A few new diabetes related news items I spotted.

This first one talks about vitamin supplements, look here, and suggest that low levels of vitamin B may be a factor in the complications that can result from diabetes. Apparantly diabetics have alow level of thiamin in their blood. The same thing is also covered here

The second article, here, talks about bones. Professor Karsenty said: "The discovery that our bones are responsible for regulating blood sugar in ways that were not known before completely changes out understanding of the function of the skeleton and uncovers a crucial aspect of energy metabolism. You need to read it.

The road next to my house. Closed as it was under several feet of water. I resisted the urge to go and look, after all, it would have just been horrible muddy sewerage laden water swilling across the road and into peoples houses. I think that those poor house owners have more than enough to contend with, they didn't need a sightseer.


This is Gordon Brown and Parmjit (Our MP) when they visited our bottled water distribution centre. Just after I took this with with my phone (Nokia N95, cracking good camera phone), he stopped to talk with me. I was then interviewed by the ITN news team who seemed primarily interested in whether I blamed the Government. Blamed the Government? For what? Britains worst rain storm and flood in 300 years? Not even with my imagination could I find a way to lay that at their door. I was impressed greatly by Hannah though, she took herself up to the water distribution place yesterday and spent all day from 8am until 6pm giving out water. That is such a cool thing for a teenager (well anyone actually) to do. No seeking recognition, just doing it because it needed to be done. We didn't suggest it, prompt her or even talk about it, she just said 'I want to help' and she did.


This is the bowser near my house being filled for only the second time. A queue was already forming as you can see. Water is so in demand that the bowser was empty again within an hour. Part of the problem is human nature. I can see how parents are trying to turn this disaster into a bit of an adventure for the kids, and I see small troops of youngsters coming to fill bottles of water to take back home. (This is the only bowser for the housing estate, several hundred houses, school, so lots of families).


And the kids have all been laughing and joking, and that is good, most of the parents realise the gravity of the situation and don't laugh too much. (There are jokes circulating but they are are in poor taste, and when you realise that this disaster has greatly affected tens of thousands of people, jokes at peoples expense are NOT going to raise spirits). But lets be honest, the bowser taps are twice the size of the neck of the bottle, kids are not usually the most careful of people, and so the end result is a good deal of spillage. As the photo shows, the wet patch from under the taps.
I have no idea what volume of water is lost, but it is not just a dribble, and I know it does not compare to some of the stories of water abuse that I have heard.

Latest news from Severn Trent is that some 'brown' water may be back in the system on Tuesday, which may mean that it will get to us by Late Wednesday or early Thursday. It takes that long because we are just about 20 odd miles from Mythe and at the end of the route from the Mythe treatment works. A mile or so down the road and people still have running water. Their popularity has increased, as has their generosity (thanks nearby neighbours). The pipes are all empty and will take a day or so to fill up and get to us. And then we will still have no drinking water, as the pipes are so polluted from sewerage. It may be undrinkable for upto four weeks apparently.

Well, we are off to Solihull to my mothers today for a jolly good shower, and a shave (For ME! Not Yvonne!!), and we will bring some good old Brummie water back with us, it will make a change from all the bottled mineral water. I know that mineral water has a higher level of salts in them to what we normally drink, hence it being unsuitable for babies, and I know that psychology comes to bear, but since the floods and having to drink bottled water, I seem so much thirstier than usual. Is this my mind playing tricks, or my diabetes and body chemistry upset by the salts in the mineral water? I don't know.

I will try and see if I can take a still image from the news footage of me talking to Gordon and post it on here. Well, why not?

I have googled my house and taken this image. I have used photoshop to paint in the area locally that were flooded. This is not showing last fridays flash floods that caused so much damage in the area, flooding the roads and businesses and houses. This is showing the very local extent of the river severn floods of this week. Most seriously was the flooding of the sewerage works. That alone caused evacuations. The image is actually quite out of date as a stonking great new road has been built from the green bit to the right of the sewerage works going north. And yes, it flooded and was closed until Thursday. Only opened in May.

AN INTERESTING OBSERVATION
This week my car insurance is up for renewal. Last week I did a lot of online quotes. That was before the floods.

This week I did them again as I had not managed to finalise what I wanted before the floods came and the internet was lost for a few days. Lummy, most of the quotes have gone up, some by £50. Blooming heck, glad I renewed my house insurance last week.
One small consolation in all this, as my house was not flooded in the UKs worst flood for over 300 years, I guess I should be able to get reasonable cost insurance, in comparison to the poor people who have been flooded. Of course everyone will have to pay more, goes with out saying, and with around £25M in road damages alone, our council tax will shoot up next time too.

Well, there I was queuing up at Tesco's car park to get my daily allowance of free water, when GB, Gordon, The PM his very self, turned up and chatted and spoke to us, and lummy, there I was on the evening ITN news talking to him.

Best bit was, we got double water rations today.

Come again Gordon!

We are, I suspect, about to face a trying time. Fortunately, even though we are very close to the river Severn, we are away from streams and we haven't actually been flooded, but we are suffering the inconvenience that many in Gloucester are. No Power for most of today, but eventually we did get it back, although at a lower voltage than usual. No water, and so we have to go and collect water from the bowser, and try and get bottled water when we can. We have no telephone or internet, some neighbours also have no TV if they are on cable, luckily we have sky, so when there is power, we are able to watch TV.

Unfortunately we were due to do our big food shop on Saturday, so we are low on food stuffs, and the supermarkets, understandably, are not open except for some basic emergency provisions. I might have to drive across country and find a normal supermarket and do a big shop. Disinfectant and bleach is essential, and there will be none available locally.

But, having seen the pictures on TV, and having seen the awful conditions just a few hundred yards from my house, we know that we are lucky and so are thoughts are with others, we can cope, we are dry and relatively warm,.

Let's just hope that the river spares the substation and 500000 people, including us, don't lose power big time. We are already trying to come to terms with the likelihood of no water for two weeks or more. No electric for a week or so would make life a tad trying.

I am not posting any pictures. I am not going to go out and photograph other peoples misery and misfortune. Sorry. For that you will have to look at BBC World or Sky News. No picture can do justice to how bad it is for some of my poor unlucky neighbours in Gloucester.

Chin up.

It appears that I have Metabolic Syndrome. it says if you have 2 out of the 5 then you have it, lummy I have 4 out of the 5!
Here is an excerpt:

Drinking milk cuts diabetes risk

Milk consumption has fallen in recent years Drinking a pint of milk a day may protect men against diabetes and heart disease, say UK researchers. Eating dairy products reduces the risk of metabolic syndrome - a cluster of symptoms which increase likelihood of the conditions - the Welsh team found. In the 20-year study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, metabolic syndrome increased the risk of death by 50%. Experts recommended people only eat two or three portions of dairy a day. Dairy products are an important part of a healthy, balanced diet and we would recommend people aim to eat two to three servings of low fat dairy a day Jemma Edwards, Diabetes UK The University of Cardiff study of 2,375 men aged between 45 and 59 classified metabolic syndrome as having two or more out of high blood glucose, insulin, blood fats, body fat, and blood pressure. Here is the whole article on the BBC website And here is an article on the BBC about Metabolic Syndrome itself. I think I might as well give up now. Oh, I wish i knew which of the blood pressure tablets gives me the raging irrits and makes me need to keep scratchin.

Rummaging around the internet, as you do, and I came across this trick, I know it is an old one, and I knew how, but not everyone does. It is called 'How to win a bet at parties' - go on, have a look