The latest revision to the forecast says 9, 10, and 11am may be dry, albeit with medium grey clouds. The BBC's forecast says there will be non stop light rain from 9am until 11pm, but for some of those hours they just say "drizzle". They know the clouds are up there, and they are going to rain, but, as usual, can't really say when that might be. This morning started around 9° C. Today will see the opposite of yesterday. Through the day it will gradually cool, and from maybe 3pm the temperature will stabilise at 6° C. Tomorrow could be sunny, but it will be another cold day. The day could start at 5° C, go up to 6° C, and fall to just 3° C by midnight.

   Yesterday was a pleasant day, although I never seemed to find the time or inclination to go shopping. Luckily I seem to have quite sufficient food in the fridge and larder to not need any more food for a while, but maybe today I ought to make the effort to go out and get some fresh food.

  I spent a chunk of yesterday doing photo editing. I started with the easy task of doing the few photos I had taken of The Cygnet Committee in The Black Cat on Saturday night. Considering how few I took, I seemed to have got a fair photo album out of them.
  The complete band of bass player, drummer, lead guitar and vox, and rhythm guitar....although it is possible I have the description of the two guitars the wrong way round. It was which guitar should be doing which that was what Michael was moaning about.  I can't see that it matters if the singer was, or wasn't, playing lead guitar.
  Is he playing lead or rhythm as he sings ? Should anyone care ? Apparently Michael does !
  There were no problems with the bass player - he was playing bass !
  I wish I had taken the time to get more pictures of the guitar player - just one more would have been good enough if more of the guitar was in focus, none of the highlights were over exposed, and he had a better expression on his face !
  I note that even in this picture, the guitarist is holding a sort of strange pose with a strange look on his face. I guess it is possible that the drunken man had had a go at him earlier ( i did later learn he had harassed the band as they were setting up), and he just wasn't feeling comfortable.

  I also managed to complete the selecting and editing of the pictures I took of Thursday's Child at Petts Wood on Saturday afternoon. I was very happy with most of the results, and I did get some nice praise from the band via other channels. They have asked for hi resolution copies to use on their web site.
  I think this is Craig Minto who did most, but not all the vocals for Thursday's Child. He played the same electro-acoustic guitar for the whole gig.
  The bass guitar the bass player plays is interesting. It has no headstock, and no obvious way of tuning it.
  I'm not sure what Michael, with his theories of who should be playing what, would make of this. The electric guitar player is called Alan, if I remember correctly (which is not a wise thing to rely on). Some times he took over vocals - should he be strumming, playing chords, playing individual note, lead or backing.... I'm sure it makes no difference, and it all sounded very pleasant to me.
  One of my pet peeves is that many bands do not organise themselves on stage in the most "artistic way". From a slightly different perspective Craig, and his electro-acoustic guitar, are standing right in front of the drummer. The bass player is almost in the wings, out of shot on the right.
  I pride myself of always trying to get at least one good picture of the drummer. When there is enough room for a side entrance to the stage I tend to go some way onto the stage, albeit keeping at the back, to get a snap of the drummer. I couldn't do that on Saturday, but I did manage to get this fairly clear shot using some patience and a strange position at the front of the stage.
  This is a wide view of the stage the three guitarists seem evenly spaced at this point, but the drummer is hidden behind Craig in the middle. I think if I had my way I would move the drummer 6ft to the right, but maybe he is quite happy to be hidden at the back.

  All I have to do now, and hopefully I'll do it today, is do the photo albums of Jamie Bull, doing his one man show from his electric piano, and The Coyles. Both will be fairly small photo albums. In Jamie's case there are not many pictures you can get out of one man at his piano. However it could take a very long time to do all the editing. As I think I mentioned yesterday, or the day before, Jamie's dad is John Bull, aka Mr Rockrpix - the man who has earned a reputation as an ace photographer. I can't match his artistic style, and maybe that is a good thing, but I do feel some pressure to turn out some perfect pictures of his son.

  As I mentioned yesterday (I think) I didn't get many pictures of The Coyles because I was getting fed up with the dense crowding around the 5pm "switching on the lights". It did start to thin out soon after the dignitaries had said their piece and the Xmas lights were on around the town, but by then I had had enough, and I also wanted to get home so I could go out again to The Black Cat, and the gig there.

  Jodie was over her head cold, and dared to come out in the rain, although she did dodge much of the rain. We had a good beer tasting session, and after she had not had much beer while she was ill (maybe none at all) she was happy to open a few of the stronger beers she kept ignoring in the fridges. Two of the beers were 10.5%, and both were very nice. Funnily enough, I though all the beers we had were very pleasant or better.

  Jodie left at her usual time to get the 6.30 train to Clockhouse where she was meeting Alan, the boyfriend, in the nearby Three Hounds Bar. I warmed up my dinner that I had pre-cooked earlier. It was supposed to be a lamb ans sprouts stew, but it had started off with not much water in it for gravy, and a lot of the water steamed off in the cooking sessions in the microwave. There was still some highly flavoured gravy left, but it was almost like the sprouts had been fried in all the grease that came off the lamb. It was really nice and tasty.

  There was no TV on last night, r I made the grand assumption there would be nothing I wanted to watch on, and so after I had eaten there was nothing to distract me from the idea of bed. I was nicely sozzled, and so bed became even more attractive despite it being not a lot later than 7pm. I read in bed for maybe 15 minutes before putting the book down, and turning out the light. The next thing I knew I was waking up sometime between midnight and 1am. I think it might have been closer to the latter.

  I am not sure what woke me up, but it could have been a growing rumble from my lower belly. It initially didn't seem to be troublesome, or uncomfortable, but maybe half an hour passed before I had to make two trips to the toilet. After that I should have gone straight back to sleep, but no matter how I arranged myself in bed, I couldn't seem to reach the comfort level to fall asleep again.

  I tried on my left side. my right side, with an arm outside the bed, or a leg outside the bed, and many combinations of these and other things, but in every conceivable position something ached. It might have been an elbow or toe, hip or shoulder. I think I even managed to conjure up some mild toothache for a few minutes ! At 3am I gave up and got up for a while. I passed some time making a special temporary web page so that Thursday's Child could download the full resolution pictures I had taken at Petts Wood. If they manage to get them I have also offered to use the same method for the pictures I took of them at Chattfest in August.

  After going back to bed i once again tried to go back to sleep. At best I had only got about 5 hours at the start of my sleep period, and I think I need a full 8 hours - or more ! After an hour, at about 5am, I turned the heater up full so eventually I would not have to worry about getting cold if i kicked the duvet completely aside. I know I got some sleep after that because I had a dream, although i can't remember a thing about it. Maybe I might have got an hours sleep, but I think it was probably less, but how less is anyone's guess.

  Well, my sleep may have been crap, but this morning my blood glucose readings were rather magnificent. Two readings, from the Sino Care, and Contour meters were a very, very good 6.9mmol/l, and the GlucoRX meter excelled itself with a reading of just 6.3mmol/l. I feel sure it is many, many years since I've seen a reading that low. Maybe I did something different yesterday, or maybe one of the beers was a magic potion.

  There was one thing I did do yesterday that was different, and it was to have a medium large plate of oven chips.  Maybe it is because potato makes my blood glucose rise very quickly that it gets it over and done with faster. Maybe my lamb and sprout stew has magical qualities ! If, as seems likely in some way, it was the chips that were responsible for this mornings great readings, they probably are a good illustration of how diabetes control and weight loss can often be in opposition instead of, as might be expected, supportive of each other.

  After my two visits to the toilet in the night, I still had to visit the toilet for a poo this morning. After that seemed a good time to weigh myself. I am still 2kg (or just over 4 lbs) lighter than my weight when I had my appointment for my diabetic check up. The thing is that some days ago I was almost 3kg lighter. So if those chips did reduce my blood glucose for this morning, they might have been instrumental in taking away some of my weight loss.

  I have three things on my agenda today. two of them can happily co-exist. I have photo editing to do, but I can do that while keeping on alert for an Amazon delivery - although that delivery, of just some more glucose test strips for the Sino Care and Contour meters, may well arrive very late in the afternoon, or even mid evening. The more immediate  thing is a shopping trip. I can't decide if it will be to Tesco or Aldi, but maybe Tesco is more likely.