Today may have started with full sunshine, but it was a cold morning with the temperature around 8° C. By now the sunshine should be reduced to sunny spells, but it looks like the sunshine might last a bit longer. If we are really lucky there won't be the 2 hour gap in the sunny spells mid afternoon. Sadly the sunny spells may not raise the temperature higher than 15° C today. The temperature will dip tonight, but some warm winds will warm things up a bit at 3am. Tomorrow could start at 10° C, but the sunny spells may not start until 11am again, and even then will be a bit sparse. That will keep the temperature down to 17° C - which is admittedly more than today, but may still feel a little cool when there is no sunshine. Things look better for Sunday, and on Monday I expect I will be wearing shorts !

   Yesterday was a typical Thursday - good in parts, and not good at all at other times. The latter particularly so when it comes to the facts about what I ended up eating - a fact I knew would happen, and I did try and get a grip on it, and failed badly according to my health records.

  I'm not sure that the word "busy" is the right word for it, but it seems the simplest way to describe my morning, yesterday. It is the correct word to describe writing yesterday's electronic diary. With all the pictures, and the need to describe them all, it all added up to a lot of writing, 3,063 words of it. This and some of my longer bits of writing seem too long for even me to bother to read, and so I have no idea if anyone ever reads them.

  After I finished writing I had a rest, but that was very busy in a different sort of way. Unlike the Philip K. Dick books I last read, and which seemed very turgid, and just never seemed to grab my attention. My re-reading of Steve Squyres' "Roving Mars" is very attention grabbing. Steve Squyres was the head of the team that designed one of the Mars Rovers. It starts with all the heartache of designs being turned down for one reason or another over the space of 11 years, and then his design concept gets the green light for a trip to Mars. Then it goes on with the technical hurdles that had to overcome before finally it is launched, and started roving Mars.

  It was quite hard to put the book down, and to go and have a shower. By then I worried I had left myself short of time, and didn't wash my hair as intended. The only deadline I was up against was the hugely unlikely idea that the man from Amazon would get here very early in the afternoon. In fact he arrived with my parcel at 5:20pm, which I guess was more the sort of time I would really expect the delivery to happen - but there has been at least one extremely rare occasion of a delivery around 1pm.

  After my shower I had a couple of hours, and in fact it was even later in reality, to get things ready for a Thursday afternoon beer tasting session with Jodie, and possibly Michael. Later on Michael let me know he couldn't make it again. Either he was too busy or too depressed. He didn't say. Anyway, I did a quick clean up in the kitchen, because I knew Jodie would probably be wanting to cook some lunch, and I cleaned the dining room table as well as polish the glasses.

 Jodie arrived a little after 3:30pm - back to her more typical arrival time after a couple of weeks of being extra early.  It was a typical beer tasting session - we had good and bad beers. Jodie had a few things to say at first, and then was very sparse with any comments for the rest of the time as she diverted most of her attention to her mobile phone. I'm not absolutely sure, but I think she has given up playing games on the phone, and moved on to the next age bracket, and spends ages doom scrolling through Instagram, and other similar things.

  One of the very best beers we had yesterday is pictured on the left. It was Floris honey beer. It was not beer brewed using honey as a source of sugar, like mead. The honey was added after brewing to give a very intense honey flavour. It did mean it was very sweet, and the amount of sugar (and sugar from honey is just sugar - there is no magic about it) was probably not good for me. On the other hand, a 250ml bottle split between the two of use meant my dose was not very big (about a quarter of a pint maybe).

  I was starting to get a bit soused when the doorbell rang. As hoped, it was Amazon with my parcel. It was was a pair of wide fitting trainers I had ordered. I didn't try them on at that time, but I did inspect them. They seemed to look OK, and seemed like they were higher quality than some supermarket trainers I have bought. Those bought from Aldi seem to be a very good fit, but it seems like the sole and heel area just get flattened under my weight, and after maybe a few weeks of use start to feel a bit uncomfortable.


   Jodie was originally intending to leave around 6:30pm to get a bus to meet Alan in Bromley, she still did leave around that time, but her arrangements went all to pot. Alan was in Crystal Palace, and intending to get the 227 bus to Bromley, but they were on diversion. According to the TFL website the diversion should probably have made the journey even shorter, but Alan was complaining that there were huge queues for buses that didn't seem to arrive. I suspect he was at the wrong stop, but eventually Jodie and Alan decided they would meet in Penge.

  After Jodie went I had my dinner, and watched the last half hour of the BBC 6 O'clock news. My dinner was two bowls of Sainsbury's read made salad - one was their Greek inspired salad, and the other was Italian inspired. That was all good and healthy, but it was what I ate before and after that did the damage. Before drinking I had two of the Aldi, very greasy, very delicious chicken tikka samosas. While drinking I ate quite a lot of Cheddars - tasty biscuit/cracker like things. I also had a packet of crisps. Individually these things seemed OK, but together they were trouble.

  The trouble didn't stop there. After my salads I had more Cheddars with a lump of cheese on the side, and after that I had some "no added sugar" (but not zero sugar) butter biscuits.  I almost could have eaten even more after that, but I knew I had to stop, and did so. Luckily I also managed to suppress a stray thought that I might have even more beer as well.

  It was while watching Star Trek: Voyager, after the news had finished, that I tried on my new trainers. Voyager was a semi OK episode, but not so great that I didn't care to miss bits of pieces of it while trying on my my new trainers. The wide fitting seemed to make a good difference. They felt a bit stiff, as most new shoes do, but they did seem comfortable they short time I wore them. It included going downstairs to the kitchen, and than back up again.

  I predict it will take a little bit of time for my feet to get used to them, and then they should be comfortable for some long walks. If they do turn out to be very comfortable than I am going to order a spare pair. I am hoping I will get them at the same price - which seemed to be £5 less than the UK recommended price. I watched a single episode of The Simpsons next, and then, before I headed to bed, I did some foot maintenance.
  This very poor picture, taken in a rush just before I started writing, is of my "Foot Pedi". In engineering terms it is a battery powered grindstone for abrading hard dead skin from the feet. It is a job I have been meaning to do for months, if not years. I have no idea when I last used it. I think a second session would be beneficial, but from the amount of dust it gave off, I must have ground off quite a lot of dead skin - mainly around the heel. My feet did seem to feel good for it, but it will take a real walk, even if just to Tesco and back, to see if it is a real improvement.

  I can't remember when it was, but my sleep did not get off to a good start last night. I always use two pillows, One is a big soft one, and the other an old one that is now thin and sort of hard. That had gradually got rucked up, and my pillow just felt wrong - so wrong that my neck was aching. I got up again, and beat the thin pillow back into shape again, and suddenly my pillows were comfortable again.

  All the thrashing around beforehand lead to two things. I didn't quite get as bad as acid indigestion, but my stomach did not feel good. I took a few antacid tablets, and that sorted that out. A couple of Paracetamol tablets sorted out the aching neck, but took half an hour to work. I spent that half hour, and maybe a bit longer reading stuff on my PC. When I went back to bed I laid down, and rested my head on my now comfortable pillows, and I don't think it took more than a few minutes before I was fast asleep.

  I can remember part of a dream. It was set in the years when I worked, but I don't think the dream showed where I worked, or what I did. The bit I remember started just after left work, and I think it was actually during the working day. I was going to a new ice cream shop that did Polish ice cream. I think I had been there once before in the day, and had bought a delicious plain vanilla ice cream.

  My second visit, probably in the afternoon, seem to need a much longer walk. I did it because I wanted to try something other than a plain vanilla ice cream. I don't remember the walk there, but when I got there I saw there was quite queue outside. I joined the queue, but it had only moved by a person or two before one of the shop staff came out to say that they had run out of ice cream for the day. It seems that most people wanted ice cream, and we all left the shop.

  The walk back to work was very odd. There had been some very heavy rainfall, and part of the road was flooded. I could also see water spurting up like it was from a burst pipe in several places, but I feel sure it was sure it wasn't a burst pipe. I was lucky when I came to a five road junction because the road I had to cross only had a little water on it. I was wearing Converse canvas trainers, and somehow they kept me feet dry in an inch or two of water.

  The dream ended with me walking down a dual carriage road, very similar to the northern approach road to The Blackwall Tunnel. There is a bus stop quite near the tunnel in real life, but I seemed to be headed for a railway (or maybe tube) station that was over the tunnel entrance. The very last image in the dream was seeing a train that I knew I had missed. It seemed to be painted in London Underground colours, but looked the wrong shape.

  I remember I was peeing a lot before going to bed, and that was probably why I didn't pee much in the first half of my sleep. I was hoping it might mean my blood glucose was low, but in the second half of the night I was back to  peeing quite large amounts, and I knew I was doomed. When I weighed myself, after quite a substantial poo, I seem to have put on 500gm since yesterday.

  It was bad news about my weight, and even worse news about my blood glucose. It was getting too close to the danger zone, and two readings were definitely in the warning zone. The Contour meter read 8.9mmol/l. That is rather high, but still probably just about safe. The GlucoRX meter read 9.4mmol/l, and that is very bad. The Sinocare meter was worse with a reading of 9.8mmol/l, and that is definitely in tickling distance of the danger zone !

  This morning I couldn't resist having breakfast, but I did limit it to a single packet, albeit an 85gm packet, of instant noodles. If I read the nutrition information correctly it said it should only have contained just 0.4gm of sugar. I think I can live with that very small amount. After two days now of high blood glucose readings, I really must be very careful about what I eat. I will try and skip lunch, although I may allow a small snack now and then.

  One of my plans for today was to go to Tesco, or even possibly Iceland if I could be sure they had a staffed checkout open. I think I am OK to defer that shopping, and all the temptations it brings until tomorrow. I think my revised plan for today is to take my new trainers for a short walk, and maybe it might be just as far as the station to pick up a copy of The Metro. I'll see how me and my feet feel when there. I might extend that walk, or I might indulge in some train spotting or something.

  I probably will avoid walking too far today because I want to have enough energy left to do a few things at home. One thing definitely ought to be some laundry. If I am good I will get it on the washing line early enough to be sun dried before I bring it in again at the start of the evening. If I am feeling a bit insane, or something, I might even take the strimmer out to the garden and reduce the thickness of the weeds everywhere !