So far this morning it has been rather dull, but the latest revision to the forecast insists we should be having sunny spells until 1pm. After that, most of this afternoon could be a bit dull. The best we can hope for today is just 22° C. Tomorrow may see mostly full sunshine, with sunny spells for a few random hours that don't feature full sunshine. It should end up a bit warmer with 24° C being the highest predicted.

  Yesterday turned out far better than expected. What I thought might be possibly painful, and a chore, turned out to be mostly enjoyable. Even a few on the spot decisions turned out well. Yesterday was Petts Wood Calling day -  a one day music festival to raise money for charity.

  I was still very unsure if I was going to go or not yesterday morning. I think I was hoping a several days old weather forecast, which predicted thunderstorms would provide an easy excuse not to go, but the late forecasts said it should be warm and sunny. So I had the full trio of shave, shampoo, and shower while still not fully believing I would be going. Once I was nearly dry (the humidity was making me sweat a bit - particularly my head after blow drying my hair) I got dressed ready to go out.

  About an hour before actually going out I took a couple of Paracetamol, plus a 300mg soluble aspirin tablet dissolved in water. This was extra belt and braces on top of taking a whole anti-angina tablet first thing in the morning (my current prescription says take half a tablet, but the cardiologist thought I should be on a full tablet). All these tablets were to help stop too much discomfort while travelling.

  I left it too late to get the train I had originally intended to get, the 11:40, and I had to get the 12:10 train. I took that from Catford station. It is a longer walk than to Catford Bridge station, and I expected to have to stop of about a minute when the angina chest pains started. Maybe all my tablets were working better than hoped because I didn't really get any angina pain. It could also have been because I was walking slower than usual because my legs were stiff and aching. I did take two very short stops, maybe only 10 to 20 seconds because I seemed to feel a little bit short of breath.

  I was happy that the lift was working at Catford station, although if I had stopped for a minute at the bottom, and taken a deep breath, I could have walked up the stairs instead of taking the lift. I had left plenty of time to get to the station, and I think I had a 10 minute wait for my train. I took that train as far as Shortlands station where there is a very nice connection for a train to Petts Wood. You get off the train, and wait on the platform for 4 minutes for the Petts Wood train.

  I noticed that Shortlands station is getting new lifts. It could be a year of more before they are finally in service, and maybe in a year I might appreciate them a lot more. When I got to Petts Wood station I bumped into one of my old workmates. For a while he was my line manager, but we got on well together. He plays cricket in Petts Wood, and our walks paralleled each other for several minutes and we had a nice chat. Incidently, I mentioned the return of my angina, and initially said I was going to try the new lifts at Petts Wood, but it seemed simpler to walk up the stairs, and that seemed no trouble at all.

  I arrived at Petts Wood Calling very slightly late, but the first band had not fully started, but had done a brief sound check - mainly for the benefit of the PA crew to make sure everything was working OK. Actually it was not working OK - the bass amps/speakers sounded dreadful. All distorted like the speakers had ripped cones. It was not a nice sound at all. Some suggested that the PA could have been turned down a fair bit at the start when few people had arrived.
  I took two camera to Petts Wood Calling - my best Nikon, the D610, and my "not quite as good" Nikon D300s. The original idea was that I would take the majority of snaps using my best camera and lens, and then use the other camera which had a bigger zoom lens on it for the occasional snap. One other thing is that it make you look more important to swagger around with two cameras !
  The only pictures I have prepared today (early this morning !) were of the first band on. They were called "Feedback". I had never heard of them before, but I liked them. I think I heard that they have been giiging far deeper into Kent, but want to get gigs closer to London. I think that may have already interested the landlady of Ye Olde Whyte Lyon who was at the festival.
  On the whole I was fairly pleased with my Nikon D610 camera, but the Nikon D300s was definitely very slightly inferior to it. On the other hand, I did get some very usable pictures from it. I have not shown any from it today, but I took enough pictures yesterday to last for the whole week, although I think that from tomorrow, and maybe only tomorrow, I will only show a few examples from most bands.
  This is a long shot of the stage over the heads of what is quite a sparse crowd. It was filling up all the time, and by about halfway through it was only just slightly short of very crowded - particularly towards the front. One picture I thought I had prepared to show here was a close up of the drummer. Having a back stage pass meant I could go behind the stage, and up the steps until I was standing on the back of the stage with a good view of the drummer.

  The next band on, at 13:30, were The Assorted. I must admit I was less taken with them. I think they got off to a bad start. It is only a guess, but the singer started the first song using some sort of effects box on his microphone. I very much doubt he was supposed to sound a bit like a Dalek with a frog in it's throat, but that is something like how he started. Even once that bit was over, and presumably the effects unit bypassed, his voice still sounded a bit off.

   I suppose it is possible he was suffering from a sore throat of something, and decided "the show must go on", and if so then all kudos to him. On the other hand, I think all the band members seems a bit loose - like they had not practised hard enough. It is hard to be definitive about it now, when I heard so much yesterday, but I definitely formed an opinion that they were not that good.

  The next band were Retro Rock Icons, and they were on at 14:30. They seemed more mature, and more relaxed. I have a suspicion, but zero proof, that they may have formed as a proper band after jamming together at various open mic/jam sessions. They certainly do seemed to have gelled together nicely. They played quite a variety of covers from Pink Floyd to The Sex Pistols ! The weird thing was that I don't think I really liked them that much, and I can't think of a single reason why not. Maybe if I was more familiar with them I might have a more positive opinion.

  At 15:30 it was time for Chain featuring "Mrs Woodstock" - Jo, who was the main organiser for Petts Wood Calling (previously known as Petts Woodstock until someone claimed they "owned" the name). I had been looking forward to seeing Chain on the big stage, but I was very, very slightly disappointed. I think Jo was probably very tired after spending so much time over the last weeks, and from early yesterday morning, to get the whole thing organised. Maybe another reason for being a bit disappointed was when I checked the pictures I took of them. For some reasons many pictures looked very lacklustre. It was as if I was feeling very tired too.

  In my original plan, I was going to call it a day, and go home after Chain's set. It was because the next band, on at 16:20, was The Cockney Nights. I hate the way they look, and I hate all the songs they do. They are basically a Chas And Dave  covers band. It's all East Enders style "Knees Up mother Brown" type songs and a mock cockney accent. Loathsome ! I did end up doing my duty and taking some pictures of them, but I was in the local pub having a refreshing pint of Guinness while they did most of their set.

  At 17:30 it was time for The Nameless to take the stage. I knew the name, and I know all the members of the band from their playing in other bands, but I am not sure I have seen then play as The Nameless before. They are all good seasoned musicians, and showmen - particularly Jamie who loves to camp it up on stage. Many of their tunes were unfamiliar to me, and that spoiled it for me a bit, but their stage presence made up for it, and I think I may have got carried away taking pictures of them. I am going to have to try to put on my most critical mind to pull out just about 10 good pictures from them all.

  One band I was going to avoid was Dread Centre. They were due on at 18:30, and as the name might suggest they are an old school reggae band. I was dreading the sound of all that bass heavy music going through those dreadful bass PA speakers. One thing changed my mind about seeing them do a couple of songs, and one thing helped to keep me there for those couple of songs. I am sure the guys on the sound desk throttled back the bass to make it sound less disgusting. They might also have turned the whole sound down a bit for two reasons - both medical.

  I had heard some of it in very vague detail on social media, that two of the band had been hospitalised, hadn't played together for 9 months, and were still recovering. The lead singer, Julian, had suffered a stroke, and his voice was less powerful than it used to be (or so I think I was told). The sound guys may have throttled everyone else back a bit to give his voice a better chance. His voice was certainly sounding pretty clear to me.

  Dread Centre's bass player is called Romeo, and in the past he was always a great guy. Yesterday I learned that we were brothers in a very special way. A couple of years back he had a heart attack, and ended up having a quintuple heart bypass - one more than me. They had to take an artery from both legs to do five grafts. I thought they had made a bit of a mess of my leg when they took the grafts, but Romeo has almost identical scarring on both legs.

  One sad difference is that while in hospital for his operation he caught Covid, and pnuemonia. He was in an isolation ward for a month or more, and it was touch and go for a long time. One particularly terrible thing was that the Covid made him cough a lot when he was supposed to be recovering from having his chest opened up, and stitched back together again. I know from personal experience how painful that can be, but I was only coughing because I had stopped smoking. He had it far worse. I thought under the circumstance I had to try and get at least a small photo album of the band.

  I left for home in the middle of Dread Centre's set. Curiously enough, the walk to the station seemed less arduous than the almost identical length walk to the pub where I had my one pint of Guinness. I still took advantage of the new lifts to get up to the footbridge that has stairs leading down to each platform.  Once there I almost hoped I would miss the train that would reverse my journey to Petts Wood.

  There were two problems going back via Shortlands. The first is that while it is a 4 minute wait to change trains in one direction, it is a 26 minute wait to change trains in the other direction. On top of that, there is the long-ish walk from Catford station to home. Fortunately I had done my homework earlier, and had some figures I could rely on, rather than guess and hope based on previous experience.

  What I had pinned down, rather than guesswork and hope, was that trains from Petts Wood to Charing Cross stop at Lewisham station. At Lewisham it is only a 7 minute wait (a few of those minutes are soaked up changing platforms) for a train back to Catford Bridge. I still have not worked out if it is much longer going that way, but at leat a few minutes are saved by the train at Catford Bridge calling at the right platform, and no need to cross the footbridge there.

  I can't really remember what time I got home, but I think it was getting on for 8pm, and that seemed quite long enough to be out. Two of the first things I did when I first got home, and after stripping down to my underpants, was to check my blood glucose and to weigh myself. They produced very interesting readings. I had appeared to have lost nearly 2kg, and I knew it must be due to dehydration. I had drunk that one pint of Guinness, and also about 3/4 litre of plain water. That seemed to be enough even on a sticky day where I must have been loosing more moisture as sweat than I realised.

  Being dehydrated can and did have a marked effect on my blood glucose measurement. Basically, without eating anything all day, my blood glucose had actually risen. It had gone from OK to almost into the danger zone. I'm sure I was probably getting a similar effect on the nights when I was heavily sweating when my bedroom temperature was close tom 30° C. none of this affected me tucking into some food. I started with a small meat pie that was well past it's sell by date, but had been in the fridge.

   I gave that 6 or 7 minutes in the microwave to warm up. It was actually more tasty than expected. I then finished off the over half eaten ready roasted chicken I had bought the day before. I "re-cooked" that in my mini oven/grill for as much as 20 minutes. I must admit it was a lot nicer like that - all tender and greasy. Eating the first lot cold was not as nice. I could almost have gone straight to bed after eating, but I knew that was not a good idea, and I had one other little task to do first.

  That task was to put my camera batteries on charge, and to copy the pictures of their memory cards to my PC. It was only then that I realised just how many pictures I had taken.  The very worst offender was The Nameless. Just on the Nikon D610 I had got completely carried away, and took 217 snaps ! Many of then are going to be when I just held the shutter button down, and took a string of very similar pictures. They may be similar, but not identical, and when I come to selecting which pictures I will use I will have to spend time studying each picture.

  It was gone 10pm, perhaps getting close to 11pm when I finally turned the light off, and turned over to go to sleep, but only after forcing down a small tumbler of water. It was almost wonderful - I had no heartburn, and no cough. I hardly remember it and so I assume I was probably fast asleep within minutes. I know I woke several time in the night, and each time I tried to drink at least a couple of mouthfuls of water. I did that possibly more times than I got up to pee.

  I remember having some sort of dream last night, but it all seemed to random to try and describe any more than saying it was one of those dreams that mixes up work locations, and workmates and others at work. Apart from the now all too frequent thing of waking up an hour early as 5am, and having to go back to sleep for an hour, it seems I probably got a good sleep last night. I suppose this is the benefit of fresh air and travel.

  It seems that last night, and through the night, I managed to fully rehydrate myself - at least I hope I did. The proof may be in my blood glucose measurements. This morning I can say they were good - for the first time in almost a fortnight. The Contour meter read 8.4mmol/l, just under my old target. The GlucoRX meter read and even better 8.1mmol/l, and the Sinocare meter read an even better still 8.0mmol/l. If I keep this up I might start ton get readings closer to my new target of 7.5mmol/l.

  The other thing that was surprisingly if I am indeed properly hydrated. My weight is still nice and low. In fact I can see nothing lower this whole year. It is almost getting back down to some of the weights I recorded during my 2020, Covid Lockdown, walks - many of which were done in extremely hot weather, and I recorded my weight when probably very dehydrated. This morning I think I can claim this is real weight loss, and although I have a long way to get to a sort of imaginary target, I am still quite pleased with my efforts.

  In an ideal world I would be spending this afternoon selecting and editing photographs taken yesterday, but maybe I'll be doing something equal or better. The trains seem to be running OK, and I think Jodie will be over this afternoon for some beer tasting/drinking. I might get a few pictures done before that, and if i feel sober enough, I might manage a few after Jodie has gone home again.