Once again the morning has started off with some rain. It may have been raining for a lot of the night for all I know.  The latest revision to the forecast shows white cloud, but no sunny spells, until 9pm when the clouds get thicker, but still no rain is predicted. The BBC say that light rain will continue until 10 or 11am, and it will be followed by sunny spells until sunset. When I look at the sky I think that the met Office forecast may have got it right. Both forecasters agree that this afternoon should see 17° C. Tomorrow may see 19° C. The BBC predict lots of sunshine or sunny spells. The met Office say sunshine or sunny spells until 11am, and then white cloud for the rest of the day.

   Yesterday was a busy day, and it was mostly because I had so many photos, taken the previous night. I had to select the best, about 31 of them if I recall correctly, and do whatever was needed to polish them up to a fair quality, or at least to try to. Occasional photos were selected for what they showed, rather than how the showed it.

  Of course my first priority of the day, after doing my usual things like checking my blood glucose, and also blood pressure, plus having some breakfast, was to write the 2,577 words that I seemed to write yesterday. I must have had a lot to say because about a 1000 words less is more typical, but after that I started off to do the first batch of photos. I am happy to say that I still know how to use my Nikon D610, and maybe I even learned a few new tricks.
  Chris is not quite as photogenic as the girls, but often plays the guitar in a way that is worth a snap. For this song he is using a (metal) bottleneck on his finger to make those slidey, glidey notes.
  This turned out to be an interesting picture. I am not sure I fully realised it when I took it. Geoff Paice was playing bass as part of the house band backing other players. There was a strong purple stage light to the left of the picture. It just missed his face, and my flash lit up his face, but the purple light lit up the neck of his guiar like it was actually purple (I think it was the usual brown colour).
  John the drummer doesn't like most pictures taken of him - he can pull some very odd faces when drumming - but I hope he likes this one. At full size it is a very sharp picture, although for some people that can be a hindrance - some prefer the soft focus approach to smooth the skin out. I think I caught John doing a great pose, and the I managed to keep his face looking like the colour of skin while his drum kit is bathed in blue light.
  Jo is rather more photogenic than the men, and particularly so with a nice smile on her face. This time the stage lights, off to the left, were beaming yellow light across the stage area, but wee pointing down so only the floor, and the bottom of Jo's legs were bathed in yellow light.
  There have been many line up changes to Chain, with Chris leaving most recently. At the open mic two different past line ups of Chain played a few songs. In this picture Graham (at least I hope I remember his name correctly) plays bass with Jo, the one constant member of the band.
  Some would say getting the correct balance between the bright purple back lighting, and flash for front lighting, is an art, or skill, I just hit the shutter button, and hoped for the best. It seemed to work, The purple light dominates the picture, but Chris's skin looks sort of skin coloured, and the details on his face are all visible.
  Some say I was standing on the bar, and some say I was dangling from the chandeliers to take this picture. I was actually almost on tip toe, with the camera as high as I could hold it. There was no way I could see through the viewfinder like that, and so it was all guesswork. It is not a finely detailed picture, and everyone seems to be looking the wrong way, but it shows a classic line up of Chain.

  I managed to get two batches of 10 photos ready before I stopped for lunch. I ate maybe a dozen small little rice crackers with ham and mustard on them for my lunch. Then I got back to work in the "digital darkroom". I almost finished another 10 picture when Jodie arrived for our Thursday afternoon beer drinking session. I am unsure if it was a good session or not.

  We did open a couple of interesting, even if not all that nice beers, but it was all overshadowed by more mobile phone troubles. It seems Jodie's old mobile phone may have completely died, and she was finally forced to swap the sim card to her new phone, and start using it. As predicted, once she had the SIM card in there, showing her real identity, some of the apps and games that didn't previously work, started to work - just as we had been trying to tell her for the last week.

  One problem remained, and it was What's App. It had picked her number up from the temporary pay-as-you-go SIM card, and didn't know who she was - and it was telling anyone she messaged on it the wrong number. In the settings it takes just a few clicks, plus typing out her proper number, for it to almost start working correctly, and all her usual contacts, plus a few recent messages all appeared again.

  One final thing was that she was getting no notification of incoming Whatsapp messages. We went through the options for that, and everything seemed to be in place, but still it wouldn't work.....and then suddenly it did ! I think it was still working on correcting the wrong phone number, and getting any old messages it could find before it turned on other features. Jodie still hasn't got Twitter working because she signed up for that using an email address she seems to have forgotten, or didn't even know in the first place because someone else entered an email address for her.

  It was lucky that for the last hour of the drink Alan turned up, and we could back each other up when it came to sorting out some of Jodie's difficulties. She is one of those people who are very scared of changing setting, and other stuff. That is a very good thing when it comes to being scared to click stuff like spam bait, but for ordinary settings, made for the users convenience, and easily changed back, such fear is unjustified.

  I had a couple of beers that I am allowed to drink "unsupervised", and one of them was a bottle of Harvey's old dark Christmas ale that I shared with Alan. The other was a basic German lager. The two "interesting" beer we tried together were a lager type beer infused with wine. it sounds lethal, and probably would be in large quantities, but it was surprisingly not too bad. The other novelty was one that has been in the fridge for weeks, It was a 14.9% stout with chocolate and peanuts. It had the potential to be very nice, but it seemed to be tainted as if a mouldy peanut had somehow got into it. All three of us tried it, and I think we all agreed it could have been very nice apart from that hint of mould.

  Alan and Jodie were off to a gig near St Pancras, and there was much discussion about how they were going to get there. Jodie thought that should go via a bus to Lewisham, and then a train to London Bridge, and finally a change to a train to St Pancras. I suggested they should get a Thameslink train from Catford to BlackFriars, and the cross the platform to to first train to arrive for the three stops to St Pancras. They set out for Catford station, and I hope their journey was as simple as I said it should be.

  It was gone 7pm when they left, and I was looking forward to my dinner. I had to add the final ingredient, a couple of sliced sweet potatoes. I had to give those sweet potatoes a good scrub and scrape before slicing them up. I then gave them, plus the base of the dinner, casseroled lamb and baked beans, another 10 minutes in the microwave oven to cook the potato. Once cooked, and left for maybe 10 minutes to cool off a bit, it was a very tasty dinner.

  While waiting for it to cook and cool I finished that last two photographs of the next batch of ten. It was hard to concentrate while thinking of dinner, and feeling mildly drunk. I felt a lot better after dinner, and with nothing worth watching on TV, I got back to photos and finished off the last lot - 11 photos in that batch. There are some photos I hope I'll be showing here tomorrow. They are not band pictures, but portraits of some band members. I was very pleased how some came out.

  I think I was in bed and I thought I was ready to sleep at 9pm, but it took a bit longer than that before I fell asleep. One novelty last night was that for over half the night I left the heater off.  I seemed warm enough, but not too warm, under the duvet. It may have been abut 4am when I turned the heater on low so I didn't have to get up in a rather cool bedroom.  I seemed to sleep rather solidly last night, and maybe only got up to pee twice in the night.

  I seemed to have a series of dreams in the last hours of sleep. It is hard to remember the order of things, or indeed to put what might have been haphazard dreams in some sort of order that makes more sense, or makes for some sort of story line. In one dream I was with a couple of young woman in their living room. I have no idea who they were, or even who that might supposed to be. There was some friendly chat, but it was more like they had adopted me, than me wanting them.

  Suddenly that dream seemed to end, and I was in another living room with a small piano that I had somehow acquired. It was not in perfect condition, and some keys didn't initially work, but that turned out to be because someone had stuffed some sales receipts and other sales stuff between the strings. One notable feature is that a USB card in it somewhere, but there was no obvious USB socket, and no obvious way a purely traditional/mechanical piano could do anything with USB. On the other hand there was some sort of electronics in it because as it got dark some lights came on, on the underside of the piano.

  It was about then that the young woman returned, and we went out to where there was a swimming pool in the back garden. The pool was no more than about 12ft long, and maybe 6ft wide, but would have been good for cooling off in during hot weather. I was hoping the woman would strip off for a swim, but no such luck. We seemed to spend maybe half an hour or more out by the pool, but didn't really do anything, or even say anything.

  There was more of thematically similar, but still very uneventful dreams. One dream sequence was very different, and very strange. It was like I was swimming up Bromley High Street. I was laying down, but maybe only my feet were touching the ground. It was a bit like swimming, and the faster I moved my feet, the faster I went. I did manage to get up quite an exhilarating speed, and would occasionally get a small boost by using my fingers as well. I didn't feel like I was floating, but obviously I was. I guess it was inspired by stuff I have been reading about being in a spaceship with very low artificial gravity, although quite while my brain decided to set it in Bromley High Street is the greatest mystery of all time !

  I am very sure it was 6.17am when I got up. It was a lot like when I was still working, and trained myself to almost anticipate the alarm going off at 5am, and leaping straight out of bed. There was no alarm involved this morning, but as soon as I saw it was gone 6am I just decided I had enough sleep, and to get straight out of bed. The only trouble was that my mouth was really dry, and the first thing I do when I get up is to take my temperature. It was hard to do with a dry and tickley throat, but I got a typical reading.

  After a visit to the toilet, and scrubbing my hands, I checked my blood glucose readings. They were very good, but not magnificent. I seemed to be back where I could get good readings without having to work at it. The Contour meter read 8.1mmol/l - good, but not that good. The GlucoRX meter read 7.5mmol/l. That was very good, but still not magnificent. The Sinocare meter probably was magnificent just for almost agreeing with the GlucoRX meter. It read 7.9mmol/l. I allowed myself two lots of instant noodles for breakfast on the strength of those readings, but if I can I feel I should put a bit more effort in getting those readings a bit lower if I can.

  Two things could happen today, but definitely not both of them. There is a chance I will have an afternoon drink with Kevin today. If not then there is a chance I might go to a gig tonight. If I do I doubt I will stay long. It is just one band, and an hour should be plenty of time to take a handful of snaps, and get the bus home again. It would be in the Bromley Bricklayers Arms (there is a pub of the same name in Beckenham). and the bus stops almost outside to get there, and little more than 100ft down the road for the bus home again. The journey shouldn't tax my body too much if I do go. The music may be a bit more taxing. The band Is Vince And The Thunderboltz, and they have a tendency to get a bit old tyme rock and roll - not my thing at all !
      







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