It is rather a cool, and very dull morning. By my reckoning it is around 14° C at the moment.  There may be an hour in the afternoon when the temperature reaches 19° C, but 18° C is basically the best we can hope for. There may be no sign at all of the sun today, but it may be dry - except for 3pm when some light rain may fall. Of course The BBC offer a fair bit of rain today - sometimes as drizzle, and sometime as light rain from 11am to 6pm. Tomorrow may start a little less cool than today, but they sky is still going to be a dirty grey until 1pm when light rain may fall. By 3pm it could change to heavy rain that will continue until, and possibly beyond, midnight.

   I think I had a reasonably productive and satisfying day yesterday. It was another day when I started writing very late, and so finished quite late. That took care of a lot of the morning, but I still managed to squeeze in time for a shower, and to get to Tesco for some shopping by midday.

  As always, shopping in Tesco lead to many temptations to buy stuff that is not good for me, or needs to be eaten with care. Then there are temptations that just seem to be ultimately a waste of money. On the other hand, some need to be tried before they are condemned. One such thing is pictured on the left. It is a "Cup Noodle", and I thought it might be good at £1.90 a pot. Sadly it was more like something that ought to be on sale for 50p in Poundland. It wasn't actually nasty, but it seemed almost bland even with added hot chilli sauce.

  One purchase I thought was pure folly turned out to be half and half. It was a pack of 4 Tesco own brand "Cornish" pasties. They were modestly nice (I had the last one for breakfast this morning). I have to hand it to Tesco - they do seem to take care to keep the sugar content of many of their own brand products nice and low. There seems no need for anything to sweeten a Cornish pasty, but I have a dark feeling that Heinz would add half a pint of high fructose corn syrup to a pasty they made. Those Americans just love obesity and diabetes.

  I had a short rest after eating my lunch of two Cornish pasties, but once rested I tackled the bigger task of the day. It was hand washing three old t-shirts I haven't worn for maybe 10 or 20 years, and were really musty after being stored in a  musty, and cigarette smoke saturated wardrobe. Most of the clothes in there haven't seen the light of day since I paused smoking (ready to start again in about 12 years time). The soapy water I tipped down the drain was really blackish-brown ! Even after the fourth rinse the water wasn't 100% clear.
  One t-shirt is pictured above. It is one of a possible two I won at The Catford Ram after drinking lots of Young's Tripple A beer. Compared to Young's Ordinary and Special beer it was rather nice. It first appeared in 2002 or 2003, and didn't survive Marsden's taking over Youngs, and ruining all their beers. That was 2006. It may be I haven't worn this t-shirt since then, but now it is clean, and it still fits, possible bvetter than when it was new, I shall make a point of wearing it again when out drinking.

  After hanging up the washing - three t-shirts, and two pairs of underpants - to dry on the clothes horse - I had another rest. I laid on my bed and read for half an hour before doing another little job. It was one of those spur of the moment jobs, although I guess it was prompted by the kitchen waste bin getting rather whiffy. I emptied that bin, the recycling bin, the little bin in the bathroom, and the bigger bin on the top landing (outside my bedroom).

  Finally I settled down to a job I've been either putting off, or I just didn't have time to do. It was to edit a second photo album of pictures of Chain playing at Chatt Fest on Sunday 27th August. When I showed the first photo album I did say I had enough spare pictures to make a second album. In fact, as I calculated yesterday, I had something like 80 or 90 photographs I had not used, or even considered last time.
  I was particularly pleased with this photo of Jo. I was looking through all the effects I could use in my photo editor when I came across this sort of lens flare effect. I first drew a boundary around Jo so the effect would only appear around her, and not over her. I must confess there were many settings for this effect that I didn't understand, and so it was all a bit poke and hope, but it came out to my liking.
  Apart from increasing the contrast, I did very little to this picture of Steve Fuller who was drumming for Chain. I was lucky to take the snap just as he was looking straight into my camera lens.
  I was looking for another effect I could use on this picture, a new one, but I resorted to a few tricks that don't need special effects buttons. The effect I was looking for, for the first picture of Jo, was lighting effects. Back in the day when I used Paint Shop Pro to edit photos I could use a lighting effect to make it look like there were coloured (or white) spot lamps just off the edge of the picture to light the subject up from different angles. The Gimp, that has some far better plugins for many effects, does have a lighting effect, but I am buggered if I can work out how to use it. Maybe I'll experiment with it later, but it is not intuitive like the Paint Shop Pro version.
  Another shot that needed very little work on it. Somehow it seems rare that Chris Mayer does any good poses (apart from rarely playing to the camera). In this shot he had moved away from the mic, and had turned his head so only the back of it was getting the very bright daylight on it. It is just a shame that the background of all the pictures taken at Chatt Fest were so drab looking.

  I barely finished my photo editing before the first Star Trek (the original series) came on. In theory it was one of the better episodes, but it didn't fully catch my attention. It was followed by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. That was one of the better episodes, and I ate my dinner while watching it. Dinner was lamb and cabbage stew with herbs and spices. I made it in the slow cooker, and after scooping out all the meat and cabbage there was still a lot of "gravy" left in the pot. That gave me a cunning idea. Rather than going to all the trouble of washing that big and heavy pot I added fresh raw diced lamb, and set it cooking again. After an hour or two on high I turned the heat to low, and left it on overnight.

  I next watched Star Trek:Voyager, and it was probably one of the better episodes. Most episodes are not very good, a couple were excellent, and this one was somewhere between. It still did not engage me fully, and my mind drifted away towards food. The lamb and cabbage stew I ate was only enough to fill two small bowls, and most of that was cabbage. I got an itch to eat another Cornish Pasty. I though the idea was verging on the insane, but I ate it anyway.

  The last thing I watched was UFO, and that finished at 9pm. I was in bed very soon afterwards, and I feel sure I was fast asleep before 10pm. It was cool enough last night to sleep under the duvet, and I seemed to sleep really well like that. I only woke up twice for a pee, and I am not sure i really needed one of them. The only short period of insomnia was jsut after 5am when I potentially could have got up, but eventually I fell asleep until about 6.20am.

  As well as not peeing much in the night, I didn't seem to drink much either, although I did have a mouthful of water every time I woke - but I didn't wake more than a couple of times. I was a bit worried that I might be a bit dehydrated, and that seems to make my blood glucose readings go high, but not this morning. Once again bother meters gave rather different readings, but both showed the same trend.

  The new meter read a very good 8.0mmol/l - the same as yesterday. The old meter read a very good 7.7mmol/l. Now the funny thing is that I have not had to be too careful recently, and I still get good readings. Last month started with a string of very high readings that were unexplained, but suddenly everything returned to better than normal. At the moment my rolling average for this month is a very low 8.26mmol/l for the new meter, and a lower than typical average of 8.45mmol/l for the old meter. Most months this year, were over 8.5mmol/l, and the average for the whole of 2022 was 8.53mmol/l.

   Today is another day when I have no specific plans. I have a hand towel I may wash after having a shower - if I can be bothered to shower today. Maybe I had better shower because I may do a bit of shopping today, but there is nothing I actually need today, and maybe if it is too grey I may stay in - I definitely will if it starts to rain. I may edit up another photo album. I know I have possibly over 100 unused pictures of 52 Fridays playing at Chatt Fest.