07:27 BST

  Yesterday was much nicer than any weather forecast predicted. There seemed to be quite frequent sunny spells when all that was forecast was clouds, albeit white clouds. The temperature wasn't bad either. It easily reached the forecast 16° C.

  

  There are some notable periods when it might be a be a bit dull today, but also plenty more times when there should be sunny spells, and pure sunshine. It looks like it will be very slightly warmer today with 17° C predicted. Tomorrow may be a lot cooler. The afternoon high could be as little as just 12° C, but it could peak at 14° C later in the afternoon. Most of the day may be cloudy, but there could be light rain an hour or two either side of midday.


  Yesterday was a good day - which made a change. The first good thing was that I washed and dressed - something I hadn't bothered with the day before. It was initially so I could go shopping in Tesco. At the top of my shopping list was 4 bottles of Diet Coke, but other stuff included stuff like salad leaves, and cheese, ham, and sliced corned beef for salads. A rummage on the reduced price shelf came up with some Lincolnshire sausages, and the Moroccan spiced vegetable pasty pictured on the left.

  I was intrigued by this pasty, and the reduced price seemed a good enough reason to test it. It may have been better if it was eaten hot, but it was almost nice when eaten cold. I can't say that it was good enough to make me want to buy another. There was an even better reason not to buy another. Hidden around the back of the package, and in very bland monochrome, was the nutritional information panel. It did not make for good reading. The sugar content would have been in the amber if they had used the traditional traffic light colours. That was a bit too rich for me, although I guess a lot of it was the semi-dried apricots in it.


   The next few hours had the possibility of being boring. I was waiting for some new about my new camera lense being on it's way. I checked the tracking info almost once an hour, and at almost 1pm it was shown as still being at the delivery depot. I thought it was so late that the chance of it being delivered yesterday had dropped to zero. Then, at about 1.30pm I got an email to say it was going to be delivered, and that it would arrive between 1pm and 3pm. It actually arrived at approx 2pm. I was surprised to find the lens was in it's original box, although all internal packaging wasn't there.
  Fifteen minutes later I was in the garden taking some test snaps. At first I had the camera on manual, and while the pictures were partly good, the depth of field was such that the tops of the petals of a tulip were in sharp focus, the stamens inside were out of focus. I took several similar pictures, and then decided to water the garden. That caused the tulips to partly close, and other flowers to turn their petals downwards. The result was that I had far fewer flowers to photograph using manual settings which I hoped would give a better depth of field. One such picture is that above.
  This is probably the second best picture I took. I am slowly learning to slightly under-expose pictures of bright yellow flowers because it is so easy to lose fine detail when over exposed. It seems better to correct the exposure in my photo editor. At this point I was realising that I should have increased the f-stop (which was f10 for the picture above) to aqn even bigger number for an even greater depth of field. I sometime wonder if I will ever learn enough about photography to take good pictures of everything under all conditions.
  In terms of fine detail, this was the best picture of all. It is easy to see those vicious little poison tipped spike around the leaves of this stinging nettle. At this point in time, before I have taken the new lens for a walk in the park, to take similar pictures to the pictures taken with the lens this new one is to replace, I am not sure if the new lens is an improvement over the Tamron lens that it is replacing. In one respect it doesn't matter. The new lens can only be used on my Nikon D80 camera, and so will stay with it. The Tamron lens can be used on my Nikon D3200 camera, and so will stay with that camera.

  I only had a few hours to kill before it was time to go out to see Whitestar playing in The Coach & Horses in Beckenham. Those hours passed easily enough except for a sort of nagging feeling that I would be missing my dinner. I had eaten ample, maybe even too much, earlier on. I had the chips and chicken wings from my takeaway, the previous night, for breakfast. I ate the very sugary pasty, I mentioned above, as a sort of lunch, and I had munched some foamed potato snacks during the afternoon. I think there was something else I ate, but I can't think what it might have been.
  I didn't feel terribly keen when I got the bus to Beckenham, and most of my enthusiasm was for seeing Angela - which I did, but it was not enjoyable. There were a few people I knew there, including the band, but I didn't know them enough to feel I was among friends. Anyway, the good news is that the band had some good lighting set up, and while I had anticipated needing to use flash, I found I hardly needed it at all. I did try and use it as a low power fill in flash, but most pictures I took with no flash. The one above, of Simon Whitestar came out well after a few post-production tweaks.
  I think this is one picture where I used a tiny bit of flash to help Matt Donovan, the drummer, sitting at the back, a bit more visible. This was one of only a couple of pictures where all members of the band were all visible.
  Overall I am quite pleased with the pictures I took, but there were not many of them. Ideally I could have spent more time taking more pictures, but there are only so many ways of showing four people all crammed into a small space. One reason for a lot of the wasted pictures was that the "stage lighting" was set to cycle through a range of colours. It was doing it at a far more sedate pace than the crazy lighting that was used in The Black Cat. That was insane ! Some colours just don't photograph well - unless you are a fan of Martian, and like green people !

  Sometimes a strong colour cast can be fine when it is balanced with a more natural, or contrasting background colour. Unfortunately that did not happen last night. Another thing that didn't happen was "keeping Angela company".  She was, as expected, in the company of lover boy, and they chose to sit around the other side of the pub. That meant there was no chance of whispering sweet nothings into Angela's ear as we watched the band. Besides, with the noise the band were making you couldn't whisper, and I couldn't even make out what anyone was saying, whispered or shouted !

  In the original billing the band were due to start at 7.30pm. That was what first interested my. That was quickly changed to 8pm, but that was still far more desirable than a 9pm start. I was at the pub at 7.30pm, and typically the band didn't start until about 8.10pm. I stayed watching and photographing for about 30 minutes. In which time I had also videoed two songs. I thought I had all I needed, and after standing up for over an hour, without moving much, I could feel my sciatica starting up. I said goodbye to Angela (no hug in front of lover boy), and to lover boy before walking down to the bus stop.

  When I got to the bus stop the Countdown display showed a 12 minute wait for the next bus. It was feeling a bit cool in my sleeveless denim jacket, and so I was rather happy when the bus showed up nearly 10 minutes early. I was probably home just after 9pm. I resisted the temptation to cook any supper, but I did finish off the bag of foamed potato snacks while I started to edit the photos and videos I had taken. By about 11pm I had done all the editing - sometimes it is good to not get too carried away taking photos - another lesson I am slowly learning.

  I read in bed for nearly an hour before the sudden onset of deep tiredness. I was asleep a few minutes before midnight. I would like to say I had a good night's sleep, and maybe I did because I can hardly remember any of it. It felt like I hadn't got much sleep, and it was annoying to wake up at 6.20am, with it seeming to be fully daylight outside. Without being able to remember much about my sleep it sort of felt like I had been cheated out of it. Just over 6 hours sleep doesn't seem like it was enough, and yet I don't seem to feel that sleepy this morning.
  One thing I didn't mention earlier is that I didn't drink at all while I was at the pub. It feels a bit odd to do that, but I tell myself I have a job to do, and I do indeed consider it more like a job, and so I leave off the booze. That was not the case when I got home, and I treated myself to two cans of Guinness. In the past I have observed that Guinness has little effect on my blood glucose, and last night, for the first time, I noticed a nutritional information panel on the back of the can. 0.9gm of sugar per can is most definitely nice and low !

  This morning my blood glucose reading was back into a more sane area, but still higher than I'd like. It was 8.8mmol/l - only slighty down from 9.0mmol/l yesterday morning. I have yet to have a productive visit to the toilet this morning, but I jumped on the scales, and there was slightly good news there too. My weight was exactly the same as a day or two ago  after an extremely productive visit to the toilet (three of them to be precise !).

  I will probably do two things today. The more definite one will be a beer tastings session with Jodie. The other, and possible reason that Jodie might be here a bot earlier than usual, is that today, being the last Sunday of the month, the Catford Food Market should be on. I don't think I will be buying anything, but you never know... Mostly I see it as an opportunity to do a bit of photography on what hopefully will be a sunny part of the day.