08:27 BST

  The BBC forecast for today says the day would start with sunny spells. The Met Office forecast said there would be a couple of hours of light rain this morning. I have seen no evidence of rain, and no evidence of sunny spells. It is cloudy right now, but the clouds don't look like they will drop any rain. I thin most, if not all of today will be dull, and not very warm. Just 20° C is forecast. Tomorrow may be generally dull with a chance of rain, but it could be a bit warmer with a few hours at 23° C. After all those wonderful hot and sunny days we had weeks ago, this so called bit of summer is looking almost autumnal.

  Yesterday was a slightly tedious day. I didn't do it non stop, but I spent a long time going through some of my photos taken at Chatt Fest, and editing the best I could find. I seemed to take many terrible photos, and my editing skills seem to take a long time to implement now.

  The first few hours of yesterday were taken up by writing yesterday's 2,586 word piece. That took some time because it also included a selection of photos taken last Saturday. By the time I finished writing I was ready for a nice lie down, and to read at least half a dozen pages from the book I am reading. I couldn't allow too long for that luxury because it was becoming apparent that I had a hell of  lot of photos to go through to look for the best ones, and prepare them for use.

  One brief interruption of my brief-ish rest was to phone the surgery to see if I could sort out an appointment. I got a good and bad receptionist. She did not tell me off for daring to phone to make an appointment, but took her times to explain she could not make an appointment straight away. I would have to go through the process of describing my symptoms, and they would be sent to a doctor who would then decide if they warranted an appointment.

  It is a most annoying system, and one that will not catch patients with serious problems. My "problem" is that I had been asked to make an appointment using "the app" - link provided in the text message, to discuss my recent echocardiogram. They wanted me to make an appointment ! If I was not curious about the result I would not have bothered disturbing their offensive telephone protocol. Anyway, the receptionist duly passed on their request to the doctor. A couple of hours later I got another txt message saying that the doctor would phone me at 11:40am on Wednesday.

  It was getting on for midday when I was ready to get back to my photos, but it also meant I was feeling a mild urge for some lunch. I'm not sure if it was then, or later when I had some rice crackers, or some crisp flatbread with pâté. Then I carried on with my photo stuff. I shouldn't blame my tools, but I was appalled by the quality of many of the photos I had taken. There were two problems.
 
 One annoying problem is they stage with a pillar cutting the view in two. Working around that was tricky, but maybe not as tricky as the terrible lighting. Much of the day was overcast, and while my camera said it was bright enough away from the stage, it was very gloomy on the stage itself. I might have done better to use my camera on manual - possibly with a fixed, fast, shutter speed - but I went for full manual control. That usually work well in fair lighting, but.....
  This was the band Too Many Cooks, and I managed to get all the band in one photo. However I had to push things to the limits. The guitarist on the left seems slightly out of focus, and everything looks a bit odd. One thing that is odd is that there is more light coming in from the left than from the front of the stage. With hindsight I could probably have taken a better picture using my mobile phone - it has clever algorithms to balance up different parts of the scene. One reason why it might not work is that it would probably want a longer exposure, and that could mean motion blur.
  When the next band, Retro Rock Icons, came on I was starting to get the feel of my camera back (I hadn't done any music photography for many months), and I was getting the hang of the light. That is not to say that I did take many more unusable pictures ! Some of the pictures, like this one above, of The Retro Rock Icons were looking a bit cleaner that the photos of the previous band. One annoyance is still very noticeable - the light is better at guitar height, but to get the players head bright I had to allow the guitar to be over exposed.
  First of all, Tony Kilby, playing electric guitar through a radio link came out to play among the audience. He was joined a few minutes later by Jon Bastable play bass, once again through a radio link. It was a good bit of showmanship, and a chance to get the camera out into the light - almost a bit too much light (a few people wearing white tops look over exposed).
  Next up was Chain. This picture of Greg on lead guitar looked awful, but it seemed like it might have promise. I threw all my editing tricks at it, and it seemed passable, maybe even slightly good.
   This is another slightly tricked up picture. This picture in it's original form included Jo's guitar, but it was badly over exposed, and so I cut it off. Jo's head and top were quite reasonably exposed, and she almost has a smile as she sings. The reflection in her sunglasses shows how (comparatively) bright it is outside the stage. It is the opposite of going to a theatre where all the light is on the stage, and the audience is in very subdued light.
  One novelty for me (not having seen Chain play for ages) is the addition of a guest fiddle/violin player. I think she was only used on one or two songs where the sound was appropriate for the song.

  That was as far as I got yesterday. At the current rate of progress I will be lucky to have finished all the photos before I take another shed load of them at Petts Wood Calling this coming Saturday. I am unsure what time I actually downed tools. I know I had a few breaks for some snacks, and then stopped for dinner, and to watch the depressing BBC 6 O'clock News. I turned the TV off after the news and did some more work until almost 9pm when I felt I could do no more yesterday.

  I mentioned having several snacks. I can't remember what I had, but I can't seem to remember exactly what and when, but I know I did try to stick to semi safe stuff - not too many calories, and as little sugar as possible. My dinner was an Aldi "Indian inspired" salad with an added couple of chunks of chicken. It was an odd mixture but quite nice. I would have thought I had some sort of dessert after that salad, but I can't remember what it was, and it may well have been nothing.

  As I said, I gave up around 9pm, and I went to bed to read for a while. I think I read more than I expected to, but once again, after putting the book down, and turning out the light, I fell asleep almost instantly. The only notable thing in the night was a dream. I know that the dream was about robots (as is the book I am reading), but the only thing I remember of it was that it was set in the morning. It caused much confusion when I woke up and it was dark and just gone midnight.

  Another thing in the night is fast becoming a lot less notable since summer appears to have already passed. It was probably a little before 5am when I woke up feeling not exactly cold, but definitely cool. I turned the heater on low, and after a while I fell asleep again. When I woke again around 6.30am, a little later than usual. I was starting to feel warm enough to almost start to sweat !

  After getting up I did my usual - I went to the toilet where I passed a fair bit of pee, and also rather a small poo (unless part of it was big and streamlined enough to pass straight around the u-bend - it did feel like that was a possibility). When I weighed myself I found I had 500gm. After what I ate yesterday that was not surprising. It may have been more surprising that my weight is still down low enough to use the still slightly rare dark blue colour coding in my weight spreadsheet.

  My weight might be very slightly up, but my blood glucose is very slightly down this morning. The Contour meter read 8.3mmol/l, and that is fairly good even if not great. The GlucoRX meter read 8.1mmol/l, and that is even better. The Contour Plus meter read higher at 8.9mmol/l, but even that is not dreadful. The average of all three is 8.43. Yesterday it was a tiny, weeny bit higher at 8.93. The previous few days were 8.27, 8.97, 8.37 and 8.13. That is fairly consistent, but a shame that I am going through a period of higher readings, but hopefully my body will switch back to lower readings in it's own good time.

  The other thing that is fairly consistent lately is my blood pressure. It is sensitive to how soon after eating I check it. Maybe I am sub-consciously selecting the time for when it is good. This morning it is 112/45, and that is very similar to the last week - both morning and evening. It is a shame when I have all these assorted, apparently good readings, that I do not feel all that good this morning. It is almost as if I got far less sleep last night than I needed. Maybe I only feel tired as a sort of defence again having to spend another day stuck behind my PC editing photos (and will probably be spending as much as possible of the next 3 days doing the same.

  Apart from photo editing, there are a few other things I will be doing today, or should be doing today. I should probably have a shower today (I didn't yesterday), and maybe wash my hair too. Once clean then I can go shopping in Tesco. Once again I seemed to have eaten through almost everything I bought in Aldi last Friday (or was it Thursday ?). The hours and minutes seem to be racing past at the moment, but I am still going to have half an hour rest next before having a shower.