The road looks damp outside after some earlier rain, but in the last 20 minutes it has looked like the sun has tried to come out a few times. According to the the latest revision to the forecast there should be very heavy rain right now ! If it ever gets started there could be a couple of hours of heavy rain followed by another 3 or 4 hours of lighter rain. After maybe 3 hours of just light cloud the rain could start again. Oh well, the garden needs it (although it is the weeds that are using it most). Today's high may be no more than 18° C. Tomorrow may be a couple of degrees warmer, but it seems there could be even more rain today, and with some thunder and lightning thrown in for extra entertainment !
 
  I'm not sure if yesterday should be described as hectic. A lot happened, but it followed a vague plan, and was fairly gentle. The major feature was Petts Wood Calling - an all day (actually midday to late evening) music festival that was previously called Petts Woodstock until the majority of the supporters and committee split away from the original founder of Petts Woodstock. The reasons for this have never been revealed beyond that the original founder wanted to reclaim the name after not having anything to do with it for 6 or more years. I can only guess he wanted to take it in a very different direction.

  I made one tragic, or maybe fortunate mistake yesterday. For some reason I thought the first band was on at 1pm, but it may have been my brain playing tricks on me. The first band I really wanted to see was on at 1pm, but the real first band was on at 12.15pm. It would have been good to see John Blackburn & The Getaways again (I saw them at Chatt Fest the previous weekend), but maybe only for the photographic record.

  I arrived at The Petts Wood Memorial Gardens, the venue for Petts Wood Calling, at about 1.10pm, and The Ferrets, the band I wanted to see, hadn't started. To get to Petts Wood I had to take a train to London Bridge, and then change there for a train that retraced half the journey I had just done before turning off towards Petts Wood. Yesterday was the first time I had gone into central London since July (or was it June ?) 2020.
  The Ferrets used to be called Ferdinands Northern Ferrets, but they changed it for reasons unknown. They are unashamedly a punk band, and cover loads of well known punk songs from the 1980s. Their lead guitarist, pictured above, seems to have lost his punk looks, but can still bash out the riffs with all the anger they deserve.
  The lead singer looks more punky, but I guess he has a 9 to 5 jobs that means he can't go over the top (safety pin through the nose etc). He still has all the attitude when on stage though.
  It was a bold, and possibly stupid idea, but I tried some new settings on my camera yesterday. Basically I set a fixed shutter speed, just about fast enough to stop any significant motion blur, but let the camera set the other settings itself. For the most part it worked well, but it did have some downsides. Fortunately they were easy to correct in my image editor. It seems that the camera was also doing an auto white balance adjustment. It seems that sometimes it set it for tungsten lighting, and sometimes for daylight. That was easy to correct (well, it has been since it was a setting added to The Gimp image editing software). Sometimes it seems it set the black level a bit high - once again easy to correct.
  This was one of those pictures that had to be taken - even at risk to my camera (although it was my chest that suffered as the rain prepared me for the wet t-shirt competition !). There was one big downpour during the Ferrets set, and I was in the middle of the crowd, a long way from shelter. It is one of those pictures that isn't that good, and yet it shows so much.
  This is possibly the best picture of the band, but it isn't perfect. The drummer is hidden behind the lead singer, but that is not uncommon. The lead guitar and bass players aren't quite symmetrical about the singer.  Maybe I should have stoff a foot to the right to take this picture.
  I assume the people running the bar thought people would be very thirsty to ask those prices, but they would also answer that a proportion of that huge price was going to charity. Curiosity drove me to buy a single pint of Guinness from the festival bar. My second (and last) pint I bought in The Daylight Inn where the Guinness was £4.50 a pint instead of £7.

  As per my original loose plan, I left the festival soon after 5pm. I had seen the three bands I wanted to see, and missed one band I didn't want to see, one band I had little enthusiasm for, and the last band who I didn't care for at all. I had a medium long wait (20 minutes I think) for a train to Lewisham where I had a 9 minute wait for a train to Catford Bridge. When I left Petts Wood I could feel my energy starting to fade, but I still had enough left for a fairly comfortable journey home.

  I had started the day with a fairly low blood glucose level, and I used that as an excuse to treat myself to a takeaway. A Chinese takeaway was not the smartest idea, but it was very nice. I stayed clear of anything with overt amounts of sugar in it (sweet and sour dishes, for instance), and somehow I seemed to order stuff that didn't seem to have much oil and fat in it. It still wasn't healthy though because I think it still contained some sugar.

  At the end of three simple dishes, without any rice, I was feeling quite full, and I was also feeling very tired. Being a Saturday there was not a lot on TV, and so I made a start on the photographs I took. I didn't actually start any editing at that point, but I copied the camera memory card to my computer, and put the photos of the three bands I photographed into their own folders. I then started quickly flicking through the photos I had taken, but I was obviously in a snap happy mood, and took around 700 snaps ! Many were when I just held my finger on the shutter doing continuous shooting to try and capture the perfect moment.

  By 8pm I was feeling really beat, and looking forward to bed. Meanwhile, back at Petts Wood the last band were only half way into their headlining set. I can't be certain, but I think I was probably asleep by 9pm. I slept solidly until 1am when I woke up, and couldn't get back to sleep again until almost 4am. The many reasons for that long period of insomnia are almost innocent by themselves, but added together... It was partly a case of waking up and finding the mattress had suddenly gained lumps that weren't there when I went to sleep, and the pillows were mysteriously the wrong height.

  It being a little cooler than desired didn't help, but one bigger reason was some assorted pains. For reasons that may never be known, my right little finger felt sore. More easy to explain was my chest hurting. To be more accurate it was my operation scar, and the surrounding tissue, that was also hacked to pieces during my quad heart bypass back in 2013, that was hurting. The reason was that wearing a wet t-shirt. That not only happened at the festival, but also when I was at home, waiting for my takeaway delivery.

  At the festival I was given a special "Crew" t-shirt to go with my back stage/photographers pass. I took off my wet t-shirt, and put on the dry one - which was nice. Rather than dribble Chinese food on my new t-shirt I put the still damp t-shirt home that I had bundled up to bring home in my camera bag. It felt cold and damp when I first put it on, and that couldn't have helped my already sensitive scar tissue.

  As I said further up the page, I managed to get back to sleep at around 4am. By that time I had the heater on low, and my bedroom was getting comfortable warm (while outside the temperature had dropped to late autumn levels). I still woke up once or twice for a pee, but essentially I managed to sleep in until almost 8am - which is late for me. As usual, one of the first things I did was to check my blood glucose level. I knew it was going to be high after that Chinese food, but 9.4mmol/l was lower than I thought it would be. I was steeling myself for a reading over 10mmol/l.

  Today is going to be dominated by just two things. I still have an awful lot of photos to select and edit. I know I'll still be doing them tomorrow at this rate. I won't be able to do much this afternoon because it will be a beer drinking session with Jodie.