This morning it felt particularly cool in my bedroom. It was 12° C outside, and inside my bedroom the temperature was only just over 20° C. That is a little under my tolerance level for sitting around, not wearing much, after getting out of a warm bed ! Over in BBC land there are sunny spells and sunshine for the whole day, but the Met Office forecast, as shown in the screenshot above, shows no sunshine at all for the afternoon, and there might even be showers at 6pm. At least the later afternoon temperature should reach 21° C - which seems really low for August. Tomorrow it could be dull and rainy again, and with the temperature only peaking at 18° C. The BBC basically agrees with that, although some of the rain they show as drizzle, and they say the rain starts and finishes a bit earlier, but no doubt all that will change by the early forecast tomorrow.

  Yesterday was a very busy day, and I didn't even have time for a snooze. I started writing quite late yesterday, and as soon as that was finished I only managed to get a 10 minute breather before starting on all the photo editing I needed to do for the pictures I took at Petts Wood Calling last Saturday.
 During the morning I was working on the pictures I had taken of the band Ransom. I thought they were very good, and I guess that inspired me to try and present the best pictures I could. We photographers, of which there was less this year, maybe only 5 of us, get access all area passes, and so can get right up to the stage, and even on it. This picture of the bass player, fiddling with his effects pedals, and/or tuning up, was taken about a foot from the end of his guitars headstock.
  I never really went to any big heavy metal gigs, and the closest I got to seeing pictures like this was either in movies like Spinal Tap, or the pages of Kerrang ! I hope some of these pictures would be judged good enough for the pages of Kerrang if it was still published (maybe it is - I've not looked for it for years and years).
  Another perk of the access all areas wrist band is being able to get a few good shots of the drummer. Mostly they sit at the back, and don't get the attention they should. I try and make a point of getting a reasonable shot of the drummer, and I think this one is better than "reasonable".
  I must admit that I love the spectacle of a big stage, and all the lights and effects, but I don't think I could enjoy a full 3 hours of it from one band. An hour set, and then a break before the next band, is much more comfortable for me, but for that hour, with the right band, and Ransom were a good band for it, giving their performance the full stadium level, it was very wonderful, and although perhaps in miniature in comparison to Wembley Stadium, it felt like the real thing.
  Such grand gestures as this are rarely seen in pub gigs. Actually, I must confess Ransom did remind me a bit of Spinal Tap, or was it Bad News tour. Ransom even have their own white transit van to move them and their gear from venue to venue. It is probably unfair to compare them to Spinal Tap or Bad News because they are comedy films, and Ransom are quite serious about their craft. That doesn't mean they are grumpy or something. Matt Fielder, the singer, and seen in the picture above, could be described as a very amiable loony when backstage. In fact the whole band were very friendly, and I sort of liked them.
  Somehow white socks, and no shoes, doesn't seem very rock and roll, but that is how Ransom's bass player likes to do it - possibly because his trainers might have got wet in one of the many downpours on Saturday.
  It is a shame his index finger was just outside the frame, but it's a fair picture of a classic rock pose. I must say that once again I was very happy with the pictures that came out of my Nikon D300s DSLR camera with my big Sigma lens attached to it. The only trouble with that big lens is that at minimum zoom it is still not quite a wide enough view for my needs. Last night, although I shouldn't really afford it, I ordered a new lens that should give a nice wide view, without showing a fish eye effect, and it should have a useful amount of zoom. I hope it will arrive ready to try out on Saturday night when I would like to see Whitestar in The Pelton Arms, Greenwich.

  I got enough Ransom pictures finished by early afternoon, and uploaded them as a photo album to a social media web site. They got a lot of "likes", and most importantly some of those likes were from the band. I then took a break to have a quick shower so I was more fragrant when Jodie arrived for a beer tasting session. Once washed, dried and dressed, I started work on a photo album of the first band on stage - The Dirty Perks.

  I have seen them a few times in the past, but they are one of those bands that are obviously very good, but somehow don't really click with me. Nevertheless I tried to get the best pictures I could during pouring rain - and the "photo pit" (area between the stage and the crowd barriers) had no protection from the rain. I did manage to get some good pictures, and a few which used the rain and spots of rain on the camera lens, as a sort of artistic feature !

  One thing I have started doing recently is a sort of spreadsheet notebook of band members names. There were people I saw on Saturday who I knew, but could just not remember their names. I guess I should do something like a personal "rogues gallery" of all the band members I take pictures of. One good, and bad thing, is that I was welcomed by name by Devon Prosser, the singer/guitarist from The Dirty Perks, and at the time I could not remember his name.

  In theory I had extra time for a bit of photo editing because Jodie had managed to miss two trains, and didn't get here until about 4.30pm. She is usually here by 3.30pm. Once she was here, and stopped flapping round, we got to tasting some of the Ukraine beer from the Varvar brewery - the subject of the beer order we made a fortnight ago. I had some bad feelings about the beers. For some reason I was expecting them to be the nasty and sour beers than Jodie enjoys, but the 4 cans we tried yesterday were pleasant or better.

  Jodie left to get a bus to The Star And Garter in Bromley where she was meeting her boyfriend Alan at 7pm. Once she left I had a special treat. It was a winter style stew of diced beef and a whole (small) head of broccoli. I had zapped it up a bit with a generous amount of smoked chipotle paste. It is a measure of how un-summer like it has been recently that I resorted to a winter recipe for my dinner. The good thing was that it has been proved time and time again, as being very good at keeping my blood glucose low.

  There was nothing initially on TV to watch as I ate my dinner, and I resorted to reading stuff off the internet, but at 8.20pm (I think) there was an edition of QI, but it was not a good one, and I mostly listened to it while I edited some more Dirty Perks pictures. It was followed by an edition of Have I Got News For You, and I did watch nearly all of it. I think I finished my Dirty Perks photo album during the commercial breaks. I then uploaded it to social media where it was shared to the Petts Wood Calling page, and I was thanked for some great pictures. Maybe that was not deserved for all the pictures, but a few I was very happy with.

  After HIGNFY I headed to bed. That must have been 9.30pm, or possibly 10pm. I think I felt asleep quite quickly, and slept well until 4am when I suddenly seemed to develop insomnia - or maybe I had had enough sleep. I thrashed around in bed for over an hour, and maybe I might have managed to doze off for 5 minutes once or twice, but I got up just before 6am this morning. I'm sure I must have dreamed of something last night, but I can't even seem to remember dreaming at all.

  This morning I had two quite different blood glucose readings. The new meter read a very unremarkable 8.6mmol/l - that is about my typical monthly average. The old meter said 9.6mmol/l - much higher, but still the safe side of the red line (at 10.0mmol/l). Such a large difference is unusual, but I guess it is just the way the odds add up or something. I think that I will treat those readings as just signifying that I can treat today as a normal day with some extra care required.

  I think I have just two plans for today (or three if you count having a shower). I want to go to Tesco and get more ingredients for another winter stew, and to try and not let myself be tempted to get bad stuff. Much of the day is going to be more photo editing. The next two bands should be moderately easy because I didn't really care for them, and didn't go overboard taking pictures of them. In theory I should have time for a third band, and maybe a fourth, depending on how snap happy I got on the camera for them. Actually, I just checked, and band 4 is Ransom, and although I intend to make a second photo album later, I can skip them today. The band on after them was Burning Chrome, and they seemed very disappointing, and they only got the "token pictures" treatment. Maybe I'll start on the next band, The Ferrets, tomorrow because they were excellent, and so I took a heap of snaps of them to choose from.