- Tuesday : I cycled into Scunthorpe. On the way back I cycled via Dawes lane .. here's a sight of the Scunthorpe steelworks

Scunthorpe steelworks 1

Scunthorpe steelworks 2

- Another puncture ... And in the snow !

- Before Christmas I bought some calendars to send abroad as thankyou presents. But I never got around to getting the addresses and sending them. Suddenly it's 2010 and I can't send them cos first it was a holiday and then there were so many days of snow. Now I realIzed that haven't got enough calendars and this year strangely instead of being overstocked all the shops have no calendars left.
- Went to Ashby 6th Jan to search for more and lost my keys.

- Those new glasses I bought in India didn't have good frames they kept falling apart. And it seems the opticians are still doing the same ripoff business they quoted me £75 for new frames or £20 for a new centre section ... I knew I would find a cheap pair of rimless reading glasses sometime ... Yep just found a pair for £2.

- Rimless glasses are great cos any rimless lenses will fit any rimless frames, no need for the expense of finding new frames exactly the same size as the lenses. .
- No, I just swapped my lenses around with the reading lenses so now I have a good pair of glasses which cost me £2.

- I read on the internet that the medicine takes 2 weeks to take effect. So the improvement was slow and different to tell, but now I've taken it 4 weeks I think my bleeding is less than when I got back from Poland. I also cut fibre and increased soluble fibre through eating white rice daily. So the improvement is due to 3 things the medicine, removing insoluble fibre from my diet and time.

I am not 100% normal, but the headaches and tiredness are almost nothing.

- So it seems now that my illness is very like that of Steve Redgrave (the guy who won 5 olympic gold medals in a row). He got a stomach infection like salmonella which persisited for months until his stomach was bleeding colitis. I started with a stomach infection in July in the Ukraine 8 weeks later I got bleeding stomach ulcers, a week later back in the UK the ulcers seemed to vary, but get worse over time. For me it seemed cos the first doctors told me to eat more fibre like I normally do so this irritated the bleeding ulcers more then cos diagnosis took so long the ulcers got worse, then the colonoscopy made the ulcers worse. 11 weeks after arriving the UK I started to take the enemas and got rid of tough fibre and increased the easier fibre like soluble fibre i.e. white rice, now its another 5 weeks later the ulcers have slowly started to heal.
- They didn't tell me there are 2 types of fibre : soluble fibre the fruit body which is OK, and insoluble fibre like the outer skin and seeds which are not easily digestible and irritate the ulcers.

-Maybe in a couple of weeks I will back to normal BUT maybe my illness is really chronic and will continue to have flare-ups throughout the rest of my life.

- According to Naked Scientists : Polysaccharide good for intestines Slow digestion of glucose and cos increase viscocity in lower intestines they help ferment beneficial fatty acids. Also they are thought to be good for good bacteria.

- Good explanation from a female gastroenterologist on ABC Radio National - Health Report hrt_20091026_0851.mp3 get link and text ?

- it is strongly suggested IBD is due to the immune system overreacting , because when pregnant womens symptoms go way down and in pregnancy the immune system is turned down.

- A week before Xmas the UK Met Office made it's annual prediction that the coming year would be the warmest ever (they seem to have a big agenda to big up global warming panic). Given their track record of getting it wrong every year, I immediately guessed the weather would do the opposite of what they said. A week later there was a week of snow a thaw then another week of snow ..which their long term forecast had failed to predict.

- If their climate modelling can be so bad over the short term how can we be expected to have confidence in their long term models which they say predict global warming catastrophe

snow in the street

snow at the house back

backsnow

- As I said it's been difficult to get things done cos of Christmas and bank holidays then it snows and it's difficult to get around.