09:00 BST

  This morning probably did start at the forecast 16° C and it was, and still is very sunny. The sunshine is forecast to last until 4pm when sunny spells will take over until sunset. This afternoon should reach a quite warm 24° C, and no rain at all is forecast for today.  Tomorrow may be dry, and there should be a lot of sunshine. Some hours may only be sunny spells. It may not be as warm as today, but a max of 20° C is still quite pleasant.

  I didn't really know what I was going to do yesterday, and I wrote that I thought I might go for a walk, even if just to Aldi. It was indeed the latter that I did. I didn't feel nearly as knackered as the previous time, but I still can't say it was easy enough to be enjoyable.

  The hardest part of going to Aldi was to restrain myself from throwing all sort of things - edible things - in my shopping trolley. I still bought quite an few things that I shouldn't have bought - or eaten !  Probably the worst thing was some lemon cheesecake. I had it for dessert after my dinner, and it was close to sickly sweet. Oddly enough it did not seem to give me any heartburn, and my blood glucose was not dangerously high this morning.

  I had a similar lunch to the last time I went to Aldi. It was a couple of flatbreads. One was chicken tikka in a naan. That naan bread tasted wonderful, and I think it probably had some spice or herb in it that I can't recall tasting in naan bread before. The other flatbread was filled with shawanarama (or something like that). It was rather nice too.  I needed a good lie down and a snooze after eating that lot.

  I did very little in the afternoon, and for the rest of the day if the truth is to be told. One thing I almost did was to finish some laundry. After I had a morning shower I almost emptied my laundry bag into one of my big buckets (trugs) filled with detergent. I didn't keep track of everything, but I knew it included a lot of underpants, and just a single t-shirt, plus one other item that I just can't seem thing what it could possibly be.

  After my post lunch snooze I did get back to that laundry, but I didn't finish it, and I am unsure why. I know wringing out all the underpants was getting boring, but I didn't seem to feel like it would have been too much like hard work to finish the job. I think the real problem is that I stopped to take a break, and then couldn't seem to find the right time to get started again. It is now a job for this morning.

  Before I started that washing I did have one specific malady that needed curing first. For ages now I have had an occasional pain in my upper arm muscle. It is the sort of pain you get when you have been punched in the arm (but not the pain of the punch itself, but how it feels later when bruised). I have often felt that it was a blood circulation problem - similar, but not the same as angina.

  Yesterday I realised it was happening at a convenient time to experiment, and I had the "tools" for the job. The "tools" was my TNG spray. I gave a quick squirt under my tongue, and very quick I got a sort of headache, and the stuff was stinging the underside of my tongue. Although unpleasant it showed that it was working. It helps dilate the arteries, and in particular, an artery that provides blood to my arm muscle. The pain in my muscle faded away like show on a hot tin roof.

  It made doing my laundry more pleasant, but once I took that "half time" break I was doomed. Another reason for doom was that I started watching TV, and an advert break during a programme that was interesting enough to stop the afternoon being boring, seemed too short to get back that laundry. I think I expected a time when there would be a gap between anything on TV that was worth watching, but that never happened.

  On reflection, maybe there was a small gap, probably only a commercial break that was too short for anything except to prepare my dinner. It was a semi/slightly healthy meal of salad with "fishsticks", and a fair bit of mayonnaise. It was a rough old ready made Aldi salad, but the mayo and fishsticks made it seem quite nice. I did my best to wreck any healthy benefits by scoffing two slices of lemon cheesecake - the two slices I described further up the page as sickly sweet.

  I think it was around 9pm when, with the laundry still untouched since "half time" - in other words there was no other half time yesterday - I headed to bed. I probably read for half an hour before turning out the lights.  Despite all the snoozes I had during the day, I seemed to fall into quite a deep sleep very quickly. It was around 1am when I woke up needing a pee. After that I did more in the night (which sounds like, and partly was peeing, but I really mean stuff like dreaming).

  I had a dream that I was back at work, or at least doing the same sort of stuff that I did at work. The task was to find one or more shorted surface mounted capacitors. There were many of them on the circuit board, and effectively that were all in parallel. I used a method that is semi frowned on. I connected the board to a power supply that could provide far more current than the board needed.

  The proper power supply would just shot down when the shorted capacitors tried to draw too much current. My big power supply just made the capacitors heat up and start smoking. That was easy to detect, and I used soldering tweezers to lift off the faulty capacitors. It was a trick that made a really tricky job easy - and was the result of years of experience. That experience was what paid my wages.

  As a side note, I am reminded of a joke that illustrates it perfectly - if only I can remember how to tell it ! There was once a huge ship that was due to leave harbour when it's engine failed. The onboard engineer couldn't fix it, and so a specialist was called in. He walked up and down the great big diesel engine, and then selected a hammer, and bash one particular part. The engine started up straight away, and so he left. The next day his bill arrived, and it was something like £5000.

  The ships owner queried the bill, and asked to see this specialist. The owner demanded that the bill be altered, and pointed out all the specialist had done was hit something with a hammer. The specialist agreed to change the bill. It now read hitting item with hammer £5. Knowing where to hit it, £4995. Knowledge does not come cheap ! A good boss knows this, and maybe I was lucky in that everyone in the management chain of my last job was an engineer, including the founder of the company, and who recognised they were buying knowledge.

  There was more to my dream than so far described, but it was mainly about making some design changes to make the equipment more reliable - all based on years of experience, and funnily enough a lot of that experience came from repairing consumer TVs - electronic equipment made from the cheapest parts, and which in turn gave a valuable experience of what fails fastest when under stress.

  I think that after that dream I was awake for maybe half an hour, and part of the reason was that I was trying to think what I would say when I wrote about it. It is a shame that there seems to be a lot of small holes in my memory, but I think I remembered the most important bits. Once I had considered all I could remember I turned over and fell asleep again almost instantly.

  It seemed quite early when I woke up and almost felt ready to get up. I think it was just after 6am. The first thing I did was to have a pee. I was surprised I didn't seem to want to poo even if I thought I ought to. When I weighed myself I found I had put on 100 or 200gm since yesterday morning. That wasn't all that bad, and maybe quite good considering what I had eaten.

  I then checked my blood glucose level. I expected that to be very high, but it was not that bad (although that does not really equal "good"). The Contour meter read 8.7mmol/l - slightly above what could be considered a long term average. The GlucoRX meter read slightly worse at 8.8mmol/l. The new GlucoFix meter read a fairly good 8.2mmol/l. In some ways these could be considered run of the mill figures. I tend not to worry too much for any reading under 9.0mmol/l, although under 8.0mmol/l is what I am for.

  After doing that, and taking screenshots of the weather forecasts I had a bit more sleep. I think it was getting on for 8.30am when I woke up, and I needed another pee. It was not a lot, but enough to drop my weight enough to amend my spreadsheet to show I had actually lost 100gm since yesterday morning. That was most satisfactory, and made my breakfast all the more delicious.

  Breakfast was possibly a tiny bit healthier than usual in so much as it was instant rice instead of instant noodles. Rice often has less sugar than noodles, and the two pots I had this morning were quite low in sugar. I wonder if I can only eat low sugar stuff during today, and get a pleasant surprise tomorrow morning ? No, it never seems to work like that - particularly when I have other sickly sweet cheese cake in the fridge, and delicious ice cream in the freezer !

  There is one thing I know will be happening today. It is a Sunday, and the trains are running. That means Jodie will be over for some beer tasting this afternoon. Before that I need to do the last two stages of my laundry (one more rinse and then fabric conditioner), and with that done I can have a shower, and probably wash my hair. If there is time I may go to Savers to top up some of my vitamins and stuff. I might even go to Poundstretcher, but I feel lazy, and could do both tomorrow if needed.