I feel I have made the right decision to use the BBC weather forecast here after the Met Office forecasts never seemed to match reality. This morning they said just sunny spells, but the BBC says full sunshine for early this morning, and that is exactly what we still have right now. The Met Office predict several rather dull hours soon. The BBC predict sunny spells, almost non stop until 7pm when full sunshine may return until sunset. Both forecasters predict a high of 25° C today. The temperature tomorrow may only reach 23° C, and there will be less sunshine. There could also be a shower or two.° C

  It seems like Saturday's Petts Wood Calling festival sort of rejuvenated me. I was feeling surprisingly good yesterday. It proved that if I took some sensible precautions I could still enjoy a day out, and while not much strenuous activity, I was quite active. I think it has inspired me to try and get out a bit more, but today won't be one of those days.

  Although I did have a few rests to partly rest my eyes as well as the rest of my body, I seemed to spend a lot of spare time photo editing yesterday. I got less done than was ideal, on the other hand I got more done than maybe I expected to do. A bit of it I did before I started writing here, and it was not long after writing that I was back at it again. As usual I was not happy with many of the pictures I took, but looking back on a few, it did seem that I did manage to take some great photos.
  This is the singer (name unknown) of The Assorted, and I managed to capture him in an unusual pose....well maybe not that unusual, but perhaps a little different to most rock and roll photos. I like the way his hands almost frame his face.
  Sometimes lighting at a gig can be very unpredictable, but the lighting of the bass player of The Assorted seemed just right for a nice bold picture. Shame about the mic stand cutting across the picture though.
  As I am sure I mentioned yesterday, having an access all areas pass allowed me to get pictures that the ordinary audience would rarely see. In particular to see the drummer drumming when he is right at the back of the stage. Fortunately I could get up on the back of the stage, and get picture like this quite colourful picture of the drummer singing and drummer.
  With a bit of care I could make shots like this, over the top of the audience, look a lot more busy. In reality, The Assortment were only the second band on, and people would continue to arrive for hours after. By the time the headline bands were on it was almost crowded. In previous years people almost kept packing into the festival, but this year (and maybe last year) the council put an upper limit on the amount of people who could attend.
  Here's another shot of the lead singer of The Assorted.  This was taken on my second best camera, but when conditions were right you can hardly tell the difference between them. Oddly enough, the other picture of this singer, a few photos up the page, was taken on my best camera, and yet it looks to be a slightly softer picture.

   I got all the photos done of The Assorted, and after a short break I made a start on the next band, The Retro Rock Icons. One odd thing about those photos was that a few were really great, but there were also loads of completely useless photos I could do nothing with. Some were mysteriously very over exposed. Fortunately that still left lots to get on with, and I was making progress until I had to stop to do a few minor bits of tidying up prior to Jodie arriving for a beer tasting session.

  I didn't manage to do all the tidying up because Jodie arrived unusually early.  I'm golad I was able to get my lunch out of the way somewhat earlier (actually, on reflection, it was probably as much as 2 hours before Jodie arrived). It was an interesting, part healthy, and part unhealthy lunch of ice cream and a couple of very ripe apples. It was nice, but not as nice as the last time I had something similar, but it was plain vanilla ice cream with a couple of flat nectarines.

  We had several of the beers I had bought "unsupervised" (by Jodie), and one of them she really liked, but I didn't think that much of it. It was more like a Belgium fruit beer, and quite sour, but sour in a different way to most of the fruit sour beers that Jodie likes. Some of those are not sour but ACID ! Most of the beers we had, and we possibly had a bigger selection than some times, were neither good nor bad.

  One beer in particular, and it was one I had essentially bought for myself, was not really very nice. That was a shame because it sounded like it could be very good. It was an oat malt stout. The big problem for my palate was that the oat malt was well over roasted to the point where a lot of it must have been charred rather than toasted. It gave it a nasty sooty, almost coffee like flavour (and I hate coffee).

  Jodie left a little later than usual because she was getting a bus to Bromley. Fortunately I had 90% pre-cooked my dinner, and I turned the mini grill/oven on again about 10 minutes before she left. My dinner was mini baked potatoes (small new potatoes) with sausages all cooked in the same pan in the mini oven/grill. It was a fairly big dinner, and over 50% was sausages - which although oven cooked, they were still quite greasy.

  That dinner seemed to be an ideal recipe for acid indigestion/heartburn, and indeed I did suffer from that for a while, but I had more work to do, and by the time I went to bed the indigestion seemed to be completely over, although I did take a couple of antacid tablets as soon as I felt that first bit of heartburn. It was probably handy that I was sitting up in my desk chair while I did more photo editing. I did finish one small "odds and sods" photo album, but mostly I was trying to, but failing to finish the Retro Rock Icons photo album.
  As I mentioned above, many of my Retro Rock Icons photos were really terrible, but some were just about perfect. Apart from cropping the photo above of Simon Dixon, lead singer of Restro Rock Icons, I hardly did anything else to it.
  This is Jon Bastable, and he once would often step in when Chain needed a bass player. I used to love his bass guitar. It almost looked like it was made from glass from some angles. I am not sure if it is just the way the light is catching it, but sadly it looks like it is showing signs of having a very busy life sonce I last saw it at a Chain gig 5 or 6 years ago.
  Another snap of a drummer taken while I was on the stage (but near the back). This is Derek Brand, and as well as a drummer he is a fully qualified electrician !
  I know I took some far better pictures of the same viewpoint as this picture, but this one looks very messy. Once I have found the better snaps I think I'll discard this one. I know that some were a lot more symmetrical, although they could be when different bands were on stage.

  I think it got to about 9pm, and I couldn't push myself to do any more photo editing. I brushed my teeth, and went to bed. I read in bed for maybe less than half an hour before turning over to try for sleep. That was when I expected some heartburn to kick in, but it didn't. At a guess I would say that I was fast asleep in about 5 minutes, and I seemed to sleep quite well. I only woke up twice to go for a pee, and then before I knew it, it was just gone 6am, and time to get up.

  This morning my blood glucose were very slightly higher than yesterday morning, and possibly what I might expect considering what I ate yesterday. The Contour meter read 8.2mmol/l, and that was a bit lower than yesterday, The GlucoRX meter read 8.5mmol/l, and that was higher than yesterday. The Sinocare meter read 8.3mmol/l, and that was a bit higher than yesterday, but really all three meters were in the same sort of area as yesterday, and that area is more Satisfactory than good, so only a silver star for effort.

  Yesterday my blood pressure in the morning was a bit higher than typical recently, but still near the bottom of the "normal" diagnostic. The afternoon was better and was in the "optimum" area. This morning my blood pressure is very safely in the "optimum" area with 104/44. It is sometimes hard to believe that officially I am diagnosed as Hypertensive, but it seems my prescribed drugs are working really well. This morning my weight is about 800gm higher than yesterday, but that is still about my new normal, and probably in line with all I ate yesterday. Maybe today I can do better...but maybe not.

  Most of today I will be devoting to photo editing. Some of the remaining bands I pnly took a small amount of photos as a token gesture, and they should not take long to do, but at the same time, there was one band I took oodles of photos in an attempt to get that perfect rock star pose ! As well as a couple of rest periods, probably just reading, and maybe having a snooze, my one other big distraction will be a shopping trip. That is why I cast doubt in the paragraph above about doing better eating wise compared to yesterday. Shopping trips to a supermarket bring so many temptations !