This morning has, to my surprise, started at about 5° C. Unfortunately I am still waiting to see the first sunny spell. I can see a bright patch of sky where the sun should be. I suspect we are caught between two weather systems, and that is why the forecast for today has changed several times in the last 24 hours. Having said that, I can see lots of blue sky, but it is all in the wrong place for any sunny spells. The one feature about today that is probably correct is that apart from possibly a brief spell at 8° C, most of the afternoon will only be 7° C. The other thing is that it could be a very cold night. Tomorrow is shown as an all grey day with a top temperature of just 7° C. No actual rain is shown, but the chances of rain seem as high as 29% some times. I don't think I like this reversion to almost wintry weather.

  Yesterday got off to a good start, but the day slowly deteriorated. It ended up quite miserable. It is likely to have knock on effects today. As I typed that the sun broke through for the first cheerful sunny spell - only an hour late according to the forecast. It has already faded out !

  I can't really remember how I felt yesterday, but apart from the anticipation of my expected Amazon delivery, I think I felt fairly good, and fairly happy. I wrote 2,230 words yesterday, and needed my typical lie down to relax afterwards. I couldn't allow myself to get too relaxed because I wanted to have a shower so I could pop out to Tesco early enough that it wouldn't clash with the very earliest possible delivery from Amazon.

  After my shower I remembered that I was going to try and stick to the policy of washing my bath towel far more frequently, and hopefully well before it had soaked up too much soap from my obviously imperfectly rinsed skin, and also long before it started to get smelly. After my shower I put it in to soak in ordinary detergent (i.e. non bio). It is a bigger towel than my favourite, and I knew it would be hard work washing it by hand, but in theory it should need less rinses....

  It felt very cold when I went out to Tesco. I put on one of my thicker coats, but I didn't feel I had to zip up the front, although it was quite a marginal decision. I was also wearing new, but old shoes. They were a pair of Converse trainers originally bought in 2018, but hardly worn for reasons lost in the mists of time. They were comfortable and uncomfortable. They seemed to slightly pinch my little toes, but gave much more comfortable support for my heels. The canvas at the toe end should soften after some use, and then they could be very comfortable.

  The walk to and from Tesco wasn't all that nice in the cold grey air, but my legs seemed to be working rather well. I didn't really see to get any aches and pains (apart from some minor discomfort from my toes), and I don't even recall feeling a bit short of breath. It was almost like it used to be before I was getting problems with angina. I am predicting that will return once the effect of the Clopidogrel, blood thinning tablets, wear off now I have stopped taking them again.

  There were two things at the top of my shopping list, and they were lots of packets of instant noodles, and four 2l bottles of Diet Coke. I also bought a few things off the reduced price shelf, but none of them were that unhealthy. I deliberately did buy one unhealthy thing - a small bit of very sweet Angel Cake. I think I knew I would have a special use for it later, and indeed I may feel the need for a thick slice of it this evening.

  When I got home again I was looking forward to some lunch. It was two Ciabatta rolls filled with babyleaf salad leaves and sliced beef - quite a lot of beer because the pack was almost a week past it's use by date, and I shoved the whole lot in. There was one thing I did in the kitchen before I made up those rolls - I put some beef stock cubes, water, and diced beef in a casserole dish, and put it in the microwave for an initial 20 minutes of cooking.

  After eating, and enjoying my two rolls I had another rest, but I did finish it a bit early to check to see if there was any progress for my Amazon delivery. All it would say is that really annoying "before 9pm" ! It would mean being on high alert until it arrived. Going back to my bath towel soaking in detergent would keep me easily in earshot of the door bell. I thought I had washed that towel early enough that it would not need that much rinsing, but I was wrong. After 6 rinses the rinse water was still very foamy with soap/detergent, and I had had enough for one session.

  I lazed away the next hour or two. I spent some time reading my current book, and some time reading stuff on the internet, but I didn't allow myself a snooze. I also tried to avoid having any snacks, although In think I did have something small - maybe a single small bag of crisps. I knew that sooner or later I would have to go back to rinsing the towel out, but I put that off until after dinner time. By then I had hoped I would have had my Amazon delivery.

  At 5pm I started to watch an episode of the original Star Trek series. At 6pm I retuned to BBC 1 and watched the BBC 6 O'clock News, and I ate my beef stew. At that point I had added some rather old, and consequently well trimmed, broccoli and cauliflower. It could have done with some chillies, but it was still nice without. It was, or so I believe, a very healthy meal, particularly in regard to sugar content. At just after 6.30pm I had some bad news !
   Going to the Amazon web page did not seem to offer any more information. Initially it seemed to suggest that they had tried to deliver it to me, but I had not answered the door. I knew that to be wrong because even while watching the BBC news I had the curtains open, and I had one eye on the road outside. What I did see was a private car pull up, and a few packages delivered to someone a few doors away.

  To give some benefit of doubt to Amazon I thought that maybe the delivery van had broken down, or maybe was involved in an accident, and that the driver was using his own car to try and deliver a few packages. Even so, if the delivery I saw was from Amazon, I am annoyed that he could not have delivered one more fairly small package a few doors away.  It looks like I am going to have to be on high alert again all afternoon.

  Maybe it was before this bad news that I decided to wash my dinner down with a couple of cans of basic lager. I must say I enjoyed those ice cold (at least initially) lagers while watching the rest of the news. I then watched Star Trek: Voyager, and it was a so so episode. Rather better, but still not one of the better episodes, I watched an episode of The Prisoner. At 9pm I headed to bed, but I read in bed until close to 10pm before I turned out the light, turned over, and tried for sleep.

  Unfortunately, as soon as I turned on my side I started to feel the chest pains of heartburn. A couple of antacid tablets, and some burping seemed to get me comfortable enough to get to sleep for nearly 2 hours, but I woke up for, I thought, a pee, and did indeed have a pee, but it was only a small trickle. When I got back in bed I felt the heartburn come back, and it was made worse after getting chilled in the freezing cold bathroom.

  On top of all that my nose started to stream, and I also seemed to gained a bit of am cough. This time antacid tablets didn't really settle my heartburn, although they did help. I thought it was possibly Angina brought on by the cold. It may have been, but I checked my blood pressure, and it was very good, about 103/60 according to the memory in my blood pressure meter. I also checked my temperature because I was still feeling chilly, and what with the running nose, and cough, I thought I might have come down with a cold. Instead of a fever it was low at around 35° C if I recall correctly.

  All the indicators showed I was in a very healthy condition. Later on I would find my blood glucose level was also nice and low. One extra thing I took last night, or by then it was in the earliest hours of this morning, was a couple of Ibuprofen tablets. I reasoned that some of the chest pains/aches might have been some strains from wringing out the heavy towel earlier on. Judging how those Ibuprofen tablets helps it is probable my theory was correct, and by 2am I was easily fast asleep again.

  I had a couple of weird dreams last night. One was in the early hours of sleep, and I only remember a bit of it. I seemed to be at some sort of university, maybe just to visit a friend. I accidently got caught up in an experiment where a gorilla was to chase another of the opposite sex, or so it appeared. I seemed to know that they were both humans, one of each sex, dressed in gorilla suits. Of course it is possible that it was not an experiment but two people who had exotic tastes in sex.

  I was part of the chase, caught in the middle until I saw a side turn off the circuit they were running around. It took me to the friend I was visiting. I wanted to show off a trick I had devised to log into a Spanish speaking web site. It used what looked looked like a ginger biscuit with a very small bite taken out of one side, and which I half planted in some earth in front of the computer mouse. Somehow that logged me in, including both name and password. I then got told off for not leaving it long enough to log out again. I just pulled my biscuit out of the earth. It was supposed to have an effect like pulling out a USB memory stick without unmounting it first - possible memory corruption.

  A second dream happened closer to when I got up this morning. It concerned an unnamed female friend who had some mysterious packages with her. One was easily identified as a very heavy duty tripod (seemingly too heavy for one person to carry). The other was a tube about 5 inches across with a lens in one end. After a bit of thought I recognised it as a telescope with the eyepiece on the side of the tube.

    It, like the tripod, and one still unidentified item, were bought as army/government surplus, but it seemed like they could be used as an astronomical telescope despite probably designed to be used on a tank or something. The third item remained unidentified, but it looked like it could be clamped on the telescope eyepiece. I thought it might expand the telescopic properties of the telescope, or maybe it had a camera or infra red image converter in it. It was a curious dream in that apart from unveiling the items absolutely nothing happened.

  This morning was another morning when it felt like 6am was a bit too soon to get up. Before going for a quite small pee I had turned the heater up full, and left my bedroom door ajar to let some heat filter through to the bathroom. After the pee I went back to bed, and it seemed I must have fallen asleep very quickly. I think it was about an hour later I woke up again, and decided I had better get up.

  After getting out of bed I went to the bathroom, and it was still cold, but some of the chill had gone - just enough to be able to sit down long enough to manage a quite small poo, and a bigger pee. I knew that the lack of peeing through the night - maybe very slightly less frequently, and definitely less quantity - would probably result in a higher than desired weight. I was right. the scales said I had put on 1.3kg. That seemed ridiculous. I was sure it was mostly water retention, and I certainly did have a large pee just now, but too late to get back on the scales again.

  The big question was did all the lack of peeing mean my blood glucose was nice and low. I felt sure that from what I remember eating yesterday I would stand a chance of getting slightly lower readings. I most certainly did ! The Contour meter read 7.7mmol/l - colour coded light green in my results spreadsheet. The GlucoRX was even better - one of those very rare readings I colour code dark green, just 6.9mmol/l. It is a shame that the Sinocare meter let the side down with a more typical 8.5mmol/l, or my old target value.

  This morning my blood pressure is still in the so called "Optimum" region, but it is a little higher at 111/45. I am unsure how I feel this morning. I don't seem to have a drippy nose now, but my throat seems quite sensitive to anything that might tickle it and induce a bit of dry coughing. Keeping it damp helps. Maybe it is that the sky has just gone very dark that I feel sort of edgy at the moment.

  My plan should be to go to the Jolly Farmers for my usual couple of pints of Guinness at lunchtime, but it's partly that I feel edgy that makes me think that maybe I don't want to go out into the cold air (and possible rain, or even a thunderstorm if the current colour of the sky is any indication). There is also the problem of my Amazon delivery. I assume that they will be trying again today, and although it is a mostly insane idea, there is the fear they will start where they left off, and my delivery will be among the first as soon as the van leaves the depot.

  If my wildest optimism could come true it might be possible to still go to the pub a little bit late after an extra early delivery. I think that is highly unlikely. I think I will be staying in on high alert until that packet is delivered. One thing I may do is try and set up a camera to try and catch the delivery in progress in case it is just a very dodgy driver. Most seem OK, but there is always a bad apple who will steal packages, or dump them in a skip or something - until he is sacked (and hopefully sent to prison).

  There are various things I could do to fill in the empty spaces today. I still have over half a dozen episodes of The Simpsons recorded on my mini TV that need to be edited before being archived. I might even watch some episodes that I have already edited, but have no really watched before. There is one tricky thing I might do this evening, and it is to take chances on my health.

  The idea is to have just enough sugar to get me peeing the usual amounts tonight, and hopefully take my weight back down to where it was before. If I judge it right I might be able to do it in such a way that by tomorrow morning my blood glucose will be low enough to not be worrying. Of course it will put on a little weight, but hopefully a lot less than the water I pee away. It is a use for the Angel Cake I bought yesterday without realising it would be quite handy for this.