There is some similarity between today's forecast and yesterday's. Both forecast a single rain shower in the late afternoon. Yesterday's shower didn't happen (or passed unnoticed), and with luck it will be the same today. It is lovely and bright as I write this, and has been for a couple of hours, but there does seem to be some cloud building up in the east, and for a moment the sun winked out as a cloud passed in front of it. Today more than the middle of the day might be cloudy, but there is a fair chance that the sun will re-appear this evening for a couple of hours. It looks like it will be close to cool today with just 21° C forecast. Tomorrow could start off dull with some rain after midday, but once again it is predicted it will brighten up in the evening.

  I think I can admit that yesterday was an OK sort of day. As I said yesterday, the pressure was off after completing all the photo albums from Petts Wood Calling including the extra, bonus, photo album of another 15 or so shots of Ransom. It did mean I did very little yesterday, but far from nothing !

  One thing I did was not important as such, but it was good to get it out of the way. It was to wash a hand towel that was used in the kitchen, and so was a bit greasy in places, a tea towel that was even more greasy, plus 4 bar towels. the latter weren't greasy, but they had been laying in a smelly (albeit very mildly smell) heap for ages. I soaked it all in bio detergent first (the much nicer smelling version from Tesco - Aldi's bio detergent smells very chemically). After 3 or 4 hours I finished the wash and hung it all on the clothes horse to dry.

  A more essential task was to do a lot of washing up. It looked a lot more than it was because I had all the glasses we used on Thursday's booze tasting to wash. The thing that did make it seem like a lot was the ceramic container from the slow cooker. It is very heavy, and quite big to wash in a small-ish sink. Once washed and well rinsed, I started cooking a dinner that I might have had last night, but didn't, and maybe I wont have tonight. Like a lot of yesterday, I'll leave it on slow simmer for a fair bit of the day. That keeps it too hot for bacteria to grow, and softens the meat more and more. it caan turned the most scraggy bit of meat into something lovely and tender.

  There were a few other things of note that I did yesterday. One was to keep an eye on the tracking information for three parcels. I am sure that two will be delivered today, and it is likely the third will as well - all three were reported to be at Royal Mail's Croydon depot waiting for transfer to the Catford district office. One item is just a t-shirt, and is probably lower priority, but I still think it should arrive today.

  My lunch was to be my final meal of the day, and so it was a more substantial than usual. It was bacon and beans, but not ordinary beans. The bacon was supposed to be smoked back bacon, but maybe I didn't bother to read the label properly because it tasted a bit bland and unsmoked. The beans were "giant" Greek style beans in a thin sauce that had some tomato in it, but not much. It should have been a very delicious lunch, but I was disappointed by it - nice, but not that nice.

  It was around 5pm when I finally washed my hair and had a shower. Until then I hadn't really got up properly. The reason for the ablutions was because by then I had become convinced I was going out in the evening - and I did. I went out to catch the 19:42 train from Catford Bridge as far as Eden Park station where I changed to the 194 bus to take me up the hill to West Wickham High Street, and The Swan pub where Chain would be playing.

  Maybe it was because my pictures taken at Petts Wood Calling were very good, or maybe it is because I have been such a rare sight at evening gigs this year, but I seemed to be greeted with extra warmth when I arrived at the pub - including a hug from Jo. The official start time of the gig was 8.30pm, but it was actually more like 9pm, and maybe even a bit after that. I stayed to the end of the first set - a rather long 90 minute set !

  (I've just checked the Royal Mail tracking web site, and it is now confirmed that all three parcels will be delivered today. The lightweight t-shirt may come with out normal postman, but the other two will probably come parcel delivery, and one of the items is supposed to be a "guaranteed before 1pm" delivery.)
  It looks like I managed to take a few good pictures last night, although many are a bit underexposed where I was keeping the strength of my flash gun down to avoid annoying people. This picture of Chris doing a nice spontaneous guitar pose needed a bit of brightening up. One of the good things about my Nikon D300s camera is that the image sensor seems to be very low noise compared to some of my other cameras, and I can brighten up dull shots without the pictures seeming grainy (but only by a modest amount).

  I am starting to think I should use RAW rather than jpg format for the picture files on my camera. Maybe I'll start with my new (arriving today) Nikon Camera. The D610 is a semi pro camera that ten years ago had some excellent reviews. One special feature is that it has two memory card slots, and I believe, it can be set so that jpg versions of the picture go to one card, and the RAW version goes to the other. My D300s can do the same, although that uses two different cards - one is a common, and so cheap, SD card, and the other is the now getting a bit rare, compact flash card. At the moment I have set the compact flash card to be an overflow if the SD card becomes full.

  It was about 10.18pm when I left the pub with a camera full of photos, a stomach full of beer (actually just 3 pints of Guinness, and not feeling anywhere near full capacity). When it comes to going home it is easy to walk down the hill to West Wickham station. I estimate it takes as little as 7 to 8 minutes. It meant a wait of a similar amount as the walking time before the 22:33 train arrived to drop me back at Catford Bridge 11 or 12 minutes later.

  Another 7 or 8 minutes later I was back home, and mildly keen to have a pee. It was another time when I had decided to not stop for any late night takeaways or other snacks, and to go to bed hungry - and that is exactly what I did. Once again it seemed an easy thing to do, although I did have to remind myself not to be drawn towards the smell of the fried chicken shop as I was approaching Catford on the train.

  There was sort of proof that I slept well last night. When I got up this morning the book I had been reading earlier yesterday afternoon, and left on my duvet, was still exactly where I left it when I got up this morning. I hadn't even realised it was there until I got out of bed. I can only remember waking up to pee twice last night - and that after drinking three pints of Guinness earlier.

  My memory of dreams is rather blurry. It seemed that one dream lasted for ages but nothing happened in it. it might have been in slow motion, but I think I dreamed the same thing several times. In the dream I was editing a video, but all I ever saw was a blank frame, possibly with a dull and out of focus scene that never changed. Overlaid on that were lines of scribble - some written in red ink, and some in green. There might have been some in blue too. I think that maybe the dream kept repeating, or something like that, because I was trying to read what I had written. I had the impression they may have been instructions to the software about how to cut and join the video or something, but nothing was readable, and the video couldn't be seen. All in all it was a rather boring dream !

  As was intended/hoped for, after no dinner, and a moderately safe lunch, my blood glucose readins were rather good this morning. The new meter gave a rather ideal reading of 7.5mmol/l, and the old meter a slightly higher, but still excellent 7.7mmol/l. It is possible I could get similar readings tomorrow morning because today might be like yesterday in many respects - although I have used up all the bacon, and I might possibly go out to Tesco later today - that will probably bring temptations that will ruin everything.

  Obviously the big thing today will be the arrival of a t-shirt, a new camera lens and a new camera. Which reminds me of one thing I did yesterday. I paid off both my credit cards in full, and thanks to my photography purchases they were for considerable amounts of money. The spending of money won't be stopping yet. I'll try and defer it for a week or so, but I next need a new camera bag for the new camera, plus a spare battery, and probably a spare charger too.

  The next big thing today is to go through all the pictures I took last night, and make up a photo album. As I sort of hinted at above, many will need a bit of brightening up because I kept the flash brightness a bit lower than was ideal. However, a very quick peek at a small sample suggests I might have a nice photo album at the end. It is possible I could be duplicating all this (apart from no parcel deliveries) tomorrow. I don't know if I will definitely do it, but I am thinking of going to Greenwich tonight to get a few more snaps of Whitestar.