It was approximately 0.9 miles to the pub via Ladywell station. The two screenshots above are from my old (left) and current (right) phone. Ideally they should be exactly the same, but evidently are not, although quite similar. It seems I managed this walk at about 2mph, although that is the average after not taking into account short stops for photography and stuff. Ignore the suggested calories used. It seems that my current phone had a very wrong weight setting in the settings for the app I use - it was far too high. The old phone was set too low.

  It was quite quiet when I got to the pub. As usual more people turned up, one or two at a time, as I was drinking. I was dead set on only having two pints of Guinness because of seeing the nurse this morning. The alcohol was of no concern, but what it might inspire me to eat was the reason for not having too much. As usual I had a good time listening to, and occasionally joining in the banter. I must admit I was feeling curiously relaxed, and could have easily stayed for a third pint, and even a double from "the top shelf".

  I almost wanted to walk home. Walking in my new trainers seemed to be so comfortable that I am almost keen to want to walk more and more in them. I didn't walk home because I wanted to buy some stuff from the little supermarket near to Catford Bridge station. I was particularly after more packets of the instant noodles that claim zero sugar content. I got two 4 packs of them, plus a 5 pack of bigger packets of Korean noodles that are not even low sugar (but not seriously high. I shall say more about them later.


  Another thing I got were a packet of "Flatbreads", as pictured on the left. I thought they looked nice, but maybe something to be eaten with great care, and maybe not until after I had seen the nurse today. It wasn't until I got them home that I saw written on the packet "Low Sugars". Initially it didn't seem to be that low because I confused the sugar content as being for each flatbread, but it was for the the whole packet of at least 12 flatbreads.

 I also bought a small tub of cabbage and carrot coleslaw. I didn't check the sugar content of that, and maybe it was not as low as hoped for, but I ended up eating the whole lot scooped up on flatbreads. Later evidence suggests it was probably a moderately healthy lunch. The last few items I bought were 4 small cans of sugar free fizzy drinks.


  After my lunch I spent a bit of time preparing the few pictures I have used today, and then I had a lie down. I may have had a snooze as well, but eventually I had to see if I had working printer to print of my health measurement spreadsheets to show to the nurse today. I had hoped that my Canon Pixma printer might work. It did, and first time, but it hadn't been used for quite a few years, and the inks had dried out - although a few colours were printing at about 75% strength.

  I did have a set of ink cartridges for my crappy HP printer (originally something like £23 from Tesco, and supplied with just enough ink to print a couple of pages). It is crappy on two counts. The first is the horrendous price of a set of new ink cartridges (I think it rejects refilled cartridges). Even worse is that it has never managed to auto-feed ordinary plain copier paper. I have to feed it one sheet at a time, and give each sheet a few light taps before the rollers will pull it in.

  The last ink cartridges in the HP printer hadn't been used for 6 months, and were as dry as a bone. My new set of cartridges also seemed to be drying up despite being in their original sealed packets. The magenta ink would not work, and I could not print out anything that was red - quite an important colour in my spreadsheets to highlight when my readings were too high.

  After printing out copies of all my spreadsheets (although some I would reprint this morning with up to date figures), I took a look at new ink cartridges. A new set for the HP printer (Genuine HP cartridges) cost £61, and I turned my nose up at that. It would be cheaper to buy a new printer from Tesco and throw it away after it had use the tint bit of ink " that gets you started". I think it would have printed all the pages I took to the nurse this morning.

  By comparison, ink cartridges for the Canon printer are fairly cheap. I think a genuine Canon set of 5 high capacity ink cartridges was half the price of the HP cartridges. Canon do not bother with microchips to mark "genuine" cartridges, and that means there are lots of non genuine cartridges available, and they can be very cheap. I have ordered a 6 pack, or 30 cartridges in all, for just £22 including p&p (unfortunately I got stitched up for p&p even from Amazon - they are getting quite tedious in trying to get me to sign up for "Amazon Prime").

   My dinner was two packets of (alleged) zero sugar instant noodles. If it didn't make for an unhealthy, as in no fruit and vegetables and stuff, dinner, I could be quite happy to have one of the three (I think) flavours of zero sugar instant noodles for every dinner. I managed ton avoid any other food than described (although I may not have said I had one large packet of instant noodles for breakfast.

  I watched the usual TV last night, but instead of watching QI, which once again didn't seem to be a good episode, I went to bed at 9pm. I initially read for a while, but soon became sleepy. This is starting to sound a lot like the night before yesterday, and just like then I think I was fast asleep before 10pm. It was a now typical sleep where In would wake up every 2 or 3 hours for a pee, but it still seemed like I slept well.  I do remember having one dream, but it seemed so random that I don't think I knew what was going on even as I was dreaming. There is no more I can say about it.

  I was up bright and early this morning, or maybe a mere 5 minutes earlier than most mornings (apart from a few big exceptions over the last week or two). I was happy I had a fairly big pee, and I did a good sized poo too. When I got on the scales my weight seemed to be satisfactory, although I had hoped it might be a bit lower.

 I had also hoped my blood glucose might be lower, but what ruined it was the Sinocare meter. Maybe it needs new batteries or something because it seems to be giving very high readings. This morning it read over 9 until I checked it again, and then it read 8.6mmol/l. That is not too bad, but I still hoped it could be lower after being very careful what I ate yesterday. The Contour meter read 8.1mmol/l, and that would have been good if I had been eating with a lot less care yesterday. The GlucoRX meter read similar at 8.2mmol/l.

  I don't know if it was the coleslaw I ate yesterday, or maybe something dodgy the day before yesterday, but this morning I seemed to be going for a poo about 5 or 6 times. I wondered if I would be comfortable enough to go out for my appointment with the nurse. Fortunately I was - just ! At least it was good for my weight, and I seemed to have lost a few hundred grams more than when I officially recorded my weight.

  Rushing to the toilet, and fighting with my crappy HP printer, raised my blood pressure a lot. Not having any breakfast made it worse. I hand wrote this mornings reading on the spreadsheet for the whole of last month. It was 120/76 - a fair bit higher than my well rested, and after eating, morning readings.

  There was a lot of heavy rain as I was getting ready to walk to the surgery. I was not looking forward to walking through that, and arriving at the surgery dripping wet. I put on my hooded raincoat, and when I opened the front door I saw the rain had all but stopped. Had I been wearing my new Adidas trainers I might have enjoyed the walk, but I had a pair of slip on shoes that are not comfortable, and so the walk was not enjoyable.

 The slip on shoes was so they were easy to take off and put back on again after the part of my check up that a foot inspection. The nurse was quite happy there was no diabetic damage to me feet, but she saw my feet, and particularly the toes were in a bad state. She asked if she should refer me to the hospital foot clinic to see if they could make my feet beautiful again !

  As usual I was weighed and my height measured. One handy thing is that the analogue dial on their scales only reads in individual kilograms, and it ended up that the closest marking was such that my weight was officially recorded without the several hundred grams I can see on my digital scales. I asked the nurse if she could look back at earlier years to see how I was doing. I was only 1kg lighter than last year, but 5kg lighter than the year before last (the year before that was exactly the same as the year after). Today's nurse thought that was good progress even if a bit slow.

  She made three attempts to check my blood pressure. The first was dangerously high. The second was even higher !! After waiting a full 2 minutes, the third reading got the systolic pressure down to 150mmHg. Still rather high, but showing that it could come down. I think she officially recorded my home reading of 120/59 - and that is apparently more like it should be, and maybe my usual lower readings are perhaps a bit too low.

  The final thing was a new thing. She attempted to take the blood samples for my blood checks. It saved all that mucking around getting an appointment with the vampires who live under the eaves of the group practice. She seemed to do it very good. The needle going in hardly gave any discomfort. The only trouble, and this is a guess, is that she didn't go in at a shallow enough angle, and went straight through the artery, and no blood came out until she withdrew the needle, but even then it was far from a gusher.

  She had another go in the other elbow with the same result. She called in a colleague, and he did not do it for her, but guided her - which was a better idea so she can learn more. This time they used a butterfly needle, the type used for Cannulas, It is a slightly finer needle, and it seems more obvious that it goes in at a shallower angle. The two "wings"  of the butterfly needle are designed for it to be taped down onto the skin so it can be left in for several days or more. This time the blood flowed freely into the two test tubes.

  Finally it was time to go. It looked brighter outside, and once again there was no rain. I am unsure if it was those slip on shoes that were holding me back, or if I was feeling tired, but I didn't manage to get home as fast as I wanted to. The first thing I did when I got in was to make some breakfast. It was a large packet of Black Bean flavour instant Chicken noodles. They were nice, but very spicy - quite hot on the tongue, but the spices brought me out in a really hot sweat. I had to open the window for some cool air. Prior to that I had run the fan heater for a few minutes because I thought it was feeling a bit cool.

  That brings me up to right now ! My plans for the rest of the day are to have a lie down, and maybe even a snooze. Hopefully it will stay dry, or at least stay dry while I go to Tesco. I had intended to go to Aldi, but at the moment I think Tesco being about a minute walk nearer would be better. I feel a bit drained right now. For the rest of the day I will probably just be totally lazy.