This morning has started out bright and sunny, but there are still some hazy clouds to be seen, and they may spoil the partial eclipse of the sun this morning. The first bite out of the sun should happen at 10am, and at 11am the moon will cover about half the sun. By midday it will all be over. By that time the temperature should have risen to 12° C , and by 2pm the temperature should peak at 14° C, and if reality matches the forecast it should stay that high for 3 hours before it cools off a bit. The sunshine should continue until sunset, and the night may only cool off to 10° C.  At 2am (or is it 1am ?) the clocks change from GMT to BST, and the sun will rise later, and set later (by local time). Tomorrow should be warm and bright with the temperature reaching a pleasant 16° C.

  The almost black clouds, yesterday morning, stymied my possible enthusiasm to possibly go for a walk yesterday. Later on it would have been very nice walking weather, but that bad start left me very mildly depressed. Later I would get some good news, and that cheered me up a lot.

  I didn't really have a lot of enthusiasm about the day when writing yesterday. One of the last things I said was that I might be better off staying at home and doing some laundry, rather than risk going out without a coat in weather that might not have stayed bright and warm, and dry in the afternoon. Of course it was dry and bright in the afternoon, but I think I remember still seeing black clouds in the sky until quite late in the morning.

  I think I somehow managed to finish writing quite early, or at least earlier than some of the worst mornings when I may have had too much to say, and couldn't type as fast as needed without making loads of terrible typos. It was a small relief to finish typing yesterday, and to then lay on my bed and relax. I assumed I would have a long snooze, or at least I seemed to feel very tired. To my surprise I didn't seem to have a snooze, and it was not long after laying down that I was up again.

  I stuck to my plan of doing some laundry. There was less than I thought in my laundry bag, but it was about up to the limit of what I usually want to tackle in one go. It was almost mostly underpants, although 5 pairs is not really a lot. It also included just one t-shirt and one pair of lounge pants. I think it was that the lounge pants seemed bigger than they are, and would take more vigorous wringing out then a t-shirt. In reality they are probably easier to wring out.

  I only got as far as putting the laundry in to soak in detergent because I had other stuff to do. Yesterday I mentioned my dilemma between wanting to try and fast, and yet having perishable stuff that ideally needed to eaten before it started to go off. I ended up having two wholemeal rolls that were just starting to hint of drying out. That may have very slightly spoiled the flavour, but after being stuffed with sliced beef and horseradish sauce they were still tasty...albeit very slightly stodgy and dry.

  I'm not sure when I ever thought that two rolls were no more than a mere snack. Yesterday it may have just been guilt over eating them when ideally I would have been fasting, but they did seem to be very filling. To make matters worse I had a brain fart and decided I would eat a few crisps with the rolls - special crisps that needed to be tried. They were, or at least the bag said they were garlic bread flavoured. I was not sure that would be good or bad if that is what they really tasted of, but I am not sure what they actually tasted of. It was sort of a universal spicy/herby/salty taste that resembled nothing, and was hovering between nice and not nice. I only had a few of them, and I still have the rest of a 200gm (maybe) bag to eat.

  After eating I had another lie down, and read for maybe half an hour. After that I should have returned to my laundry, but decided I would spend some time editing yet more recordings of The Simpsons. My intention was to go back to the laundry while the first edit was rendering into the final trimmed video file. That takes 4 or 5 minutes, and with nothing to do while waiting for it I would do a rinse or two of my laundry. I didn't ! I just waited for it to render, and then started on another.

  It was about 3.30pm when my phone chimed. It was a message from Angela. She started off by saying she was in agony, but had just got the all clear. The doctors/oncologists, had declared her cancer cured, and gave her the all clear. That was wonderful news. I suggested to Angela, and I think she sort of agreed, that she should now stop worrying, and concentrate on healing all the lesions, ulcers, and other sore bits from the radiation therapy and also the biopsy she had done on Monday.

  Perhaps I am too optimistic, and maybe just wrong, but I rather hope that her healing will accelerate from now on. As the ulcers and other sore bits in her throat heal she will be able to eat easier, and eating more should build her strength up (I have no idea how much, but she had said she has lost a lot of weight, and she was quite slim before all this). As gets better nutrition her healing should speed up, and not having to worry about the cancer should help a lot.

  I suggested that by June she should be fit enough to join me for a celebration drink in the pub. She said she definitely would with "her special Bill". It seems hard to believe that I have helped Angela that much. Half the time I had no idea what to say when she messaged me, but I seemed to find a few kind words, and it seems that they must have helped more than I thought. I look forward so much to seeing Angela again, but it also seems sad that it will only be on the very rarest of occasions.

  I did get back to my laundry after that, and got it all triple rinsed, and treated with fabric conditioner before hanging it on the big clothes horse to dry. I left it in the front room because that room was feeling warm after the sun had been shining through the windows. I didn't want to waste electricity using a fan heater, but I did use a desk fan to help the drying. I think it is all dry this morning, but I'll probably leave it hanging up until the room is reheated by the afternoon sun, and more definitely bone dry.

  I then returned to editing another episode of The Simpsons, but only the one because it was time to watch live TV. It left just a single episode on the memory card from the mini TV. Of course it is still a case of chasing my own tail because last night I recorded another 3 or 4 episodes. I'll have to check those carefully because I think they are just recent repeats, and I may already have an edited version in my archive.

  Before 6pm, and the BBC national news, which I would watch, I could have cooked a frozen ready meal, but I thought I would try for a lighter meal. In respect of it being "lighter" I failed, but I think it was not too far from "healthy". Part one was pushing the idea of "healthy" to extremes. The rice crackers were definitely healthy, but using them to scoop up apple and pork paté might not have been terribly healthy, although the container did say that paté had a very low sugar content.

  Part two of my dinner was fruit for dessert. I had a nectarine, a pear, an orange, and a golden apple. I believe that lot had lots of healthy fibre in it, and was possibly low in calories, but maybe not all that low in sugar content (and fructose, sugar from fruit, is still sugar for a diabetic). In fact it seems like both parts of my dinner were semi healthy, or at least "safe" - except for the apple.

  I have no idea how I did it, but while eating the apple I somehow managed to block a saliva duct (at least I think that is what it was).  It wasn't exactly sore, but it did generate enough to draw attention to itself. What started out as something a little bigger than a pimple, is now feeling like, or has the consistency of a blister, about the size of a 5pm coin. It could be bigger or smaller because it seems hard to judge the size of something using the tongue. I have had something like a tiny sesame seed feel like a boulder, and one one, hopefully not to be repeated, occasion, a whole tooth feeling like it wasn't much bigger than a bit of grit - until I spat it into my hand so I could see what it was !

  Wow ! Just as I was writing about it, I just had an odd taste in my mouth, and it was because the blocked saliva gland had unblocked, or burst. Probably burst because it is stinging a bit now, but the feel like a soft squidgy blister has gone, and it now feels like a deflated balloon (or something like that). The stinging, which is now seeming to fade, has been the most painful bit of it all. I predict that by later this afternoon there may be almost nothing to remind me it ever happened.

  I lost track of time last night, but I think I was probably in bed, reading, before 9pm. I definitely felt very tired, and it can't have been long after 9pm before I turned the light out, and turned over to go to sleep. After a few minutes I had the feeling that I was just starting another session of heartburn. This time I took a dose of Acidex liquid antacid straight away, and to my relief it calmed it down straight away. I think I maybe have fallen asleep well before 9.30pm.

  I seemed to get one of my better night's sleep. I even seemed to get up to pee less frequently, although my guess is that just meant I did a bigger pee when I did get up. It is possibly just imagination, but I think I may have been asleep for 4 hours before getting up, busting for a pee, at 5am. Sunrise was still about 45 minutes away then, but I could see some grey light peeping around the curtains, and I wondered if I could get back to sleep again.

  I could and did get back to sleep, and I think it happened quite quickly. The next thing I remember was waking up at nearly 6.30am. It almost felt like it was time to get up, or it felt like I was unlikely to get much more sleep, and so I got up. I had a pee, weighed myself, but fortunately I found I needed a poo after I started sorting out my medication. That poo, plus another trickle of pee meant that when I got on the scales I found my weight to be the same as it was yesterday, and the day before. That was good, but not nearly as good as if I had lost a kilogram to get back to where I was a week or two ago.

  It was hard to judge if I was peeing a lot, or less last night, and even if I could say one way or another, it is still tricky to guess my blood glucose being up or down based on how much or how little I was peeing. The only way to tell is with my blood glucose meters. The Contour meter read 7.5mmol/l. and that is spot on my rarely achieved current target. The GlucoRX meter was not quite as good, but 8.0mmol/l is pretty good. The Sinocare meter also read 8.0mmol/l.

  My blood pressure is pretty typical this morning, 106/47, and so nothing to worry about there. After checking my blood pressure I rushed downstairs to give my extreme "neutral density filter", a single lens from a pair of 1999 eclipse glasses taped over a spare UV filter for my Sigma 300mm telephoto lens. That was attached to my Canon EOS 1200D camera. I have just taken a couple of shots of the start of the lunar eclipse. In some ways that filter is a bit extreme, but what I have seen in the viewfinder looks reasonable. It will look better after I've cropped the image a bit, and maybe made the sun look a bit brighter. There is almost half an hour to go before I can try for some pictures of the full 50% eclipse.

  I am not sue what I am doing a bit later. I probably should try to go for a walk, but I am unsure if I will. The problem is being unsure if I can enjoy it, and if I can manage to walk far enough to make it all seem worth it. This morning I took the first of maybe a weeks worth of Clopidogrel, the blood thinning drug, that I was over prescribed and stopped taking over a year ago. I have a 28 day supply, and getting more may prove impossible. With luck they will make walking easier, and maybe if they allow me to start getting back in shape (or muscles built up again) I may be able to continue through the warm and hot months with no more drugs.