It seems like today will be a lot like yesterday - which is pretty usual. The sky seemed to be a purer blue earlier, but now it is a pale blue, but the sun continues to shine even if a bit hazy from time to time. Like yesterday we are due to lose the sunshine or sunny spells early in the afternoon (the latest revision to the forecast now says 2pm), but like yesterday it will hopefully stay bright. Maybe today's high will be a degree higher than yesterday at 18° C. Tomorrow is either shown as sunny spells according to the BBC forecast, or the Met Office say white cloud all day, but the temperature should still make 16 or 17° C C.

  There were two big events yesterday, and I'll describe them in due time, but there are a few notes about the rest of the day. The main thing was having to cancel my usual Wednesday visit to The Jolly Farmers because I was expecting a parcel delivery from Amazon. To my great surprise it arrived earlier than expected - right in the middle of the time I would have been in the pub !

  The item delivered was a new temperature display and three external, radio linked, sensors. Principally I just wanted one sensor to replace one that had gone intermittent. Just after I had got fed up with that sensor failing, and had ordered the complete kit (costing about a third extra of a single sensor) I performated some percussive maintenance - I banged it against the brick wall just to show it who was boss. It has worked perfectly since, and may do until we get a very cold night, maybe in autumn.

  It was my plan that I could use the new/spare display unit in the dining room, and indeed that is what I have done. It replaced an older display unit whose display seemed to have faded over the years. That old display still works, and is bright enough in a dim room (!), and so I won't throw it away just yet. It is currently in the spare bedroom awaiting it's fate. I now have three spare temperature sensors waiting for one of the older ones to fail.

  With my parcel being delivered soon after 1.30pm (a record for Amazon !) I was free to go out and get a bit of shopping from Tesco in the afternoon. I think we had lost all the sunny spells by then, but it still felt nice walking there and back without a coat. I was mostly after some more salad ingredients, but I did see some diced lamb on the reduced price shelf. I think it was about £1 off the normal price. that is not as good as Sainsbury's who often make clearance stuff half price, but still a good enough price to tempt me.
  I was saddened/annoyed/something else that not only are Tesco out of stock of their low sugar and salt tomato ketchup, but they are not expecting supplies until 7th June !

  When I got home, just after 3pm, I had a late, and unhealthy dinner. It was a pack of 5 hot pepperami sticks. I scoffed the lot, and enjoyed them until later when they started to repeat on me. I didn't bother to read the nutritional information before eating them. I knew they were full of fat, and so had quite a high calorific value. This morning I have a strong feeling that they must have a high sugar content. I know that some dried meats, like biltong, use sugar to draw out moisture from the meat. I am wonder if Pepperami sticks do something similar.

  The headline event yesterday was going out to Simon Whitestar's open mic at The Partridge pub in Bromley. As a rule I don't like the place when a full gig is one because it gets so crowded, but as I observed a few weeks ago, when looking at some of my old photos, the open mic sessions are far less crowded. I hadn't gone to the pub at dinner time, and so I didn't have the usual Wednesday afternoon hangover. It was still daylight for several hours, and it was almost warm out. That decided for me that I was going to break several years tradition, and go for it.

  I thought I could get away with not wearing a coat. It was very mild when I walked to the bus stop, and I certainly didn't want a coat inside the pub. It was hot enough in there to get some dampness across my brow. It had cooled down a little more than was wise to go coatless on the way home again, and I shall have more to say about that a bit further down the page.
  This was the "house band" for the open mic session. Notable is Angela's lover boy on drums. It was till light outside when they started - a late start closer to 8.30pm than the "official" 8pm start. I think this picture was taken with natural light, but it wasn't long before I started using the flash gun.
  This is Simon Whitestar who runs this open mic session. I think this used flash with the flash gun set to low.  I was trying out an idea I had seen being used last year - a double layer of bubble wrap used as a diffuser, for a softer flash. Compared to my normal way of using flash, bouncing it off the ceiling, it was good and bad. Bouncing the flash, with the flash gun turned up brighter, gives better background illumination. Using the flash with bubble wrap diffuser, pointed almost straight at the subject can light the subject up leaving the background dim - when it works properly, and I am not sure it did a lot of the time.
  This is Roy Dalley - Simon's second in command. This picture was not nearly as good as hoped. The minimal stage lights to the left of the picture turned to blue as I hit the shutter button. Blue is a light colour, and it combined with the flash, and tried to bleach out Roy's face. The picture was slightly underexposed, and some detail is left in Roy's face, but his body and guitar are darker than I would like.
  One of the things I became aware of when taking a lot of pictures is how many would look better if taken from a lower angle. I've cropped off Chris' legs here, but in the full sized picture Chris looks quite short. I think I can see why some old style cameras are making a come back - the type that you hold at about belly height, and peer down into the top of the camera for the viewfinder. Of course the big problem with this picture is that Chris looks like a waxwork model - there is no implied life or movement in it.

  I got to the pub at 8pm, and intended, and enjoyed myself enough to stay until just gone 10.30pm. That is unusually late for me these days. At that time I had seen every musician playing (I think), and that seemed a good enough time to take a wander to the bus stop. Straight out of the warm, pub I felt OK with no coat and bare arms, and fortunately I didn't have to wait much more than five minutes for the bus.

  I don't know if they have changed the timings on the 320 bus, but I am sure it took less than the usual 23 minutes to get to Bromley. Going home is downhill, and usually feels faster anyway, but I noted the driver had to slow down whenever he approached a speed camera ! Upon arrival at Catford I walked home as fast as I could. This time I was far more aware of the cold. Ideally I would have had some hot food when I got home, but I was trying to avoid eating, although I did eat a handful of peanuts washed down with a large whisky before going to bed.

  It was possibly getting on for midnight before I was in bed, and falling asleep. At that point I didn't think any heating was needed. An hour or two later I woke up, partly uncovered, feeling cold, and my chest was feeling very sore. If I hadn't known better, from past experience, I might have thought I was having a heart attack. Fortunately I knew it was because I had let my chest get chilled, partly from the journey home, and partly from sleeping partly uncovered in a cool room. I took both Paracetamol and Ibuprofen to kill the aches and pains. From then on I seemed to sleep OK.

  I only woke a few times after that for a pee. At the pub I had only drunk 2 pints of Guinness, which is generally safe, and a pint of Mild. The latter was awful. In my opinion it had gone off, and was tasting quite vinegary. I left the last quarter of a pint. Even so, that was nearly three pints, and I am surprised I didn't pee more in the night. It was almost as if my blood glucose was nice and low.....

  I was woken up earlier than expected by a test message from Angela - at least I think it was from her, but the number was unfamiliar. There could be many reasons for it including some sort of scamming or something, but I seem to think that maybe Angela has a secret phone that is hidden from lover boy. Angela wanted to know if I would like to meet in her local pub at lunchtime. Of course I did, but I have Jodie and Michael coming for a beer session this afternoon, and I am also expecting another Amazon parcel some time today.

  It felt much too early to get up, even if at any other time I would possibly be up by then. I did attempt to go back to sleep, and I sort of did sleep, but only of the time where the clock has advanced 10 minutes during a single blink of the eye. Once I had been to the toilet I checked my blood glucose level. After not having a dinner, I expected it is to be a lot lower than 9.1mmol/l. That was as much annoying as intriguing. Sometimes a cold or other malady can raise blood sugar. I wonder if the chest aches, and painkillers, had any bearing on the higher than expected reading. Either that of those sticks of hot Pepperami must have been saturated with sugar !
  One of the possible highlights of today is that it is soup day. The four cans pictures above are actually cans of beer - very cloudy beer I am lead to believe. Jodie, who has tried one or two of them suggests I won't like them. That sounds highly probable, but fortunately I have other beers to drink - some of which may be more to Michael's taste.

  That is most of the afternoon described. Another highlight should be the delivery of a petal style lens hood for one of my camera lenses - one of the lenses I was using last night, and a lens hood may have been useful, even if only to make my camera look more professional. The lens hood was not terribly expensive, and I padded the order out, to get free delivery, by ordering some useful high power AA and AAA cells.

  One thing that will be sucking up a lot of my spare time today will be picture editing. If it had just been one band on last night I would have probably taken enough pictures to show the band, and then probably have gone home. At the open mic there was a stream of different musicians to try and get good enough snaps of, and today I have to go through almost 300 pictures (thank goodness for cheap digital media - couldn't do that with expensive 35mm film !).  To make matters worse I am trying to improve my skills at "beautifying" the picture with little tweaks here and there. It can get time consuming.