At about 5am the temperature had fallen to 11° C. The morning sunshine is helping to slowly warm things up, but the forecast only predicts 18° C - which is pretty poor for August ! The BBC predict light rain from 3pm to 7pm, but the Met Office says it should be dry for the whole of today. Although it is sunny as I write this, the sun will soon be replaced by just sunny spells, and even those are in short supply, and many hours could possibly still be bright, but with no sunshine at all. Tomorrow could be a bit warmer, and there should be more sunshine. The temperature could hit 21 or possibly 22° C.

  Off to a very late start this morning for reasons that will soon become apparent. Yesterday was a good day, and all my fears, generally about the weather, only came partly true. I actually had a slow morning getting myself, and my camera equipment ready to get the 11:40 train from Catford station to Petts Wood via one change of train at Shortlands station.

  The weather forecast for yesterday, albeit for Catford, rather than Petts Wood, ranged form appalling to terrible. There certainly was a lot of rain falling for over half the time I was there, but there also some sunny spells. They didn't appear in the weather forecast (although the last revision I saw was just before I left for the station, or about 11am). One thing that didn't appear/happen was any thunderstorms. They could have been exciting, and also terrible, if they had happened.

  The reason for my journey (in light rain) to Petts Wood was to see as many of the 9 bands performing at Petts Wood Calling, on a big stage in the Petts Wood Memorial Gardens. There were several bands I particularly wanted to see, and a few I didn't. I didn't expect to stay to the end because I didn't really care for the last band. They are very good, but it all gets a bit over excited. besides, they were on past my bedtime !

    The reason why I have started to write so late in the morning is that I wanted to have a few photos edited and ready to use before I started to write. As it stands I have only transferred pictures from my Nikon D80 camera to my PC, and I've only dealt with half of them so far. I know there will be at least several hundred on my Nikon D300s camera. I am expecting it to take a couple of days to get through all of them.
  Most of the pictures taken on the Nikon D80 were using my very wide angle, fisheye lens. It distorts the outside of the picture so much that people look like aliens or something, but a crop from the middle of the picture doesn't look too bad (I hope). This pictures is of the first band on stage - The Dirty Perks.
  One band I was looking forward to seeing was Burning Chrome. I last saw them, but only their very last song (although I did hear some of the previous song as i walked to the pub) at Chattfest last year. On that occasion I thought they sounded great, but I now realise that they only play "balls to the wall" heavy metal as a sort of finale to their set. I found most of the stuff they played at Petts Wood Calling failed to excite me - plus, up close, the three of them look like school teachers !
  I was looking forward to seeing The Ferrets set, and this time I was not disappointed. They are a punk rock covers band, and have all the attitude (on stage) to make for wonderful entertainment - if you like old punk stuff - which it seems most of the audience did. Off stage they are nice blokes, and it was easy to line them up against the wall to shoot them - as in a band photo that I hope came out OK because to my tired eyes it looked very slightly out of focus.
  This is another picture of The Ferrets. The writing on the guitarists t-shirt says "Granny Magnet" which for some reason amused me.

  I think it was probably about 5 hours after getting to Petts Wood that I felt the need to take a couple of Paracetamol tablets. The damp was probably instrumental, as well as old age and general decrepitude, in getting my knees, ankles and other leg parts, as well as my right elbow, aching. I was also tiring in other ways. After 7 hours I thought I had put in a reasonable shift, and hoped I had taken enough good (or good enough) pictures to justify my back stage pass (sadly just an orange wrist band rather than a laminate as seen in all the best rock movies etc).

  What I didn't realise until I checked the times of the trains, was that the "action short of a strike" meant that all the Thameslink train went to bed early last night. They were only running one train an hour in the day, and they probably finished around 6pm. It was after 7pm when I was going to go home. I considered several alternatives, and the easiest was to go home via London Bridge station.

  In my fatigued state I didn't seem to retain the times of the trains in my memory. had I remembered the time of what could have been a good train I might have started towards the station a bit earlier. As It was, I arrived at the station with train already standing at the platform. If my legs and knees and stuff had allowed for running I might have just made that train by the skin of my teeth. It was a 20 minute wait for the next train, and it was feeling cold and windy, with some light rain in the wind as I waited for the 7.44pm train towards Cannon Street (calling at London Bridge).

  While I was waiting for the train I checked the train timings, and saw that I had three minutes to change trains at London Bridge. That is less than the recommended time, but that is probably based on the time it takes to get from platform 1 to platform 16 (or whatever the highest number platform is). I just had to go from platform 3 to platform 6, and 3 minutes was plenty of time. I think it was the 8.15pm train I got, and I was at Catford Bridge just before 8.30pm.

  It was a bit of a slog walking back home from the station, and I was very glad to get home. The first thing I wanted was some dinner. I had had a large helping of instant noodles for breakfast, and one two ginger biscuits until I was home. I had been very tempted to go home via the fried chicken shop, but I resisted that, and had something equally unhealthy, but in different ways. I had two Scotch Eggs, and a tub of my favourite low calorie/sugar ice cream.

  My dinner seemed satisfying in a way, but maybe some hot food might have been better. The cold ice cream on a cool night was probably not a good idea. By the time I had finished eating, and checking a few things online, I felt too tired to do any more, and I went to bed. I doubt it was any later than 9.30pm before I was fast asleep. It was a cool night, and of course eating ice cream didn't help. For the first time since something like mid spring, I slept the whole night under the duvet.

  I can only remember  waking a couple of times for a pee, and on those occasions I had to turn my pillow around because I had been sweating on it. I think that made a bad situation worse. While I was out I think I only drank a little more than half a 500ml bottle of water plus a pint of Guinness (more about that Guinness possibly tomorrow). One notable thing is that as soon as I got home I checked my blood glucose reading. Instead of going down, and I expected, it had actually risen since the morning. I blamed that on probably being dehydrated.

  I didn't drink all that much after getting home, and before going to bed. So I am going to blame more dehydration for my very high blood glucose readings this morning. Both meters gave almost identical readings of 10.6 and 10.5mmol/l. That is dangerously high, but maybe dehydration was causing a false reading. Before considering any breakfast, despite feeling very hungry. I drank almost a litre of chilled water (maybe three quarters of a litre) over the course of an hour and a bit. I ten checked my blood glucose reading, just one one meter, the new one, and it read a more wholesome, but still higher than desirable, 9.4mmol/l. That is a fair drop, and as if to prove the point I only had a single small pee after guzzling that much water.

  The trains are running fine today, and that means Jodie should be coming over this afternoon for a beer tasting session - assuming she hasn't over pickled herself at the Great British beer Festival. Before that I have to have a shower. I think I feel like I want a snooze, and I have to make a start on the pictures taken on the bigger Nikon D300s. I think I will concentrate on the picture of the band Ransom because Jodie will like some of their long blond hair, and (hopefully) a few hair flicking picture I took. It feels like it will be a busy day today, and tomorrow.