This morning, the 1st day of May, and sometimes regarded as almost a summer month, has got off to a grey start. There  could be sunny spells at 9am, but only for that one single hour. Rain is forecast for midday, 1pm, 2pm, and 4pm. The rain for midday and 1pm could be heavy rain. There could be some sunny spells in the early evening. I think the temperature is already 12° C, and maybe it will climb higher than the 17° C forecast for today. Tomorrow could start with dark cloud, but by mid morning white cloud is currently forecast, and that white cloud will continue for the rest of the day. It is going to be colder tomorrow with the day starting around 8° C, and the afternoon only 14° C.
 
   I didn't seem to be in a very positive mood yesterday. I wanted to go to see a couple of bands at The Sweeps Festival in Rochester, but I seemed to find too many negative reasons for not going, and I ended up staying in doing one modestly big job, and a lot of playing around jobs.

  One negative influence was that I felt a bit stiff after the gardening I did the previous day. More about that later. Another thing is that I didn't manage to go to the toilet for a poo until almost midday, and while it was a reasonable amount, it didn't seem like the end of the story, although nothing more happened later. I was going to say the biggest turn off was the long train journey caused by engineering work blocking the more straight forward route.

  As I mentioned yesterday morning, to get to Rochester I had to get a train to London Bridge. It is a fairly fast service and only stopped at two intermediate stations. Changing at London Bridge can be irritating because it is such a large station, but at least I knew in advance that it was from platform 8 to platform 4. From London Bridge to Rochester on the Thameslink route meant stopping at 17 station before arriving at Rochester.

  In the days of slam door trains, when you could open the door window to get a good look at your surrounding, and if the weather was bright and sunny you could pass the time taking pictures through the open windows, and such a journey could have been interesting. Yesterday it would have been very boring, and there was a lot of doubt about what the weather would really be like. The forecasts could not agree with each other, and it all seemed to be a gamble as to whether it would be bright or dull. There did seem to be a fairly high probability that it would be dry.

  When the time came when I should have been walking to the station I started cooking my lunch. It was cheese on Turkish Bread toast - the bread left over from the takeaway a few days earlier. It was nice, but maybe slightly bland. I think I should have put on more cheese, and left it in the mini oven/grill until it started to brown. Having eaten lunch I lay on my bed to read, and possibly to snooze, although I don't think I did snooze.

  I probably relaxed to digest my lunch for less than an hour when I did what would be the big job of the day. It was to do some laundry. Now the thing about the way I do my laundry by hand bears some semblance to gardening activities - bending over the bath with my big builders buckets in it, picking up heavy wet stuff, and wringing it out. Apart from wringing stuff out, it was using a very similar set of muscles to those I used when gardening (although gardening used a bigger variety of muscles).

  As soon as I started that laundry I could feel those muscles start to ache very quickly. Maybe ache is not quite the right word. Maybe tire and ache comes closer. I was only washing a single t-shirt, a pair of lounge pants, and two pairs of underwear. I didn't completely have to, but it felt better to stop and take a breather before doing the last rinse water wringing out, and then wringing out the fabric conditioner. I hung everything on a clothes horse in the front room with a desk fan on it to help it dry.

  With the laundry done I retired to my bedroom, and lay on my bed reading until some more inspiration crept up on me. I decided to watch another two episodes of Star Trek: Picard. Once again I came away with the strong impression that while enjoyable, it would have been a lot more enjoyable if it were written like a traditional TV episode of about 40 minutes (with no adverts) instead of close to movie length. All the padding to make it movie length just spoiled what could have been a faster, and more enjoyable plot.

  I think it may have been between the two episodes I watched that I stopped to serve up my dinner. In theory it was a safe chicken breast and vegetable stew, but I was trying some new vegetables - an Aldi bag of "stir fry vegetables". As usual in such a thing, there was a lot of cheap carrot in the mix, and I always have strong doubts about the sugar content of carrot. There was other stuff I ate yesterday that I knew to be not exactly safe, and it included the cheese on toast, and some giant hoops (not quite the same as Hula Hoops, but a similar idea).

  I had watched all the Picard I could stomach in one sitting, and it was still light outside, although the light was starting to fade. I can't think for the life of me what inspired me, but I grew curious about whether an old, some say vintage, Philips flash gun would work with my two oldest, and so less sensitive cameras - the Nikon D80 and the Canon 300D.
  I had tried on one or the other a few years ago, but I wasn't sure if it worked on both. I bought this flash gun off a friend in the mid 1980s when I got my first SLR camera - possibly from the same friend, but not at the same time. For years it sat in a dusty box unused, and with the batteries left in it. Inevitably they leaked, and when I discovered it a few years ago I found the contacts around one battery were badly corroded. I cleaned up as much corrosion as I could before testing it.

  I found that although the battery contacts needed more cleaning because they were a bit intermittent, the thing worked, and seemed to work well. On the back of the unit is a large dial where you can set the sensitivity of the film (in ISO rating, and so still relevant to a digital camera), and then read off the f stop suggested. That too works with a digital camera. I took some test shots, and the figures on the dial seemed to be a good starting point, and would have been fine for film. On a digital camera, with instant review of the picture just taken, the settings can be tweaked as you go.

  I am not sure if the flash gun is described as intelligent, or computerised. In fact it does have something like an analogue computer built in. It can detect the strength of the flash, and quench the flash early once enough light has been on the scene. Two other very simple little things make it stand out as semi-professional. The reflector inside cane be rotated up or down the throw the flash either direct, or bounced off the ceiling - a generally better way of using a flash if there is a ceiling. Also the entire flash unit can be rotated left or right, once again for indirect illumination. On the whole it is still, after 40+ years, a very useful accessory.

  There is an interesting write up about the flash gun here - http://www.muada.com/2014/03-05-my-old-philips-31ct-computer-flash-unit.html
  This morning I thought I ought to take a few decent snaps to show the Philips flash gun working my Nikon D80 camera. The first is of spare cans and bottles of beer sitting on the mini fridge in the dining room. It is pretty grey outside at the moment, and with no other lighting it was only just bright enough for the camera to focus when I took this picture.
 It was dull enough in the garden to make using flash worthwhile to get a picture of the flower head slowly opening up. In a day or two more, hopefully when it is sunny, this flower head will expand into a ball of very small flowers. I think, but the chances are I am very wrong, it is an Aster.
  As soon as I went out into the garden this pigeon was expecting me to put out some bird seed. It flew over my head several times, and briefly came to rest on the bird table - disused since last November when I realised the scattered bird seed was attracting every rat in the neighbourhood. I only had seconds to take this snap, and I didn't have time to change any camera settings. I have had to clean it up a bit. The pigeon looks nice and sharp, but somehow the whole scene looks very unnatural.

  Back to last night, and in the last couple of hours before I went to bed I often felt a bit too cool, and would put the heater on low. It seemed to only take five minutes before it felt almost too warm. I left the heater off when I got into bed, and the temperature seemed to feel about right. I think it took 15 or 20 minutes before I got to sleep, but I seemed to sleep well once I was asleep. I only seemed to wake a couple of times in the night. I think it was the second time, at around the 3:30am when I turned the heater on because I was sort of in pain.

  I am not sure what I did while asleep, assuming I did do something in my sleep, but my left shoulder, and quite a lot around it, felt really quite painful, but only when I moved my left arm in certain ways. It left a sort of residual pain even in the most comfortable position. I didn't count it in the amount of times I woke up in the night, but I guess 5:30am also counts as one time because I did deliberately go back to sleep after turning the heater full up.

  This morning my left shoulder is mostly OK, but another pain that started in the night is marginally worse. It is my right wrist, and I am wearing a wrist support to make typing this more comfortable. Once again it is certain movement, at certain angles that are the worst. Annoyingly, picking up a full pint glass (not of beer) is one semi painful movement. Luckily, or maybe not luckily, I am unlikely to be going out for beer today.

  I alluded to it earlier, when discussing some of what I ate yesterday - I have started the new month with a high blood glucose reading. 9.5mmol/l is not terrible, but it is still very undesirable. I felt hungry when I woke up, and I have had a big bowl of instant noodles. Today's food ought to include a couple of individual meat pies, although I think their use by date could be the 5th of the month. It is probably best I get rid of them under semi controlled circumstances. I may have them for a very late lunch, and then try and fast tonight. I've not really done that more than once or twice in the past, and it all depends on being in a happy mood. That seems unlikely, but I'll do my best.

  I don't know what I am doing today. I don't fancy anything that will put strain on my arms or wrists, although I suppose walking would be OK, but I am unlikely to do any walking in this afternoon's rain ! One thing I will try and do is to finish sorting out my paper work, bills and receipts into their appropriate file pockets. To save space I have already started only keeping a single copy of some bill showing a typical price for the year. I was surprised that it only seemed to be a few years ago, maybe 10 years, that all my "free upgrades" have approximately doubled the price of my Virgin Media broadband connection. I guess I really should accept the disruption of changing to a cheaper provider, but sometimes an old shoe is so comfortable you don't even notice it.