09:00 GMT

  This morning has started off bright, and large areas of the sky are blue. Apparently it should be raining. There was definitely rain during the night, and the road is still looking wet, but it seems like it would be unlikely to rain this morning. At this point it is worth consulting the Met Office forecast for a slightly more optimistic forecast (although still possibly wrong). It says light rain this morning as well, but from midday, and the next few hours it predicts it will be dry with sunny spells. It still predicts the afternoon will only be 10° C, the same as the BBC forecast (as seen above). For tomorrow the BBC predicts rain or drizzle all day, but the Met Office predicts mostly dry until 5pm, and then some lightb rain lasting into the evening. Both forecast predict and afternoon high of just 10° C again.

  Yesterday's rain, even if not heavy, and with scattered dry periods, was enough to make me want to stay indoors. The possibility, or even likelihood of chest pains was one negative, and the rain doubled the negative. It was easier, and still productive to stay in the warm, get a few snoozes in, and generally rest, but not exclusively.

  Yesterday morning my blood glucose was rather good, and I think that gave me a false sense of how my body, specifically my Pancreas, was working. I think I only made one big error, and I'll be describing that lower down the page. Not doing any exercise, as in walking to the shops as originally intended, didn't help things.

  After I had breakfasted, and had a snooze, I should have had a shower, and I was going to wash my hair, but if I was not going out, and expecting no visitors, I could not be bothered. What I did do was to get y two big builders buckets out, and filled one with hot water and detergent. I found I had more laundry to do than I thought, and put a fair bit of it into soak. That may have been less than half of what was in my laundry bag.

  I left the laundry soaking in detergent while I got on with other things. One thing I kept reminding myself about was to make sure I finished the job before bed time so the bath would be clear if I wanted a shower this morning - which I may well do. I think I did some reading next, and then it seemed time for lunch. My lunch was a pesto chicken sub roll bought from Tesco a couple of days ago. It had the potential to be nice, but I think the bread was starting to get rather chewy as it started to go stale.

  After a post lunch lie down I got back to my laundry. I had no trouble getting through half the job, but then I got some extremely subtle hints that I was getting a bit tired. On top of that I was getting some very mild back ache. That would ordinarily ignorable, but the merest hint that I might get some chest pains was sufficient to make me stop and rest for an our or two before resuming the job. At the end there was just enough room on the big clothes horse to dry it all with the aid of a fan heater on low (which I left on overnight). Everything was dry this morning.

  There was one other important thing I did yesterday, and I think it was in the afternoon. I rung up "Patient Transport", to request transport to Kings College on Tuesday 3rd February. That is when I hope I will have my procedure to replace my faulty heart valve. Once again I was told to be ready for a 5am pickup - 3 hours before my appointment time. It is going to be another long slow journey picking up more patients along the way. I expect that 5am pick up will be closer to 6am, and we will get to the hospital over half an hour early.

  Not a lot happened for the rest of the afternoon. It was the usual being very lazy, having snoozes, and quietly reading. It sounds boring, but I was quite content waiting for the excitement of dinner. My dinner was a part home made dish of raost sprouts with some bacon, plus some mixed vegetables cooked with the sprouts. I added a sprinkle of ready grated cheese (actually four cheeses). It should have been super healthy, although the only thing it seems to have done is make my farts extra stinky.

  I have nothing new to say about the evening - it was just watching the same old selection of TV programmed I keep describing. One small, but not that rare, change was that I went to bed before Have I Got News For You started at 9 (or was it 10pm ?). I felt ready for bed early. I did read in bed for perhaps half an hour, and then I turned the light out. I think I felt asleep almost instantly.

  It felt like I should have slept well last night, but evidently I didn't. I know I woke quite a few times to go for a pee, and in a way the same happened in the morning. I woke at about 5am thinking I could get up then, but after a pee I got back in bed, and in what seemed like a very short time I was getting an extra hour of sleep. I did the same thing once more before getting up quite late.

  I had one more pee, and it was of a fair size, before getting on the scales. It is a shame I didn't have a poo (and as I write this I still haven't despite it feeling like I need to) because a good poo would probably have made enough different to say I lost a little (tiny) bit of weight yesterday. In reality it seems my weight this morning, which is fairly good, is exactly the same as yesterday, which was OK-ish, but I still want to lose another 20kg if I can - and which may only happen once I can start doing some long walks again.

  My blood glucose is a bit poor this morning. I think I may have eaten a whole Angel Cake yesterday (although maybe I started it te day before yesterday. I am pretty sure it wasn't the sprouts I had for dinner that has raised my blood glucose this morning. One reading, on the Nexus blood glucose meter was tickling the bottom of the danger zone with a reading of 9.1mmol/l. The other two meters were not that bad with readings of 8.1mmol/l (fairly OK) and 8.7mmol/l (OK, but higher than I like).

  Today I am going to see how I feel about another shopping trip. Judging by the lack of any negative reactions going up the stairs here, I may not feel too bad on a 6 or 7 minute walk to the shops. Maybe the deal breaker will be that there is nothing essential I need, and I mostly want to do it as exercise/practice. Once again, it depends on it being dry because walking in the rain for no good reason is a step too far !

   1,295 words today.