By my reckoning the light cloud shown for 7am should have been grey cloud. It is very dull as I write this. The last revision to the forecast hasn't changed anything obvious compared to that shown above. It seems like much of today will be dull, and there could be a heavy burst of rain at 3pm. The BBC forecast also shows rain, but only light rain, for 3pm, but most hours either side are shown as sunny spells, and even full sunshine from 5pm to sunset. I guess it is going to be one of those days where the forecasts are an off the cuff guess, and reality will assert it self as it feels fit to do. Both forecasters nearly agree on the temperature with The Met Office forecasting 23° C, and the BBC a degree higher. Tomorrow could be 21° C, and the morning and evening bright with sunny spells. The middle of the day could be dull and sunless.

  Yesterday was a day when there was no pressure to get my Petts Wood Calling photos finished, and uploaded to social media. Of course there was no external pressure, and the pressure was all self generated. It still made it seem sort of good to be able to put my feet up and do very little. Of course that didn't happen !

  Yesterday morning was part guided by the possibility that I would be getting a delivery from Royal Mail. Mainly that meant not showering until I was sure I wouldn't get a ring at the door bell while under the shower. My belief in a possible delivery yesterday morning would be cruelly shattered late in the day, but more about that later. With not a lot to do, beyond doing a pile of washing up, I thought I would check on the photos I had taken last Saturday at Petts Wood Calling.

  What I discovered was mildly surprising. I knew I had taken a lot of pictures of the band Ransom, and I knew I didn't use all of them in what turned out to be the first "official" photo album. What I found was I had only gone through approximately half of the Ransom photos. The obvious thing was to make another photo album. This second photo album included a handful of pictures taken when I was braving the rain, and standing in the middle of the audience.
  While all the audience are wearing rainproof coats or ponchos, I was just wearing a Petts Wood Calling t-shirt and shorts. I got mildly soaked, but it didn't feel cold, and I seemed to dry out very quickly.
  I'm quite glad I got these pictures from within the audience because it shows the view seen by the audience rather than from the privileged position of those of use allowed backstage, and between the crowd barrier and the front of the stage. Some may argue that the better position is from within the audience because you can see the whole width of the stage. Hopefully the new lens I have on order, a wide angle lens, will go some way to correct that.
  Just look at the rain on the back of the man on the left ! With no pressure, or imagined time limit to complete this second photo album I could enjoy the job more. The odd thing is that I didn't seem to need to be creative to cover up dubious photography. In the first photo album of Ransom I had to "paint out" a stray hand from the corner of a picture, and there were a few simple tweak I did to other photos.

  Maybe it was because yesterday morning was a bright morning and it made me feel good, but I didn't feel any need to improve on any of the pictures apart from simple things like changing the exposure a bit for some more contrast between foreground and background. On the whole I found many of the picture were almost good enough straight from the camera - except for quite a few that were badly framed (probably because someone moved before I could reframe the shot), and some where I hoped I could isolate  a band member from another, but it turned out they were too close.

  I have to say that I am so glad I bought my Nikon D300s camera. In terms of pixel count I had a better camera, but paired with my big Sigma lens, it seems a perfect combination. What is so great about it is undefinable (apart from the obvious - it takes good pictures). I could only say something incomprehensible like "it feels right", or it does what I want it to do. Of course all my big (DSLR) camera should do what I want, but maybe the Nikon D300s does it more obediently. Very soon now, the Nikon D300s will be my "B" camera, and pride of place will go to a Nikon D610. It is, on paper, sort of double the 300. It has a bigger, and denser (more mega pixels) image sensor, and a faster image processor (the CPU that runs the whole camera). It is about 10 years old, and I found one from a reliable source (not Ebay !!!) at a bargain price.

  The one thing I had to do yesterday was to do the washing up left over from a day or two, which included beer glasses, plus a general tidy up for an after noon beer tastings session. Both Jodie and Michael were due to, and did join me to taste some new beers. In the mean time, I did a bit more photography.
  Yesterday (I think it was yesterday) I was saying that I suspected one source of extra sugar that contributes to my high blood glucose readings in the morning, was the salami slices I was eating on rice cakes. While I was in the kitchen I got the rest of the salami slices out of the fridge, and too a picture of the back label. I does indeed show that glucose syrup is used as an ingredient. on the other hand, the nutritional information, which I didn't even realise it had, shows that "per 100gm" the sugar content is only 1 gram. That should be a negligible amount, and I probably ought to look elsewhere for why my blood glucose readings were so high - not easy to do after a couple of days have passed.

  We had a generally pleasant beer tasting session. One of the beers that should have been good, a so called "pastry stout" didn't seem to taste nice to my palate. It had a sort of mild metallic bitterness - just strong enough to spoil the taste. There were two others that were nice-ish, but their main thing was that they seemed to be the sort of beers that needed to be glugged down to get the proper taste. So while Jodie sipped hers, I drank my half of a 330ml can, in two gulps, and then, as happens far too often, had to sit there dying of thirst while Jodie caught up.

  I think everyone (Jodie was joined by Alan for the last hour) left around 6.30pm, or maybe a little later. I could eat my dinner, and see the last quarter of an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in peace. Dinner was a chicken and broccoli stew, or maybe broccoli and chicken is the correct description because there was more broccoli than chicken - a lot more. In the slow cooker it looked like there was a lot of it, and yet it only filled two soup bowls, and a lot of it was just watery gravy. It was a nice low sugar meal that I slightly spoiled by having half a dozen rice crackers with cheese on them as a sort of dessert.

  I couldn't be bothered to watch QI last night - I think it was a Xmas edition, and/or it had someone on as a guest who I didn't like. It meant I was in bed early last night, but without a TV programme as a sort of time marker, I really have no idea when that was. I'm guessing it might have been before 9pm, but it may have been 10pm for all I know. What I do know was that it was (at least initially) quite a hot and stick night. For what I think was a very short time I was thinking that maybe I felt too sticky to sleep. The next thing I knew was it was a quarter to midnight.

  I woke up thinking I probably needed a pee, and I did go for one, but the real reason became apparent when I was getting out of bed. it seems that somehow I pulled a muscle in my neck. it was really painful and I took a couple of Paracetamol tablets before going back to sleep. I next woke about 45 minutes later, and this time it was just for a pee. The next time I woke up was just after 3pm. I had another pee, but this time it seemed too insignificant to have woken me up (these days I think I just go for a pee if I wake up even if I don't really need one).

  It was my recent 4am insomnia moved back to 3am for some unknown reason. I guess I was awake for about three quarters of an hour. One difference to the 4am insomnia is that having got back to sleep I seemed to sleep well for a couple of hours. At some point through all that I had a dream that I remember some significant details about. It was a slightly scary dream, and it may have been the reason I woke up at 3am.

  in the dream I was with someone - either a friend, or more likely a workmate. It was one of those dreams where you don't seem to actually see the other persons face. We did seem to be at work, and it was to do with connecting power to a railway "third rail" system. back in the real world that only involves voltages of up to 750V, and more commonly something closer to 630V. That demands respect, but with care it is easily handled.

  In the dream the power connection we were trying to make was much higher voltage, maybe closer to the 25,000V of the overhead electrification, but there was an added twist. Instead of being 50 hertz mains frequency, this power supply used radio frequencies. The problem is that it was easy for those frequencies to induce high voltages into nearby metalwork, and also there was the problem of dialectric heating. Insulators, such as plastics, tend to get very hot when stressed with high frequencies. It all made for very tricky working conditions, and at the end of the dream I don't think we had managed to do much except avoid being fried, frazzled, or other most unpleasant outcomes.....although getting out of in one piece should probably be considered a triumph !

  It feels like I got up to early this morning, but maybe that is a result of the dull weather. There was good news on the blood glucose front. The new meter read 8.2mmol/l, and the old meter said a less good, but OK, 8.9mmol/l. Depending on what I do today, I should be able to match those figures tomorrow morning. It all depends on what I end up doing tonight. I have a choice of three gigs. Whitestar are plating in The Pelton Arms in Greenwich tonight. Chain are playing in The Swan in West Wickham. What I fancy trying for is The Flame Pilots playing in Poco Loco in Chatham.

  At the moment I am thinking I won't have the enthusiasm for any gigs tonight. The simplest if I can raise a small bit of enthusiasm will be Chain in West Wickham. The more interesting will be The Flame Pilots. I have never been to Poco Loco before, and in fact I don't think I have ever been outside of Chatham station before. The band are supposedly due on at 8.30pm, and if I stayed an hour I should have plenty of trains to get home on (The last train seems to be after 11pm). It could be an exciting adventure - if I can raise the enthusiasm.

  This morning I was the subject of one of life's cruel hoaxes. Late last night I got an email to say my new lens and camera, was on it's way. What it really meant was that the company sending them had been on the Royal Mail website, paid the postage, and been provided with a tracking code for "guaranteed before 1pm delivery", but the countdown doesn't start until The Royal Mail collects the parcels from the company - presumably some time this morning, and then the clock starts for delivery before 1pm tomorrow ! I have the patience of a kid for these new (and expensive) "toys". I suppose one thing I should do today is to pay my credit card bills before they start charging interest on these large amounts. Doing so may cause so much psychic shock that I may do no more until tomorrow !