This morning was less fresh than yesterday, and it is warming up fast. After a day of non stop sunshine 26° C is expected. It might even get hotter. Tomorrow is currently forecast to be another sunny day with the temperature reaching 27° C.

   If the day before yesterday was the calm before the storm, then yesterday was the storm ! The storm being Petts Wood Calling 2022. It was a great day, but got off to a bad start when I had to wait on Catford station for over half an hour because the train I wanted had been cancelled because no driver was available. On a positive note, my new back pack camera case was really good, although also carrying a small cool bag with some drinks and ice bricks in it was a bit of a pain in the neck - literally. Most of yesterday is a story told in pictures.
  The first band I saw (actually the second band on) was Hell On Tap. This picture shows Paul Newham on bass, and Mike Chappel in the background on drums. The significance of this picture, and all the others I'll be showing today, is that it was taken on my Nikon D80 camera.It is a 2006 model bought secondhand for around £100 - which is remarkably cheap for a full DSLR camera. I was very pleased with it's performance, and really the only problem I had with it was that I don't have a wide angle lens for it. So all these pictures are long shots.
  Here's Steve and Carrie from Hell On Tap. I just couldn't far back enough to get in Steve and Carrie's feet, but then again they were hidden behind the monitor speakers.
  The next band on were Chain, and here's Chris Mayer from Chain showing off he Fender (guitars) t-shirt.
  Chris Clark is only a part time member of Chain, but usually appears playing keyboards at their bigger events. I used some artistic licence for this picture. The lights behind Chris were actually off, but I thought I would make it look like they were on to give some extra colour to the pictures.
  Another shot of Chris Mayer. I never did get a decent shot of Jo Corteen on the D80 camera because being in the middle of the stage I couldn't get a decent long shot of her. I hope I have some decent pictures of her on my Nikon D3200 camera.
  Steve Fuller was Chain's drummer on this occasion. He always seems to have a grin, or even big smile on his face.
  Skipping a band (because I didn't want to waste shots on The Cockney Knights - a Chas And Dave tribute band - i.e, pretty terrible), and on to MT Pockets. Dan Murphy always seems so photogenic - sometimes on account of the faces he pulls while playing guitar.
  The thing about Dan Murphy is that it seems he has two loves. One is funk/soul music, and the other is playing the guitar in heavy metal style. One song the band covered was The Isley Brothers "Summer Breeze" - a very traditional funk song - but Dan played it with heavy hands on the guitar strings, and added lots of twiddly bit to it.
  MT Pockets went down really well with the audience. Dan got them singing along like a professional.

  My original plan was to go home after seeing MT Pockets, but I stayed for a few other bands, and it was getting on for 9pm when I left, although I think it was actually closer to 8.30pm. I had partly fortified myself with literally just three ginger biscuits during the later afternoon/early evening, and I also popped out twice for a pint of Guinness from The nearby Daylight Inn (it was much cheaper than the onsite bar). I suffered a couple of bouts of sciatica, but a short rest, sitting down in the green room, provided a partial cure. By the time I headed home the sciatic was getting harder to stop.

  Getting home of Petts Wood is always a pain. There is a very quick (3 minutes) connection when changing trains at Shortland (for instance, although National Rail always suggest Bickley). In the reverse direction the Catford train arrives before the train from Petts Wood by that same 3 minutes. It means a 27 minute wait to change train, which is not great when feeling tired. Fortunately there is an alternative !

  When I got down to the platform at Petts Wood station I saw there was a Canon Street train due first in about 12 minutes. The information screen showed the times it would arrive at the stations along the way. Of particular interest was that it was due to arrive at Lewisham at 9.02pm. A quick check on my phone showed that at 9.13pm, just 11 minutes later, was a train to Catford Bridge. That was acceptable, and that was my route home. It didn't seem to take any longer that the journey to Petts Wood (after subtracting the time of the cancelled train). Maybe it was because I was mostly moving rather than hanging around,

  There was also one small time saver by taking the route - it cuts out the walk between Catford and Catford Bridge stations. I was looking forward to eating when I got home, and unfortunately looking forward to it a bit too intensely. After the bowl of instant noodles for breakfast, and the three ginger biscuits I ate at the festival, I had eaten nothing during the day, and it was well past my usual dinner time.

  I gave in to desire, and bought some chicken and chips on the way home. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and last night was the first time I had any "fries" for months, and maybe years. They seemed really delicious. The first two bits of chicken were really tasty too, but I think that two pieces were enough to jolt me back to reality. I must remember to only order 2 pieces if I do the same next year.

  After working my way through my chicken and fries I degreased my hands, and started looking at the pictures I had take on the D80 camera, and I was very pleased with the quality of many of them. I stayed up to midnight selecting and editing nearly all the best of them. By midnight I was really feeling dead on my feet. I think I had almost forgotten how to write when I went to bed.

  It is no surprise that I slept rather well, and also quite late last night. It is a sort of shame that for the last two hours I was hovering between sleep and being awake. I think I would feel a bit better if those two hours had been solid deep sleep. This morning I had to drink a pint of chilled water before getting an "official" blood glucose reading. The first reading I took almost straight after getting out of bed, was rather high, and just over the red line. The reading I just took was a far better 9.0mmol/l. That is higher than I'd like, but on the other hand it's all as expected after eating chicken and chips so late at night.

  Today could get very hectic just as I would really like to have a very lazy day. After I have had a shower I ought to wash some clothes, and get them hanging on the line to dry. After that I want to take a walk in the park to see just what is happening at the Fun 'n' Food day there today. I particularly want to take some snaps of the wild birds of prey display. There is a music stage, but I can't imagine there would be anything on it that would interest me. It is possible there could be a beer tent.... Taking of beer, I am not sure if Jodie will be over this afternoon because there are no trains today. I was originally hoping that if there was a beer tent, and Jodie was coming by train, she could meet me in the park, but if she is coming it will be by bus, and I doubt she would enjoy the extended walk to get into the park.

  Of course what I should be doing all day is going through the photos taken on my Nikon D3200 camera yesterday, and spending hour and hours, and countless hours selecting and editing the best from that camera too - and I probably took 3 or 4 hundred pictures on that camera !!