday's breakfast was two packets of Koka (brand) Mi Goreng instant noodles. It is a flavour I have never seen from that make before, and I didn't need to go any more exotic than Aldi to buy them. The flavour basically translates to "fried noodles". They were rather nice. The only problem is that two packets only just fit in my favourite noodle bowl, and they would have been nicer if there had been a little more room for liquid. This morning I had Koka "Stir Fried" instant noodles. They were very nice, but not quite as nice as the Mi Goreng noodles.

  After I had eaten breakfast, and then finished writing yesterday's electronic diary entry (what you are reading now is the next page in my electronic diary), I had an idea that it would be good to go out for a walk. I was even thinking of a long walk where I could probably test my GTN spray (incorrectly called NTG of something yesterday) by walking fast enough to probably provoke the start of angina.

  Before that I had my usual rest. I laid on my bed and read for a while. I also felt like closing my eyes, and I might have had a short snooze. I certainly felt very relaxed. I then went and had a shower - keeping a sharp look out for the big black spider that had tasted human flesh !! It was not a hot shower, and didn't need to be, but it still seemed to relax me. I went back to my bedroom to get dressed, ready to go out, but.....

  I sat down in front of my PC, and read a couple of news items from https://www.theregister.com/ and as I read I started to wonder if I really wanted to go out, and started looking for any and all weaknesses of my body as reasons not to go out. I think the only truly valid reason was some uncertainty about if I had finished pooing for the day. Mostly I just thought "I can't be bothered".

  Not going out left me with very little to do, and that would mean I would likely eat too much - and a very nearly did. There were two things I did do that didn't take very long, but were quite useful. One was to order more test strips for my blood glucose meters. I was going to order them from Aliexpress, but they didn't seem to have test strips for my older Contour meter. I then checked Amazon, and they had test strips for both my Contour meter and Contour plus meter. One meant a £2.99 delivery charge, but I could just about swallow that. I ordered 100 strips for both meters.

  I then went to Beer Merchants web site to select some beers to order. They are a very good place to order beers from - except for one annoyance. Every order earns you "Reward points" that are worth money off another order. The annoyance is that you really have to keep your eyes skinned to notice when you are supposed to claim those points. My 77 points would have knocked off around £3 from my order, but if you get past the point where you redeem them there is no going back.

  The points remain valid for the next order - unless you once again miss the part where you can redeem them. I don't think it is a malicious thing, and is just poor web site design. This time I had to pay full price, £107, but at least it is free delivery. It is possible my beers could be delivered in time for Thursday's drinking session. For this order I chose a lot of fairly weak beers - some as low as 1.5%. I also bought a couple of very expensive, but discounted, bottles of strong beer.

  My lunch was safe enough while it was pâté with rice crackers, but the "afters" of peanut flavour ice cream, even if it was supposedly low calorie, was rather less safe. As I will later explain every I ate was actually safe in terms of blood glucose level, but less so for my weight. I was probably eating in a way that would have made a 3 mile walk a very good idea.

  As 6pm approached I made a sort of chicken salad for my dinner. It was not super healthy because as well as two ready cooked chicken breasts (semi greasy, and also 1 day past their best before date), I included a lot of creamy coleslaw and potato salad. The coleslaw was possibly only mildly bad, but I think the potato salad was not that good. The ironic thing was that it was not only not that good for me, but it didn't taste that good. It did not taste bad in terms of being rancid or something, but it was a sort of oily/greasy taste that did not seem good.

  I turned on the TV expecting to watch the BBC 6 O'clock news, and found bloody Wimbledon clogging up the airwaves of BBC1. The BBC news channel had a 6pm news broadcast, but that didn't include the local news for London. It was not great watching, but it filled a blank space before Star Trek: The New Generation. Now the strange thing is that I know I started watching it, but a whole lot of it seems to be a blank memory. I think that maybe once I remembered the story I just sort of blanked it out.

  I don't think I read my book, but I probably read other stuff on my PC while still listening to Star Trek. I think that was possibly true of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that followed. I can't seem to recall anything about it. I think I did start reading my book while it was on. As it was on I had two other distractions. I glanced out of the window and saw what looked like a drunk, or other hooligan playing with a shopping trolley with a length of string tied to it.

  I took a wider look and saw as many as 30 people watching him from 20 feet away. Suddenly it clicked. It was obviously a rehearsal for some filming that is due to take place outside on Sunday 20th July. A leaflet through my door explains what will be happening. Just one scene will be filmed, and it is of a "lone shopping trolley rolling down a frosty street". It says it has allowed 2 hours to film this single scene using a cast and  crew of 50 !!!! It will be curious to see how they make the street frosty. I believe the usual way is loads and loads of washing powder. I an intending to take pictures of much of it.
almost full moon
   While looking out my bedroom window I noticed a very full looking moon, although as my photo shows, it is probably the day before, or the day after the real full moon. The moon was quite low in the sky, and I doubt I would have seen it from road level. I had to wait until the moon was in the correct position to get a clear shot by the side of the open-out window in my bedroom. The picture did include a few lights from the flats in the distance, but I removed them from the photo.

  I don't think it was my best picture of a full (or nearly full) moon. One curiosity is that it includes either a plane, or maybe a space shuttle leaving the moon (impossible) near the top of the moon. It is not an ultra sharp photo, and even when zoomed in, all I can see is an object with wings. I think it is just a plane, but the perspective seems a bit odd.

  Soon after taking the picture I watched the whole of an episode of Have I Got News For You. That did not finish until 11pm. I went straight to bed when it finished, and I am not sure I managed to read even the whole of a single page before I turned out the light, and fell asleep.

  I mostly slept OK last night, but at 4am (I think) I woke up feeling almost cold despite my room thermometer saying otherwise. I could have, and should have just pulled the empty duvet cover over more of my body, but opted just to turn the heater on low. It was very warm in my bedroom when I got up ! I had some dreams, but they left little impression on me. My biggest memory of the night was not peeing much.

  I woke at what I thought was 6am, but it was only 5am. I had a pee, and went back to bed. I didn't think I would fall asleep again, and was quite surprised to next see it was about 6.20am. I got up and went to the toilet. I did seem to have a fair sized pee, but only passed some wind.. well maybe a bit more than "some", but definitely no solid. I was a bit annoyed to see my careless eating meant I seemed to have gained 600gm this morning. It would have been a lot better if I had lost that amount.

  I had several things to eat yesterday that were theoretically not good for my blood glucose. The worst was cake and ice cream. I  expected the worst, and indeed my blood glucose was not as wonderful as yesterday, but it was still exceptionally good. The Contour meter and the GlucoRX meter both read 6.3mmol/l - much lower than expected, and once again in the sort of area the diabetes nurse bullies me to achieve, It seems it is easier to achieve by doing nothing. The Contour Plus meter let me down this morning, although at any other time 7.0mmol/l would be excellent (for me).

  The main thing for today is the pub at lunchtime. Today is Ayse's birthday. she is 52 years old, but looks younger. I had bought her a bottle of her favourite booze as a birthday present. There is a small chance that Kevin my join me. I mentioned it was Ayse birthday as part of another exchange of message. He gave no indication that he might come. I expect he will decide this morning if he feels good enough for an outing. There is a mini-microscopic possibility that Angela might turn up. I mentioned about today, but she never commented on it. She is still not drinking, and so it is unlikely she will come for that reason alone.
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