Please do not read into this that I am enjoying a day of gorging on baklava or downing gallons of retsina. far from it. As it happens I have not had a drink for more than ten days and I am really enjoying being sober every day. It is not that I have had so much to drink that I have had a hangover for months and months. I really do not enjoy that sort of drinking any more. But I actually feel better for not drinking at all.
And I shall have another carbohydrate free day as well. It is just that - I have no plans to do manual labour up at the Greek hovel. I did a major session of olive pruning yesterday and I think that I am about three or four sessions from completion.I am getting so much faster than I was three years ago and - after years of neglect - my little darlings actually need far less pruning than they used to. But at the end of that I felt pretty ill, maybe it was dehydration maybe a mini migraine. I eschewed a swim and just collapsed into bed. I got up for a light breakfast at 7.30 AM and at 11 AM have just got up again.
Today is a day for admin, swimming and writing, a day of taking it easy. There will be no work up at the hovel.
The really good news is my blood sugar levels are almost within target range of 5 to 7. You will remember that they were 15.3 at the start of this battle and almost 11 a couple of days into round 2. Like General Election opinion polls you get outlying readings now and again. So I had a 7.2 yesterday afternoon and a 9.3 that morning. But today I started at 8.5 and for several days now my readings have all - other than those two outliers - been between 8.0 and 8.9.
That is not good but its heading the right way and it is not "off the scale" as I once was. I am convinced that dodging carbs as well as sugars and taking even gentle exercise is the key to getting back to a consistent sub seven by the time I head back to the UK. The battle then will be maintaining that.
The one scare was that yesterday I ran out of one of the three pills I take to control type 2 diabetes. All credit to the most excellent Messinian Bay Hotel. One of the chaps at the front desk scuttled off and though it is a prescription only drug he had a pal at a pharmacy and within half an hour I had replacement supplies to hand.
So today, it is 31 degrees, pity me as I tap away by the side of the pool. It is a hard life.