It would seem, assuming the forecast is correct, that only 11am and midday won't see sunny spells today. They may help warm up my front. south facing rooms, but outside it is going to feel cold with the temperature only rising to 8° C maximum in the afternoon. Unless you are in BBC land, tomorrow may start with mist and fog (The BBC forecast says it will be clear with sunny spells), but the sun should break through by 10am, and there could be full sunshine until sunset. Once again that sun should warm up my front rooms, but outside it may be no more than 7° C.
 
   At least half of yesterday was not nice. It was the price to pay for my evening out at Chain's gig the night before. I felt tired. It wasn't the sleepy kind of tired, but something more akin to exhaustion, although it wasn't as bad as that. On top of that many of my aches and pains were back. Most were like muscular pain, but some were joint pains. None were particularly bad, but together, and combined with the weary sort of feeling, it made it difficult to raise enthusiasm for anything.

  I had made a start on getting a few photos from the previous night, ready to use here, but I had a lot more to work my way through. It was one of the things that seemed like hard work, and work I didn't want to do while feeling sub par. It was a job made worse because I was not happy with many of the pictures. Many seemed to be basically in focus, but had a soft look about them.

  It is an effect I have noticed before, and I am fairly sure it is all the fault of the "cheap" Tamron lens shown in the picture on the left. In theory it should be a great lens. That 18 to 200mm zoom range covers wide, full band shots (provided I am far enough away, and the view isn't cluttered by people) right up to close ups on faces.

  I need to do some tests, with the camera on a tripod, in various light conditions, to compare it to other lens before completely condemning it. Even if it does turn out to produce "soft" pictures, it is possibly OK in brighter light - like full daylight, such as today may see. That could make it OK for things like daylight train photography, but I tend to use one of my Canon cameras for that.

  Funnily enough, or maybe it is not so funny, I have one or two Tamron lenses for my Canon cameras, and I think I have blamed them for producing soft pictures. Maybe I have more testing to do using a Canon camera and lenses. The good thing about Tamron lenses is that they are cheap - cheap compared to similar Nikon Nikkor lenses. It would make it VERY expensive to replace my Tamron lenses, and I think I just have to be selective when and where I use them.

  Despite all the frustration, and the aches, pains and general weariness, I pushed on, and finished doing all I could for the photos I used at just after midday (if I recall correctly - which I have doubts I do !). There were a couple of photos I did put extra work into.
  This picture is one I particularly like, and not for any reason you might guess. I guess you could call it a rescued photo. It started life as a picture of Carrie at the end of the bar with my, and several others photo nemesis. His name is William, and he has a bad habit of standing in front of photographers (because he has little awareness of others), and for doing trying to get into other pictures. In this picture he put his arm around Carrie, and was gurning towards my camera. I think I did a fair job of painting him out, and ending up with quite a good picture.
  Here's another picture of Carrie where she posed for me with no ugly gurners hanging on. She is my own big hope of getting photos of someone before they are famous. She has already done some TV work, but music is her first love. She is young enough, and driven enough to be famous one day - hopefully.

  After finishing photo editing I was going to have a shower, and maybe go out, perhaps just to a local shop or something, but it was some miserable looking outside that I decided not to bother. What I did instead was to hand wash a couple of t-shirts and some underwear. I surprised myself by almost doing it all in non stop process (except for leaving it all to soak in detergent for half an hour or so). In the end I did take a break just before doing the last wringing out before hanging it all up to dry indoors. The reason I stopped was to pee.

  I didn't resume straight away after the pee because I stopped for a bite to eat. I can't remember if I had two or three lunch/snack breaks. The one in the middle of the laundry was definitely a snack break, albeit a big snack. It was 4 chilli flavoured rice cakes with mustard and ham on them. I can't seem to recall if I had a bowl of instant noodles or a bowl of soup, or both for lunch breaks.

  Once I had finished the last stage of the laundry I felt I could start some high level laziness. Until dinner time I read, snoozed, and read more until it seemed time to see if anything was on TV - there almost wasn't. I saw the tail end of Pink Floyd's "Endless River" on Sky Arts. That was followed by Guy Harvey's "From The Vaults" featuring video of punk bands from 1977. I ate my dinner watching that.

  Dinner was the dinner I had actually cooked for the previous day, but didn't eat because I went to the gig in the evening. It was basically stewed, diced lamb with loads of white cabbage. Originally I was only going to use half the lamb in the pack, but the last pack I used seemed to contain so much fat that it rendered down to quite a small portion of meat. So this time I thought I would use all of it, and of course this time it had far less fat, and I ended up with a lot of meat. Fortunately there was still plenty of fat to glaze the white cabbage, and I now consider it is the supreme way to serve white cabbage - even if all that animal fat is far from healthy even if it is delicious !

  My final bit of TV was the James Bond movie "Thunderball" being shown, with an annoying break in the middle, on ITV4. All James Bond films are good in parts, and some are good in total. Thunderball often seemed to be a bit pedestrian, and only a few bits were good. The tradition grand climax, usually with grand explosions and stuff, was a bit damp - it was mostly filmed under water, and while you can marvel at how they managed to get enough extras who could scuba dive, it just didn't feel terribly exciting.

  I did two things in the evening that may have had significances. One was to drink two bottles and one can of beer. One of the beers was a very strong abbey beer. The other things was to eat two medium sized juicy oranges. Although sweet, they were also a bit tart. I thought that might be good after the fatty dinner I had. Either or both might have had significances after going to bed, and/or in the morning.

  It was not long after finishing reading another short chapter in the book I am reading that I put the book down, turned out the light, and tried to sleep. I guess that was between 10 and 11pm. Very soon after I pulled the duvet over myself I began to feel hot. I guess it should be called a hot flush - a feeling of being very hot, and a sort of burning sensation on the skin. I wonder if it was the alcohol I drank, or the sugar from the oranges, or the hot pepper sauce in my dinner several hours earlier.

  The hot flush seemed to fade after 15 0r 20 minutes, and once it did I soon fell asleep. I know I had many dreams last night featuring things like buses, trains, and tunnels, but the details have faded to almost nothing now. Generally I seemed to sleep reasonably well. One curious thing is that despite the beer I drank, I can't remember getting up for a pee more than a couple of times.

  The getting up for a pee so few time would suggest my blood glucose was fairly low, but like the previous night, it turns out the opposite was true. This morning, maybe thanks to those sweet oranges, or maybe one of the beers, or even the possible three lunches/snack I had, my blood glucose had risen to 9.0mmol/l this morning - right on the cusp of being OK and a bit too high.

 One good thing is my blood pressure this morning, 108/75, although maybe the diastolic pressure, the "75", is a bit high. I mentioned yesterday, or the day before, that my blood pressure meter has become very unreliable. It frequently comes up with an error message - unless, as I discovered yesterday, you thump it on the side with something solid, something like a beer bottle ! Of course the trouble with this method is that it is difficult to keep relaxed while doing it. With luck, despite still saying it will be tomorrow, my new blood pressure meter may be delivered today. It arrived at the Amazon Dartford depot at 12:17 in the small hours of this morning, and usually it will be going out for delivery by midday. I expect it could be an annoyingly late delivery, but maybe I'll be lucky and it will get here before I want to go to bed.

  There is only one probable definite thing on today's agenda, and it will be an afternoon beer tasting session with Jodie. If I have time I might do a quick shopping trip to Tesco, but it is not high on my list of priorities.....on the other hand, there is nothing else on my list of priorites that doesn't involve reading and snoozing until Jodie arrives.