09:40 GMT

  There was evidence that there was rain in the night. The road outside looked wet, and I could see some rain drops glistening on the leaves of some succulents in my back garden. The rain seems to have passed now, and the forecast says the rest of today will be dull, but dry. The afternoon will, once again, reach 10° C, and like yesterday will slowly fall away to just 6° C. There will be a small chance (21%) of rain by then. Apart from some drizzle at 9am, tomorrow is shown as dry, but grey. Once again we will see a similar temperature range - the afternoon should reach 10° C, and it will be just 7° C at midnight.

  Throwing off my Covid infection has made life seem closer to normal. I still have to contend with my faulty heart valve, but while I avoid too much effort/exercise (basically being mostly lazy) it has no bearing on my life. This means that some normality has returned to my life. Yesterday was another day when I was happy to do a few normal things.

  As mentioned yesterday, I wasted almost a whole night of sleep in pursuit of erotic fantasies - trying to set my self up for some "interesting" dreams. They never happened - which is par for the course. Trying to influence dreams before you have them rarely works. Anyway, it left me feeling very tired, and I spent a fair amount of time snoozing yesterday. That included one long snooze in the afternoon that started off in daylight, but ended after dark. Admittedly it was semi late in the afternoon when I started.

  It had been my plan to have a good wash under the shower, and go out for a short walk, probably a light shopping trip, but that never happened. I'm not entirely clear why not. I felt it should be OK, but I just could not raise the enthusiasm for it. Maybe I was just too busy snoozing. I have to say that all that snoozing was very enjoyable - at least I thought it must have been.

  One notable thing was having a rummage in the freezer for some lunch. I found some sweet potato chips I remember buying shortly before this latest heart event. Sweet potato is somehow better for you. It may be less starch and more fibre, but that is a guess. What I can say is a plate of them at lunchtime was a very nice lunch, and one I may repeat today.

  The big thing in the afternoon, once my lunch had settled down was to do some more laundry. I still have at least two more loads to do before I clear a small backlog. Yesterday it was to wash more stuff I had worn in hospital, and that included two pairs of pajama bottoms (one of which was actually exercise/lounge pants) plus some underpants. It was all pretty smelly.

  As I started doing it I had the notion that I might feel OK to do the whole lot non stop, but I got as far as the final rinse and decided to take a break. I came back to it an hour or so later and wrung out the final rise water, and then the fabric conditioner. I hung it all on the large clothes horse in the front room, and because I seem to have become numb to the amount of electricity I am burning, I left a fan heater on "one bar" (1 kW) blowing at it overnight. It is all dry this morning.

  As part of my rummaging around in the freezer I came across a packet of Aldi fish fingers, and I had a sudden strong desire for some for my dinner. It was truly a momentous time because I only cooked a half a packet (about 5 fish fingers). I had them with a (probably) very healthy "vegetable medley" (or mixed vegetables as it said on the packet). The mix was peas, sliced green beans and some carrots and sweet corn. Of course I ruined it all by melting some cheese on the vegetables and covering the whole plate with tomato ketchup.

   For all my strong desire for fish fingers, I did not find that dinner to be super wonderful, although it was pretty nice. Maybe what I really craved was fish finger sandwiches. I am sure I will have them some other day. I rounded off dinner with the last of the ice cream in the freezer - lemon and pistachio flavour. It was very nice but maybe not as nice as it sounds it could be. If things go to plan today I will revert to just plain vanilla ice cream for future desserts.

  My evening was a fairly typical evening - watching some of my favourite TV stuff. Sadly some of it was not good. One of the Star Treks I watched was a pretty poor episode. Later on I just could not watch QI. One of the woman on the panel had some sort of speech impediment. It was possible she was deaf and had never learned to speak properly, or maybe it was some sort of neurological problem. What I do know is that it was hard to follow her, and unpleasant to to try to. It was a brave step in promoting equality, but maybe a step too far for television.

  Last night I abandoned any idea of trying to force erotic dreams (with or without pretty nurses), and just concentrated on sleeping. That was a far better idea, and I think I slept really well. So much so that after waking at 5am, when if things were normal, and it was mid summer, I could have been tempted to get up, but after a pee I went back to sleep and I slept for another two hours. I think I actually felt refreshed when I got up this morning.

  I do remember one fairly long dream. It contained no nurses, or anything of an erotic nature. It could have been nightmarish, but it was sort of interesting, and rather weird for that. In my dream I seemed to be back working for BT and was visiting one of the big London exchanges. I could have easily walked down one flight of stairs to the floor below, but opted to take a lift. The lift was odd in that instead of a buttons for individual floors there was a keyboard with a three digit display.

  I wanted to go to floor one and so keyed in 001. The lift started moving, but it went up instead of down. I saw we had reached floor ten of what I though was an 8 storey building. At the 10th floor the lift started moving sideways, and had converted to a single car tube train (or at least reminded me of a tube train). There was a viaduct that we crossed, and then went through a building without stopping in it. I wondered just where this mysterious location 001 actually was.

  I had a feeling I had discovered some sort of secret place hidden in plain sight. The lift travelled for some distance twoards rising ground - a fairly steep hill. We soon entered a tunnel and the ride really did seem like I was in a tube train. Now the sad thing is that I didn't get to discover where location 001 was. I woke up before we got there, and that was a bit disappointing because it was an enjoyable dream.

  It was after the dream that I had my pee, and then went back to sleep. I ended up getting up quite late. It didn't matter what time I got up, and wouldn't really have mattered if I had spent the whole day in bed, but I still felt mildly annoyed by it. It set my whole day back. For instance it is now 11am, and there are things I am hoping to try and do today. So far I have managed two thing things - things I usually manage with no effort every morning.

  The first thing is assessing my health. It is not bad, and not good, and that ignores my faulty heart valve. First reading is my weight. I have actually managed to lose 400gm this morning. If I can keep this up I may be back on target in a week or so.....possibly. My blood glucose is not great, but 7.8, 8.1 and 8.3mmol/l are good enough (and possiblt pretty good considering I had some chocolate last night, although it was 85% cocoa solids chocolate and has a low sugar content. My blood pressure is, if anything, slightly low, but I believe 102/45 is acceptable.

  Once I have finished writing I think I have a snooze calling. Maybe it will have to be after that when I have a shower. Once clean I want to get dressed to go out shopping to Tesco. I say "want to" instead of will do because I am finding it all too easy to be ultra lazy, but I have to keep reminding myself that even if I can get fully back in condition until my heart valve is replaced, it would be nice to get some tone in my leg muscles before that lose all tone.

  Being able to do short walks is getting ever more important. It is only 6 days away when I have to get to Kings College hospital, and then get home again. I can probably call "Patient Transport", but I would like to do the journey on a train. I haven't been on a train for too long now. I'll fortget how to do it if I wait too long !








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