The sky may have stayed cloudy longer than forecast last night because this morning started at closer to 10° C, and it is already 11° C as I type this. The sun is shining, as per the forecast, and although full sunshine will/may give way to just sunny spells before the morning is over, it should remain bright and cheerful, and the temperature should reach 17° C. Rain could start to fall at 2am tomorrow, and by morning could be quite heavy. It may slacken off by mid morning, and the last of the rain could fall around midday. The afternoon will be dry but still dull, and it may be no more than a chilly 13° C.

   Yesterday was a day that started with some appalling health measurements, and I had to steel myself to take special precautions. Today it seems most of what I did worked, but more about that later. I seemed to take my time writing yesterday's piece, and that was a good distraction.

  My plan after I finished writing was to have my usual lie down and rest, and the have a shower. I was feeling quite smelly, although I had had a good scrub on Sunday, the day before yesterday. I certainly had a good rest. As well as a bit of reading, I am sure I had a quick snooze. I may not have had a snooze of the book I am reading was not so dry. As detailed a week or so ago, it is Philip K. Dick's collection of short (ish) stories with the overall title of "The Preserving Machine",

  I believe that all the stories had originally been published as stories or serials in the SciFi magazines of the day (mostly the 1950s). The story I am currently reading, called Dead Men Talk, is the longest in the book. It is hard work reading it because the characters keep changing, and more characters keep being added. I find it hard to keep track of who everyone is, and it is made worse by the writing style which seems so dry. It seems easy to read a few pages and find yourself falling asleep.

  Yesterday was another bank holiday, and so there were no big shops open (although lots of the smaller shops were most probably open). The weather was actually better than forecast, but the forecast seemed miserable enough to rule out going out for anything like exercise. Under these circumstances I could not be bothered to have a shower. Instead I got straight on with washing two towels.

  That initially translates to I put the two hand towel sized towels, but white, in to soak in detergent. I would go back to them a bit later, but it was passed midday, and my thoughts turned to lunch. I was intending to fast until dinnertime, but I was feeling slightly hungry at lunch time. I first checked my blood glucose using just one of my meters, and it seemed even higher than it had done about 5 hours earlier.

  I made a sort of strategic decision to still have a small lunch with the least amount of sugar in it, with the hope that it would stave off worse desires for food. It was just 10 (instead of 12) rice crackers with quite thin slivers of cheese on them (and definitely NO sweet pickle). It seemed to work quite well. I did not feel any strong urges to eat, and it seems the sugar content was as low as hoped. It was possible little more than 3 hours later that another blood glucose test showed it had dropped from a dangerous 11mmol/l to an OK 8.4mmol/l.

  Soon after my light lunch I went back to my washing. The two hand towels were easy enough to wring out, and because I had decided to wash them after not much use, they seemed to need only about 6 rinses before the rinse water was running just about clear. I don't use fabric conditioner on towel because I prefer them to feel rough and absorbent, and not shiny and water repellent !  After the final rinse, and a heroic hand wringing out, I hung them on the small clothes horse with a fan on them. Before I went to bed I checked them while turning off the fan, and they seemed to be almost dry.

  I didn't have any other things to do after that, and so I invented something. I thought it might be a good idea to make collections of my best pictures of a few select people - mainly singers - and keep them handy for things like birthdays. I went back to 2016 when I took my first pictures of Miranda, Angela's daughter, singing for Life Of Brian, and also Back To The Frey. I found a few good pictures from 2016, but many were awful.

  2016 was (I think) the year I got my first DSLR camera, my Canon EOS 1200D. I knew how to use it in theory, but the practice left a lot to be desired. It seems that in the same year I also bought my first Nikon DSLR camera. I saw that Nikon on a second hand shop for quite a reasonable price. It was how I started my love of Nikon Cameras, and apart from a few very dimly lit venues, my photos improved....but then again, but by then I was getting the hang of DSLR cameras, and even the pictures I was taking on the Canon looked better.

  It was quite tedious looking through hundreds (literally) of photos to pick out just one or two best pictures. It seems I was very active in 2016, and I only got as far as September that year before I got fed up with it. (I did leave myself a note so I can pick up from where I left off).I got to feeling like something to eat again, and with my blood glucose now down to just 8.4mmol/l I felt that provided I was careful I could have a snack....or two.

  My first snack was rice crackers with mashed up fish - from small tins of things like mackerel in tomato sauce. I added a very small tine of anchovies in olive oil (with most of the oil drained off) for extra fishiness. I also added some white pepper and some vinegar. At the time I believed it to be a very low sugar snack, and generally healthy - and the fish oil has benefits such as being good for old stiff joints.
  It was not until I was studying this photo I took of two small tins of fish that I saw that the Mackerel fillets had quite a high sugar content. I would speculate that the source of the sugar was the tomato sauce, and that the mackerel had more sauce and less fish in the tin. I would consume both these cans, and I think one more, although I can't remember which. I know that the first snack went down so well that it was not long before I had a second. That second one was less healthy because for some strange reason I decided to use two small packets of crisps to scoop up the mashed fish.

  I must admit that as 6pm approached I was not feeling all that hungry after only eating the last snack maybe 90 minutes previously. I decided it would still be best to have my dinner then for the simple reason that it would give it longer to digest/settle down before I went to bed, and so lessen the chance of indigestion. That mostly worked, but I could still taste fish in my burps as I got into bed !

   When I was shopping in Aldi I thought it might be interesting to try the chicken version of the beef casserole and dumplings I had tried the previous time. This time I made sure to give it a bit more time to cool off a bit before eating it. It helped a bit, but maybe it slightly hindered as well.

  Being able to taste it with burning my mouth was maybe not a good thing because it turned out to be not very nice. The few lumps of chicken did not taste very nice for some reason. I can't say the dumplings were very nice either, but then again I was not expecting them to be very nice. I may still give the beef version another go, but this time giving it enough time to be just a bit warmer than tepid. I am not expecting much, but it seems it would only be fair to try again.

   One thing I just checked was the beef casserole with dumplings picture. I checked it before saying that the 6gm of sugar in the chicken version seemed a bit high. Two things about the beef version is that it's sugar content was shown as 7.2gm, and the other thing was that it was from Tesco. The Chicken version was from Aldi. It is fairly obvious they came out the same factory regardless of the name on the package.

  It seems I have become to used to having a dessert after dinner, and yesterday I seemed too keen to want one. I decided that I would avoid ice cream this time, and also that I would not have a plate of assorted fruit. What I did have was two semi ripe nectarines. They did the trick, but I think apples would have had less sugar in them. Those nectarines, sold as "ripen at home" were about perfectly ripe - still firm enough not to squish everywhere, but not tart tasting.

  Despite the earlier offerings on TV were a bit banal, I still stayed up to watch an edition of Have I Got News For You last night. It started when I might have otherwise being going to bed - 9pm. It was quite an old edition, from 2019 if I recall correctly, and so some of the stuff was a bit stale, but much of it was still amusing. It finished at 10pm and I went straight to bed, but it was not until about 10:30 before I tried for sleep - it came quickly and easily.

  Last night's sleep seemed to be one where I may have woken up less frequently to pee, but then peed larger amounts. The amount of pee I passed was both good, and possibly bad. Too much pee suggests high blood glucose, but also dries me out more so I weigh less. I think the amount of water in the body is often underrated. My scales easily show the difference if I had drunk just half a glass of water. (100ml, about an 1/8th of a pint, weighs 100gm - and my scales weight in 100gm increments).

  I only had one dream last night that left some sort of memory. I am not sure where the dream was set. In some ways it might have been in school, but some sort of work place may have been possible. At first I was showing off a gadget I had built from a kit, with a few of my own modifications. It seemed to be a bluetooth connected remote control for a circuit board that powered a motor.

  I was then heading for a toilet to have a pee, but before I had started I was called back by someone who sounded a lot like a teacher. I had to sit at a big table and show my gadget to everyone. After that I could get up and finally go for my pee. From where I was sitting it was easier to get to another toilet with having to squeeze between other. The toilet I was about to use seemed clean and tidy. The toilet I went to seemed more like a well used pub toilet. It must have been that the flush mechanism was broken because there was much floating in the bowl (not nice !).

  I think I started to pee, but then I woke up, and went for a pee in my own toilet. That may have been at around 5am. It seems unlikely, but when I got up just over an hour later, I had a very big pee (sadly no poo, just some wind). All that peeing was good for when I got on the scales. They said I had lost 1.1kg, and that was the exact amount I had put on yesterday morning. It seems my main problem had been water retention yesterday morning.

  After all that peeing I expected the worst when I checked my blood glucose. The Contour meter read 8.6mmol/l. That was OK and it was lower than yesterday. The GlucoRX meter read an almost excellent 7.7mmol/l. The Sinocare meter read 8.7mmol/l, and that was almost the same at the Contour meter. I have no idea what the GlucoRX meter read so low, but I decided not to tempt fate by rechecking it. It seems I am back to some version of normal, but there is still not a lot of room for complacency.

  Today should be warm, mostly sunny, and dry. I think that means I ought to go out and stretch my legs. I have a sort of loose plan. It may go something like this:- I'll walk to Catford Bridge station, and then get a train to Elmers End. From there I will walk to the Arena tram stop, and along the way I will see if I can find the 1954 vintage third rail insulator pot I found when I went there last week. This time I will have my rucksack with me to carry it home in.

  From the Arena tram stop I will take a tram to Birkbeck tram stop and National rail station. It is a curious station that for many years had only a single line in operation for a small shuttle train, but has now had the second track reinstated for the trams. From there I might get a train to Beckenham Junction station, but it depends on the timing. If I don't get a train I will walk down to Elmers End station via a small walk in the South Norwood Country Park.

  If I do get the train to Beckenham Junction then I have several choices. I could get the same train back to Birkbeck, but that would mean a 20 minute wait. I could get the tram back, and that would probably be quicker. Another possibility would be a train to Shortlands and then a Train to Catford station. That option would allow for some good train photography. The final, and maybe more likely option would be walk the 1.1km to New Beckenham station for a train back to Catford Bridge.

  One thing I will have to do during all this is to keep stopping and starting my tracker, and then add all the bits together to see how far my total walk was. With some long breaks involved in it, it is possible it could be quite a long walk. Now all I have to hope is that I can get myself to Catford Bridge station. That will be the worst part of the whole walk - physically getting my legs moving OK, and mentally getting my brain going OK.