I think it was at least a degree warmer than 17° C at 8am, and it definitely wasn't sunny.  At that time the whole sky was a milky colour. That high cloud/mist has dispersed now, and it is bright and sunny. The latest revision to the forecast now shows 4pm as sunny spells, but full sunshine is still expected for the rest of the time up to sunset. For all that only 26° C is expected. It seems that the expected heat wave has been put back a bit. Curiously enough, the forecast for tomorrow shows only sunny spells for a few hours, and somehow seems closer to today's reality. By mid morning the sun should be on full power for the rest of the day, but only 27° C is expected. Maybe the day after will see 30° C.

   Yesterday was another slow day, and it wasn't a lot different to the day before. I did manage to get some washing on the line earlier than the day before. By 5 or 6pm it was hot and dry after being dried by the admittedly intermittent sunshine. I think I brought it all in during one of the longer spells of sunshine, and that was why it felt quite hot as I gathered it in off the washing line. It is how I like it to dry.

  I think the magnitude of all the photos I have to go through, and edit the best for public consumption, is actually making me work slower. There is also the thing that while I have managed a couple of good (for me) lie ins, I have been getting to sleep so late that I am still not getting any more than 7 hours sleep, and possibly as little as 6 hours. I only really thought about it this morning. It does explain why I feel tired - tired as in sleepy rather than just generally fatigued.

  All I managed yesterday were one and a half band photo sets. The first band I tackled was Slider Punk. Despite all being middle aged, they do a pretty good job of recreating the punk scene of the late 1970s (or was it 1980s ?). Now I have to admit that over the years an awful lt of dross has settled to the bottom, and all the great punk songs I remember are really a small selection of the total that have risen to the top.

  What I am trying to say was that I enjoyed their set a lot ! Now some people dance to music they like, while others just tap their feet. It seems I start to tap the shutter button on my camera. That resulted in an awful lot of pictures to go through. There were 261 of them to choose from, and like punk music, there was an awful lot that were total crap. However, with so many to choose from I managed to get a few excellent pictures, and a handful, or two, of still very acceptable shots.

  Getting some of them to look good required a fair bit of time at the photo editor application. One problem, which I think I mentioned yesterday was that the open backed stage let brilliant sunshine in, and that meant a lot of back lighting for some pictures, and quite often just great big bright patches that made the actual subject of the photo look very wishy washy. This is illustrated well using a picture that I still hope I can improve.
  The brilliantly lit stage fog gives a very ethereal back drop, but Dan looks very bland in the middle of it. I haven't "officially" done this picture yet. I have two other very similar shots I might play with, but sadly none have a symmetrical display of fog behind Dan. John Bull, the photographer who inspires me, showed a brilliant version of this picture, and I think I will have to take a copy of it to see how close I can get to it.

  Dan is from the band MT Pockets, and for a three piece they make a big noise. Better than that is that Dan has a huge stage presence, and like many guitarists he can pull loads of faces and poses. I ended up taking 410 pictures just for the one band. Many are failures, and I won't be using them, but it still takes a long time to go through them, and consider the possibilities. Yesterday I only got halfway through all those pictures, and rest will probably take up any spare time I have today. The picture above is about halfway through the second half, and so my eyes will probably be tired again when I try and improve on it - either that or I'll be drunk, but maybe that will help !

  One thing that didn't happen yesterday was a visit from Jodie. This time she phoned me and said she had to do some "adult stuff", namely going to a large tile shop to select new tiles for the bathroom in her late parents house. Sometimes it feels I'll never get to drink some of those beers that have been chilling in the beer fridge for well over a week now. Yesterday evening I was drinking (Aldi's own brand of) Jack Daniels and Diet Coke, and I must admit it slipped down rather well.

  During the day I half ate wisely. Having a big bowl of instant noodles for breakfast was a poor choice when my blood glucose was so high, but I did feel very hungry. A can of Tesco's Irish Stew made a nice, and close to safe lunch. It was dinner time when it all went wrong. I had two ready meals in the fridge, originally bought for last weekend, and both were on their use by date (and possibly a day after it). I had both of them for dinner. The trouble is that their sugar content is not notably low, and so they were bad for me, and doubly so when eating the two of them. The ironic thing is that I didn't even enjoy them !

  It was quite warm last night, and I closed the window because I was expecting this morning to be very cool - it wasn't. Like the last few nights it was gone midnight when I fell asleep. I did seem to sleep rather well. It was just getting light, sort of pre-dawn light, when I first woke up. One of the most obvious things when I went back to bed after a small pee, was that my pillow, partly protected by a towel, was soaking with sweat. I suppose the alcohol didn't help, and neither did the hot sauce I put on my dinner to try and make it taste nicer.

  This morning I woke, as if to get up, at about 6.30am. I thought I would just close my eyes again to see what happened, and the next thing I knew it was 7.30am. It is possible that I could have had another bit of sleep, but I knew I have a busy day ahead, and thought I had better get up. One thing I didn't do was to drink enough water, and wait long enough to rehydrate myself before checking my blood glucose. At least I hope that if I had drunk nearly 2 pints of water, and left it another half hour or so, I would have got a lower, less dangerous, reading of 10.2mmol/l.

  Obviously no breakfast for me today ! If I knew for definite that Jodie won't be coming over to open some of the chilled beers, I would try and fast until dinner time, but there is a small chance that Jodie will come over. Other than a possible drinking session this afternoon I have to do some shopping in Tesco, and of course I still have teetering mound of digital photos to go through and edit the best of them.

  When I have finished the MT Pockets photos I will have just 167 snaps of Jamie And The Jets, and 98 snaps of Glamstar to consider. Finally will be a large handful of crowd shots to consider. I might even be free to go out on Friday with the photography job complete.