The forecast may say loads of grey clouds, but as I type this, in the middle of what should be very grey, it is actually almost bright, albeit without a single ray of sunshine. No sunshine at all is forecast for today, but that doesn't mean that it will really happen (fingers crossed). At least it should stay dry, and 13° C (not 14° C according to the latest revision) is almost mild. Incidently, The BBC forecast still says 14° C, and they do show a single hour of sunny spells, but can't decide when that hour will be ! Tomorrow will feature white cloud all day long, and 16° C is expected.

   Yesterday was quite a busy, and sort of productive day. I started the day unusually early, and finished writing very early. That gave me plenty of time to have a shower some time after 10am, or several hours before I usually have a shower these days. (Once upon a time, when I was working, I would be getting up at 5am, and showering soon after that !).

  After my shower I put some laundry in to soak, This time I didn't ignore it, but finished the job in the early afternoon. I spent a lot of the rest of the morning being very productive. I did all the washing up, and prepared my dinner, plus half cooked it ready to be finished cooking in the evening. The next thing I did was to cut up two large beer delivery boxes to fit into the recycling bin. I had been putting off doing that little job for a while, but yesterday morning's sunshine made going out to the bins to cut up the boxes a pleasant experience.

  I think that took me up to around midday, and I stopped for a lunch of rice crackers and cheese. I think maybe half the amount I actually ate would have been better for me. I allowed half an hour or so to let lunch settle, and then I did the laundry I had left soaking. It contained two pairs of lounge/sweat/whatever pants, a single thick t-short, and a single pair of underpants. I did the job in one go, and hung it all up to dry on the big clothes horse. I helped it dry with a big desk fan, and didn't bother to use a fan heater. It seems perfectly dry this morning.

  The rest of my afternoon was productive in a different sort of way. I ended up editing, aka top and tailing, plus advert removal, five episodes of Secrets Of The London Underground. It is sort of odd that editing a single episode seems to take very little time, but editing five episodes took the whole afternoon, and even a little into the evening. I think it is the case that lots of little bits can add up to a lot. Once edited it took about 7 or 8 minutes to render each episode, and so that is 35 to 40 minutes without considering all the fiddly bits.

  I have to admit that the editing was getting a little tedious, and I did have some short breaks. One such break was for an afternoon snack. I stuffed 4 little bags of crisps down my throat. They were very bad for me, and the worst thing is that I only part enjoyed them.

Real time update: As I write this there is no actual sunshine, but the sky where the sun is, is so bright that it is casting soft shadows. It is no substitute for real sunshine, but it is still rather cheering.

  I think it was almost 7pm before I had my dinner. It was a sort of stew of smoked Polish pork (like bacon with thick skin on it) with potatoes and broccoli. It was not unpleasant, but it didn't have the "zing" (whatever that is) that I hoped for. Maybe I was too distracted by the film I was watching - "Invasion Of The Flying Saucers"....or maybe I wasn't. It was a sort of fun film from the 1950s, in black and white, but it was too American to be good.
  I washed my dinner down with a nice Belgium beer. It was in a bottle with a wired, champagne style cork, and as you can see from the picture, it was incredibly foamy when first poured ! It had a sort of hint of wheat beer about it, but it listed the ingredients, and it said barley, and no wheat. I think it was a 75cl bottle, or about a pint and a half. It seemed enough for last night.

 It was 8.30pm when I went to bed. It was deliberate that it was earlier than usual because I was getting near the end of the book I was reading, and I wanted to, and did finish it before I went to sleep. I think that was getting close to 10pm. Some time today I will start on the next book Robert Heinlein wrote (based on the year of his copyright notice), "Podkayne Of Mars".

  I don't think my sleep was as good as the night before, although it did not have any periods of insomnia. It just feels like it was not so good, and maybe the amount of long dreams I seem to recall having indicates I was often in light sleep - or is the other way around ?  I can't recall and fine details of any of these dreams, but the flavour of one sticks in my mind. That dream was about a bully who I ended up putting in his place by knocking his head against the top of a desk when he grabbed me from behind.

  One other dream is noteworthy because I can't recall dreaming of snow before. I guess it may have happened before, but I have no memory of it. In last night's dream I was coming out of either work, or college, and the ground was white with snow. Somehow it didn't seem to feel cold out, but the snow was definitely cold to the touch. Most people opted to walk down the road to the right of a field in front of the door we had come out of. That looked very slippery to me, and so I opted to walk down a fairly untouched path to the left of the field. As I neared the end I realised I had made one mistake. The path came out on the steepest bit of the hill, and the bus stop was up the hill. I woke up before I had to tackle that bit.

  For several days running I have kept saying how surprised I was that my blood glucose readings were so low. This morning I got it right - my blood glucoe readings were higher, but still not that high. The Contour meter read 8.2mmol/l. and the GlucoRX meter read 8.1mmol/l. Both are still below average. The Sinocare meter's reading was typically a little higher at 8.4mmol/l, and that is about average (on better months).

  One thing I hope to do today is to go to Tesco. I need some more meat, probably diced chicken, and some vegetables to accompany it in a stew. I also think I ought to get some fruit. Maybe a couple of apples, and a couple of oranges. Possibly some other fruit too. Ideally I would not get the fruit from Tesco because their fruit is not as nice as that from, for instance, the mini supermarket on Catford Bridge. This is all because I feel some fruit fibre might help my digestive system.

   This morning was another morning where I wondered if I would ever "go". Like yesterday I have "opened my bowels" (as they say in hospital), but like yesterday the quantity seemed hardly enough. At this rate I will have another explosion like I had 5 or 6 days ago when I seemed to do a late afternoon/early evening additional complete clear our. I think I would prefer something more controlled !
      







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