This morning started cooler than yesterday. It was around 7° C at daybreak, and it looks like the sun doesn't have the strength yet to warm things up like yesterday. Despite all day sunshine (probably) the afternoon temperature will only reach 17° C. The wind may be a bit stronger today, and that will mean it will feel cooler still. It should still (hopefully) be ideal t-shirt weather. It looks like it will cool down quite fast tonight, and tomorrow may start at just 7° C again (and the forecast claims the wind will make that feel more like a very chilly 5° C). Once again there should be full sunshine all day, and the afternoon may be no more than 13° C, except 3pm which might reach 14° C.

  I'm not sure how to describe yesterday, or more specifically me yesterday. I've considered saying depressed, and I've considered saying tired, but I think listlessness is closer, but a mix of all three, each boosting the others, probably comes closer to the truth.

  I think I got off to a reasonable start yesterday. I managed to write 2,435 words yesterday, and I think some of it probably made sense. The rot set in after I had finished writing. I had my usual lie down, and read for a bit, but then found I didn't really fancy doing much else. I started to believe I had no energy. Later that would prove to be partly true, but mostly it was probably all just a state of mind.

  My original thought was that I would have a quick shower, and then go out and get a bit of shopping. That never happened - including having a shower. Once I realised I could not be bothered to shower I thought I might start doing some laundry. I put in a pair of lounge pants, a single t-shirt, and 5 pairs of underpants, to soak in detergent, and then went back to quietly reading.

  I think I had some lunch before I did any more. Fortunately I was still mindful that I was trying to shake off a recent increase of weight, and not terrible good blood glucose readings. What I had for lunch was an experiment. I made two open sandwiches, from a single ciabatta roll sliced in half. The topping I put on each half was fish from those little tins you get of mackerel or pilchards. I think both were mackerel. One was in tomato sauce, and the other was in brilliant yellow rapeseed oil. I was not sure I liked that oil, but both of my open sandwiches was quite nice, and probably fairly benign to my dietary needs. If you can call it a recipe, I shall add it to my repertory.

  After allowing perhaps half an hour for lunch to go down, I finally tackled the laundry. I still can't decide if I felt weak, listless, or just couldn't be bothered to grit my teeth, and just do it, but I got as far as getting the laundry into the last rinse water, and then stopped for a rest. It was not a clever idea, but I had a snack before resuming. I think that one was to finish a half eaten, big-ish packet of crisps.

  After finally getting back to the laundry I wrung out the last rinse water, and then did the fabric conditioner. With that wrung out I hung all the laundry on the washing line. It was when some thin clouds kept dimming, but not completely blocking the sunshine. I had visions of having to take it all in, still very damp, and having to dry it all indoors overnight. Fortunately it mostly dried before the sun was starting to set.
  Had I waited a bit I could have got a picture featuring far more clouds. Maybe half an hour later, this view was almost all clouds, but the view is to the north, and the sun was still shining bright behind me to the south. To make matter worse when it came to drying my washing, the wind was really just a light breeze, and for a lot of the time it was barely jiggling the laundry as it hung on the line.

  With the laundry hanging on the line I could resume resting/being lazy.  That was just gone 3pm, and I still wondered if it would be dry before sunset. It also meant that the afternoon was coming to an end...sort of. It didn't seem to take long before it was time to turn the TV on at 5pm to watch Star Trek:Voyager. It was a quite tedious "what if ?" sort of episode where we learned about 3/4rs through the episode that the crew we saw was actually bio-mimetic duplicates, and so their destruction didn't really matter - except that maybe the duplicate crew were less annoying than the real crew ! an episode of Star Trek: The Original series. It was one of the better episodes shown lately. I was quite taken with the Vulcan seductress !

  At about 5:30pm I started to cook my dinner. That included an experiment to see how well using both of the very close, very small shelves in my mini oven/grill, would work. The answer is that now I have tried it, and realised some limitations, I hope I can cook more food at the same time in the oven. Yesterday itw as the last of a bag of frozen chips - possibly no more than just a mere 10 chips, and a pair of jalapeño flavoured beef burgers.

  I had hoped that the burgers on the lower shelf would cook well enough while the chips were on top, but it would have been better to have got the burgers started on the top shelf, before moving it down one, and putting the chips in. Those jalapeño burgers were not very nice. I am fairly sure they were cooked, but they would have benefited from fiercer heat to almost char the tops. That charring may have provided the missing flavour.

  At this point I can't seem to remember if I had something extra to eat before or after the main course. Maybe I had both. I am sure I had something, and maybe it was just rice crackers and cheese, but I might have had that earlier, and I might be confusing it with the day before. What I know I didn't eat was any more ice cream. Maybe that was a very good thing, but there is a chance it may not have mattered. I am sure I ate a fair bit yesterday, and while my choices of individual things may have been sound, I don't think it all accounts for some of my health readings this morning.

  The BBC news was not very inspiring yesterday, and as already noted, neither was Star Trek:Voyager. (I got that mixed up with the Star Trek: Original series episode I watched at 5pm - I have crossed out what I said about Star Trek: Voyager, but it is still readable). After Star Trek: Voyager finished at 8pm I turned over to Sky Arts who were showing "The Genesis Song Book" - an overview of Genesis from their first to last albums.

  The curious thing is that I am sure I had already seem most of the interviews they used, but in other documentaries about Genesis. It was not riveting viewing, but it was a painless way to pass the time. Over on channel E4 they were showing 5 back to back episodes of The Simpsons - except, or course they were not back to back because of all the adverts and stuff between, and in the middle of them. Over about two and a half hours they showed approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes of The Simpsons. I recorded most of them, and watched maybe the last two before going to bed.

  I can't quite remember what time I went to bed, and nor can I remember when I went to sleep. I seemed to read quite a lot of the book by Philip K. Dick that I am reading. I still can't say it is a style I like, but I have now read about half the book, and of course now I am intrigued about how it ends, and have to keep reading it. It may not have been later than 10pm, or at worst 10:30pm, when I fell asleep.

  I might have slept well, or maybe not. I can't seem to evaluate the quality of my sleep any more. What I can say is that each time I got up for a pee, I fell asleep again soon after getting back to bed. I'm not even sure if having loads of dreams, even if I can barely remember more than an odd second here and there, is an indication of good or bad sleep, or even if it matters.

  I will only attempt to describe one dream because it is the one I have the best memory of. Even so, I can't remember if it had a start that explained what I was seeing. I may have been watching TV, or maybe more likely some sort of training film of video, but my attention was 100% what I was seeing - had no peripheral vision. It was about something that was a bit like a heart pacemaker, and it could be used as such, but that wasn't it's intended use. I am not actually sure what it's intended use was to be honest.

  The point of the film/video/whatever was to point out the differences between the Mk1 and Mk2 versions. The first version was designed to be set once (there were many options it could be set to), and then was very difficult to change. The thing itself was cased in perspex panels all screwed together with flathead screws. It may have been intended to be an anti tamper idea, but the screwhead had an almost microscopically thin slot that needed a knife thin screwdriver blade to turn it. The Mk2 version used conventional screws, and could easily be re-opened to change settings. It was all possibly a lesson for engineers to think what was really needed rather than what seemed like a good idea initially.

  Maybe one good thing about my sleep was that at 5am I got up for a pee, and didn't even think I would sleep much after, but I did. I was very surprised when the next thing I knew was that it was just gone 7am when I opened my eyes. I went to the toilet, did a smaller pee than expected, and didn't have a poo. When I got on the scales I was surprised to see that I had apparently lost 1.1kg. If I had managed to have a poo as well I could probably add another 200gm to that figure. Like yesterday, I will probably have a poo sometime before midday.

  I was also pleasantly surprised when I checked my blood glucose. The Contour meter read a very good 7.7mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter was not quite as good, but 8.1mmol/l is fairly good. The biggest surprise was the Sinocare meter. For  days and maybe weeks it has been giving high readings. This morning it was best of all with a reading of 7.6mmol/l. It does make me wonder if my slightly flippant suggestion  that that meter might be sensitive to alcohol in my blood, was not so flippant. I had no booze yesterday, and this morning it agreed with the other two.

  Low weight, low blood glucose, and even my blood pressure being slightly lower this morning surely cannot be because of no booze, and I am sure it was not because I didn't have a bit of ice cream last night. I think the main thing that ice cream may do is to affect my blood glucose a bit, but I feel sure it would not affect my weight by any more than an odd 100gm. I can't see any relation to my blood pressure at all. I feel sure all these things are affected more by things like fighting infections, and doing it s well that I am unaware of the fighting going on. Maybe my listlessness yesterday could be blamed on some sort of bug.

  I wonder if I have cured myself of that bug (if indeed it existed) today ? As I write this, and finishing later than intended after another rambling phone call from Lee, who still thinks of himself as the victim, I am unsure how much get up and go I have today. I had been thinking about going out today, possibly for a train ride or two, but until I have had the poo I believe I deserve, I won't be going further than the local shops, and maybe not even that far !