Today has started off wet, and it may continue to be wet all day. So far I have only seen light sprinkles of rain, but heavier rain is forecast. From late afternoon there could be thundery showers, but I find the BBC forecast tend to get over eager to forecast thundery showers. Maybe we will get a couple, but not 6 hours of them as in the forecast. It is notable that the Met Office forecast shows rain for most of the day, but most of it is shown as light rain, and there is not a single mention of thunderstorms. Tomorrow may start dull, but there will be sunny spells from late afternoon until sunset, although the periods between the sunny spells may be a bit long. There may be light rain from early evening onwards, and 7pm could see a thunderstorm.

  Yesterday was not a good day, although there was only one thing that really spoiled it. Although it was sort of expected. It was all one big distraction that altered the proper course of my day.

  That is all sounding very cryptic, but it might make some sense if I say it was all to do with my visit the the chamber of horrors Enterology department of the hospital. On the 9th of next month I will be orally and anally raped by a lumpy rubber tube with a camera in the end. As the time gets nearer I feel more and more unsettled by the procedure. In one respect this is odd because with the promise of an escort home, by Jo from Chain, I will be able to have the full sedation, and it will be just a dreamy experience (hopefully).

  With the promise of a potentially grey and wet day, which was not the case at all until later in the afternoon, I felt no desire to go out to do any train photography, or even to take a wander in the park. I was so under the spell of that, that I completely forgot to go to the pharmacy around lunchtime to pick up my repeat prescription.

  I spent most of the morning and a fair bit of the afternoon being very lazy. I spent a fair time laying on my bed reading, and if I found my eyelids drooping I would give in to it and have a snooze if I could. I can't remember what I had for lunch, but unless I am thinking of a day or two earlier, I think I may have skipped breakfast, and had a bowl of instant noodles for lunch.

  It was about 4pm when my doorbell rang, and it was the postman. He handed me a thin, jiffy bag style envelope. I almost wonder if it was some sort of special delivery because it was from the hospital. Inside was a lot of paperwork, and two sachets of Plen vue - the atomic grade super laxative I have to take the day before the man with the rubber tube (with camera and tools in the end) can shove it where the sun doesn't shine - down my throat, and up my bottom !

  I found it quite depressing. It was a strong reminder of what was to come, and in some ways the worst bit of of the whole procedure. For 4 days before the procedure I have to endure a strict diet that will soon become very boring. It is 4 days of a low fibre diet, and while there could be alternatives, I think the easy option is 4 days of nothing but plain cheese sandwiches on white bread, and lots of plain vanilla ice cream.

  I was fortunate that I had a potentially nice dinner in mind to act as a temporary distraction. In actual fact I should have had a lighter dinner than I actually had, and had some heavier stuff, probably fried chicken and chips after I came home from a gig. As well as forgetting to go to the pharmacy, I had completely forgotten that last night it had been my intention to go to see The Life Of Brian playing in the Partridge in Bromley.

  By the time I should have left I had not only not had a shower or washed my hair, but I was also feeling like I had eaten too much for comfortable travel (and hanging around in a pub). My dinner, as nice as it was, was not an adequate substitute for seeing the band.

  It was a lot earlier in the year that I made an online order with a supplier of Asian foods. Mostly I had ordered a heap of assorted instant noodles, but I also ordered some mini ribs in black bean sauce, which turned out to be almost all bone and gristle, but some Chinese style roast pork. The ribs and roast pork were delivered still frozen, and I kept the roast pork in the freezer until yesterday. I left it out since the morning, and it was just about defrosted in the very early evening. The cooking instruction said oven cook for 25 minutes.

  As it cooked, the smells that it emitted were delightful. With hindsight I could have diced it into little cubed and served it with some pre-flavoured, microwavable rice. I had half the pork with low sugar baked beans. The beans were not ideal, but good enough. The pork smelled and tasted delicious, but the big chunks were fairly stringy and took a fair bit of chewing. I was forever picking bits of meet out from between my teeth. It was why dicing it into small cubes would have been a good idea, and I shall do that for the rest of the pork.

  It may have been while eating, or probably just after, that I remembered I wanted to go out. It was too much bother at that point, and all I could do was to sulk (but only a tiny bit). I spent some of the evening watching TV, and maybe an hour, and perhaps more, reading in bed. I think I tried for sleep at about 11pm, but it was probably midnight before I fell asleep. It was one of those periods of time when it felt like my heart was beating hard, or fast, or at any rate, not quite right in some way that is hard to describe.

  I did get to sleep in the end, and mostly slept OK. I can't seem to remember if I go up to pee in the night, but I would be surprised if I didn't. I can remember some fact for one dream, and I am very sure I had another dream, but I can't seem to remember anything about that second one.

  The dream I do remember started off on a bus in North London, and my guide for those mystical areas was my old friend Aleemah. I have no idea why we were in North London, or where we going. We got off the bus, and we had to walk up a hill. I think there may have been some light rain to make the walk more unpleasant. We were halfway up the hill when Aleemah went behind a house, and opened the back door to let us in. I thought it was all very irregular, but Aleemah said it was OK because her friend Richard lived there, and he wouldn't mind.

  The next bit is very confusing. I think we went upstairs, maybe to use a toilet, but we had also put on some music in a back room. I have no idea what inspired it to be in the dream, but it was Bach's Toccata and Fugue - played on a big organ with super low bass notes. I came down stairs, and into the back room just in time to catch the speaker that was about to fall off a shelf because of all the deep bass notes making it jitter around.

  The dream sort of faded out at that point, but maybe there was a following episode. It is vague in the extreme, but it seems to be a sort of experiment to watch the speaker vibrate it's way off the shelf. Maybe we just discussed it rather than did it, or maybe my memory had become so vague that I can't remember any more. Maybe I just woke up. This morning was slightly unusual that I did not wake until about 6.45am, and it seemed too late to go back to bed.

  This morning my weight seems to have gone up by a full kilogram. That is rather a lot even if I have yet to have a decent poo. I can't remember eating anything that might cause a large weight gain. Once again there was a strong indication that maybe I had not eaten excesively. My blood glucose readings were the lowest for quite some time.

  The average of all three blood glucose readings was 7.0mmol/l. That is rather wonderful. It was made up of two identical readings of 6.8mmol/l - a nice low figure I very rarely see - and one reading of 7.4mmol/l - itself a very good reading. I had suspicions that the Chinese pork might have contained a lot of sugar as part of a marinade or something, but evidently not. I find it hard to believe it an extreme amount of calories......so where did my weight gain come from. I once thought I understood these things, but it is seeming like voodoo these days.

  This morning my blood pressure is a bit better than yesterday when the morning and late afternoon seemed a bit higher than I would have liked (although still apparently safe). This morning it was 125/75 with a pulse rate of 71 bpm. That pulse rate still seems a tiny bit high for when I am supposed to be at rest, but it is equal to one other reading that is the lowest so far this month.

  Once I have had a rest I will have a shower, and also wash my hair. I then intend to go out. My first call will be the pharmacy to pick up my repeat prescription. While I there I might as well go around the corner to get some shopping in Aldi. After that I will probably only indulge in some advanced forms of resting, and maybe some mild gluttony. If it is the right sort of gluttony (unlikely) I might lose some weight by tomorrow morning !