The weather forecast for today has retained one special feature through all the revisions since yesterday afternoon. In the very latest revision the warning of thunderstorms has finally disappeared, although copious rain is still shown. The BBC forecast, which was late to the party is still showing "thundery showers" for 5pm. It was a nice sunny start to the day, but it is already clouding over. It was a cold start to the day, just 14° C at 6am. The afternoon temperature may only reach 19° C, but 18° C would seem to be more representative of today. Tomorrow should start bright and sunny, but the afternoon may be dull and rather damp. Tomorrow's temperature may be very similar to today.

   One of my aims for the day was to get to a gig in the evening. To do that meant I needed to check my camera, and select accessories. While I was doing that I thought I might as well get all my photographic equipment from the spare bedroom to my own bedroom.

  That started a cascade of work to get the spare bedroom ready for Patricia to stay in while she spends a day or two in London as she passes through on her way from Argentina to Italy. With all my cameras, in their camera bags, off the spare bed I got everything else off the bed. It included my rarely worn two pairs of red trousers. They are, and always have been, a rather "snug" fit.

  While I had them in my hand I tried them on. There have been times when the closest I could get the top button, to the buttonhole, was about an inch, and maybe at one desperate time almost 2 inches. Yesterday I could do them up quite easily, but they still seemed so tight I didn't dare sit down with them on, although it would probably have been not too bad if I had.
  Talking of clothes...... One little job I did yesterday, mostly because it could get on with it with little supervision, was to rip all the episodes of UFO from my two DVD box sets. I am glad I did it because the disks seem to be suffering "bit rot", and in the not too distant future they could become unplayable. While checking that they had ripped to mp4 files I stumbled across a sequence of this woman walking down one of the corridors of Moonbase. It is such a 1960s look ! I love it.

  It seemed to be nice and bright, and warm feeling while I was emptying the spare bedroom of most of my stuff. It seemed a good idea to take advantage of it like that, and open the window wide to air the room. Whilst doing so I saw just how badly clogged the guttering was on the lower roof. I made up a special tool of a small garden trowel strapped to what was supposed to be a telescopic upper window cleaner. It was just long enough to scoop out all the moss and grass in the guttering. Maybe today, if we get the forecast heavy rain, I might be able to see the water flowing away instead of pouring over the side of the guttering.

  My ultimate aim yesterday was to get out to a gig in far off Purley.  The gig wasn't due to start until 9pm, and the journey time was about 1 hour and maybe 15 minutes, door to door, so I had plenty of time to do some of the work already described, plus shampoo and shower. I also, in theory, had plenty of time to eat, but other than my morning double portion of instant noodles, all I ate was four rice cakes with wild rocket and cheese.

  It is quite a simple journey to get to Purley (and the pub is just 5 or 6 minutes walk from the station), but it is a tedious journey. The simple and probably the quickest was to get there is to get a train to London Bridge station, and then retrace over half the journey there until veering off towards Purley. Unfortunately, at this time of the year, it was already slightly dark when I got to London Bridge, and fully dark by the time I got to Purley. I find travelling in the dark, and more so when in an empty carriage, as was the case on my way back to London Bridge, a very melancholy experience.
  I was treated like royalty by the band, Ransom, when I got to the pub. I was wearing one of their t-shirts, and that scored some extra brownie points, but mostly it was because they thought the pictures I had taken of them at Petts Wood Calling were really good. Matt Fielding, 2nd from the left in the picture above, bought me a pint of Guinness very soon after I got to the pub. Incidently, I didn't arrange the line up for the picture above. I was thinking how I might do it, but they lined up for some of their fans - mostly not very good looking young women. I took advantage of it and took this snap of them.

  One of the things I was interested in was how well they would do their stuff on a small stage. On the big Petts wood Calling stage they were brilliant and fully used all the space. Last night they made a valiant effort to do the same on the small stage, and on the whole they did it well. Unlike many bands I see, they are very expressive and very animated. If I had been able to sit down, and have a clear view of them, I might have stayed longer, but I left just before 10pm.

  Not only was the pub very noisy - even before the band started playing, which was correctly loud - I could barely hear what anyone was saying so I felt sort of isolated, and it was also rather crowded near the stage. Even though I know it is inevitable, I hate having to try and thread my way through crowds of people to try and find a new niche for a new camera angle. I only saw about 45 minutes of the band playing before I headed for the station.

  Just to make things slightly worse, I had arrived at the pub earlier than expected because as is so often the case, changing trains at London Bridge can be a lot quicker (assuming you are moderately agile - which somehow I still can be) that the times allowed on the journey planner. Instead of a 20 minute wait at London Bridge I only haed a 2 minute wait for my train to Purley.

  One of the odd things about Purley is that it always seems to be a Thameslink train going there, but always a Southern train going home. The train I got was the 10:15pm train, and the train was almost empty. As soon as we left the station the outside was plunged into darkness. As I mentioned further up the page, it feels very melacholy travelling alone with no view outside the train.

  I think I used the "official" journey planner change at London Bridge. It involved a longer walk across the concourse because it was from one of the Southern trains platforms, and that mopped up some of the time. I had about a 6 minute wait for a train back to Catford Bridge. I finally arrived home at about 11.30pm. That was quite late enough for me, although I didn't seem to feel that tired, or even particularly hungry despite eating nothing sine the rice cakes for a late lunch.

  Before I went to bed I wanted to copy the pictures I had taken from the camera to my PC. I then did the editing of the band line up picture I have used this morning. It must have been half past midnight before I got into bed, and as far as I can tell, I fell asleep within a few minutes. Apart from waking up at 6am, which was rather early after such a late night, I seemed to sleep well. I can remember getting up to pee twice in tyhe night, and I suppose you could count a third time at 6am because I went back to sleep after that, and got just over an extra hours sleep.

  After eating so little yesterday I expected my blood glucose to be even lower than it was. My new meter read 7.5mmol/l, and the old meter, 8.1mmol/l. Both figures are good, although there is quite a difference between them. I had hoped that maybe the readings might have been a little bit lower, possibly even a figure starting with a 6, but no such luck. I think I may have managed a tiny bit of weight loss yesterday, but it will be hard to detect for a while.

  Today's big event should be the first day of Chattfest. It all starts at 2pm with Jo (from Chain) doing a solo spot for an hour. This is the recheduled weekend after the first was judged too wet for an outdoor event (in the large garden behind the pub). With the potential of thunderstorms, or at least substantial rain this afternoon, I am wondering if it will be cancelled at the last minute. As I write this I notice that to the north it is mostly blue sky,  but to the south, the approximate direction of The Chatterton Arms, the clouds are piling up, and some look dark and threatening.

  I do have some fall back plans if Chattfest is cancelled at the last minute. Hell On Tap are playing in The Partridge (Bromley) tonight, although it is likely to be too crowded for any more than 15 minutes of photography, and maybe a single pint of Guinness before I head home again. During the day I can be usefully employed going through the pictures of Ransom I took last night, and doing some housework in preparation for Patricia's arrival on Monday afternoon. In fact, the amount of housework I feel I ought to do really means I shouldn't be going out today.