07:30 BST

  This morning started with some rain, but it is either so light that it is hard to see, or it has stopped. Towards the west it looks like it is brightening up a bit. It is a shame it isn't to the east where the sun is ! If, and it is a very big if, the forecast contains any truth, by 10am the rain will be no more than some drizzle, and by 11am we could be having a few sunny spells. It will be dull again for most of the afternoon, but from 5pm the sunny spells may return, and the last two hours of daylight could be full sunshine. For all that, the highest temperature may still be only 21° C, and that for one single hour at 6pm. This morning started off a bit chilly at just 14° C, and thanks to clear skies tonight, tomorrow may start off even colder at just 13° C, but strong sunshine should start to warm things up quite quickly. Apart from the first few hours of the afternoon, when only sunny spells are forecast, the whole day should see strong sunshine, and the temperature should reach 23° C. That starts the slow build up to another heatwave with temperatures of 30° C of more in a few more days time.

  Yesterday was one of those days when unexpected things happened. The first unexpected thing happened just after I finished writing. It was a long phone call from a friend. Much of it was semi boring - stuff about mobile phone signal strengths, with my friend quoting where all the local masts are.

  Of course not all of the call was boring. Some of it was about our health, and he spoke very positively about the new wonder weight loss drug, Mounjaro, the drug I was offered by the nurse last Friday. He told me his neighbour had lost 6 stone after taking it. I think I will end up taking it, but I want to see where my next appointment with a doctor, at 11am this very morning, takes me. I would rather have one lot of potential treatment at a time, and be in a stable position before starting more treatment.

  I think it was gone 1pm when I told my friend I really had to go because I needed to shower, and get ready for a visit from Jodie later on in the afternoon for a beer tasting session. I think it was just after I had a shower, and was basically dressed for drinking, that Jodie phoned me to say all the trains had stopped running because of a signalling fault. As she was talking I checked the National Rail website (not very good or useful since the "coloured pencils" department tried to improve the web site.

  Jodie claimed to have been at the station, and maybe was at the station. From what I could see it seemed she had just missed the last on time train but just 2 minutes. The signalling fault seemed to be in London somewhere, and was only affecting trains going to Hayes (Kent) station, the terminus where they come out again, back towards London. Had Jodie caught that train she would have been here on time, and the rains were all back to normal when she left here to go home.

  Jodie is not great company these days, but a bit of company, and some beer would have made for a better afternoon. On the other hand, with my doctors appointment this morning, it was actually a blessing not to worry about drinking too much and having a food frenzy if I was too drunk. With little else to do, I spent most of the afternoon, and the start of the evening, watching the whole of series 8 (or possibly 9) of Red Dwarf.

 I am unsure of the exact time, but that is not important, when I decided if I wasn't drinking it gave me some leeway to have a few snacks. One such snack was just rice crackers with cheese. Another was a small portion of plain vanilla ice cream. I expected the latter to ruin my blood glucose, but once again it seemed to do the opposite. There was something else about these things that I will mention.

  I was recently reading about space stuff, and one bit caught my eye. It was about one of the astronauts who was on one of the longer Gemini missions (pre Apollo), probably in 1968. It was because there were no toilet facilities in the very cramped Gemini capsules that the astronauts wore nappies, but preferred not to have to use them. To help them in this respect they only ate what was described as "low residue" foods.

  In simple terms, most of what they ate was converted into sugars that can be absorbed into the blood, and leave very little to end up as poo. One astronaut claimed an unofficial (and probably untrue) record of 5 days without having to "open his bowels".  Apparently many of those astronauts were very happy to land and use proper facilities !

  I mention this because a lot of what I ate yesterday, and maybe even the day before, might be low residue foods. Instant noodles, being mostly starch are probably mostly completely absorbed in the gut. I expect that rice crackers and cheese are semi low residue, and the ice cream, being mostly frozen water, is probably almost zero residue. Last night's dinner was two small pots of flavoured miso with a little bit of chicken, a few small amounts of vegetables, and probably 50% noodles.

  You may guess that this is leading up to another confession of being, or seeming to be, constipated again. Where this idea falls down is that if all that starch was converted to sugars, where did the sugars go ? I'll come to it in more detail a few paragraphs later, but basically my blood glucose readings were very good, and not as presumed to be, very bad this morning.

  I can't seem to remember if I watched any live TV last night. I don't think I did because I had no idea what the time was when it seemed like a good idea to go to bed when I started to yawn. It was another night when I only managed to read another two pages of my book (I had read a fair bit more during the day), before I put the book down, turned out the light, and quickly fell asleep.

  Before I actually went to bed I had a pee, and it seemed to be quite a lot. That was the sort of thing I was hoping for because the more I peed in the night, the more my swollen leg would un-swell, and the lower my weight would be in the morning. I did seem to pee more, in quantity last night, although I am unsure of the frequency of waking and peeing.

  Mostly I slept well, but with the temperature dropping through the night, and ending up quite low this morning, my bedroom also cooled off a bit, but maybe only a degree or two. That was enough to go from feeling almost very slightly too warm, to feeling cool enough to pull my empty duvet cover over me. I even treated myself to 30 minutes of the heater on low when I got up.

  I had several dreams in the night. I only remember some of one dream, and it was a dream about being at work. Much of it is hard to explain because it involved things that would not be familiar to most people outside what was quite a small industry. Some of the dream concerned the internal wiring of a small, specialised, motor. It should have taken maybe half an hour, but was taking ages because I kept ending up with a spare wire, and nowhere to terminate it.

  Other parts of the dream concerned one persons desire for me to have an absolutely clear bench - even in the middle of working on stuff. That was a battle of will that ended when I partly won by getting the other party to compromise. The worst bit of the dream was when it was time to go home. Someone had been tidy up stuff elsewhere, and I could not find my coat. I needed it because it was raining outside. It was suggested there were some spare coats of the coat hooks, but none were big enough for me, plus I would be taking someone else's coat.

  I woke up this morning with the empty duvet cover partly over me, and feeling a little too warm. As soon as I uncovered myself I felt cold. I am amazed at my very narrow temperature comfort zone when in my bedroom, and in a state of relaxation (or sleeping). It seems just 2 degrees is the difference between feeling hot or cold. As mentioned a bit up the age, I treated myself to maybe half an hour of the heater on low. It only raised the temperature in  bedroom a degree, maybe two, but it was enough to feel comfortable. It has been off now for a couple of hours, and the temperature has dropped, but I am more active, and I have had some hot instant noodles for breakfast.

  I had high hopes that the extra peeing I thought I had done in the night, back to how it was before my sudden rise in weight, would have seen some weight loss. Having a poo (which I still haven't had, but hopefully will do before I go to the doctors surgery) might have helped. Oh well it does seem I have lost a whole 100gm. It is very little, but if I could do that every morning for a week I would get back closer to where I left off.

  I was stunned when I checked my blood glucose readings. All the extra peeing, and eating stuff like the ice cream yesterday, should have meant my blood glucose had gone up, and possibly quite a bit. What I actually measured was so low that all three readings were in the green, and not light green, but one better, dark green (according to my own spreadsheet colour coding scheme). The Contour meter read 6.4mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read 6.3mmol/l. The Contour Plus meter was almost the odd one out with a reading of 6.7mmol/l.

  Those low readings were amazing, and I think closer to the region where the "all stick and no carrot" nurse said, or even nagged me to hit every single day, and the only exceptions would be if they were even lower. I have not seen readings this low since the early days of almost crash dieting in the early days of first being diagnosed as diabetic. At the time, just stopping drinking gallons of full sugar Coca Cola made for a huge drop, but by then the damage had been done, and the long road to today started.

  Next on my agenda today is to wash my hair and have a shower. At about 10:45, or 10:50 at the latest I shall take a walk to the surgery, and see what develops with Dr Arthur - a doctor I am sure I have never met before. After that I hope I will go around the corner to buy some stuff from Aldi. Once home I doubt I will do anything else all day except eat - very carefully !