28 February 2025 (Friday) - Calories

What with “er indoors TM, littlun and the dogs all up in the attic room I slept rather well, but was still wide awake at half past four.  I got up, made toast and scoffed it whilst watching an episode of "Star Trek: Discovery". I'd forgotten that I was a season behind with it. The show was rather good; it was only a shame that when watching stuff on the Paramount Plus app you can't fast-forward through the adverts. However you can make a mental note of what company the advert was for, and being sure not to use their products.  As I was once told by a boss many years ago, there's more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream.
I remember the chap who gave me that sage advice had just been told off by his boss for taking too long at a tea break. He gave me that advice, then went off early to his lunch break and came back (drunk) four hours later. 
 
I scraped the ice from the car then drove round to Sainsbury's to get petrol. Have you ever driven round Ashford at six o'clock? There's some very odd people on the roads at that time of day who seem to think that speed limits don't apply that early in the morning and get very cross whenever I drive at the speed limit. They always fly past me at the earliest opportunity and whizz off dangerously at breakneck speeds in what are residential areas.
I got my petrol, then headed west-wards through the -hursts and the -dens to Pembury.
 
As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about the Prime Minister's meeting with Donald Trump yesterday. Apparently the Prime Minster is claiming that the talks went very well. The more cynical observers being interviewed think that the talks went well because the King invited Mr Trump over for an official state visit. It was claimed that Mr Trump goes for that sort of thing, and an example was cited from his first presidency when he apparently took more notice of an Australian golfer than of the Australian government.
There was also talk about how farmers aren't letting their sheep graze on Dartmoor as sheep theft has reached epic proportions.
All the country's meat suppliers are adamant that they check on where their meat comes from, but someone's shifting humongous proportions of hooky lamb.
 
I'd left for work early today. Usually the roads to Pembury aren't the easiest to get through,  but there were only three sets of temporary traffic lights today and I got there far too early. If nothing else it meant that I could park.
I did my bit. There as cake. However in a herculean effort of self-control I didn't scoff any. That was about five hundred calories I saved.  Another saving was getting a box of fruit with my meal deal lunch I got from the petrol station. That fruit box was two hundred and twenty calories less than the bag of crisps I usually get. 
I find this calorie counting is much easier when I've had a walk round the woods with the dogs as that usually gives me an extra six hundred calories to play with.
 
And here’s a thought… I’m doing this diet because on 10 January my GP randomly messaged me to say they would like me to go into the surgery to give them a blood pressure reading from their self-service machine. I did – it was 167 / 89.
Three days later they asked if I would get myself a monitor and give them blood pressure readings twice daily for a week. Over the week it averaged well into the stage two hypertension category.
Two weeks after I gave them the readings I had a telephone appointment with a pharmacist (i) who said everything about blood pressure that I’d read on Google and didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. She suggested blood tests and an ECG which were then done last week (a further two weeks later).
It’s now eight weeks since I found I’ve got high blood pressure and I’m still waiting to see a doctor.

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