08:17 BST

  The sky looks very similar to how it looked for most of yesterday. It means that the sunny spells forecast for right now are not happening, and it seems unlikely the sun will break through for hours, and possibly not at all today. On the other hand, with sunny spells forecast for the whole afternoon, and early evening, at least one must happen ! The forecasts says a maximum of 23° C today.  Tomorrow, like most mornings now, will start off rather cool, just 15° C, and it may only warm up to 21° C. The morning may, and probably will, start very dull, but at midday we may get sunny spells. From 2pm we may get full sunshine. The wind will be from the north, and so presumably that will make the 21° C feel even colder. It will be like feeling the first breath of Autumn, and with Winter close on it's heels.

  Maybe I am getting numb to it, but yesterday was dull enough to be very depressing, and yet it wasn't. Even terrible blood glucose results and a lot of weight gain didn't seem to make me feel depressed, although both made me very careful. Despite that lack of bad depression, I still didn't do much again.

  It was a mix of not having much to say, and another effort at keeping the length of yesterday's writing short, that resulted in just writing 1,780 words yesterday. I'm not sure if I realised it at the time, but I wasn't under any pressure to finish writing as early as I could. It would only make one difference if I had twice the stuff to write about, and if I had continued to write until, or even past midday. That one difference would have been delaying the relief of finishing writing, and having my usual rest.

  Yesterday I wrote that if I felt a snooze coming on I would not fight it during that post-writing rest. Now the odd thing is that I didn't have anything to fight. I know I did close my eyes for a minute or two, but I am sure I didn't fall asleep. I just spent about half an hour reading my book. There was one thing that was playing on my mind that may have kept me alert. It was that I had to finish rinsing and wringing out the large-ish bath towel I had been washing in small stages for the previous 24 hours or more.

  It think it was not long after 11am, and at a time when I would often be resting, and sometimes snoozing, that I got back to that towel. I think I managed another 5 or 6 rinses before I gave up. There did still seem to be some soap embeded in the towel, but the water was almost clear of suds, and I declared the job done, and after a final extra strength wringing out, I hung the towel up to dry. All I have to do now is to remember to wash that towel again after it has only been used for a couple of days (and before it soaks up too much soap from my body - soap I am always sure I have rinsed off !
  It was getting close to midday, and I had fasted all morning. Somehow it felt OK doing that, but I was starting to feel a bit peckish. I felt it important to check my blood glucose again before deciding to eat or continue fasting. In the spirit of madness I used all my blood glucose meters (except the newest one which I have no tests strips left until I get my next repeat prescription on Wednesday).

  For me, the two meters I trust the most are top left in the picture. The Contour meter reading 8.0mmol/l, and the GlucoRX meter reading 8.3mmol/l. The Contour Plus meter (top right) gave a higher reading of 8.9mmol/l, and that was just low enough, by the skin of it's teeth to OK a careful lunch. On the bottom row, on the left is the nice looking meter that seems to give super high readings. The next along, The VivaChek gave a very nice low reading of 7.8mmol/l. That did surprise me. Finally, the Sinocare meter read a bad, but only a tiny bit worse than the Contour Plus meter, reading of 9.0mmol/l.
 
  Note the random time setting of the meters on the bottom row ! Those on the top row more or less agree, although the Contour meter is still on GMT, but in a month or two we will all be on GMT.  On the basis of only believing the best readings, I gave in and had a fairly safe lunch of smoked mackerel with rainbow coleslaw (part based on a yoghurt dressing, and with a moderately low sugar content). The naughty thing was having a small portion of ice cream afterwards.

  One thing that got some attention yesterday was the state of my beer orders.  The first update was an email to say that my Left Field Beers order was now packed and awaiting pickup by the courier. Then I got an email to say DPD had now issued a tracking number for my Beer Merchants order, and they would be collecting my order later in the day. this was all good news, and my guess was that I might expect deliver of both today.

  I didn't really do much at all yesterday afternoon. I probably spent most of the afternoon either reading my book, or catching up on all the news stories I wanted to read from https://www.theregister.com/. I had allowed a huge backlog to grow because I seemed to be too busy doing other stuff, even if I have no idea what much of the other staff was. Maybe the backlog started to grow when I was spending a lot of time editing the photos I took at Petts Wood Calling.

  That reminds me of another thing I did yesterday. I have a small desire, which there is a small possibility I might realise this coming Friday evening. Chain are playing at The Swan pub in West Wickham. Provided I use the bus to get to the top of the hill where the pub is, it is a fairly easy pub to get too. One curious fact is that the gig is supposed to start at 8:45pm, and although it is not early at all, it seems early (in the same way that £5.99 seems significantly less than £6) enough that it has tempted me.

  If I do get there I don't expect I will stay more than an hour, although if it is not too crowded I might possibly hold out for another hour. One thing I don't want to do is to lug my big heavy Nikon camera and big heavy lens to the pub. I decided I would use my much lighter Canon EOS 1200D camera. I spent a bit of time making sure all the batteries are charged. I didn't realise I have 4 batteries for that camera. As far as I know, all batteries are still in good condition, and each would last a whole afternoon and more at a festival. The amount of use at a small gig for maybe just a single hour, will barely scratch the charge on a battery.

  I spent a little time considering what lens(es) to use. I could go back to my roots with a fixed (non zoom) but large aperture lens that allows plenty of light in even when the lighting is dim. On the other hand, a zoom lens is more flexible, and I chose a Tamron 18 to 200mm zoom lens. Once again it depends on the light, but I am pretty sure I will be using a flash gun with that lens. I remembered to pack a spare set of batteries (ordinary AA cells) for the flash gun.

  Very soon it was getting on for dinner time. I left it a bit late to "cook" my dinner, and allow a cooling of period, before the BBC 6 O'clock news started. Well that was no trouble because the first 15 minutes of the news was a report worth 5 minutes or less of what Trump has been up to. I did watch about 5 minutes of it before nipping down to the kitchen to zap a Tesco prawn curry ready meal in the microwave. The BBC were still re-re-reporting all the speculations about Trump.

  I shouldn't have done it, but I enjoyed a second portion of ice cream for dessert after that prawn curry. I definitely wanted something more because by my personal reckoning, that ready me for one was only enough for 2/3rds of a meal for one. I must admit that ice cream did slide down a treat after the curry - not that it was anything more than a very mild curry according to my taste buds.

  I part wasted the next two hours watching the two Star Treks Sky Mix were showing. Actually, thinking back, the Star Trek: The New Generation was actually quite a good story, with Captain Picard using his full Shakespearean actor repertoire at times - and to good effect.  I barely remember the plot of Star Trek: Deep Space nine, and so I conclude it was another crap episode. At 9pm there was a fair edition of Have I Got News For You on Dave.

  At 10pm I went to bed, and I read for a bit, but I don't think it was for all that long before I felt like trying for sleep, and getting it. I am unsure is it was a good thing, a bad thing, or just "one of those things", but the next thing I knew was that I was waking up thinking I had slept for a full 8 hours. I then saw the clack saying it was only just gone midnight. That accounted for it being dark outside. I went for a pee, and was asleep again minutes later.

  I remember getting up for a few more pees in the night, but only in a sort of dreamlike way. The only real significant thing I remember from the night, apart from a few hazy, indistinct, freeze frames from a couple of dreams, was that at about 5am I was feeling a bit cool, and turning the heater on low before falling asleep again in what seemed like seconds. It was almost as if I was still very tired, but I didn't (and don't) feel that way when I got up about 6.30am.

  I weighed myself before going to bed, and it seemed I would never loose as much weight as needed to get back on track. However, I did have a main pee after getting up, and a smaller pee after counting out my drugs and vitamins for the day. I never did a poo, but I expect like far too many days, that might happen later in the morning. The scales said that I managed to lose 1.1kg since yesterday. That is impossible by normal means, but I think much of the loss was all the water that was causing my left leg to swell yesterday. It is almost normal this morning. Maybe that is where all Sunday's beer drained to - literally "hollow legs" !

  My blood glucose is not as low as I would like this morning, but it is back to OK again, and maybe that is good enough provided I am a little careful today. The Contour meter read 8.2mmol/l - not great, but acceptable. The GlucoRX meter read 7.5mmol/l, and that is spot on my current target, and thus very good. The Contour Plus was only in mild exaggeration mode with a reading of 8.8mmol/l. Even that is just about good enough.

  The two highlights of today will be the delivery of my beers. I have now heard from both courier. The Beer Merchants order should be delivered between 11:08 and 12:08. They usually get their estimates about right, and I would not be surprised if it arrived at 11:34. Once that is delivered I will have a shower. If there was any proof the sun still existed I might consider going for a walk, even if it is no more than to Catford Bridge station to get a copy of The Metro.

  My order from Left Field Beer is estimated to be delivered between 15:21 and 17:21. That is rather a large window, and I am not confident they will even manage it in that time. It would be nice if it is closer to 15:21 so that I can finally relax rather then being on very high alert for 2 hours (and getting cross if it is late). I think I may use a bit of the afternoon to do a small amount of laundry - maybe no more than 2 t-shirts and 4 or 5 pairs of underpants.