09:01 BST

  Today should feature non stop sunshine like yesterday, but the forecast says the temperature will only peak at 27° C. Tomorrow up to half the hours may only see sunny spells, but the temperature may rise an extra degree to 28° C. Once again it should be perfectly dry. The day after tomorrow may see 29° C.

  Yesterday was another of those days when not a lot happened, but it still seemed a satisfactory day. I have no idea how I did it, but I seemed to have eaten sensibly....well, sort of. The big event was a shopping trip, and that was the reason why I did what I did instead of what I might have done.

  About half of yesterday, up to around 3pm, can be described as just a few actions. As usual there was writing yesterday's piece, and then a rest. After the rest I washed my hair and had a shower. I allowed half an hour to cool off a bit, and then got dressed to go out shopping inn Tesco. It was a fairly warm walk there, and even warmer carrying my shopping. So warm that I decided that going out for a walk later, as I had been thinking of, seemed like a stupid idea, and I stayed in.

  Once I was home I started on my lunch of two packs of sandwiches, and a Cumberland sausage meat Scotch Egg. The latter was not not nice. I didn't detect any herbs in the sausage meat, and I didn't like the "soft set" egg inside. The yolk seemed to have been converted somehow to a translucent orange gel, and did not look, feel, or even taste very appetising. I came close to thinking about the possibility of throwing it away, but of course I ate it all.

I had a lie down, and read for maybe an hour after lunch, but I forced myself to be a bit more productive.....but only a bit more. I had some photo editing to do. Most of it was very quick because I was working on pictures I had already edited, and mostly only needed to shrink them a bit to fit on these pages, but I think I tweaked at least one to improve it a tiny bit. I also had some editing work on this picture.

  It shows two of my weather stations, and they both agree with each other that at approx 15:14* it was 30.5° C in my bedroom. Being south facing, it is always the very hottest room in the house.  It was only 29.8° C outdoors. The right hand meter says the humidity was quite low at 24%, and they may account for it not being as sweaty as the temperature might have made it seem.

* The clock on the right is radio controlled and should be right to the second. The other is not controlled, and I ought to reset it now and then, but that would be a lot of bother unless too far out.
 One of the pictures taken at Petts Wood Calling that seemed to come out just right. It shows Matt Fielder, frontman for the band Ransom.
  How to salute your friendly photographer ! Of course it is all part of the act. Doing the V sign is guitarist Dave Barlow, and the recipient is John Bull, the photographer who inspired me to become a better photographer. I have seen the picture John took, and in my opinion it is not one of his best, and I think mine is better. Of course it is possible that John was not going to use it until he saw my picture of him and Dave in action.
  It has to be said that unlike some on the stage, Matt Fielder knows how to "work the crowd", and they respond well to it.
  Here's the band "working the crowd" and the crowd responding. I feel sure that some of the crowd/audience would not really care for Ransom's music in another setting, but the joy is a sort of infection that is passed one to another in these settings. It must help that it is a small festival compared to many, and many of the audience are local, and many know others after seeing them at gigs or drinking with them in local pubs etc. Coming all the way from Catford sometimes makes me feel an outsider, but then again there were loads of people there I at least recognised even if I did no know their name.
  A week earlier I had walked out/headed for home half way through the Ferrets set at Chatt Fest, and I did the same at Petts Wood Calling. I must admit I was very tempted to stay to the end of their set, but the more I thought about the horrendous journey home in an exhausted state, the more exhausted I felt. Actually, apart from the walk from Catford Bridge station to home, which I almost did on my knees, the journey home was not that awful.
  One huge difference between Petts Wood Calling and Chatt Fest was the big stage with no wooden pillars in the middle of it. In theory I should have been able to get more wide photos taken in the middle of the front of the stage, and getting in the whole band. I could have done it too but for a preference not to piss off too many people. The was a solid mass of people up to the front barrier with mobile phones taking pictures, or even worse, shooting video, and I would not have been popular if I had stood right in front of them.
  I don't seem to know the name of the Ferrets frontman/singer, and I used to call him Mr Ferret until I discovered that this guitarist, part of The Ferrets - The Punk Rock Band, is called Garfield Ferret. I am not certain if that is a real name or a stage name.

  I definitely got some photos I was quite pleased with at Petts Wood Calling, but many needed a fair bit of work, usually tinkering with the exposure, getting the balance between black and white (or dark and bright), and shades in between, looking good. What I very rarely get is the glossy look that John gets. The only time I come close to that is when I take an important picture very badly. Then I use the smoothing control to reduce grain, and also resolution. After that I put on tons of sharpening to make the picture look semi sharp. I have sometimes wondered, but then dismissed the idea that John is not as good as me at taking a basic photo, but is wizard at the photo editor !

  Preparing the above photos to fit on these pages, from photos where all the major work was already done, should not have taken long, and maybe it didn't really, but it was getting close to dinner time before I finished....or maybe it was exactly time for a rest before it came getting close to dinner time. I was really looking forward to my dinner because it was to be a simple, but special treat.

  While shopping in Tesco I bought two main ingredients for my dinner. One was a small loaf of sliced bread that was gluten free. It was basically made from rice (and some other stuff) instead of from wheat flour. I never got to taste it properly, but I came to a conclusion that it did not taste nice.

  The other ingredient was a small boil/microwave in the bag pack of kippers. It is a shame that they are now almost a luxury food stuff. I had them on buttered, gluten free, bread. Of course the strong taste of the kippers did not allow a true taste of the bread. It would be a shame if it does taste nasty, or even just not that nice, because I noted it's sugar content seemed less than many breads.

  After the bread and kippers I had a dessert of lemon ice cream. It seemed to make a good combination. I must admit it was tempting to eat a lot more ice cream that I limited myself to, and maybe this morning I might thank myself for that. I ate dinner while watching the BBC 6 O'clock news. It was not terribly exciting, but I guess the news is not supposed to be. one interesting thing is that it seemed some technical problems that spoiled bits of the news the day before were still not fixed, and the London News section came from the local Kent studios.

  That did mean a strong bias of articles about people enjoying the hot sunshine on Kent beaches (apparently even ones like Brighton that are just shingle and nasty to walk or lie on), and not many London centred news items (although there was some coverage. In one respect it may have made it better by concentrating on actual news instead of assorted frivolities.

  Apart from a long backlog of technology news items from https://www.theregister.com/, I was up to date with my photos, and I could spare the time to watch both Star Trek: The New Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - except that neither were episodes that demanded any concentration, and what started as reading the news stuff during the commercial breaks became more and more missing chunks of the programme as I continued to read. One problem with the huge backlog is that the comments after each item grow longer and longer as the days pass. it is often the case that the comments are more entertaining than the actual news item !

  After the Star Treks came Have I Got news For You. It was one of those editions that seemed good at the time, but barely left any memories of what it was all about. Feeling tired wouldn't have helped, but I seemed to be able to keep my eyes open to read half a dozen or so pages from the book I am reading. I then tried for sleep, and I did indeed sleep quite well. I had left the window open, the curtains not fully closed, and for most of the night I had the fan on low blowing at me.

  It feels as if it should have been unlikely, but I did seem to sleep really well last night. I think it was just before 5am when it was still about 27° C in my bedroom, but that felt cool enough to turn the fan off after I came back from having a pee in the toilet. The only bad thing about my sleep was waking up around 6:10am. I woke with cramp in both legs, and I was desperately trying to get out of bed and stand up. Once I put weight on my legs the cramp almost just switched off, but trying to get myself on my feet was really hard. I almost had to climb up the wall to get upright.

  Like yesterday, I seem to be temporarily constipated this morning, and like yesterday I will probably not be constipated after about 11am. This morning the constipation (or maybe just not ready to go yet) was of less concern. After one more pee I weighed myself, and found that despite some of what I ate yesterday, I had lost 600gm since yesterday. That takes me ton the next colour down in my spreadsheet code. If I am lucky, in a few days I might be able to switch to the next colour down - something I have managed 8 times so far this year, but never any better. I would need to lose 1.4kgm to do that.

  Eating ice cream late in the day, like I did yesterday, should theoretically doom my morning blood glucose measurements. This morning that may have left a very small mark, but my blood glucose is not bad at all this morning. The Contour meter read 7.9mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter read a tiny bit higher at 8.0mmol/l. The Contour Plus meter did not surprise me when it read a not so good 8.7mmol/l. Even that is just acceptable. The new GlucoFix meter read the same as the Contour meter at 7.9mmol/l.

  The main thing on today's menu is a walk through the park, diverting to to Ladywell Station for a couple of copies of The Metro, and then on to The Jolly Farmers for my usual two pints of Guinness served by my favourite barmaid. It could be more than two pints if anyone else I know turns up, but that is unlikely. Once I get home again, I look forward to a light-ish late lunch, and then probably a snooze !