08:09 BST

  Yesterday saw a complete reversal of the weather the day before. Most of the day was grey, sometimes very grey, and at other times it was such a light grey that it almost seemed like the sun may break through, but those were very few, and I can't recall a single ray of sunshine getting through the clouds. At just 12° C at best, it felt cold all day, and there was rain. Admittedly it was only about 24 small drops of rain, but it definitely rained !

  

  The early morning forecast for today shows nothing to cheer about, but as I write this the sun is out, and has been for some time now. The latest revision to the forecast does not acknowledge this sunshine, but it does grudgingly add sunny spells for just 3pm. By late afternoon the temperature should have risen to 16° C, and even under a slightly dull sky it might feel comfortable. Tomorrow, and indeed for several days after tomorrow, the forecast brings no joy. All these days are predicted to feature 100% cloud cover, albeit generally white cloud. Tomorrow should still reach 15° C.

  Yesterday was not a good day. Maybe all the exercise the day before was too much for me, or maybe it was something else, but I didn't feel good all day. Several bits ached, I seemed to have little energy, and too much hunger ! I think blaming what I did the day before was only part of the problem. The bigger problem was probably depression brought on by the dull grey weather. Of course these things tend to be circular, with one thing making the next worse, and then picking up other negative things as it all goes round and round.

  Probably the most depressing thing was that there was nothing to do except staying in and selecting/editing pictures. The curious thing is that I didn't want to have to sit down for long periods of time editing photos that should have been taken with more care/skill, and yet doing so was quite enjoyable in some ways. As I think I mentioned yesterday, many of the photos, particularly those of The Flame Pilots, had over exposed feet and under exposed faces !

  It was all to do with the very bright sun slanting down, and the top of the stage causing a wedge of shadow that left those at the back of the stage only lit below the waist, or lower. I set the exposure to be about right for the tops of most of the band who were in Shadow. It meant that everytime Fiouse, the singer/frontman came to the front of the stage his face would get full sunlight, and I was not agile enough to correct the exposure fast enough to stop many photos being very over exposed.

  I must admit it was interesting trying various ways of trying to even up the exposure for different band members, and for different parts of the bodies and instruments. It was time consuming, but I did get some good results. It was also a good learning experience - mainly about trying to stop the over exposure in the first place. I can pull up detail in under exposed shots, but once something is over exposed all detail is lost forever.
  This picture of Fiouse, the lead singer/front man shows the severity of the over exposure. On the other hand, it does sort of look quite good - particularly the rainbow sunburst from his mirrored sun glasses. I kept this picture in the "official" set of photos for the band. I was praised for the good pictures, and of course that was rather nice. It was also interesting to compare my photos with those of one other whose photos appeared on the bands social media page. To my eyes, the other photos being shown alongside mine were very poor - very blocky and blotchy as if they were mobile phone photos on maximum zoom - which they probably were.

  I can't remember when I finally finished all my photo editing, and uploaded the results, but I think it was fairly late in the afternoon. During the whole process I kept feeling hungry, or maybe "peckish" is a better description. I ate an assortment of food during that time, and even after when I was supposed to be relaxing. Much of it was cheese of Marmite flavoured rice cakes, and they are sort of safe (even if the cheese clogs my arteries and contains too many calories).

  I can't remember when it was that I ate a sachet of Heinz "Spanish inspired" Beanz. What I do know is that when I checked the sugar content I came to realise that they contained far less sugar than their ordinary "baked beans". They do several different "inspired" flavours of beans in sachets, and all but the Mexican inspired one are rather nice, and the only thing which slightly spoils the Mexican inspired flavour is an excess of cheap cumin to flavour it. I had never thought of them as being low in sugar content before, and I must re-check that because unless I dreamed it, it could be the answer to eating beans which I like but the ordinary baked beans, even the "no added sugar" seem to have high sugar content.

  One thing apart from the miserable weather, the tiredness, the tedium of being at my photo editor for long periods of time, and general depression, that made me feel hungry was the knowledge that I had a pack of Sainsbury's ready cooked chicken thighs in the fridge. I was really looking forward to them, and as waiting for dinner time (between 6 and 7pm) to eat them. It was rather annoying that they failed to excite when I had them as part of my dinner. I don't know if it is the chicken we buy now, or me, but it seems I don't like chicken nearly as much as I used to. It is probably just me, and maybe another long term effect of Covid like how cucumbers went from nice to initially really nasty after getting Covid over 2 years ago now. The cucumber problem is starting to fade, and I can tolerate a little bit of it now.

  During the day I felt terribly tired, but every time I laid on my bed for a snooze nothing happened. I seemed to be comfortable enough, and it didn't feel like any other time after having a snooze, but I just didn't go to sleep. I wondered if I would sleep OK last night, and as a precaution I took a couple of painkillers to help stop any distractions by bits of me aching. I read for a little while after going to bed, but it was not that long, and sometime, probably between 9 and 10pm I easily fell into a fairly deep sleep.

  One the whole I slept OK, but there were a couple of short interludes. One, maybe the first, was when I woke up after about 4 hours of sleep, and after a pee I got back into bed to find that the pillow and the top of the duvet felt cold and damp. I left the heating off last night, and I guess I was so well wrapped in my duvet that I was sweating lightly in my sleep. It was easy to avoid the dampest bits, and even those were only very lightly damp, and get back to sleep.

  At about 5am I woke up, had a pee, and turned the heater on. I don't think I slept so deeply after that, and it must have been about 6.30am when I woke up. I guess it happens every time these days, but on some days it seems more pertinent that it feels too early, and I would wish for more sleep, and yet I know it is really time to get up. More sleep is impossible. At least this morning there was some good news. After all the nibbling I did yesterday I had worries that my blood glucose would have shot up to some bad figure. It had gone up a little, but only from 8.1 to 8.3mmol/l. As always I would prefer a lower figure, but that is still very acceptable.

  I am not sure what I am doing today - a day when the sun is still shining despite all the gloomy forecasts (both BBC and Met Office) saying it isn't shining. I have three possibilities for today. One is to go to The Petts Wood May Fayre where there is some live music, but as usual the bastards refuse to be specific about it. There is an all day charity event in The Iron Horse pub in Sidcup. It is free entry, but someone with a bucket will occasionally try and mug you for donations. They have many bands on, and the list include a couple I would like to see - particularly if I wanted to stay out late.

  I don't fancy staying out late tonight, or indeed most nights. If I had any stamina I could probably spend a bit of time in Petts Wood, and then go to the Iron Horse, but I can't see myself managing that. The third option is to do neither of the above, and make something up for myself - maybe a walk in the park or something. There is a fourth thing that I will try and do along with any of the others, and that is to get a bot of shopping. Ideally it would be from Tesco because I only want a few things, but I suspect that Tesco may not be open on this bank holiday.