08:32 BST

  It is sunny now, but there are some patches of thin white cloud that could dim the sunshine if they pass in front of the sun. The forecast says this afternoon should see 26° C. After sunset it is supposed to start clouding over. That means it will probably feel less fresh tomorrow morning. The cloud will continue all day tomorrow, and no sunshine at all is forecast. It could range from dull to very dull, and the temperature may only rise to 20° C. The day after tomorrow, Sunday, could see some rain and drizzle.

  Yesterday was generally a good day, although like many days it was up and down. Less good was that somehow it had a sting in it's tail. Quite what caused it remains a mystery, but it did keep me up for a couple of hours early this morning, and I am unsure how I feel now.

  I can't really remember, but I probably felt quite good yesterday morning, or at least my actions suggested I must have felt good. On the other hand, I do remember there was a question mark over my guts. The previous day I had seemed to completely empty them, but I seemed to feel almost-but-not-quite mildly constipated again yesterday morning. Maybe it was only while I was writing, and had more time to think about the negatives.

  Once I had finished writing, and I finished at least half an hour earlier than many days, I had a short rest, and then I went for a shower. It might have been little later than 11am when I was dressed and felt ready to go shopping in the little supermarket on Catford Bridge. I felt there were a few things I needed from there with a higher urgency than shopping in Tesco.

  I can't say it was a pleasant walk to the shop. Yesterday was dustbin day, and the narrow pavement along the road to the supermarket was cluttered with bins left all over the place by the bin men (and this was before they were emptied !). Quite a few were very smelly. I was dodging left and right to squeeze through some narrow gaps while holding my breath when passing some bins. Other than that, is could have been pleasant in the sunshine and still a bit cool air.

  As odd as it sounds, one of the biggest reasons to go shopping at the little supermarket was to buy a couple of cans of Barr's "Shandyade" - a light beery taste with no alcohol or sugar. I think it is good stuff, and very unlike Barr's sugar free Orangeade. That tasted disgusting, and would later be poured down the sink. Of course I couldn't shop in there without buying some instant noodles.

  I bought a big 5 pack of habenero, lime, and chicken flavoured Korean noodles. I also bought some cake and biscuits. The biscuits were sugar free choc chip cookies - know to be very nice although slightly weird. The cake was a pack of 5 or 6 slices of full sugar Angel cake. It was one of the first things I tried, ages ago, that seemed not to affect my blood glucose readings if I did not have more than one slice a day. In fact it seemed to improve my blood glucose readings despite it should have made the readings worse.

  I also bought a couple of cans of beer. My bag was just a bit heavy as I made my way home. I tried the other side of the road to go home. It seemed marginally less cluttered with wheelie bins, and maybe only one was a bit smelly. I was still impeded enough to spoil what might have been a nicer walk - nicer because the sun was behind me in the homeward direction, and I wasn't being dazzled.

  Once I got home I put my shopping away. That involved shuffling things around in the beer fridges, and my main kitchen fridge freezer, to make room for the drinks I had bought. A bit later it would get worse because after I rest I went out again. This time it was to Tesco, and that probably meant I walked a whole mile of unmeasured, undocumented exercise yesterday.

  There were only a few definite things on my Tesco shopping list, but I ended up buying quite a lot, and much of it was beers !I found a couple of things on the reduced price shelf that could become dinners, and I grabbed a bag of salad leaves. That was almost all the food I bought. I filled my shopping basket up with beers, and one bottle of Diet Coke. I had to carry a second bottle in my hand when I went to the checkouts.

  All checkouts seemed very busy despite hardly any queues. It looked like a few people were shopping in advance of WW3 starting. The single man in front of me had a big shopping trolley piled over the brim. I could not decide if he was older or younger than me, but I think he may have been a little younger, but he was most definitely in far worse physical shape then me. He had to get the checkout girl to unload all he had bought onto the checkout, and then another member of staff packed it all for him as it was scanned. I suspect he had a bad back, and wondered how he would unload the trolley into his car, but he didn't have a car because I saw him using the freephone to call a cab. I suppose the cab driver was tasked with unload the shopping trolley in to the cab - which probably didn't amuse the cab driver. I can't even imagine what happened when the cab reached his house. It was probably all tossed onto the pavement.

  I had a considerable weight of drinks in my rucksack when I walked home. Fortunately I seem to be more physically fit than many people of a contemporary age, and carrying that weight was little effort, and I made fairly good time walking home with no angina pains, and not even feeling short of breath when I arrived home (although I was breathing a bit harder than usual). I didn't even feel the need for a rest before I started on my lunch, although I did have a lie down after I had eaten.

  My lunch featured a pack of, made in Germany, ready to eat, hot and spicy meatballs. To my taste buds they were neither hot or spicy, although maybe they had a hint of both. They only cost £1 so most definitely not made with 1st quality meat - and probably quite the opposite. As I write this it occurs to me they could have been the cause of some discomfort during the night, although while not tasting as advertised, they didn't taste bad in any way.

  Those meat balls were part one of my lunch. Part two was both nicer, and not so nice. It was pre-sliced Edam cheese wrapped around the last of the fig and spelt flavoured sourdough crackers. Wrapping them in thin cheese helped to protect the inside of my mouth being slashed by those sharp edged, extremely crisp, crackers. I think I had the last 6 crackers, and used three slices of Edam to wrap around them.

  I had a rest after lunch, but it was not as long as it could be because I had to do some preparations for a later afternoon beer tasting session with Jodie and Michael.  One thing was something I have been meaning to do for a while now. It was to scrub the PVC table cloth of spilt beer and crumbs around where Jodie sits. She is quite a messy eater, and it is all made worse by her liking for adding nuts and seed to her vegetarian meals.

  I was half expecting Jodie to arrive early like she has been doing on warm sunny days, but it was a little after 3:30pm when she arrived. I had managed to find a few beers in Tesco that she liked the sound of, and we started with a raspberry and white chocolate flavour beer. One of the things I wanted to do yesterday was to reduce my booze consumption for the simple reason I am seeing the diabetic nurse early this afternoon, and I wanted to try and keep some sort of control.

  For every can or bottle we opened I just had a very small taster, and Jodie (and later Michael) had to drink the rest. I was drinking water of soft drinks for some of the time. The previously mentioned Shandyade was one soft drink, and the Orangeade may have been a second, but it tasted so horrible that 3/4 of it went straight down the sink ! At the end of the session I felt almost completely sober, but that didn't help me when it came to choosing dinner.

  Michael joined us at about 4:30pm. He was not in a great mood, and some of it was because he had not had a chance to vent some of his problems to me for a fortnight. Last Thursday, and Sunday, Jodie was away, and I thought it was a good idea to be free to do other stuff (even if I didn't), and to not drink any booze. It wasn't long before I was feeling like the adult in the room.

  One of Michael's recent moods concerns doctors and prescriptions.  He has recently had trouble trying to get a repeat prescription for a drug he probably doesn't need, but has been taking for years. The chemist says they can't supply it until they get a script from his doctor, and he can't get hold of his doctor. At this point I have to hold my hand up and admit that I may have made it sound less impossible to see my doctor (mostly by taking backdoor routes).

  Michael now thinks he should change to my doctors, and he has one valid reason to do so - they are only about a 3 or 4 minute walk from where he lives. He is put off doing this (if indeed they are able to take him on) for a couple of reasons. One is that he is such an emotional person that he is wracked with guilt about turning his back in the surgery he has been registered with for something like the last 50 years. It seems impossible to convince him that there is no need for guilt if they are unable to give him any service.

  The other huge problem is that Michael cannot do anything online (except sign up for the paid service of Spotify [which he worships] and sign up to emails from Argos, Aldi, and all sorts of other stuff he feels the need to hear about.  Some of sign up to a new GP may be easier if done online, but most organisations recognise that there are those, usually the older generation, who not won't, but can't use modern technology to do stuff (I refuse to use the apps or online stuff to book appointments and stuff).

  I told Michael to go along to the surgery, probably around 11am when the mad morning is over, and tell the receptionist that he would like to sign up as a new patient. I told him that whatever happens to keep his mobile phone in his pocket and to say that he has no means of doing anything online. The receptionist will have to dig out, or print off the old paper form for Michael to fill out - just like I did when I signed up 20 or more years ago. The important thing, if he even finds the courage to do it, is to be firm, and stand his ground, and not to end up having a row with the receptionist. Apparently he did end up having a row at his current surgery, and they threatened to get the police to escort him of the premises !

  After Jodie and a bit later, Michael had left I had to make quick decisions about what to have for dinner. I may have been a lot closer to sober than most times after a beer session, but I still felt impatient and wanted something quick and simple. I decided it would be an excellent time to test out the new hot and spicy Korean noodles I had bought in the morning. They seemed to have more sugar than most instant noodles, but not a huge amount.

  I made them up quick enough, but with hindsight I realised I had added too much boiling water. They are the type of noodles where they suggest using a lot of boiling water, and maybe even simmer them for a few minutes before draining off the water before adding the vegetable flakes and flavouring. I just added boiling water on top of the noodles, flavouring and vegetables. It usually works OK, although some time the noodles can taste a bit floury.

  One unfortunate thing was that Star Trek: The New Generation had started (I had completely missed the 6 O'clock news), and the second episode was no more attention grabbing than the first episode of the series the day before. The upshot is that I was not distracted enough to allow time for my noodles to cool down. The water was still extremely hot, and the habanero and lime was very hot too. By the time I had eaten those noodles I had steam coming out my ears !

  I should have been satisfied with  just those noodles, but maybe because most of my experience of eating them was just blowing on them to try and cool them down, and trying not to let them touch the inside of my mouth, I felt like I wanted some more dinner, and for simplicity I had more instant noodles. This second portion was just plain chicken flavour, and I managed to let them cool down before I ate them. After the first lot they seemed rather bland and I sprinkled generous amounts of hot pepper sauce on them (which seemed quite mild compared to the other noodles).

  I felt fine when I went to bed at 10pm (I had stayed watching TV to watch an episode of QIXL after Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had finished). I don't think I managed to read any more than a couple pages before I put my book down, and quickly fell asleep. Although a lot of what I had drunk earlier was non alcoholic, it was still a lot of drink, and I fully expected to be awake every few hours to do a big pee. I think I woke around midnight to have a pee, but I don't recall it being very big.

  I had noted before I went to bed that my weight was unusually high compared to when going to bed most nights. I was relying on a lot of peeing to make me weigh less. I don't think I peed much when I woke up around 3am, and it was probably because I was distracted by a very uncomfortable stomach ache. I realised that I needed to poo, and yet it didn't actually feel like I needed to.

  I was back and forward between my bed and the toilet for nearly an hour before suddenly, and with little prior warning, all hell broke loose, I had a poo all right, and it started off hard, and then in the same motion it turned closer to diarrhoea. I think I went twice more in the space of 15 minutes, and the latter was very "loose". It took a while before I realised it was probably safe to go back to sleep.

  There are two possible suspects that caused that stomach upset, and I am nit sure if it was really either of them. As mentioned much further up the page, there were the meatballs I had. They did not taste or smell like they had gone off, and I feel sure they would have smelled really bad if they had. The other thing was the habanero and lime flavouring of the noodles I had. It was extremely spicy, and potentially could have upset my stomach, but I feel sure I have survived worse with no ill effects (except a sore bottom the next morning !).

  After losing over an hour of sleep I decided to try and sleep late. I didn't expect it to work, but I managed to sleep until almost 8am, although I did wake at just after 6am us usual for a pee. I still didn't think I had peed as much as I should have, although there was some extra water involved in my very loose stools (as they say in medical circles). Even with all that pooing, I appear to have put on a lot of weight, 1.6kg, which does not seem possible considering the amount I ate.

  If I had put on that much weight then surely my blood glucose would be a disaster ? It seems not. The Contour meter read 7.8mmol/l. That is a little higher than yesterday, but still very good. The GlucoRX meter read a little lower at 7.6mmol/l - just 0.1 over my current target. The Contour Plus meter, once again, read exactly the same at the Contour meter, 7.8mmol/l. All readings in the light green and OK to print out and show to the diabetic nurse this afternoon.

  I do have a few things to do this morning. One I've already mentioned, printing out my blood glucose readings spreadsheet, and also my weight and blood pressure too. I will need a shower and wash my hair, but mostly I will relax until it is time to walk to the surgery. I will also keep my fingers crossed that the nurse I see is the nice one, and not the one who is all stick and no carrot.