It wasn't cold enough for a frost this morning, and I am not sure if it ever went as low as 3° C as shown on the forecast. The jump of a whole 3° C between 8 and 9am looks unrealistic. As I write this it is about 7° C. I don't think I have seen a sunny spell yet, but there are plenty of blue bits of sky among the clouds, and so sunny spells are very possible. It is going to be a cold day with just 7° C forecast, although if it is 7° C now, it could go up to 8° C later. Tomorrow could start at 4° C, but the temperature could climb to 10° C by midnight. There could be rain at the start and end of the day, but most of it may be dry, and much of the middle of the day may feature sunny spells.

  Yesterday was a sort of low key hectic day - if that makes any sense. There were four things I hoped to achieve yesterday, and I am happy to say I achieved them all. Another aim was to eat very carefully, and that I only half achieved. The low level stress made me feel hungry.

  I did the preparation work for the most important job while taking a break from writing yesterday's piece for a toilet break. It was to pull up all the duct tape from the patch over the crack in the bathtub. The fact that it almost fell off was the reason why it had started to leak. I also used a hand towel that was due to be washed to dry all around where the new patch would be placed.

  I will admit I was not looking forward to the rest of the job because it would need patience, and a lot of work leaning over, and into the bathtub. Once I finished writing I had a nice rest and did a little reading. I think I almost had a snooze, and maybe I did, but if so then I doubt it lasted more than a few minutes. In the end I could put it off no longer, and went to the bathroom with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, plenty of kitchen towel, and new duct tape.

  Scrubbing the area around where the new patch would be, using kitchen towel and plenty of alcohol was the hardest, but simple part of the job. After that I had a half hour break. When I came back it was a case of measuring by eye many strips of duct tape. I am unsure if it will make any difference, but for this patch I started with overlapping strips going across the crack, and then did long overlapping strips along the length of the crack.

  Incidently, the strip of rubber, cut from a rubber glove, still looked intact and well sealed. Had it been a bit longer it might have sealed any leakage totally, and the duct tape only used to make it look a bit nicer. I think the main leakage as just beyond the end of the rubber strip, and  paid particular attention to try and get the duct tape as seamless as possible over that area.

  Once the job was done, and I have to say I seemed to make a neater job of it this time, I had to test it. I had a hand towel, a face flannel, plus a pair of blood stained (burst boil) underpants to wash. I only half filled one of my big buckets with bio detergent, half a capful of Dettol, plus some stain remover on the blood stains. That stain remover really froths up when it gets on something organic like blood. I would not like to get that in contact with my skin for too long !

  I left that washing soaking while I got some lunch together. Now the silly thing is that I am not 100% sure what I had for lunch. I think it was a couple of wholemeal rolls with cheese and tomato. I know I definitely did eat a couple of rolls like that, but I am unsure if it was for lunch or a snack.....although now I think of other stuff I ate, it must have been lunch. After lunch I had another short rest, and finally got on with the next job of the day.
  That job was to go through the pictures I had taken of Granite at the Petts Wood Xmas Carnival last Saturday. Sunset came soon after their set started, and there was a sort of twilight period that gave some external lighting, but it was dim enough for the stage lights to make the pictures more colourful....sometimes. The picture above was of the lead guitarist.
  Although I thought the lighting should have been good, I didn't seem to take much advantage of it. This picture of the bass guitarist, and the second guitarist is spoiled by being slightly over exposed. All details have been bleached out of the bass players face.
  All I know about this lady is that her name was Pauline, and she did lead vocals on one or two songs, and backing vocals on others. The other thing I know was that her face was tricky to photograph in close up. It rather showed her age a bit too well. I can't remember if it was this photo, but on one I did try to soften her face a bit, but I am definitely no expert at doing that, and tried to keep it to a bare minimum.
  I know that most, if not all bands like a photo that includes the whole band - it makes for better publicity shots. This was my offering, but I am not happy with it. Ideally all the band would be a bit closer to each other, and so a more close up shot would offer more detail. The other alternative would be a high angle shot, but that was not possible.
  Of course the other tricky thing is trying to catch the band all looking forward, or at least inward towards each other. This photo shows those at each end looking towards the wings of the stage, the bass player looking at his guitar, and the drummer's head hidden behind a cymbal. In short it is a crap photo even if (in the full size photo) it is clear and sharp !

  After doing the photos of the Granite Band (a total of 18 in all) I rested my eyes for a bit, and then went to start rinsing the washing. I mostly filled the bucket to not a lot more than half full so I could empty them down the toilet. My hope was that by not pouring hot soapy water in a great torrent over the patch it might last a bit longer. I think I did about 5 rinses, but towels always need loads more than that. After those first five I stopped and had a snack.

  The snack was a couple of small Cox apples that I had bought from Aldi nearly a fortnight ago. They had been kept at room temperature, albeit very cool in the unheated kitchen, and continued to ripen with no hint of any decay starting. They were really delicious, and so sweet tasting that a chunk of strong mature cheddar was needed to stop a tendency to drool (sort of).

  I think I went back to the laundry, and did another 3 or  4 rinses. Those rinses were still producing lots of froth, and many more would be needed. I gave them a break, and went back to my PC where I started on the last photo album. It was of the band The Four Hoarsemen. I did not have many pictures to choose from because I was getting tired and I wanted to get the next train home, but I did get enough for a fair photo album.
  By the time I took this picture it was completely dark outside, and I had to rely on the stage lighting - and it didn't always shine where I might hope it would shine.There were what I suppose you could call floodlights (or maybe head lights, as opposed to foot lights) set just under the end of the canopy at the front of the stage. They could often be quite harsh, but at least it didn't leave the bands faces in the shadow - a thing I once complained about on the mobile stage, and I think the owner may have installed them because of my moans.
  When I was pointing the camera in the right direction, and the stage lights were most favourable, I did get a few decent pictures like the one above.
 I never did get a great picture of the drummer, something I like to do if I can, but this one is not too bad.
  I think I was lucky to get this picture of all four members of the band in one shot...although it would have been better if the lead guitar player in the middle was playing, and if the guitarist on the left was looking forward...and maybe the bass player was looking forward too ! This was only a small selection of the photos I took of The Four Hoarsemen. Many were completely unusable, and I think the full photo album only contained 10 of 12 photos.

  I think it was half way through going thought the photos of The Four Hoarsemen that I took a break to do the last rinses of my washing. I hung the three items on the small clothes horse set up in the dining room. I left a fan heater on low blowing at them for a few hours, but from mid evening I switched to a desk fan that I left on all night.

  At the end of the photo editing I had part one of my dinner. It was a small tub of Tesco, ready to eat, BBQ chicken legs. I didn't heat them up, but I had taken them out of fridge several hours earlier to get up to room temperature. I think they tasted nicer like that, but once again, they were a lot smaller than they looked once the flesh was chewed off the bones. I felt I wanted more, and a bit later I did have more. It was a small packet of crisps followed by three very naughty chocolate covered biscuits.

  I can't seem to remember when some of these things happened last night. I am sure I was eating, and maybe still doing a bit of photo editing (but not at the same time) while watching or listening to Star Trek Deep Space Nine and Voyager. I must confess that I seemed so distracted that I didn't even realise I was watching Voyager, and was quite surprised that another Star Trek didn't follow it.

  I turned the TV off for an hour, and soon after that hour started, I had finished everything I wanted to finish, and I could have a lie down and a read. At 9pm I turned the TV on again for a medium good episode of QI. That finished at 10pm, and I went straight to bed. I don't think I read anything, and I do think I probably fell asleep quite quickly. It was a funny night where it seemed like I slept very little - superficially !

  It was one of those nights where I mostly had zero memory of actually sleeping. For instance I woke up around 1am for a pee, and thought I had hardly slept at all. It was quite a shock to see that it was over two hours later since I last saw the clock. Once again it seemed I had barely got to sleep before waking up needing another pee. In fact the clock said that over 2 hours had passed. It was similar again two hours later.

  Later in the night, or should I say the early hours of the morning, I did have more awareness of having slept by way of a dream that left a few memories behind. I'm sure it was actually a series of short dreams linked by one common thread. That thread was a camera. In some ways it looked like a pre-digital single lens reflex camera, but it was a digital DSLR camera - possibly a very old one.

  The first bit of dream was about getting to a bus stop where I was due to meet a couple of friends - one of them being Jodie, and the other was a man wearing a kilt for some unknown reason, unless it was a tribute to Axle Rose, front man of Guns And Roses, in his kilt wearing days. To get to the bus stop I had to get passed some roadworks via some dodgy short cuts - which included going up a very steep path over some rubble or something.

  It had taken quite an effort to get to the bus stop, and I suggested we just walk because it was only two stops, but I was overruled. We went up on the top deck of the bus, and neither of my friends was paying  attention, and it seems neither was I because we went past our needed stop, and the next was quite a long walk back to our destination which was some sort of venue.

  It was a large building that had a small and bit concert hall, a disco room, and several small shops that were used to sell merchandise, or similar stuff. I got split up from my friends somehow, and I didn't know where we were supposed to go, and I didn't even know if my friends had a ticket for me. The place was crawling with security, but they all seemed very friendly, and the head of security introduced himself to me, and told me to let him know if I had any problems. It seemed to be that having a big camera around my neck gave me the free run of the place.

  It was a shame that the camera didn't seem to be working properly. It didn't seem to save pictures to the memory card properly, and the lens seemed to have something sticky on it. I had no idea why I had the camera with me. It was certainly not to take pictures of the band we were seeing, if indeed we were going there to see a band ! Still, it was quite nice having some sort of official status because of it.

  Once again I seemed to have another long lie in. I doubt I will change this sloppy habit until the days start getting longer again, and it is light at 6am. Other than the late start, and having so much to say, means I probably won't finish writing until midday, I guess it does no harm.

  After getting up I went for a pee, and thought I would be pooing too, but so far it is just wind. However, when I got on the scales I found I was a whole 200gm lighter than yesterday morning. That was a good thing, but what would it mean for my blood glucose readings ?

  It would not be a good thing. My blood glucose was slightly up this morning. The Contour meter read 8.7mmol/l. That is "good enough"...sort of. The GlucoRX meter was a surprise because it was the highest of the three with a reading od 9.0mmol/l. That is high enough for a mild pink background warning on my spreadsheet. The Sinocare was very curious because it was the lowest of them all with a reading of 8.5mmol/l, and as I keep saying, that is spot on what was my old target until it sometimes seemed I could do better - which I can't seem to recently.

   Yet again, my blood pressure is nice and low again this morning. It is another reading where the first attempt seemed good enough to not bother to try and improve it. This morning it was once again firmly in the "Optimum" area according to the meter. It was 108/49 with a pulse rate of 54 beats per minute. It is odd how a great reading like that say almost nothing about my general health.

   Today I have two things to do. I want to wash my hair and have a shower. It will test the patch on my bath a bit more, as well as making me feel nice and clean. I also want to wash a few t-shirts and some underwear, and that will test my patch even more. Other than that, I am contemplating going out for a short walk, but it feels like it might get a bit late for that. I will just have to make it up as I go on.