The temperature fell a lot during last night and the early hours of this morning. The temperature has now risen to 18° C, and it is feeling reasonable again. When I first got out of bed, wearing very little, and with the window open all night, it felt damn chilly - just 14° C ! There is full sunshine at the moment, but will give way to mostly sunny spells soon. The afternoon may only reach 22° C.  It will be another very fresh night, but tomorrow may see a bit more sunshine than today. Tomorrow's afternoon peak may still only be 24° C. From Saturday we may see the temperature rising again, and by Sunday we may sizzle at 30° C again.

  Yesterday was a sort of busy day - busy enough that I had little time for any decent resting/snoozing, and no time to start re-writing yesterday's diary which I accidently deleted when I had to do a reboot after a new Linux kernel was installed on my PC. I say "had to", but that was not strictly so. I could have done the reboot at a more convenient time. Linux is not like Windows - it never forgets it is your computer, and YOU make the decisions.

  Going back not to yesterday, but the day before, I will now try and remember a few important parts of the day, and describe them now. Maybe the most important things I did on the day before yesterday included knocking a spider off the ceiling just above the bathtub. I did not fancy having a shower with that dangling about my head. I have to confess I washed it down the plughole when I had knocked it into the bath. I still didn't have a shower, but I did finish washing a pile of underpants, and hanging them up to dry.

  I was going to describe a dream while it was fresh in my memory, but 2 days later and I can't remember hardly anything about it......and yet.....a bit does come back to me. Unfortunately it sounds exciting, but in fact it seems it was an anti climax. All I remember was sitting opposite a young lady (where young is usually around 40 to 50 years old these day), and she had very nice legs - at least they looked very shapely in what I think were yoga/ski pants. I ended up stroking those legs, or at least I started just before I woke up !!!

  Now back to yesterday.... It was good I had rendered the bathroom spider free (until next time) because I had an appointment with the nurse yesterday morning, and I needed to wash my hair and have a shower before seeing her. It was just routine stuff that ended with her prescribing my next does up of Ozempic (a wonder weight loss drug that almost seems to have shown hints that it might control my appetite, or at least it almost did on one day).

  After seeing the nurse I went and did some shopping in Aldi (which is around the corner from the surgery). I spent far too much money in there, but apart from a bottle of Aldi own brand golden rum, I am not entirely sure how I managed to spend all I did, although.....I have to admit that I could not get everything I bought in the fridge/freezer. Maybe I just bought more than I needed at the time. Of course it is already slowly going down, and everything just about fits in the fridge now.

  The main oddity about my excessive spending was that I intended to rush around Aldi as fast as possible because I wanted to get home before the postman arrived. It seems I did not rush around Aldi at all, but I still managed to get home with maybe half an hour to spare before there was a ring at my door. It was the postman with a parcel for me - a parcel I was drooling to receive.

  The parcel was my new camera - a secondhand Nikon D700 camera bought from Ebay (always a worrying transaction). It arrived safely, and is in good working order based upon a few test snaps I have done on it. The main superficial trouble with it is that maybe it is not as wonderful as hoped. Upon closer inspection (and making use of Wikipedia) is that it is a very minor upgrade to a Nikon D300 - which I already owned. I think it is the same 12.1 megapixel sensor, but it has a new image processor that might do more impressive noise reduction. Like the D300 it is a Professional grade camera, but unlike the D300 it does not have dual memory card slots that can be used in various ways. For high end professional use you can use one as a back up for the main memory.

  A thought just occurred to me, and I've just taken 10 minutes to check on it. The big difference between the D300 and D700 cameras is that the D700 camera has a "full frame" sensor. That makes it better quality, and particularly so when editing the photos, and which definitely includes when cropping the picture. The much more significant thing is that some of my lenses will not work as expected with it. The image that the lens projects onto the sensor needs to be big enough to cover the sensor area, or you get "Vignetting" - a black, irregular shaped border around the picture. In that respect it is the same as my Nikon D610 camera, and I have to be careful what lenses I use on that camera too.

  One thing I did yesterday was to order more stuff from Amazon. I think I mentioned that I have bought a few magnetic "wireless" phone chargers from China. They do seem to work well on my Huawei phone, but apart from one model which came with an adapter, they all have USB-C plugs on them, and I have no power adapters that have USB-C sockets (except an extension cord with a power strip on the end, but I don't that provides enough power from the USB-C sockets.

  Yesterday I ordered a couple of power adaptors with USB-C and USB-A sockets on them, plus a couple of USB-C to USB-C leads.  When they arrive I'll keep one power adaptor in my bedroom, where I charge my phone, and one in the dining room where I expect it will get more use by Jodie.

  I seem to have accidently ordered one more charging coil than intended. There was a query on one, and I tried to confirm some details, but it said something about the computer not being able to change the details. I thought I had better order another, but the first went through anyway. The second was delivered at at 8.20pm last night. It was by the same Evri driver whose estimated delivery time kept being put back on a previous delivery. I get the impression he is just very slow, and I doubt he will last long at the job - unless he enjoys a 10 hour day !

  In all the excitement yesterday, I barely had time to wash and polish the beer glasses for an early beer tasting session. It would have happened today, but Jodie suggested bringing it forward a day because she is busy today - drinking special beers elsewhere. That was fine by me - apart from all the distractions in the morning, and not being able to have a nice snooze after eating some sandwiches I had bought in Aldi for my lunch.

  We were joined by Michael and also Mark for the beer tasting. Michael was a bit late, and mark always joins us late on days he does join us - which are moderately rare. One thing I have to confess is that I am finally starting to get the underlying flavour of some of the fruit sour beers from the Vault City Brewery. Maybe I have just learned to ignore the feel and sound of the very sour beer etching my teeth !

  I think it was as late at 7pm when everyone left, and I could have my dinner. It was a typical North American get-fat-quick meal, but with a hint of British decorum. It was Aldi "southern fried chicken" - a mix of legs, thighs and breast coated with spicy breadcrumbs that needed to be oven cooked for 45 minutes in the oven. They were not as good as the greasy affair from the local fried chick shop, but nice enough. I followed that main course with some peanut butter caramel ice cream. I will add that the ice cream had much less sugar in it than you might expect.

  After dinner I felt in a very relaxed mood. As usual I watched some TV, but I think I went to bed an hour earlier than I could have done, although I did manage maybe a quarter of an hour reading before I could no longer keep my eyes open. I felt asleep really quickly once I turned the light out. The only notable thing about my sleep was waking up in the small hours and after having a pee, quite a large pee, I made sure to pulls the duvet around myself because my bedroom was getting very chilly. I think that tonight I must remember to close the window before I go to bed.

  When I got up I had another very big pee, and I managed a small, but reasonable seeming poo. When I got on the scales I found I had lost 400gm. That was probably quite good after an evening that included beer, although I reckon my share of the beers may have only added up to 2 or 3 pints (with 2 being more likely). Also surprising, despite the ice cream, and once again, the beer, my blood glucose was very reasonable. In fact 7.0, 7.0, and 7.5mmol/l is very good. Maybe the Ozempic is starting to work like Mounjaro did, and act as an insulin substitute.

  There is nothing I have to do today, but several things I want to do. I have made some progress already, but it is definitely time I cleared all the washing up out of the sink. It is not essential, but I'd like to go to Poundland and/or Poundstretcher for a few items. I could do it tomorrow, but I want to pack my "spare" camera bag ready for some more photography on Saturday. The "spare" camera bag is like a big traditional doctors bag with the addition of a carrying strap as well as a handle. I bought it ages ago, and I have never used it. It is high time I did, but it is going to need some discipline on hour I pack it. It may mean taking the lenses off the cameras (and putting on the dust covers) to get two cameras in neatly. Alternatively I could use the backpack I used at Petts Wood Calling (and Chattfest).

  Of course the thing I have to do today, and tomorrow, is to knuckle down, and try and finish all my photo editing before I take more pictures on Saturday. That gig only features two bands, but I know I'll be taking a silly amount of pictures of one band - The Life Of Brian Band ! The gig is in the gardens behind the Churchill Theatre in Bromley. I think it is only 2 or maybe 3 hours long, and so I will probably have time for some wildlife photography (mostly ducks on the river and pond), and probably some train photography. In theory it could be a very pleasant afternoon.