The road outside was damp when I opened the curtains, and I did hear rain in the small hours of the morning, but I don't think I saw any heavy rain at 7am, and any light rain at 8am. What I am seeing now is a sunny spell ! From the look of the sky is seems more sunny spells are very possible. However, both forecasters are stuck on the idea that there will be rain in the afternoon. Both forecasters agree that this afternoon should reach 15° C. There will be more rain late tonight. After a wet start, tomorrow could feature sunny spells. That could push the temperature up to 17° C. That is starting to get a very usable temperature. The day after tomorrow could reach 19° C !!

   Yesterday ended up as a good day. The hoped for plan never happened, but that left the way open for an even better time in the evening. The original plan was to meet Kevin in The Blythe Tavern because Ayse, my favourite barmaid, would not be in the Jolly Farmers. That never happened because it all hung on Kevin getting a telephone appointment with his doctor in time. It was scheduled to be sometime between 10am and 2pm, but actually was at about 2.45pm.

  Until such time as I had to wash my hair, and have a shower, prior to going out, I had a very relaxed, and many would say lazy morning. At 12:40 I got a message from Kevin warning me that it looked unlikely he would get his call from the doctor in time to get to the pub before 2pm. I had set 2pm as an arbitrary cut off time, although there was no real reason why we couldn't have started a lot later - except that could be a temptation for a binge instead of a more relaxed drink.

  Kevin did say that if things happened earlier he would let me know, but by 1pm I lost faith (as he did) with his doctor, and I stared thinking of some lunch. I ended up using the last of the bread I had to make one and a half toasted cheese and ham sandwiches. It was possibly less than it sounds because the end of the loaf tapered down to almost half size, and at it's widest it was still smaller than a typical loaf of sliced bread ("Sunblest size").

  I was almost about to say that I did nothing in the afternoon, but I did do something potentially important. It all started when I was curious of what video I had recorded at Sevenoaks station in 2003, on "tape 913". The only thing to do was to set up my old, dual boot, Windows and Linux, PC in the front room. It has a program on it, when booted to Windows XP, that can download digital video from a mini-DV tape.

  For what I thought of as simplicity, I used the big TV as a monitor. In fact it was crap as a monitor. The claimed resolution was quite high, but it looked so horribly gritty. I only wanted to copy that digital video tape to a USB thumb drive for review on my main PC, and so I put up with the atrocious picture on the TV. I used my little, bought for just £50 in a secondhand shop, Samsung camcorder to play back the tape via a "Firewire", IEE1394, cable to the PC.

  The little palm sized Samsung camcorder has terrible optic, and terrible autofocus, and seemingly a low resolution image sensor, but it plays back a tape recorded on a better camcorder at full fidelity. Unfortunately "tape 913" didn't have what I hoped on it, but it did have a few nice passes of slam door trains. Maybe more importantly it proved the set up worked, and it is still all set up so I can copy more tapes to digital video files.

  As the evening approached I began to feel a bit peckish, but I didn't want to eat a full dinner. I was intending, and indeed did go out last night - something I couldn't have contemplated if I had a full belly. Booze, but only in the form of Guinness, was involved, and so I wanted a little bit in my stomach first. I think I had two small packets of crisps, and some sugar free choc chip cookies.

  Eventually the clock reached 7.30pm, and with my new leather jacket on, and camera bag on my shoulder, I went to get a bus to take me to The Partridge pub in Bromley. It is not a pub I like much, more so after I found they were charging £6.20 for a pint of Guinness (just £4.80 in The Jolly Farmers). I was just starting to feel the beginnings of some strain by the time I reached the bus stop, but my timing was not bad, I only had about a 5 minute wait for a bus.

  Then there was the very tedious 25 minute ride on the bus to Bromley. I think I was a bit surprised to be there, but I surprised many others a lot more. It was good to see most of the people there, but a couple I didn't care for. One is surely autistic and doesn't recognise privacy, and the other is, or was a ponce - as in poncing, or even stealing drinks.
  It was good to be back behind my camera at a gig. I must admit I misjudged the lighting at first. The picture above, which was the house band for the night, was taken without using flash, and was underexposed.Fortunately it brightened up reasonably well, but it lacks some sparkle and definition. After some photos I gave in and used my flashgun, but rather stupidly I had that set too low at first, and that produced more under exposed pictures.

  I hope I have time enough today to go through all 243 pictures I shot last night, and pull out the best one or two dozen snaps. I think (I hope) that a couple might look really cracking pictures. When I first arrived the house band had almost finished their warm up set, and I'll admit I did rush things when trying to buy a pint, and getting my camera out to get a few snaps of them. Roy Dally, on guitar at the far left of the picture, is usually quite animated and I get good pictures of him. He wasn't on this occasion, and was quite static.

  When I first arrived Chris Mayer, now ex- Chain after semi retiring, was there and he was pleased to see me. Later on he would buy me a pint of Guinness (using his musician discount).Jo Corteen arrived about 20 minutes later, and I got a hug and a peck on the cheek, plus a pint of Guinness ! It seems I have been missed more than I would have believed.

  It was a most enjoyable evening, and the highlight was seeing two classic lineups of Chain. Chris played lead guitar on both, and Guy, who I haven't seen in ages, played drums for both. On one set of songs Geoff Paice (who often used to dep for them, played bass, and for another set of songs their current bass player whose name escapes me as I write this, played bass.

  I may have missed out on a marvellous jam session at the end, but at just before 10.30pm I decided I had more than enough pictures, four pints of Guinness, and I was starting to feel tired. I packed up my camera bag, put my new leather jacket on, and headed for the bus stop. That was when things went very wrong. The Countdown display on the bus stop, plus the app on my phone, both said they had no information for that bus stop.

 There was one young Asian looking woman waiting at the bus stop, and she was consulting an app I didn't recognise, on her phone to check the time of the next bus. She told me my bus might only be 2 minutes away. We waited and waited until a man kindly told us that the buses were on diversion ! The Countdown display could have said that, and there could have been paper notices on the bus stop, but there was nothing.

  I had to walk all the way two bus stops down the road where buses were calling after being diverted pass Bromley North station. I was not happy with that walk. I probably tried to walk too fast, and was soon feeling my breathing getting a bit strained, although I wasn't exactly breathless. I could also feel some tightness in my chest starting. It wasn't help by the weight of my camera bag with the big Nikon camera, two heavy lenses, plus flash gun and spare batteries etc.

  It also wasn't helped by my new leather jacket. Although I can just about do it up, it still feels too constrictive - particularly on the arms. The main problem is a lack of air circulation. I was feeling hot by the time I reached the bus stop, and even after an 11 minute wait for the bus, I was still feeling too hot. At least I could sit down and relax as the bus travelled to Catford. It was a 208 bus, and that dropped me off at the end of my road on the high street.

  It was good to get home for two reasons. It was good to get my jacket off, and put my camera bag down. It was also good to get up to the toilet for a pee. I had just one shortly before I left the pub, but that probably only dealt with my first pint. I still had three more pints sloshing around in me when I got home.  I had decided late in the afternoon that I would try not to bother with any supper when I got home. I turned all the lights of downstairs, and went straight up to my bedroom.

  I will confess I munched on little more than a palmful (being less than a handful) of peanuts while I spent 10 minutes checking a few things on my computer. I then went and brushed my teeth (and had another pee) before going straight to bed. It took very little effort to fall into a deep sleep. Maybe later in the small hours of the morning I had a series of dreams. Most of them now forgotten, but fragments of one survive.

  In the bit of dream I remember I seemed to be in the company of conspiracy theorists, or those whose relationship with reality was a bit suspect. The theme was all about the railway tunnels between New Cross and London Bridge stations. (Back in the real world that line is above ground on a viaduct). They claimed that there were secret side tunnels in thos tunnels. I said nonsense because I was old enough to remember going through then on slam door trains with an open window. You could see a lot through an open window because obviously there was no reflection of the inner lighting on any glass. It was easy to see the sides of the tunnel wall, and it had no openings in it.

  They said they knew better, and that they had proof (but no photos to provide real proof). They had found a letter addressed to the Chief Signalling Engineer. That was apparently proof because it said to, rather than for the Chief Signalling Engineer. No explanation of how that was proof was ever described. I can't quite remember if I enjoyed the romp through pure fantasy, or if it was annoying. Maybe it was only annoying to wake up early.

  On the other hand, I have got a busy day coming up if I am to go through all last nights photos looking for the best of them, and tweaking them up a bit in my photo editor, and so an early start, very soon after 6am, was actually a good idea (although I wouldn't be surprised if the next thing I do after I have finished writing this, is to have a snooze). At least I got this writing off to an early start.

  I was probably hoping for too much when I checked my blood glucose readings this morning. I expected super low readings, or at least that is what I hoped for. The first reading was taken with my Contour meter. It was ridiculously high, about 9.2mmol/l. I am very sure the problem was that I was pricking my little finger for blood, and may have pricked a previously pricked prick. I had a hard time squeezing enough blood out. I pricked it again, and took another reading. This time it was closer to what I hoped for.

  It read 7.6mmol/l. That was good, but I had still hoped for even lower. I got that from the GlucoRX meter. That read a magnificent 6.7mmol/l. That was more like what I hoped for after having no supper last night. That meter is often generous to me, and it is my "official" NHS supplied meter. The Sinocare meter was up to it's old tricks again and reading high. It read 8.1mmol/l. That is still pretty good in the grand scheme of things, but it would have been nicer if it had confirmed one or other of the other two readings.

  Generally speaking, apart from two exceptions, I feel OK today. The first exception is that my legs do feel a bit stiff this morning. I guess the extra walking I did yesterday, even if the walking only added up to maybe a mile, was enough to cause the aches because I am so out of practice. The other thing concerns the temperature. I seem to be unusually sensitive to the temperature recently. The outdoors temperature is such that my bedroom seems to stay comfortable enough, after turning off the heater, for some time, but gradually I feel cold. Upon turning the heater back on it only seems to take 10 minutes before I am feeling too hot again.

  Any spare time I have today will theoretically be taken up with photo selecting and editing. That is probably just as well because now we seem to have lost the sunny spells it doesn't look nice weather to even go shopping. From id afternoon I should be beer tasting with Jodie. I hope Michael finds himself free enough, or desperate enough to join us, but I doubt it. After the beer drinking I'll probably be too tipsy to do anything useful !
      







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