Today looks like the wind will dominate the day more than yesterday. It will be sunny all day again, and behind glass (for instance) it should feel very warm, but out in the wind the forecast 14° C could feel chilly. There should be slightly lighter winds tomorrow, and they will be blowing in warmer air. With another day of non stop sunshine the temperature could reach a rather warm feeling 17° C. The day after tomorrow could see the temperature briefly touch 19° C.

  I didn't expect it, but there was a lot of good stuff about yesterday, and only a little bit of bad stuff. That was mainly at bedtime, but just for a change it was not heartburn or related pains. Sometimes it was little things that made yesterday a good day.

  I managed to start writing early again yesterday, and because I did not have a lot to say (just 1,569 words) I finished writing quite early. Early enough that I could still have a half hour rest, and then wash three white t-shirts, and get them hanging on the washing line a few minutes before 11am. I thought I deserved another rest after that, but it was mainly a sitting up, reading stuff on the internet sort of resting. Maybe that was not resting, but could be described as non taxing activity.

  I still managed to have a shower, and be ready to go out shopping in Tesco. I had many doubts about them ever being wearable, but I gave the trainers, I had bought from Tesco a couple of week ago (reduced from £20 to £10 to clear them), a test. They seemed difficult to put on, and felt very snug. Initially they did seem rather stiff and a bit uncomfortable. After a time they seemed to get more comfortable.

  I think those trainers could end up getting very comfortable once I have worn them in. I don't think I dare wear them for any walk further than the shops until they have worn in a bit. One probable improvement will be the change the laces. They seem to be waxed or something, and don't seem to slip through the eyelets. That could be good when looked at in some ways, but it is that, that makes them so hard to put on. Better laces, and I am sure I have a selection that would fit OK (they seem a bit longer than typical) could make a very useful difference.

  Initially I was walking quite slowly towards Tesco as I was getting the feel of the new trainers, but I think I speeded up a bit towards the end. It was an OK walk, but maybe not enjoyable in the warm sunshine for two reasons. One being the new trainers, but it was more the wind. That wind made it feel really quite chilly. When it stopped for brief moments the sunshine felt nice and warm.

  Apart from the ongoing buying two litre bottles of Diet Coke, my shopping trip was mainly to buy stuff for dinners, but I only bought one pack of diced beef for one "proper dinner". I did buy more bread in the form or crusty rolls and Ciabatta rolls, and of course I bought stuff to go in them. One particular item I bought seemed a bit stupid after some recent mornings when my blood glucose was rather high. It was a 2 litre tub of Tesco "Neapolitan" ice cream. The reason was because I noticed it seemed to have a low sugar content. More about that a bit later.

  Despite only mentioning a few things I bought, my shopping was rather heavy, and it did seem to be a bit of drag to carry it home. For some reason I can't quite seem to remember how I felt when I got home. I think I may have been starting to get hints of angina pain, but maybe it faded so fast once I was home that I just don't remember it. Or maybe it was something different !

  My lunch was quite weird, and potentially stupid. I had found a packet of "mini savoury eggs" on the reduced price shelf, and I think that were actually reduced to half price - quite a miracle reduction in Catford Tesco ! There was quite a lot of them and because they claimed to have a very low sugar content* I stuffed the lot of them, and still felt mildly hungry. I then used rice crackers to scoop up garlic and herb flavoured Philadelphia soft cheese. I'm not sure why I bought it because without the flavouring it would have been tasteless, and I had a good idea that I would be tasting the nasty aftertaste of the garlic all afternoon - and I did !

  * One thing I often fail to do is to look carefully at what the sugar content on the simple "traffic lights colours" panel actually says. I think for those mini savoury eggs it said something like 0.4gm. What I didn't see was whether that was per mini egg (the size of a small marble), per 100gm, or per box (container or whatever). It was probably per 100gm, but than  had no idea what the weight of the entire portion was. I three the container away as soon as I had emptied, and I am not fishing it out of the recycling bin to check now.

  After my lunch I had nothing important to do, and it felt like I had many hours to fill in. In fact it was only about 3 hours until I could use the TV as a mind blocker (or something like that). I ended up doing quite a few small things to fill in that time. One was to start reading a book by Philip K. Dick. He is a well regarded SciFi writer, and maybe best remembered for the book "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep" - the book the movie Blade Runner was based on.

  I have two of his books on my bookshelf, and the only thing I could remember about them is that they failed to excite me. I am not sure I gave either more than a basic trial. The book I decided to try and read yesterday was "Radio Free Alburmeth". One thing makes it a bit odd is that the story of another man is told by a Science Fiction writer, and it is my guess is that his described background, but obviously (?) not the story itself, is based on Philip K Dick.

  One little thing I did was to make an order with Amazon. It includes a variable 2 to 2000 neutral density filter to screw on almost any of my Canon camera lenses (because most of them have a 58mm filter thread). I have no idea just how much a reduction of 2000 will actually make, and in particular, whether it will be enough to take pictures of future lunar eclipses, partial, full or any other type. Maybe I may find other uses for it too, but it is rather rare that I complain of too much light.

  Another diversion was to check one of my old cameras. I can't think why I started it, but I got out my Samsung U-CA3 camera, and initially checked to see how well charged it's batter was. To my surprise it seemed very full despite not being used for possibly several years. It was given to me by a workmate, and described as being rather basic compared to modern cameras - not that it was terribly old at the time.

  I bought a spare battery for it, and a bigger (1 GB) Sony Memory Stick style memory card for it. I also bought a battery charger for it. I found it really good as a pocket camera to keep handy while I was commuting, and I used it a lot. Later I would get better cameras, but it did seem to be a lot better than "a rather basic camera". Maybe it was because I could do fair photo editing that enabled me to produce some rather good results from it.

  One of the things I wanted to do was to see if it was possible to charge the battery via the USB connection. I don't think that is possible now. It took some time to find a suitable USB lead for it. It uses the same mini USB socket as my small Nikon and one of my Fuji cameras, but it seems Samsung do it differently. I did find a lead that worked as far as downloading pictures went, but it didn't seem to work to charge the internal battery. I'll carry on using the external charger I bought to charge the batteries. I might even take that camera out with me today.

  I watched the usual TV last night - Star Trek: The Original Series, The BBC 6 O'clock News, and Star Trek: Voyager. My dinner was two ham and mustard rolls. They were OK, but not as nice as I hoped for. I also had a dessert, and it was some of the tub of Neapolitan ice cream I had bought. I was quite careful with how much I allowed myself. On the front, in the "traffic light colour codes" it said 7.6gm of sugar. In smaller print it said "per scoop".

  I have no idea how much a scoop is, and I suspect that many people, like me, don't own an ice cream scoop. Fortunately, on the back of the tub it said that "a scoop" was 42gm. I had already eaten what I hoped was a small amount, but I got a small disposable paper plate and put it on my kitchen scales, and zeroed the display. I then uses an ordinary dessert spoon to scoop out ice cream until the scales read 42gm (actually I overdid it and the scales said 43gm, but I wasn't about to spilt hairs). To my surprise it seemed like the portion I had eaten was roughly the same size as one "official" scoop.

  After Star Trek: Voyager there seemed nothing else on TV that I wanted to watch, and I started to go to bed. I read for maybe half an hour, and then turned out the light. I looked forward to getting lots of sleep. I still felt a bit of a deficit from the nights before. I did my best to get comfortable, but whatever position I tried I could not get comfortable because of various amounts of pain. At least it was not heartburn for a change "

  The principal areas of pain were my stomach muscles and my right shoulder. I think I may have strained both when carrying big buckets of water while doing my laundry. The stomach muscles pain (at least I think it was just muscles complaining) was not that bad, and almost fades while laying down, but my right shoulder tended to hurt in most positions. On top of that I seemed to have loads of little pains, and they all altered as I adopted different poses in bed. They ranged from my right wrist (always a bit prone to tendonitis in recent years), to odd pains in a finger or toe, some aches from my right elbow, left ankle, a muscle or two in my neck, and a weird itch on my left calf.

  Most of the minor pains would have been ignorable, and if I wasn't actively searching for pains I might not even realised I had them, and just gone to sleep, but the shoulder ache was really quite prominent no matter what position I adopted. There was nothing for it but to get up, sit at my PC reading while I took a couple of Paracetamol tablets, and wait until the worked. They did seem quite effective after about half an hour, and it was probably about 9.30pm when I fell asleep.

  I got up to pee in the night quite regularly, but I still seemed to think I had slept well, Even my dreams seemed to be quite nice. Two of them featured very friendly women, but the details of one of them seem very vague. I do remember some of the other one. I am not sure how it started, but the first I can remember was sitting by myself on a table because the tables only help 4 people, and I had 4 friends who were sitting at the table next to mine.

  What looked like a French waiter came out of the bar, and seemed to indicate to me that I had to go, and to go at 11pm. I later realised that he meant it was 11pm and the place was going, but it sounded like he was using 11pm as a direction on a clock face. We all got up, and three of my friends went to find the toilets. The fourth was a young and very cuddly, as in she liked cuddling, woman. She gave me a delightful cuddle as we waited for the others.

  I might have responded a lot more enthusiastic if iit were not the case that I seemed to be developing a very close relationship with another woman. All five of us got in a car. One curious thing was that the driver, and his girlfriend seemed to have no faces or even said anything. They seemed to be there just as a story device so that we had transportation.

  The car, if indeed it was a car - it was another thing I didn't really see in any detail - must have had a bench front seat, and I was sitting next to the woman I had the "developing relationship" with. We held each other hands as the unseen driver diver drove us along. Our grip increased when we came to a strange device. There were two parallel steel girders set into the road to our right, and a weird device to out left. It was a sort of turnstile.  The right hand wheels had to be lined up with the gap between the two girders. On the left there were two steel, curved, arm like things. They would open enough to let each wheel through on the left.  I have seen nothing like it before, and I am not sure what it was for. Maybe it was just another blasted speed control thing.

  I woke up as we were going through the thing, and I never did find out any thing more about it. Later on in the morning I woke up a couple of times for a pee, but also because I seemed to feel cold. That was despite my room thermometer saying it should have felt quite warm - which it did after coming back from the very cold bathroom ! Somehow I had a mini lie in this morning. I woke at just gone 6am, and decided to try for more sleep.

  I think I only got very light sleep, and I woke again at 6.50am. I felt a bit reluctant to get out of bed, but I wanted to take screen shots of the weather forecast before I lost the the first hour of it (The BBC forecast starts the day at 6am). I had another pee, but no poo (although I have had one since). I was still quite pleased when I weighed myself. My weight is still higher than it was a couple of weeks ago, but I have shed another 600gm lighter. I will be starting to feel happy about it when I have shed another full kilogram !

  All the peeing in the night suggested another morning with high blood glucose readings, but as I am taking years to learn, that is not always the case. This morning my Contour meter read an (almost) excellent 7.6mmol/l - just 0.1 short of my target. The GlucoRX meter read 7.1mmol/l, and if I could manage similar readings for the next few weeks I would set my target to 6.5mmol/l. Even the Sinocare meter shared the joy with a reading of 7.7mmol/l.

  My blood pressure seems higher than usual at the moment, but is still "normal". It would probably help if I had the pee I feel coming on. It is difficult to relax properly when needing to pee. At the moment my blood pressure is 121/55, and as my meter says, that is considered "normal" - I prefer "Optimum", but you can't get it gold plated all the time. I'll try again a bit later.

  Today, being a Wednesday, I'll be going for my usually regular Wednesday lunchtime drink in The Jolly Farmers. I'll see how I feel at the time, but maybe this week I will walk home from the pub instead of walking 7/8th the same distance, but with a short rest in the middle while I wait for, and get the train from Ladywell back to Catford Bridge. All I will need to do then is to be extra careful about what I eat after having some booze !