This morning started a bit different to most, and not just because I have started writing so late in the morning, but for an unusual reason that was part the reason why I have started so late. For reasons to do with madness, and probably two things on my mind - waiting for my delivery from Evri, and the my colonoscopy on Thursday, and particularly the preparations for it, I somehow called yesterday Friday. Before I could start writing this I had to work out what day was supposed to be what day, and edit my entries for yesterday to show it as Saturday.

  Yesterday was a good day in one respect, and a disappointing day in another respect. More about that further down the page. It was also my last day before I go on my low fibre diet until I've had my colonoscopy. It still seems completely the wrong thing to do when my bowel has to be spotlessly clean for the camera, but a lot fibre diet is almost certainly going to give me bad constipation, and the super strong laxative I have to take will be working overtime to clear that.

  Yesterday was dominated by waiting for the Firewire (IEE1394) connected external hard drive I had ordered from Ebay, and then once it arrived, playing with it. The playing was possibly productive, but more about that later. After a long wait I finally got the message to say Evri was going to deliver my parcel, and initially gave an estimated time of 1pm to 3pm. It was actually delivered at about 1.15pm. Once that estimate came through at 11:11am I knew I had time for a shower, and I think I washed my hair (or was that the day before ?).

  I could eat normally yesterday, but I did try to eat some stuff with a fair bit of fibre in it in an attempt to ward of constipations for as long as possible. My breakfast was the usual instant noodles, and lunch was a ham quiche - neither of which was high in fibre. In fact I am relying on instant noodles to be low fibre so they can be part of my meals for the next 4 days.

  Once the Firewire hard disk arrived I opened it up to see what was inside. Fortunately I had done some earlier research that showed how to open the enclosure - it has no external screws, but the bottom pops off when levered by a screwdriver. The first thing I saw was that it was not a 20GB hard drive that for some reason I thought it was, but a 200GB IDE hard drive. 200GB was far more reasonable, but I had a spare 320GB hard drive that I think is in good condition, and hopefully will work OK.

  Once I had taken the 200GB hard drive out I hooked it up to my PC using a IDE to USB converter (my main PC does not have a firewire connection). I could only see a blank hard disk, it was a different story when I ran the photorec (photo recovery) command line program on the disk. It recovers all deleted files if that have not been overwritten. It found something like 170 mp3 files - some of which may be useful, and others of music not to my taste. It also found loads of video files. Some were very short bits of digital camcorder footage, and others included some complete episodes of Star Trek -  The Next (or New) Generation. Curiously enough, the first I saw was exactly the same as an episode shown on Sky Mix only a day or two previously.

  Having recovered all the files, and saved them on another hard disk for later consideration, I thought it time to plug the drive into the iMac I use mostly as a music player in the dining room. When I looked around the back I saw the Firewire socket was for the 6 wire version which is bigger than the 4 wire version used on digital camcorders. For some reason I thought I remembered seeing a 4 wire socket, but evidently I did not. This is no problem except among my collection of leads I have not got a 6 pin to 6pin lead. I have 3 or 4 of the 6 wire to 4 wire leads that I have used from one of my older PCs to connect to my three digital camcorders *.

 * I have a semi pro ("prosumer") Sony digital camcorder, a Samsung camcorder with is definitely consumer quality, but not bad, and a small Samsung digital camcorder, bought very cheaply from a second hand shop that seems to have lousy autofocus and lousy optics (possibly it was dropped or something), but works fine as a playback machine to save undue wear on the better camcorders.

  Until I have got hold of a 6pin to 6pin lead I can't test my replacement hard drive to make sure it is compatible with the box it is in, and also is not faulty. One little task was to order a couple of leads from Amazon. While on Amazon I thought I would see if Spike Milligan had written any other possibly interesting books. I saw that he had ! Despite the 6th book in his war memoirs saying it was the last ever, I see he has written a 7th book.

  It was needed because the 6th book almost ended on a cliff hanger - he is on a boat back to England after a tearful goodbye to his Italian girlfriend. I could probably find the answer in wikipedia, but it would be better reading it in his own words, just what happened to the girlfriend. Did she join him in England, or was it a goodbye for ever. It would be a sad ending if that was the case. The book and my firewire leads are predicted to be delivered next Wednesday - not a convenient day if I am to go to The Jolly Farmers as usual.

  Having been thwarted from testing the external firewire drive I resorted to being very lazy for the rest of the afternoon. I am not sure when it was, but probably later in the evening, I finished reading the 6th book of Spike Milligan's war memoirs. It could have been late afternoon. One thing I did do late in the afternoon was to cook my dinner. It was BBQ, boneless, beef riblets with Mediteranean roasting vegetables. It was supposed to have been roasted root vegetables, but I seem to have run out of them.

  It was a nice dinner, and the last like it I can have until after my colonoscopy on Thursday. After that I can celebrate - possibly with a takeaway, but maybe just something more sensible. The ironic thing is that I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped. The plain vanilla ice cream (which can, and will be part of my low fibre diet) was definitely more enjoyable. After dinner it was the usual TV and then bed at around 10pm.

  I'm not exactly sure when I turned the light out, and laid down to sleep, but 10pm seems close enough to be about right. I fell asleep fairly easily. I woke a few times in the night for a pee, and I think it was around 3am when I woke up with a mild stomach ache. It felt like I needed a poo. Maybe I was half asleep, or maybe it was a dream, but there was evidence in the toilet that I had done a poo - which would explain why I haven't had one since getting up this morning.

  This morning I was surprised and happy to see I have lost 300gm since yesterday morning. My blood glucose was not that low, but 8.3, 8.4 and 6.6mmol/l is not too bad. I don't know why the last reading was so different to the other two, but if I had only taken that reading I would have been very happy. The other two, 8.3 and 8.4 are a bit higher than I would be aiming for, but they are good enough. My blood pressure is possibly a bit low this morning. It is 104/48.

  I am going to try and take advantage of this low fibre diet I start today to maybe lose a bit of weight. The idea being that to avoid bad constipation because of low fibre I will eat less. This morning, and possibly the next 4 mornings, I have skipped breakfast. My lunch will be just a single bread roll with butter and either cheese or sliced chicken. My dinner tonight may be the same thing, but possible cheese instead of chicken. For the first time in ever (possibly) I have left the butter out in a plastic container so that it should be spreadable. That should make the rolls a bit nicer.

  It is now very late, but I have time for a brief snooze, and then a shower before Jodie arrives for a beer tasting session. I'll have to take it easy if I only have a single roll inside me as a buffer against the booze. I am unsure if anybody else will be joining us. If not it may be a boring booze session, and I haven't even got a book to read at the moment that I can lose myself in while ignoring Jodie as she ignored me !

  Tonight I ought to try and get to sleep early because I see the nurse for my next Mounjaro prescription in the morning. It is a 9am appointment and so I won't have time to write anything until I get back home again. Tomorrow starts a busy week for medical stuff. There is the nurse Monday morning. I have a telephone appointment with the Cardiology team at Kings College Hospital at 11:15am on Thursday morning, and my colonoscopy at 3:15pm. Prior to that I have my first dose of Plenvu - the mega strength laxative at 7pm on Wednesday as well as no eating after 1pm. I may then spend most of the night on the toilet. At 6am on Thursday I take a second dose, and will spend the morning on the toilet. Hopefully I will be completely empty by the time I have to walk through the park to the hospital for the 3:15pm appointment. Next Friday I should be able to eat and drink whatever I like - and ideally have no more hospital appointments until next August.