Today, or at least until the afternoon, should be nice and bright and sunny. Yesterday evening I think the forecast said the sunny spells should last most of the afternoon, but not in this mornings forecast, and the latest revision off it. At least the afternoon will feature white cloud, and so it should still remain a bit bright, and the chances of any rain today are very minimal. The afternoon should reach 7° C. Tomorrow may be very sunny until 3pm, but it is going to be bitterly cold. The current predictions shows the temperature falling to just 2° C at 9am, and then rising to a peak of 4° C before falling back down to 1° C by 10pm ! The BBC shows even lower temperature than the Met Office for tomorrow. It also shows sleet falling mid morning, and later afternoon on Thursday !

   Yesterday was another pleasant day, or to be less positive, it was a day when there were few negatives. One such negative was my Amazon delivery not arriving until 7.30pm, but at least it was before bedtime. A positive thing was that I did finally get out to get some shopping, although I did spend rather a lot of money in Tesco.

  It was gone 11am by the time I had washed and dressed ready to venture outdoors. It was at a time that was shown as rainy in the latest forecast, but it didn't rain while walking to and from Tesco, and I don't seem to remember much in the way of rain for a few hours after, but it is possible there was some rain that went unnoticed from indoors. I guess it was because there was no wind that it felt, almost mild, although I definitely would not want to be out without a done up coat !

  I spent a lot on Tesco, mainly on account of buying two bottles of whisky. However, one bottle was a one litre bottle of Haig which was on Clubcard offer again with £10.50 knocked off the full price. The other bottle was a 70cl bottle of Tesco "Special Reserve", and that is modestly cheap at just over £13 a bottle - all of which was paid for by Tesco Clubcard vouchers - with a few quid spare for other stuff.

  Apart from booze, I mostly bought meat and vegetables for my evening dinners. I also bought some cheese, including some Camembert, as well as some cold meat, plus a pack of pork and mushroom pate. I didn't realise until I was filling my shopping bag at the checkout just how many packs of instant noodles I bought. Other relevant stuff was a packet of "sweet chilli" flavoured rice crackers, and packet of pork chipolatas reduced to £1.85 from £2.?? (it was about £1 off).

  The "relevant" stuff was because when I had got home, and put all the food away, I had a lunch of some of the pork and mushroom pate scooped up by the sweet chilli rice crackers. It was nice, but I had hoped it might have been nicer still. The same is true of lunch part two which was Camembert on more sweet chilli rice cakes.
  Before moving on to other stuff, mostly photo editing, one photo I edited first was the above picture of a train taken using my mobile phone at Shortlands station. This was the train I got to Petts Wood on Saturday after changing trains at Shortlands. There are now possibly just 5 class 465 trains from the total of 148 built that I haven't got photographs from. The exact missing figure is a mystery. I believe that one was scrapped after being used as a test bed for a different traction package. Many were renumbered when they had a first class area built in them, and some may be in long term store for unknown reasons. There are 5 obvious gaps in my spreadsheet, and before Saturday there were 6 gaps !

  My biggest, or most important, of most daunting job yesterday was the selecting and editing of photos of Jamie Bull's solo set at the Petts Wood Xmas Carnival last Saturday. As I keep mentioning, Jamie is John Bull's, aka Mr Rockrpix, son, and John has a growing reputation as a go to photographer by many bands who actually want to commission professional grade photos. It is quite daunting to go up against that, but I did my best.
  I think this was the best I could do. I spent quite some time on it - tweaking bits here and there. Jamie seems to be nicely in focus, and the background is reasonably colourful. The only trouble, particularly seeing it the next day, is that while it is perfect, it is not exciting, and I am not sure if I have the slightest clue as to how to make it look exciting.
  One problem for me, and maybe for John Bull too*, is that there are only so many ways you can take a picture of a man sitting at a piano. I think the only excitement is when catching the light and stage fog at exactly the right time.
* I did note that John Bull only showed a single photo of Jamie.
  The big trouble with shooting from Jamie's other side was avoiding the microphone, or his iPad (with lyric notes on it) getting too much in the way of the shot. It took a bit of patience to get this shot with Jamie doing a good pose. What spoils it is the front stage lighting was on the wrong side to light up his face a bit better.

  I think these three pictures, plus maybe the picture I showed Sunday, with Jamie standing next to his piano, are possibly the best I have managed to get of him so far. Maybe much of the improvement is down to my wonderful Nikon D610s camera. It seemed a bit expensive (for my budget) when I bought it, but now I have the feel of it, it turned out to be a great investment. It is probably telling, but for the first time I am not thinking of upgrading in any way.

  I should have gone on to select the best, and edit, photos I took of The Coyles at Petts Wood. There were so little of them that the job probably would not take long.....having said that, being such a small amount to choose from, I might possibly attempt to smarten up some that I would otherwise just ignore. That could add some time to the job. I just preferred to be lazy, and read my book rather than do any more.

 I did end up doing a little bit more, but it was only washing up and cooking. The original plan for for a (hopefully) super healthy stew of chicken and some green vegetables. What I actually had was pork chipolatas and chips. Having bought them on their sell by date, I did need to cook and eat those chipolata sausages fairly quickly. The trouble with sausages is what to have with them. Carefully sautéed vegetables in gravy might be one possibility, but chips was an easier option, and it does seem that chips, in terms of affect on my blood glucose seem "mostly harmless", even if their effect on my waistline isn't.

  I ate my sausages and chips while watching TV - the usual three Star Trek's  - none of which were particularly great episodes, quite the opposite in fact. It didn't help that I tried to flip between Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Enterprise, on different channels to try and see which one gabbed my attention more. By hopping back and forward like that I missed the plot, and just made things worse.

  After Star Trek: Voyager I changed channels to watch another episode of "Abandoned Engineering" - a very poorly presented programme, and this episode didn't even show anything of any great interest.....Well maybe one place was sort of interesting, but if they stopped trying to pad out the programme, and just devoted 5 minutes to it, with a decent narrator, it could have been far better than the 20 minutes of drivvle they spent on it.

  Soon after 9pm I was reading in bed, but I think I may have only spent 10 minutes reading. I put the book down, turned out the light, and the next thing I remember is seeing 4.37am on the clock. That was one bit of solid sleep. I think I may have got up for a pee some time during that time, but all I can recall is a really hazy, faded dream like memory.  From then on I did have some insomnia that may have lasted an hour or so, but I did get back to sleep.

  I knew I slept because I remember a dream. It is not exactly a clear memory. It was actually more like watching a documentary than taking any part in the dream. It was about a modernised "primitive" tribe who had modernised, and a coming of age ceremony. In it's modernise form the boys becoming men had to climb trees to a platform where either their sweetheart would be waiting in bed for them, or if not a sweetheart, then a "professional woman" would see to their needs.

  In it's original primitive form the trees were huge great things, and difficult to climb. The modernised version had red poles that had hand and feet holds cut in them, so all by the lamest could climb them. It was a dream about sex, but not including any sex. I think it was inspired by the book I am reading, although there is nothing comparable to it in the book. The only parallel is that in the book a primitive tribe are modernising as they come out of an ice age on the planet Helliconia.

  I did have another dream, and it was a return to an old theme of me being back at work, supposedly repairing TVs during my retirement years. I was treating the place a lot like a play school (or something like that). One notable thing was a warning that appraisals were coming up, and I had better try to be more productive if I wanted to keep my job. That didn't worry me in the least. As far as I was concerned my pensions met my needs, and my wages was just the cream on top. I decided to just hang out as long as I could before I was sacked. After all, I was unlikely to worry about getting a reference when I was kicked out.

  It was interesting that at about 5am, maybe 6am, I felt hungry, and also that I had seemed not to have gone for a pee more than once during my sleep period. These things were reflected in my blood glucose readings. One reading I had to do twice because the first reading was ridiculously high compared to the other two. On the second attempt the Sino Care meter read 7.8mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read 7.5mmol/l, and the Contour meter read 7.2mmol/l. All three were excellent readings (for me), and the 7.5mmol/l was spot on my imaginary target.

   The first reading on the Sino Care meter was something ridiculous like 9.6mmol/l, and I think it was because I was having difficulty getting a nice clean bead of blood for it. Today it was the turn of my right index finger to be pricked, but because it is the most used finger the skin on the tip is almost leathery. It took the new reading from my right thumb instead. Incidently, my Amazon delivery yesterday was another 100 test strips for the Sino Care meter, and another 100 test strips for the Contour meter. It seems like I am going to be taking these triple readings for at least the next 100 days !

  One other surprise this morning was despite the fact I have yet to have a poo, my weight seems to have dropped back, and I have almost lost the 1kg I thought I had put on. I made a decision I was going to try a tiny bit harder to lose another kg, but then immediately blew that out by having a double helping of instant noodles for breakfast, but in my defence I can say that one was only a 60gm pack !

  It would be nice to say I have a blank sheet for today, but I suppose I had better select and edit the few best pictures I took of The Coyles last Saturday. With a sunny morning (hopefully) warming up the front room, it would also be a good time to do a bit of laundry. I did once think that today I could be tempted out to stretch my legs, but with the sunshine only lasting up to maybe 1pm, it is a far less attractive idea.