We seem to have full sunshine now, and it is needed to help warm up a rather chilly start - just 5° C. The full sunshine may not last beyond 11am, but sunny spells should continue until almost sunset, with maybe one single hour of no sunshine at 3pm, although the exact time may be different. For all the sunshine it is not expected to go over 12° C today.  The BBC things tomorrow could start at just 3° C, and that could mean a frost, but The Met Office say a 5° C start. Once again there may be some early morning sunshine, but most of the day will be dull, and rather cold. Tomorrow may see the temperature rise to no more than 10° C, and The BBC reckon there will be light rain or drizzle from mid to late afternoon.

   Yesterday was one of those days where anticipation turned into something like depression, but not actually depression (at least I wouldn't describe it as such) once the anticipation had been achieved. I had plans to do much, but did little in the end.  On the other hand, one plan did work out OK.

  The great anticipation was waiting for the delivery of my new camera lens. I came to assume that it would not come as pure parcel post, but was a small, and light enough packet to be delivered by my normal postman. That was the case, and it arrived a little earlier than expected. I think since he had his stents fitted, and is on light duties, he is arriving earlier than he was some months ago.  He arrived with my lens at about 11am.

  I hastily opened up the box to get to, and fondle my new lens. I was very happy to see it came with a lens hood - many second hand lenses don't. I attached it to my Nikon D3200 camera, and did a few test shots indoor. They seemed very good, but I had intended to go out for a walk with the new lens, and the old lens it was replacing, but I just couldn't find the energy and/or enthusiasm. The trouble was we had just had a spell of grey weather, and there had been a light sprinkle of rain. However, I did go into my garden, and too a few test shots there.
  I must admit my garden is mainly covered with "meadow flowers", but some are fairly pretty - like this yellow flowered thing. It was not my intention to take pictures with such a shallow depth of field, but it was a consequence of using a very fast shutter, and that meant the aperture had to be very large. It is something I ought to be more aware of, but with a lot of my photography being done in poorly lit pubs, getting enough light is my main concern. Anyway, this shot seemed nice and sharp.
  I know that these flower heads are related to the onion family, but I can't seem to retain their name in my head for some reason. Anyway, I thought this close up, taken with a fair bit of zoom, was exceptionally sharp.
  An even closer close up yellow flowers. It would have been nice to have caught a bee in the photo, but I didn't have enough patience to wait long enough for one to visit.
  The dandelion seed head, whose common name escapes me, came out really sharp, but the dandelion flower was just a single inch closer, and just out of the plane of best focus. I wonder if the extra sharpness, compared to the old Tamron lens is because the Nikon lens is classified as a VR lens, where VR stands for vibration reduction, and is their way of saying image stabilisation. It is supposed to, and does indeed seem to, counteract any slight hand tremor, or other slight movement that causes enough motion blur to give a soft outline instead of a sharp outline.
  I have one small tree in my garden, that I ruthlessly cut back to stop it becoming a huge tree. It has only recently just started sprouting new leaves after being dormant all winter. This little clump of fresh leaves seemed to be a good target for my camera.
  I am unsure if this is cherry blossom, but for a short while it is very colourful.  Many might think these pictures could have been taken just as well using a mobile phone, and indeed modern mobile phones can produce very good pictures of flowers and stuff, but maybe not the picture of the cherry blossom. Taking this picture needed almost full zoom, because it was taken over the top of a 6ft high fence - without climbing the fence, but from about 6ft from the fence. Only the top foot or two is visible over the fence.

  Having taken these pictures, and prepared them to show here, I decided the £259 I spent had been an excellent decision. The new lens is definitely better than the old lens of the same zoom powers, but without the image stabilisation. I decided that I might try and use it to take some snaps of Chain playing in The Railway Pub in Blackheath last night. I got as far as putting one of my flash guns, and some spare batteries for it, in my Nikon D3200 camera bag, and then I went into relaxation mode.

  I guess it was not in full relaxation mode initially because now I was not handling expensive camera gear I could have the lunch I had intended to have - some fruit. It was only two medium small blood oranges. Now they have had extra time to ripen they were very sweet, very sticky, and very nice. I did wonder if maybe they were a bit too sweet for me, but I seemed to get away with it. I don't really know why, but those two oranges were not only nice, but them seemed to be almost filling, or at least "satisfying".

  After washing the orange juice off my hands I did go into full relaxation mode. I laid on my bed, read for a bit, and ended up having a snooze. By then we had definitely seen the last of the sunshine, and I needed the heater on low just to keep warm - warm enough to be very sedate !  I'm not sure what time it was, maybe something like 3pm, but I was rapidly losing the desire to go out, and another plan seemed to start seeping into my mind.

  Perhaps another hour passed by, and during that time I added up all the reasons not to go out to Chain's gig, and there were many reasons. Enough to completely outweigh they one or two pro reasons to go out. The evolving plan was to splash out on a kebab or two for dinner. It didn't seem long to wait until just before 6pm to order some food online.

  I used a kebab shop I had used once or twice before, but had never made any notes about it, as I now do for every kebab shop I use. Last night it was the Ladywell kebab shop. I was quite startled at their prices. A small donor kebab with salad was £12, and they did a medium and large. the large was something like £24 !! I ordered a small donor kebab, and a small chicken shish kebab - also £12. I think Just Eat estimated it would be delivered between 6.20, and 6.40pm. It came at 6.30pm.

  I found the "small" donor kebab was very big ! It was also pretty tasty, although I thought the chilli sauce was extremely tame, and added some of my own. The salad came on it's own in small plastic containers. That could be a big plus point in the future because it would mean it would be easy to reheat the meat part of a kebab if there was a spare ordered for the next day. The chicken shish kebab was probably bigger than "small", but not to the extreme of the donor kebab.

  One bit of uncertainty was what the effect of the donor kebab would be. Past experience shows that shish kebabs, basically grilled meat with salad, are very, very kind to my blood glucose reading the next day. I hoped that the donor kebab, apart from containing more grease, and more salt, would also be kind. In fact in this case the donor meat was fairly fat free - just enough to not be dry.

  I had to resort to playing old recordings of The Avengers last night. There were 5 back to back showings of The Avengers last night on the Great TV! channel, but all were from series 6, and all had been shown quite recently. I watched two recordings from series 4, and selected a couple of titles I couldn't quite remember much about. It was while watching one of those that I had an accident.

  I really don't know what happened. It seemed that a belch, a hiccup, and a cough all happened at the same time as I was taking a sip of whisky. What I do know is that I tried to inhale whisky, and it really stung. I doubt if I inhaled more than a couple of dips, but I really knew it !!!! The worst seemed to be over when I drank a few mouthfuls of water, but there was more persistent trouble later.

  I intended to have an early night because I couldn't be bothered to watch any more TV, live or recorded, although I was happy to read a bit in bed. I was probably in bed by about 8.30pm. Not long after I laid down I started to get a tickle in my throat. It became evident that those few drops of whisky had inflamed my airway, and it was producing a bit of mucus. I could not seem to cough it up until I took a couple of puffs from my well out of date asthma inhaler. That opened up the airways for a nice deep cough that finally expelled the last of the mucus.

  It was probably getting on for 10pm when I was finally relaxed enough to get to sleep. I had a mostly OK sleep, but in the first part of the night I got up twice to do a big pee, but then many hours passed, and it was getting near getting up time before I needed another pee. Sometime in the night I had two dreams. One I remember some details from it, and the other I remember almost as just a still frame.

  The "almost" still frame was of two woman sitting on a bench outside a pub. One seemed fairly pleasant, but otherwise ignorable. The other was wearing a light blue t-shirt with holes cut out for each breast. Here breasts seemed to be rather big, and somehow oddly shaped as if she had had surgery that had gone wrong. Her nipples looked like the bright red caps of a Fairy Liquid bottle. This was no erotic dream. If anything it was the opposite. I found her look to be most repellent.

  The dream I seem to remember more of was about me being in a new house. I had apparently swapped it with a property developer for a slightly smaller house that had been complete done up, and in far better condition than my old (current) home. The developer said he would cover the money spent on the refurbished house because he could convert my house to a 5 (very small) bedroom house, and sell it for a lot of money.

  That was the background, but the action concerned the tool I use to prick my fingers for a blood glucose test. The one I was trying to use had gone wrong, and it was sticking the lancet in far too deeply - which was painful and messy. I was wondering if I should go back to my old house, which was not much more then 15 minutes walk away, and see if I could find one of my other tools to prick my finger. I never did go back before I woke up, but that bit of dream seemed to take a lot longer than it did to describe it.

  I woke up a little after 5am, and decided that it was too early to get up, but I did go for a pee, and I also turned up the heater to full. It was little more than 4° C. outside at that time, and my bedroom was not feeling that warm to get up into. I then fell asleep, and didn't wake up until not long before 7am. I am happy to say I was not suffering from constipation this morning - I went for the first of three productive visits mere minutes after getting out of bed.

  It was then time to learn the truth about all I had eaten yesterday - which mainly in terms of the small, but actually large, donor kebab, ended up as quite a lot. It was good news. The Contour meter read 7.8mmol/l. A little lower would have been better, but it was still very good. The GlucoRX meter ready a very good 7.1mmol/l, and the Sinocare meter was pretty good at 7.7mmol/l. It seems the plan is working, but I still want to do better.

  One original plan that would put a spoke in the wheel to do better was to go shopping in Aldi or Tesco this morning. That is not going to happen this morning because as I write this the morning is almost over (another late start). Fortunately there is nothing I desperately need. The trains are running this Sunday (no engineering work) and so Jodie should be over for a beer tasting session, The less temptations I have around when drunk, the better my diet will be. Dinner tonight might be just gilled beef cubes and slices of leek. That should be safe, and I have very little of anything bad in the cupboard at the moment, but I can have something like cheese and rice crackers for lunch.
        







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