This morning it seems like the Met Office forecast is slightly closer to reality, although on reflection, the BBC forecast is not a lot different. It is reality that is different. As I type this the sky is at least 50%, and maybe 75% blue, and the sun is shining. Later on it may well cloud over, and by mid afternoon there might be light rain or drizzle. Most of today could be 10 or 11° C. Tomorrow could be bright and dry, but it will be very cold. A high of just 6° C is forecast by the BBC.

  Yesterday was a curious mix of hectic and relaxed. There didn't seem to be any rush to do stuff, but I achieved quite a bit, and that included far more photo editing than expected - and so much of today's edition of the electronic diary will be photos.

  Once I had finished writing I had the usual rest, and it may have been midday when I had a shower. Unfortunately my slapdash repair to the patch over the crack in the bathtub did not work, and I had another damp bit of carpet. I should have ripped all the old duct tape off, and scrubbed the area clean with some alcohol, and then put fresh duct tape down. If everything was clean it should have stuck down very firmly, and resisted water getting under it. That is one of my forst jobs for today.

  Having showered I got dressed and went shopping in Tesco. Apart from having to walk in the rain, the walk there and back seemed mostly OK. I bought the usual stuff, including 4 x 2 litre bottles of Diet Coke, and that accounted for three quarters of the weight I had to carry home. One unusual purchase was a bag of oven chips. I just had some sort of urge to buy them despite knowing they were not an ideal food for me.

  After I got home I cooked a portion of those chips, and while they were cooking I had a cheese and onion pasty. I think both were equally bad for me. One big annoyance is that somehow those chips got stuck to the foild lined baking tray I cooked them on. It was well greased, and I expected them to just slide off. Instead I had to almost chisel them off.

  I still had a fair time for Jodie to arrive, and she would arrive later than expected. I had a short rest after my lunch, and then got down to some photo editing. I had hoped that I would be able to get at least one photo album ready yesterday. I started on the first "band" - the singer and songwriter Lilise, and her guitarist who provided all the musical backing.
  Here's a full length picture of Lilise in her bright red, flamenco style dress.
   For the first two hours the light was good, and the stage was nice and evenly lit, although it did mean the colourful stage lighting was hardly showing.
  I have no idea why, maybe there was a slight resemblance, but I had a thought that the guitar player may have been Lilise's brother. Maybe he might have even been her husband. I am fairly sure I didn't hear his name.
  I'm not sure I actually enjoyed Lilise's set, but I did enjoy taking well lit photos. It makes such a change from trying to take photos of a band playing in a dimly lit pub. After such a long time of only taking pictures of trains and trees, it was nice to take pictures of people - and the enjoyment would get even better.

   It was while doing these photos that I got a message from Jodie to say she was coming here via Bromley, and that she would be late again. That was handy because it allowed me enough time to finish the Lilise photos, and to do some stuff I should have done first - tidying up the kitchen. There was a small amount of washing up to do, and I had to take out not just the recycling bin, but the bin liner that was the overflow of the bin.

  I guess all that was less than I thought, and I had time for a rest before Jodie arrived at about 4pm, and only half an hour late. It was not a great beer tasting session. For one thing, Jodie spent ages not saying anything, but just doom scrolling through her Instagram account on her phone, and several other sites too. The other semi bad thing was that we had some beers that were not that good, or maybe just not exciting.

  A couple of them were from The Chiltern Brewery, and that place is turning out to be not as good as hoped. One beer was a winter stout. It had the favours listed on the bottle, but it seemed sort of thin and watery. Oddly enough, Jodie liked it. Over half the beers we had were ales, and that is not one of jodie's favoured styles, and I must admit even I was not terribly impressed with some of them.

  It must seem like we got through many pints, but don't forget we were sharing most bottles - half each. Not only that, but most of the ales were not very strong at all. At the end I felt very sober, or so I thought, and nothing happened, except one thing, to suggest otherwise. The one thing was just an eating malfunction. Before Jodie left I covered a small tub of Tesco read to eat chicken legs with chilli sauce, and blasted it in the microwave.

  After Jodie left the chicken was just starting to get cool enough to eat the messy way - picking it up and gnawing the flesh off the bone. The trouble was it did not taste good. It didn't taste bad either, but it did not taste exciting, and there was less meat on the bones than first seemed. Maybe my worst error was to have two wholemeal deli rolls with cheese and pickled and sliced red jalapeños. They were probably not as bad for me than I thought they would be.

  Even Sky Arts had nothing of any interest. The next stuff of any interest was at 9pm. That gave me time to do more photo editing, and I managed to complete a second photo album. It was of Vince Lightning, and his last minute addition of Thunderboltz. Vince had accepted the gig before he had a backing band, but he rallied some old friends the night before, and they did the gig with no rehearsal - or so they claimed !
  This is Vince, complete with silly hat. Although I did manage to edit up a fairly big photo album, I am just showing a few highlights here (and all the photos are shrunk to half size to fit on his page).
  Smudge, playing the cajon, looks very happy here !
  This is one of the highlights I mentioned. I think it is because I have built up a good reputation as a serious photographer, I can get up on stage with no one minding, and get snaps that most can't get. of course I do try to be a bit discrete, and keep to the background, and don't invade any of the musicians spaces. For this picture it is a shame that the guitarist on the right wasn't another foot or so to the right, and i could have got a bit more of the audience in shot.
  This picture came out better than hoped, although it is still not a great snap, but I did manage to get all members of the band in the one long shot. I'm sort of surprised that all members of the band are roughly in focus.
  This was more a top of the steps up to the stage, rather than a full stage invasion, but it was the only way of getting a shot of Vince actually playing his keyboard.
  I am quite proud of this shot. I anticipated a bit more harp (mouth organ in common parlance) playing, and managed to get the camera shot lined up in time to capture the harp before it was enclosed in his pair of hands - the most common way to play it.

  I think it was just after I finished the last photo edit that I became aware that a visit to the toilet might be a good idea. I have no idea what I could have eaten, presumably up to 24 hours or more earlier, but whatever it was, it really irritated my lower intestine/bowel. Fortunately there didn't seem to be any rush, but once I was sitting comfortable on the toilet, I exploded ! I think most of it was over in about 5 seconds, but I had to sit there for 5 or 10 minutes more for the after shocks.

  It was almost as if I had severe food poisoning, but I have never known that to be over in just one sitting. I did vist the toilet a few more times, but it just turned out to be some extremely foul smelling wind.  I had occasional bouts of it while watching TV, and after I went to bed soon after 10pm. I read until almost 11pm when a particularly vile fart had me get up and go to the toilet - just in case.

  As I sat on the toilet I did have a pee, but no more. In the minutes of silence I could hear my digestive tract sounding like a coffee percolator with all sorts of gurgles, bloops, and bubbling. It did not sound good. In fact it sounded like another eruption might be imminent, and I didn't dare to go back to bed. Instead I sat at my PC and read some stuff for nearly an hour before I got bored and was falling asleep at the keyboard. I assumed nothing was likely to happen after that.

  I got into bed, and on the whole I slept well. I didn't even seem to wake up as much as usual to go for a pee, although I did turn the heater up and down a few times in the night. If I had any dreams I don't seem to recall a single thing about them. The only significant thing was a determination to get at least an extra hour sleep to make up for the last sleep near the beginning of the night. It was far easier to do than I thought, and I didn't get up until 8am.

  When I went to the toilet I almost thought I would be doing a poo, but it was no more than a fart, and a fairly small one at that. That was not really surprising considering the clearing out I had last night. I did have a fairly decent pee though, but none of it was enough to keep my weight down to what it was yesterday morning. This morning my weight was still 300gm less than it was on the last day of November, and I guess that was still a good thing.

  My blood glucose seemed to be unaffected, or at least not in a bad way, by what I thought was some naughty eating yesterday. Both the Contour and the Sinocare meter gave the same rather good reading of 8.0mmol/l. That was more like I would hope it should be. The GlucoRX meter went a bit further with a very good 7.7mmol/l. That is colour coded light green, and just a bit over my rarely attained target of 7.5mmol/l.

  This morning my blood pressure is higher than average, but 113/5 is still nice and low, and according to the meter it is "Optimum". So that can't be bad. What is bad is that now the sky has clouded, and the glorious morning sunshine has ended. One other thing that has happened, much to my surprise after that great clearing out last night, is that I have just had a very small, but perfectly normal poo.

  Whilst in the toilet I started the work to replace the patch over the crack in my bathtub. I peeled off the top patch of duct tape, although it was almost more like it just fell off rather than needed to be peeled. The layer under that was more firmly stuck, but there was still water under some of it. I used a towel that needs washing, and indeed will be the first thing I  wash, even before me, once the new patch is done, to dry the area. Later on I will get the isopropol alcohol out and scrub  the area clean and dry before applying another patch of duct tape. Then I can start to wash that towel, and also a face flannel - hopefully without water leaking out from the bathtub.

  The only other important thing to do today is to edit the photo albums of the other two bands I saw on Saturday at Petts Wood. The light was starting to get a bit bad for the third band, and I took a load more photos than needed in the hope that maybe around a dozen would be presentable. The light was worse for the last band, although like the previous band, it is very uneven light rather than a complete lack of it - faces might be over exposed, and shoes lost in deep gloom. I only stayed about 15 minutes for the last band, and didn't take many pictures. I hope I can salvage a few reasonable pictures.