Tuesday 30th May 2023

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Tuesday 30th May 2023

08:36 BST

Once again there seemed to be more sunshine than forecast yesterday. One thing was very noticeable was that the sunshine during early afternoon felt very hot, although the air temperature was possibly as little as 17° C. It seemed to cool down quite fast in the evening, and it felt quite chilly despite it still being 13° C.

The latest revision to the weather forecast is that 9am, or quite soon as I write this, will feature grey clouds. It is not quite that bad at the moment, but it is rather dull this morning. In compensation the start of the sunny spells has been brought forward to midday. There might even be a few hours of solid sunshine, and the temperature could rise as high as 19 or 20° C. Tonight could be quite cool, but thick clouds should stop it getting too cool (hopefully). Tomorrow could follow the trend and start off cool and dull, but the afternoon should be warm and sunny.

Yesterday was a good day, albeit with some caveats. It all revolved around going to a matinee gig featuring Chain playing in The Pelton Arms in Greenwich. I don't think I mentioned it yesterday, but it was a bank holiday. It was a warm and sunny day so many people went to the coast, or local parks. A consequence of that was that the gig was poorly attended. It can get quite rammed at The Pelton Arms at most gigs, but yesterday the custom probably barely paid for the band.

As I mentioned yesterday morning, I had a bit of stomach trouble that, at the time, seemed to threaten to spoil my day, and would make going out anywhere unwise. Fortunately it was "just a flash in the pan" and by midday when I finally went for a shave and shower, I was feeling OK, but still a bit cautious. At 1.45pm I was on my way to get a train from Catford Bridge to London Bridge. At London Bridge I changed trains to a train to take me to Maze Hill station.

In one respect my day was quite spoiled by a poor choice of shoes. I had rashly decided to wear a pair of replacement trainers for my favourite pair that I used to wear to gigs. Those old ones finally wore out, but for well over half their life they were very comfortable. Their replacement was actually one size smaller because that is the size that I have been wearing other shoes for a while now, but they felt a bit cramped. Just like the pair of shoes I wore for my short walk last Sunday, they felt uncomfortably hard and stiff.

I became acutely aware of this just walking to Catford Bridge station, but it was too late to turn back to change shoes. Besides which, I had this absurd romantic notion that I needed to wear in the new shoes, but yesterday was not really the day for that, and loads of short walks to the local shops would have been a far better start. Wearing those shoes slowed me down all the time except when changing trains at London Bridge. I only had four minutes to rush down the long stairs, which I think was slightly faster than taking the elevator next to the stairs. To get back up to the platform for my next train I almost ran up the escalator. It must be that the height of each step of escalators is the perfect height for my legs because I do find it fairly easy to go up escalators in a fast walk.

It is a 10 minute walk from Maze Hill station to The Pelton Arms pub, and each step was annoyingly painful. I was looking forward to some Guinness to dull the pain. It worked while I was in the pub.... I arrived about 10 minutes before the band started. After saying my hellos I went to the bar only to find Jo had followed me and insisted on buying me my first drink. Ten minutes later it was time to get out my camera.

The first picture I took were using natural light. I used my large aperture, non zoom lens on my Canon EOS 1200D camera. At first the bright daylight from the windows either side of the band was good, but later on it became a nuisance, and I got out my flash gun to give more front illumination of the band.

The lens I used is described as good for portrait work, and indeed it does do that well even in fairly low light. This close up on Jo came out well.

It was during the second set (I think) that I thought I would see what my Huawei P30 Pro mobile phone camera would make of the view. Apart from Jo aquiring a strange yellow colour cast, it did make a fairly good job of it, although it does seem to have a slightly "gritty" feel to the picture.

I had actually got my mobile phone out to shoot one video of the band, and as expected, with a few caveats, it did a good job of it. The big problem, as you'll probably notice about a third of the way through, is that the zoom function is a bit crap. It is a tiny slider that moves with barely a touch. To go to wide mode it uses a different lens, and always jumps. that is particularly annoying !

I stayed at the pub long enough to drink 4 pints of Guinness. It was sliding down a treat, and I guess I was hoping to numb my feet. Before getting carried away I inspected (and used) the pub toilets. The last time I was there it was very busy, and the single cubicle of the gents was awash with who knows what. I think the toilet seat was loose or broken, and the toilet roll was sitting on the floor in a puddle. Yesterday the floor was damp looking, but there wasn't enough for a half inch deep puddle ! It felt just sanitary enough to be usable !

On my way back to Maze Hill station I took a slightly different route - more for it's novelty value than it being any quicker. The main novelty was actually rather sad. I found a long closed pub - The Duke Of Wellington. They have kept the original frontage, and name board, but it has been converted to flats. http://www.dover-kent.com/2014-project/Duke-of-Wellington-Greenwich.html

On my way to Greenwich, and on the way home again, I was taking pictures of most of the trains I saw. At London Bridge I didn't have any time to spare on the way to Greenwich, but I took a couple of snaps of trains that I later found I already had pictures for when I could. On my way home, waiting at Maze Hill station train 465179 pulled in on the Kent bound platform, and I later found it was the first picture I had taken of it, and it was duly entered into my big spreadsheet.

At London Bridge, as I was headed for home, I did have a short time to snap one train that I later found I needed to add to my spreadsheet. It was this class 376 train at platform 8 headed towards Charing Cross. This picture, like the other train picture above it, were taken using my mobile phone in "Pro" mode - using a fast shutter speed. They looks sort of OK, but I feel sure one of my Nikon or Canon cameras would do a better job. Having said that, the sun was quite low, and in the wrong place for the above snap.

Once I got home I took my shoes off, and that felt so much better ! I changed into much more casual clothes and sat down to transfer all the pictures had taken on my mobile phone, Nikon pocket sized camera, and Canon 1200D DSLR camera, to my PC, and started the long process of selecting and editing, plus in the case of the train pictures, checking them off against my spreadsheet, and entering the two new trains into it.

That last train picture, taken at London Bridge station was taken at 5.29pm. It must have been very close to 6pm when I got home. After not eating since breakfast I was looking forward to some food to eat while editing picture and watching Star Treks. I was intending to have a salad, but I seemed to busy to spend time washing and dicing and stuff to make a salad. Although it is a ridiculous expense, I ordered yet another shish kebab takeaway.

I used the same place as the two previous kebab takeaways because I had some confidence that their cooking methods seemed to use no sugar - for instance in marinades or salad dressings. Delivery only seemed to take 30 or 40 minutes. I was a bit disappointed that the amount of meat seemed less than last time. I'm guessing that it was just a different chef having his own ideas about how much to use.

I had taken just over 200 snaps of Chain, and that was a lot to go through. Many were near duplicates where I was using continuous shooting. Some I just didn't like the lighting, and some the focal point was behind the wanted target. Out of the just 200+ snaps I found 22 that I was happy with. It was a long job. I gave up on it at about 9pm last night, and it wasn't long before I was headed to bed.

I was evidently tired enough to sleep quite well last night. I don't recall any great trauma during my sleep, but then again I can't seem to clearly remember any of the dreams I had. As seems to be common lately, I turned the heater on low at around 3am. I woke up around 5am, and then had a sort of lie in, but I was up at 6am this morning. I still had a lot to do. The first thing, after the toilet, was checking my blood glucose. It was not as low as hoped for, but I can't complain about 7.8mmol/l.

I thought that low reading allowed for a double helping of small packets of instant noodles. Maybe it was not such a good idea because it seemed to make more photo selecting/editing seem like hard work. I am not even sure my eyes were properly awake when I started. The pictures I spent a couple of hours on this morning were taken with flash, and I can't say I was that happy with them. It may have been the contrast between the expensive Canon branded lens, and the cheap Tamron zoom lens I was using for the second set.

When I had finished dealing with the photos I started to write this. I got as far as today's weather before wanting to have a lie down, and close my eyes. I actually dozed off for 15 or 20 minutes before I woke up and resumed writing this. I now have to think what I am doing for the rest of the day. I think I am going to rest my feet and stay in. I have at least one small job to do. This month is about to run out, and I need to cobble together a web page for the month of June. I may also do some gardening, or just some light house tidying up. Mostly I think I will be lazy !