The early (7am) version of today's weather forecast started off wrong. The light cloud was actually rather dark, and I am sure I felt a few light drops of rain just after 9am. The latest revision to the forecast still reckons this afternoon will be nice and sunny, albeit mostly as sunny spells. I have doubts about it, but I'll be assuming it is true for now. The afternoon temperature should peak at 23° C. Tomorrow could feature even more sunshine, but it will be 1° cooler at just 22° C.

  I felt very unmotivated yesterday. It was a mixture of a lack of sleep, and it being so dull and grey outside. It was all made worse by a sort of positive feedback thing. My lack of motivation meant that it became a chore processing the photos I had taken at Chain's gig on Saturday. It being a chore just fed back into the depression process, and I really had to force myself to go through all the photos I took - all 130 of them !
  It was all made worse by the realisation that many pictures were not very good. There are a couple of reasons for this, and one of them was my fault. I am sure it would help if I had turned up the power on the flash gun I was using. I was trying to preserve the colours of the (not very bright) stage lighting, but I now realise I was trying too hard. Plus it depended on which bit of stage lighting. The front lamps were dim compared to the side of stage lights. The latter could often cause some unwanted glare. The final problem was an unusual one. It was very hot in the pub, and later in the gig even Jo had a sheen of sweat on her face. That glinted in the light and looked strange - very much so if I needed to brighten the overall picture.
  This picture of Chris (electric guitar), Steve (bass guitar) and Jo (electro-acoustic guitar) probably needed less work than some. At least it is better than many mobile phone pictures. They would have been blinded by the 4 bright stage lights behind Jo.
  One unusual thing was that I was able to get some bright pictures of Chris. Very often all the lights are on Jo, and Chris is in the shadows. On this occasion he couldn't hide because I had the flash gun right on him. The picture was actually slightly over exposed, but I turned it down as best I could.
  I think it was when I saw Chain at The White Swan in West Wickham, my first gig after lockdown, that Rob Todd said the next time he sang it would be a cover of Bob Segar's "Turn The Page" (but his version would be more like Metallica's cover of it). Here he is with Chain singing "Road To Hell" again (for the 10th time !). By this time I think I had turned up the flash power, and was getting better results, but it was one of the last pictures I took before heading home.

  With the day being so gloomy, and often feeling cold when I was very sedate (as I was a lot of the time), I frequently felt hungry. That was not a good idea when my blood glucose was high at the start of the day. I had started the day with a pile of bacon. At lunchtime I had cheese with rice crackers. Mid afternoon I had more rice crackers, but this time I had them with slices of Spam. I felt I needed to be careful after that, and opted for soup for dinner.

  My first soup was an ordinary can of lentil soup. My second soup was something a bit different. It was a sachet of "Peasant Soup" from Eastern Europe. It should have been made up in a large saucepan over an open hob so it could be stirred and simmered as the dry powder turned into soup. Doing it in the microwave ended up with lumpy soup, but it was still sort of nice in a novel way. I couldn't read all the ingredients, but it seemed to be a soup made with yoghurt and mint. My third soup was not exactly a soup. It was a "Mug Shot" noodles in an alleged Chow Mein sauce/soup. It was nicer than the Peasant soup, but only as a sort of filler.

  There was more live music on Sky Arts last night. I thought I would enjoy Tom Petty in concert, but after a while it was almost starting to get annoying, and turned the TV off and went back to the book I was reading. I think I put the book down at almost 11pm - rather late considering I intended to have an early night ! The good news is that I seemed to sleep OK last night. Sometimes it didn't seem so. I think it was twice that I woke up thinking I had only been asleep for a few minutes, but the clock said it was more like 3 hours.

  I had a dream last night that was really fascinating, and deserves to be described. I think it answered one of the questions about life, the universe, and everything. The only trouble is that I didn't write this within seconds of waking up, and now, several hours later, I can't remember anything about it at all ! Oh well, at least there is the good news that my blood glucose is down to 8.5mmol/l, or my average value over the last few months - described as "good diabetes control" according to the report I got about the blood samples I gave Friday before last.

  My plans for today are still a bit vague, but my plans for tomorrow are more set in stone. At 9am I go in to see the nurse at the surgery to hear the rest of the details about my blood tests. I will also get my feet inspected - which considering the state they are in is going to cause some concern. I expect I will be forced to have my blood pressure checked, and the action of that will make it go sky high - as it always does at the surgery. The most obvious outcome of all this is that I won't be writing this blog until I come back from the surgery.

  Today I am relying on the weather forecast being correct about it being a sunny afternoon. I have a load of washing in soak at the moment, and I hope to get it on the line before the sun comes out. Once I have done that I am contemplating going out for a train rise somewhere.