There may have been no mist or fog this morning, but the day did start with a thick frost, and once the sun had risen, glorious sunshine. The sky is forecast to stay clear all day long, and all the sunshine will raise the temperature to 10° C. Once again, clear skies will mean the temperature is going to plummet after sunset, and tomorrow will start with another frost. Once again it is going to be a sunny day, and tomorrow afternoon may see 11° C.

  Yesterday was good in parts, often "satisfactory", and towards the end of the day, very bad ! It was a day to take advantage of the bright sunshine, and I did in a way. I had a very lazy morning, and even a bit of the afternoon lazing on my bed reading while the sun was trying to dazzle me.

  One thing I was thinking I would do yesterday was to go out and see if the market stall in Catford Mews, around the side of Savers, might be there, and I could buy a new rucksack. In the end I convinced myself that it would not be there on a Sunday. It felt so nice laying on my bed with warm sunshine through the windows playing on me, that I spent a lot of time laying there quietly reading.

  I did break my laziness to have a shower, and a bit later to have some lunch. I had one finger roll filled with corned beef, horseradish sauce and aromatic baby salad leaves, plus, for some reason I don't understand with hindsight, two 25gm packets of crisps. I think I was subconsciously planning my own doom with those two packets of crisps, and other silly and not really needed things through the day.

  The one thing I had to do I failed. I was intending to do some washing up before Jodie joined me for some beer tasting. Somehow just 3 main items and maybe 3 or 4 pieces of cutlery didn't seem important. It didn't even seem to be important to scrub the dining room table. I can only offer one possible reason why I didn't do these things, and that it was because I was ill, but didn't realise it at the time.

  One general for of illness was a tendency to be easily provoked into coughing. When it happened it was mostly dry coughing, but one one occasion, probably when a stray crumb tickled my throat, I did end up with one cough, maybe two, bringing up a very small amount of mucus. With thoughts of a possible lung infection, I checked my blood oxygen saturation. It is a good test of Covid I believe, but it was easy to get my blood saturation up to 99%, and that suggested my airways were clear.

  It was just after 2pm that my Amazon delivery, the one originally estimated to be delivered on Tuesday, arrived. It was a semi big order, made up of a couple of wants, and a couple of "that might be handy" things to make sure the order qualified for free delivery - i.e. over £35. I got spare glucose test strips for two of my blood glucose meters, and I got new batteries for my two waterproof cameras.

  The thing about those batteries is that with probably as much as a fortnight of dry weather ahead of it, they are hardly needed, but of course there are always April showers to come. By April I would hope that it would be getting warm enough to make going out in the rain less of an ordeal. One handy thing is that the new batteries are 1200maH. The Fuji originals were just 700maH - or almost twice the capacity. Being cheap Chinese batteries that will probably explode and burn the house down one day, but at least they came with a free USB powered charger.

  Jodie arrived a bit late after mistiming her walk to get an earlier train. She had earlier told me she would be bringing a packed lunch with her. That did mean she didn't stop to do any shopping on the way here, and be even later. It turned out that her packed lunch was still in kit form, and had to be assembled and heated before she ate it. On the positive side it seems that my last beer order contained quite a few beers she had never had before, or hadn't had since opening her account with untappd(dot)com, the website to share all your beer drinking with like minded people.

  As usual, Jodie spent ages being boring by being stuck to her mobile phone - checking beers on Untappd, and "doom scrolling" on Instagram. Quite early on I showed Jodie the broken zip on my rucksack. She thought the zipper could be persuaded to get back on the zip, but failed on her own, and we failed when we tried to do it together. After she went back to he phone I had a closer look through a magnifying glass. What I hadn't spotted before was that there were bits of loose threads clogging the zip.

   I got those off, and tried again. This time I had success, and the zipper went on, and it was working perfectly. To stop another mishap I got my hot melt glue gun out, and put a big blob of red glue at the end of the zip - on both sides of the zip, and even tried to glue it back to where it was originally attached to the main fabric of the rucksack. I doubt that will last beyond the first time I use it, but the big blob as an end stopped should hopefully last for ages.

  Many of the beers we drunk were not very strong, although at least one was in the 6% area. In theory I should not have got drunk, and in the normal course of events I would say I was still at least 50% sober, but apparently not when it came to eating. The main course of my dinner, which I ate after Jodie left, was the second half of the unhealthy dinner I had the night before, but this time it was cooked in a better way.....better, or just maybe in a more convenient way.

  It was the second half of the pack of German seasoned pork balls, and the second half (or maybe a little less) of the box of fries I had bought in Aldi. It was, or should have been quite filling enough, but there was a weird factor at work. Earlier in the afternoon my fridge seemed to smell very stinky. It took my a while to realise it was the Camembert cheese I had bought.

  I knew that cheese is one of the smellier cheeses, but was also very tasty when eaten. I had a stupid urge to round of my dinner with a finger roll filled with  Camembert. There were two things wrong with this idea. One was that by having it I was over stuffing myself, and the other was that after the spicy pork balls the cheese seemed a bit muted, and I was stuffing myself for no good reason.

  Other than that, everything seemed OK. I watched a bit of TV, and then read in bed. I think it was when I got out of bed to go and have a pee, and brush my teeth, when I started to feel something very much like heartburn, but also with a few other sensations that were a bit like the start of angina. All this was made worse by going into the freezing cold bathroom. When I came back and got into bed I realised I was in too much pain to relax and get to sleep.

  It was back to the well practised trick of sitting up at my computer desk, and taking antacid tablets. They helped a bit, but not enough. I tried some Ibuprofen, and that also helped, but once again not enough, or sometimes not for long enough to be able to get to bed. I think I might have gone to bed and slept for a whole hour before waking up needing a pee. Once again, going out to the freezing bathroom just killed off any relief I had.

  I think it was around 4am before I felt either OK enough, or just plain sleepy enough to get some proper sleep. During the night I checked my temperature, and that seemed pretty normal (for me). I checked using my pulse Oximeter, and with little effort I could get my blood saturation up to 100%. I also checked my blood pressure, and most times the systolic pressure was up around 140mmHg, but I got a few readings as high as 169mmHg.That was definitely not good !

  One or other of my doctors once said that it was no worry if my systolic pressure went as high as 140mmHg, but any more needed the attention of a doctor. I have mentioned that my blood pressure meter has a sort of built in diagnosis display. My blood pressure is usually in the "Optimum" area - which is better than "Normal". Last night I noticed that 140mmHg was on the border between "High - normal" and "Mild hypertension".

  Apart from a few times it seemed I was in no danger, although such a huge jump in pressure was a sign of something amiss. For a lot of this morning my blood pressure was 137/59 - theoretically safe, but quite undesired after my much lower usual readings. It was maybe half an hour ago that it seemed to suddenly jump down to a slightly high normal average for me of 113/49. So for now normality has returned to my blood pressure, but other things will take a bit longer.

  My weight seems to have shot up by a ridiculous 1.2kg in just 24 hours. Some of that may be because I suppose I was reluctant to go out to the freezing bathroom in the night, and I didn't pee that much last night. I should have peed a lot last night because my blood glucose was dangerously high this morning. Another reason for the increase of weight was that I seem to have done some very big poos this morning, and I also did a couple last night. I know I was not constipated yesterday, but maybe I can only remember one visit to the toilet for a poo during the day.

  This morning I only used the three usual blood glucose meters. The Contour meter read a very high 9.5mmol/l. That is still short of the red line, but is still very bad. The GlucoRX meter read 10.0mmol/l - right on the red line ! The Sinocare meter rubbed my face in the dirt with a truly terrible reading of 10.9mmol/l. A check using my two spare meters just now gave conflicting results, The Vivachek meter gave a reading of 8.8mmol/l, and that means it could be safe to have a very light lunch in about 90 minutes. The Exactive meter read 10.2mmol/l, and that says I should continue my fast until at least dinner time. I will try and continue to fast (I had no breakfast) for as long as I can, but I might have something like some rice crackers and cheese (but no pickle) as an afternoon snack.

  With a real possibility, that seems to have faded now, of having to get myself to the hospital to be checked out, I have had a semi busy morning. I have paid off both credit cards, and won't have to worry about those if I do end up in hospital for anything up to a couple of weeks if needed. I also managed to get through to the pharmacy quite early to order my next repeat prescription. That will be ready for collection on Wednesday after my lunchtime drink in the Jolly Farmers.

  That was an interesting interlude: I have just been for a pee, and it was the sort of size I would normally do in the night, but didn't last night. I then had an idea, and I went down to the kitchen - not for food, but to examine the bag that the finger rolls came in. They are actually "tiger rolls", but don't really look like it. The more interesting thing is that the nutritional information says that each roll contains 7.9gm of sugar. That accounts for some of the high blood glucose readings that I had not anticipated before. By comparison, the Ciabatta rolls I have say only 2.5gm of sugar.

  There are various things I could do today, but some things need doing in order. Having a lie down after writing all this is going to happen first, and after my lack of sleep during the night, a snooze is going to be inevitable. After that I need to finish washing my favourite bath towel. I realised it was starting to smell before using yesterday. I used my second favourite towel to dry myself after a shower, and put the smelly one in to soak in bio detergent with a splash of dettol. Doing all the rinses of that today will be a good test for my heart.

  Incidently, after going down into the freezing cold kitchen just now, and then coming back up the stairs, gave only the merest detectable hint of anything negative. That might mean that after I have washed my hair, and had a shower, I will probably try and take a walk in the sunshine this afternoon. I can't imagine going any further than to Ladywell, through the park and back, and maybe I won't even manage that. I guess I feel a bit delicate today !