The forecast suggests medium grey for right now, but the reality is that it is barely light outside. At least it is dry. At midday the already thick cloud could get thicker, but maybe just for the one hour. By then the temperature may have risen to just 4° C. In the last two hours before sunset there could be sunny spells. At this end of the day it looks unlikely, but fingers crossed. Tomorrow may start cold enough for a frost, but non stop sunshine is forecast. Sadly it may only warm the day up to just 5° C, but at least it will look nice, and should warm up my south facing rooms - hopefully enough to turn the heating off for much of the day.

  Yesterday should have been a good day, and in parts it was, but the cold and dull weather spoiled it. During the morning a few brief, and very unexpected sunny spells tried to cheer things up, but a minute or two in a sea of greyness had little impact.

  I had two main objectives for yesterday, and I am happy to say I achieved both. One thing I didn't do was to wash my hair or have a shower. I admit it just seemed to save time to just have a quick flannel wash. Of course the stupid thing is that in reality I had plenty of spare time. After I finished writing, had my usual rest for half an hour or so, I had my flannel wash, and then got dressed ready to go shopping in Tesco.

  Apart from the usual bottles of Diet Coke, I only had vague ideas on my imaginary shopping list. The first thing was to get some fruit. I got a small hand of fairly large bananas. This morning I think some of my fears about the sugar content of bananas came home to roost. I really wanted the small bananas like I bought in Aldi, but Tesco appeared not to stock them. I also bought some medium big "easy peeler" oranges, and some Persimmon fruit.

  I bought a few of my favourite instant noodles, plus a couple of pots of some (alleged) Thai based noodles. I had one for breakfast this morning, and it was nice, but maybe not nice enough to buy more (although I will re-check the price to see if they are as expensive as I think they are). Other stuff in my shopping basket included a ready made "simple salad", and some crusty rolls, and wholemeal baps.

  The walk to and from Tesco was unremarkable - in so far as it was neither good nor bad. Maybe it being 10° C warmer, in bright sunshine could have made it actually enjoyable. It was still good to get home, and put all my shopping away before making my lunch. It was two white crusty (although not very crusty) rolls filled with beef, horseradish sauce, baby leaf salad leaves, and some sliced gherkin. It seemed very nice, but I wonder of two rolls was too much, and if the white bread was saturated with sugar as some can be.

  After lunch I did a little project. It all started when I seemed to have lost my Parker "Jotter" pen which had a purple ink refill in it. I bought a small selection of coloured refills from Amazon, and replaced a spare black pen with a purple refill. That left a few coloured refills that I could use if I had more spare pens. I checked on Amazon, and they had the stainless steel pens with a gold coloured clip for about £18 each. That seemed rather a lot, but they had the plain stainless steel pens for £11 each. That seemed reasonable until I saw they would charge nearly £5 delivery for them. That put me off.

  I was not convinced I would find any Parker pens in Tesco, but there were. The stainless steel pens with the gold coloured clip were just £12. I splashed out and bought two. One now has a mauve refill in it, and the other has a pink refill. It is a shame that my handwriting is so atrocious that I actually do very little hand writing. The exception is for crossword puzzles and the occasional birthday card or Xmas cards.

  After playing with the pens, and also having a rest, I went back to some laundry I had left soaking in detergent in the morning. It was just two t-shirts and a pair of lounge pants, and a face flannel. That flannel was the cause of one problem that delayed finishing the job. I had tossed it in with the other three items after using it for my flannel wash in the morning. I thought I had rinsed it enough, but like when washing towels, it seemed to have loads of soap impregnated in it.

  After 3 rinses, and the water still very frothy, I took the flannel out and set it aside for later. I then took a break. When I resumed I did two more rinses, and then the water seemed clear enough to do the final fabric conditioner. Maybe it was the bigger items, or maybe it was the cold and gloomy weather, but it all seemed hard work compared to washing the eight pairs of underpants the day before. It was a relief to finish it, and hang it on the big clothes horse in the dining room.
   I don't think I had anything to eat since lunch, and by 5pm I was feeling hungry. I ended up having a two part dinner around 6pm. I started with a quite big starter, but one I thought should have been fairly safe for me. It was a Tesco "simple side salad" topped up with some corned beef, horseradish sauce, and some oil and vinegar salad dressing. One original thing in that salad was (I think) Edamame beans. I had been thinking these beans may have a high sugar content, but a little scroll down from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/280285#benefits suggests they are actually safe for diabetics.
   What could be called the main course of my dinner was the plate of fruit shown above. This morning my blood glucose was a lot higher than hoped for. I have already put some blame on the two white crusty rolls I had for lunch, but the rest of the blame probably falls on this plate of fruit. I think the orange is unlikely to be the main culprit. I have had a lot of oranges lately with no bad effects. The strawberries are a possibility. They were not fully ripe and so didn't taste very sweet.

  I did not buy the strawberries myself. These 4 were given to me by Jodie on Thursday. She had bought a heart shaped punnet she was going to share with Alan, but it was so full that she decided to lighten the load a bit, and gave these four to me. high on my list of suspects for excess sugar is the moderately big banana. It was almost twice the size of the small bananas from Aldi. I have had very good blood glucose results after eating the small bananas.

  I watched some really stupid TV while eating, and for an hour or two after. It was a series of programmes on the Blaze channel about hidden mysteries in various archaeological site in reference to ancient astronauts. Much of it was laughable, 95% was absolute bollocks, and the last 5% was highly dubious. I think I gave up at 8pm, and with nothing else to watch I retired to bed with a book.

  I read for as much as an hour before I realised two things. One was that I was not feeling very sleepy, and the other is that I had forgotten to do an evening blood pressure measurement. I had also not done a temperature reading, although I only do those out of curiosity. It started during Covid, and assuming I caught it a second time, I had the silly idea I wanted to catch the first time I got a fever. I never did that, but it showed that my average temperature was quite a low 35.8° C.

  Last night it was 35.7° C, but it had been as high as 36.7° C during the day. (These are under the tongue measurements, and may be quite different to my core temperature). My blood pressure was higher than normal, but still in the "optimum" area. It was 117/51. This morning it was a very good 105/50 - and that was on my first attempt. With a bit more forced relaxation I might have got it a bit lower.

  While I was up and playing with/using spreadsheets I decided to do something I had been thinking of doing for some time. It was to add extra years, as sheets on a single spreadsheet recording my weight. I am sure I have scribbled notes of how much I weigh going back well before 2019. It was in 2019 when I started taking the occasional pictures of the display on the scales. At the start of 2019 I was relying on two very unreliable scales that often seemed to read high. That was useful because it felt less like a disaster when the nurse (or other medical professional) forced me to get on the highly accurate scales in the surgery.

  In October 2019 I bought the very nice, and I think/hope very accurate scales I now use. From then on I think I can rely on the readings. It is quite interesting looking back. The difference between the highest and lowest readings I have recorded is about 10kg. The lowest readings were a sort of cheat. It was in the hot summer of 2020 when I was going out on long walks during the Covid lockdown. All that exercise undoubtedly helped, but it was dehydration that really made a difference. A 5 mile, or more, walk in blazing sunshine would dry me out almost to the point where I was probably taking a few chances. I would weigh myself when I got home, and before I guzzled a pint or two of cold water !

  I think it was after 11pm when I finally fell asleep last night. Once asleep I seemed to sleep well, although I thought that getting up so soon after 6am was a bit early. It was another typical night where I was getting up every 2 or 3 hours to have a pee. One time may have been a good time so that I can just about remember some of the dream I was having when I woke up.

  The dream was a bit odd in so much as I didn't seem to know if I was a human, a parakeet, a robot, or was using a mechanical parakeet as an avatar. I was complaining to another bird that I thought I was supposed to be green, but I seemed to be grey, or in black and white colours. The bird said that of course I was green, and it was just that the parakeet eye cannot see in colour. It said it was blue, but it did not expect me to see that either. It was all very bizarre. Back in the real world I am sure that Parakeets can see in perfect colour.

  6 am was not a time I would have chosen to get up, but that is when I woke up, and it just felt to be about the right time. I went for my first pee of the waking day, and like many days I expected to have a poo as well, but it was just wind. I hope I finally have a decent poo or two before too long so I feel OK to go out later - if I decided I actually want to go out on this cold and dull day.

  Without a poo, and without waiting for one more pee (which I think i had straight after breakfast, I got on the scales, and I was very slightly disappointed. After considering what I ate I had hoped I might lose more than just 200gm, but I suppose I should be happy it was a loss and not a gain.

  I also hoped that my blood glucose would be rather good good this morning. I had, and have written about some fears that my blood glucose would not be very low, but it was still a shock to see just how high it was this morning. All readings are below the red danger line, but are still in the not good area. The Contour meter read 9.0mmol/l, and that puts it (and the other two) in the heading into danger pink zone on my spreadsheet. The GlucoRX meter was worse with a reading of 9.4mmol/l. The Sinocare was a between the other two with a reading of 9.3mmol/l.

  With blood glucose readings like these I ought to fast until dinner time today, and maybe that might be possible. My original intention was to go out today to an afternoon gig in Ye Olde Whyte Lyon. It is an irritating double bus rise to get there, and that is why I will only go there for the occasional afternoon gig. Today, from 2pm to 4pm it is Simon Whitestar, and he usually does an enjoyable set.

  My camera is charged and ready for action. Like the day before (or was it the day before yesterday?) we have just had a couple of unexpected sunny spells. That make me a bit more enthusiastic to go, but it is still not set in stone. As I write this I am feeling uncomfortable with constipation. That means I will be very reluctant to go out unless that clears by about 1pm when I should go and find the first of the two buses I will need to get. Other negative things are that the place is quite small, and it could easily be very packed in there. There may well be at least one person who I prefer to avoid going as well. He is just one of those sorts of persons you come to hate for no one simple reason. Basically I just find him very annoying, and prefer to be where he isn't. Maybe I'll end up going, and if I do I may enjoy it, but for now I am very undecided.