Contrary to what the forecast predicts, it is bright and sunny this morning. There is a fair amount of what looks to be very high thin clouds, and so maybe the sun will be dimmed a bit now and then. The latest revision to the forecast predicts white cloud for 10am, sunny spells for 11am and full sunshine for midday. Then it gets cloudy again, and there is just a 30% chance of light rain at 3 and 4pm followed by white cloud until sunset. Of course the only part of the forecast that will probably turn out right is the temperature. It was just 16° C early this morning, and the highest today should be 23° C. Tomorrow is shown as generally cloudy, but it could stay dry, and the afternoon temperature should reach 22° C. There might be an appearance of the sun in the late morning.

  I think I can say that yesterday was a rather good day. It seemed to take a long time before I was ready to go out, but I eventually made it to the 320 bus stop to go to Bromley. That was quite an unpleasant journey. The bus may have started off with few people on it, and so I could grab my favourite seat (2 back from the front), but we seemed to stop at every stop, and more and more people got on.

  The bus was rush hour full when we got to Bromley, and getting off the bus was a bit of a scrum. I arrived in Bromley about 20 minutes later than intended, and at that point I had no idea where I was going. All I knew was that Carrie and Steve were playing on the terrace of The Glades shopping centre. I am sure I have been in The Glades many years ago, and I am sure that it has probably changed a lot in all those years, but even years ago I hardly knew the place. Fortunately I noticed a huge advert taking up an entire disused shop front pointing to a new store on the Terrace. I followed that rather vague sign.
  I found them playing in the shade with the sun behind them (but over the roof of the building) while the sun burned down on The Queens Fields in front of them. It was my first opportunity to try my wide angle/fish eye lens for something like the purpose it was intended for. After shrinking the picture to show here it looks slightly messy because of the sun peeping over the top of the building causing lens flare.
  From the camera's perspective it didn't help that the windows behind them were almost mirror like. You can see how bright the gardens were in the reflection in that glass. This was the most liked of my pictures, and that is partly because Carrie's reflection looks a lot like her mum, Dawn Pross. She had dark hair, and because there is very little light on Carrie's back, it makes her hair look dark. They both share a very similar figure.
  It was impossible to photograph the pair face on without including myself in the image ! There are only so many pictures you can take of just two people that don;t change position, and I had soon used up all the angles I could think of (without rolling on the floor, or something equally weird). There is also the fact that as an acoustic duo, in a busking situation, they don't really entertain me much. My visit was more a photographic opportunity rather than wanting to see a gig.

  I guess that after as little as 20 minutes after getting there I said my thanks and good bye. That prompted a very light, sideways hug from Carrie - which was nice. The first place I went was into the gardens that were in front of them where something caught me eye.
  I think I have spotted this owl from the bus when it is headed towards Catford, and I had wanted to get a closer look to see what it was all about. It seems Bromley has an "Owl Prowl". This one was entitled "Sweet Heart". It seems there are probably many more of these dotted around Bromley. I only saw one more.
 This one was called Professor Mechanicus, and was outside the Metro Bank on the High Street. I didn't fancy getting a hot and slow moving bus home, and I did want to explore a little more of Bromley. In particular I wanted to see something of Churchill Gardens. What I didn't realise was that they were not the park I wanted to see. I got to see two parks for the price of one.

  Both follow the path of The River Ravensbourne, and are actually only separated by one road. The river actually flow along the bottom of Churchill Gardens, and there is a large pond called The Glassmill Reservoir there. If I had taken a big zoom lens with me I could have taken a few nice bird pictures. I attempted a picture of a nicely posing grey wagtail, but without zoom it was just too small to take a good picture.

  The park I really wanted to see was The Queensmead Recreation Ground, it is the one that I think it is most prominent from the train as it goes between Shortlands and Bromley South stations. Now I have a better appreciation of the layout I will re-appraise wnat the view from the train is really showing. Unfortunately the river is bounded by an ugly concrete channel as it flows through this park.
  While the parks were an unknown quantity, I knew I would come out on the road where The Shortlands Tavern stands. It was another excuse to get my fisheye lens out. The sun was almost perfect for this shot that was taken from the other side of the fairly narrow road. One possibility I might explore is whether I can do a reverse fisheye effect in my photo editing program to straighten the image out a bit.

  From The Shortlands Tavern it is just a short, well rehearsed route to Shortlands station. My timing was lucky because I only had a 10 minute wait for a train back to Catford station. In the 10 minutes I took a couple of snaps of trains, and one was a train I had never photographed before, and so it was another addition to my huge "train spotting" spreadsheet. In another 20 minutes I was home again (after spending 5 minutes on Catford Bridge station when i got a snap of another train for that spreadsheet.

  I was quite glad to get home. I had been wearing a new pair of all black Converse trainers, and my right foot was not comfortable. I think those new trainers are going to need a bit of wearing in. It was good to get them off, and yet there was no obvious damage to my foot. I guess if i had gritted my teeth I could have done a bit more exploration or train photography.

  I felt hungry when I got home, and made myself a second bowl of instant noodles. With hindsight that was probably a mistake. Later on, after a snooze, I had a snack of rice cakes with ham on them. I then sat down and went through all the photos I had taken. On the whole I was satisfied with what I had taken, although some of the pictures seemed under exposed. I had to do some noise reduction before I could brighten them up. All the photos were taken on my old Nikon D80 camera.

  I wasn't sure if I could trust that camera, but the pictures I had taken at Petts Wood Calling using it seemed to be quite good - in some instances better than my Nikon D3200 ! One curious thing is emerging, and it is about the pictures John Bull takes. They have a sort of unique quality, and I think I am beginning to understand how that came about. His usual camera is also an old Nikon, and while it is a professional model, it is not that dissimilar to my D80. Some of the pictures I have taken on that D80 have needed a lot of processing to make them look good. Part of that processing is a lot of noise reduction smoothing followed by a lot of sharpening. I have yet to take that to extremes, but some of my efforts have started to take on some of the milder characteristics on John's pictures.

  Last night's dinner was another plate of salad leaves with 4 small burgers on top - just like the day before. Once again I gave those leaves a good wash despite the packet saying washed and ready to eat. This morning I have had a brief dalliance with the runs again. It is nothing like the start of the weeks terrible runs, but it is still unwanted. It is almost as if even clean salad leaves are triggering a response now, and I am sure I can blame them because my poo has a hint of green and among the stench there is a sort of spinach like odour !

  I was in bed fairly early again last night, but I spent a long time reading in bed. I finally got to the end of the book I have been reading - "Fate Of Worlds" by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner. As I mentioned a day or two ago, it is complex book which starts with three separate story threads, and gradually, via lots of twists and turns, brings them almost together by the end of the book. The odd thing is that while I have had the book for probably many years, I am not sure if I have ever read it, or maybe never read it in it's entirety before. I think I could only recommend it to anyone who has read the books that precede it, and really wants to know how all the characters in those books end up.

  My sleep was good until about 2am this morning. I woke up from a safe nightmare at around that time. The nightmare was safe because it was about watching a very unpleasant film on late night TV. The film was a horror film about some people who had been drinking (or possibly injecting) rhododendron juice. In the film this made them both insane and impervious to pain. It was pretty unpleasant when they used scissors to cut off part of their ears to eat. It got really unpleasant when they decided it would be nice to eat each other intestines !

  I have no idea what could have inspired such a gruesome dream, and I am glad when I "turned off the TV" by waking up. I actually woke up because I needed a pee. I had that, and went back to bed, but I couldn't decide if I felt hot or cold. I think a draught across a bit of my body felt cold, but the rest of my felt hot. After a time I seemed to feel comfortable enough to go back to sleep. I almost slept well again after that, but I was awoken again for a pee, and then (or before) with cramp developing in one leg.

  I was quite surprised to find that I had slept through to gone 7am by way of several short sleeps this morning. I seemed to feel fairly good, and hoped for another good blood glucose reading. After a pint and a half of chilled water I took a reading, and it was a high 9.0mmol/l.  That's not terribly high, but definitely annoyingly high. Rightly or wrongly, I blame that second bowl of instant noodles I had.

  I have two simple plans for today. One is sure to happen, and it is to go out to get a bot of shopping from Tesco. The other still needs more research. Chain are playing in The Jolly Farmers pub in Purley tonight. The pub would seem to be no more than 5 minutes walk from the station, and the station is almost easy to get to - or at least it is during the middle of the day of a weekday. I think there may be a few hurdles to check out for on a Saturday night - particularly for the return journey. If The train journey looks feasible, and I can retain my enthusiasm into the evening (the most unlikely thing) maybe I'll get to an evening gig for the first time in ages.