It might be worth noting that these pictures were taken with no flash, or any additional lighting beyond the fairly low ambient lighting in the pub. They needed a fair bit of processing to clean them up. The same was true for the pictures I took of The Life Of Brian. It took a lot of processing to bash a few of those pictures into a just acceptable form. Once again it seems like I might have done a half decent job because the British Oak pub, where Life Of Brian were playing, have "liked" nearly all of them. If I had one of those very expensive 600mm lenses with large apertures that a few of my photographer friends have, I could probably take some fairly nice pictures at the British Oak while hiding at the back in an attempt remain discrete.

  Last night The Life Of Brian were playing in The Coach And Horses, and I would have liked to have gone there, but it is such a tiny place that it would be impossible to avoid Angela. It breaks my heart having to avoid her, but the perceived wisdom is that the only friendship I can offer is wrong for someone grieving. So I grieve too. Fortunately there was a very good alternative last night, and that was Chain playing a gig in The Partridge in Bromley.

 I was more than happy to be there - up to a point. The only trouble was the state of my throat. It seemed to be the opposite of what you and I might think, but the hot steamy atmosphere in the pub seemed to make me want to cough more. The problem was compounded by the amount of people in there I knew and who I talked to. With the general background noise in there, it was difficult for me to hear what people were asking, but worse was that I had to raise my voice a lot to reply.

 I am not sure how long I was at the gig, maybe getting on for three hours, but eventually I found I was coughing too much, and had to slink away out into the night. The cool night air felt much better, and I didn't cough much on the bus, and I was feeling almost OK when I got back to Catford - so much so that I didn't go straight home, although with hindsight I wish I had.

 I had this cunning plan when the bus got to the high street. I would get off there, one stop short of my usual stop, and instead of buying a very late dinner from a greasy fried chicken shop, I would buy a chicken shish kebab. I still cling to the delusion that grilled skinless chicken and salad is a healthy meal that is only very slightly spoiled by the pitta bread. Sometimes I won't eat the pitta bread, but having not eaten since midday, some 12 hours earlier, I was feeling a bit hungry, and the pitta bread followed the chicken and salad down my throat.

 The second part of my cunning plan was to call into the Wetherspoons pub next door for a quick pint when my kebab was cooking. It was exceedingly quiet in there, and I wasn't even sure if they had stopped serving. There was no one at the bar, and just 10 - 20 people thinly scattered around the big interior of the place. It seemed they were still serving (I have no idea what time the place closes on a Sunday), but the reason why the bar was deserted was because of a new rule (new as in a whole year old I was informed). It is a very good rule provided it is used at the correct time. The manager has decided that people should not stand drinking at the bar, and when the place is busy it is a rule that is worth enforcing, but to apply it when there is just one person there (me), and the rest of the place is looking deader than a cemetery, just struck me as being very offensive, and rather "jobsworth". I feel much less inclined to drink in there in the future - less than the very infrequent visits I make anyway. I can be assured of much more friendly service in The Black Cat.

 Last night I was back to the insomnia that plagued me during the (almost) fortnight that my cold raged. It seemed as soon as I laid on my side my throat would start to tickle. That had one or two consequences. The worst was that I would start to cough while laying on my side, and that would inevitably "unhinge" my "twisted ribs" and make my chest sore. The second worst thing is that I would almost always have to sit, or even stand up, to get a powerful enough cough to dislodge the tiny little bit of mucus that was irritating my throat.

This morning it felt like I had only got half the sleep I would have liked to have got. On top of that, my throat still feel tickly form time to time. It is not nearly as bad now as it was earlier, and maybe by tonight I will have recovered again. Maybe one of the good things is that it is not accompanied by constantly having to blow my nose. I also feel sort of OK - excepting some tiredness - but it's not the bone weary tiredness that I had during the worst ravages of the cold I had (or maybe still have in a very diluted form).

 Today I don't have to do anything. I have no one to see or talk to, and I could do some intensive resting, but I have started some laundry. A few shirts and stuff are soaking in the mega sized bucket in the bath, and before the day gets any hotter I must rinse and condition them. So that is a bit of hard work to look forward to. Some other hard work, but hard in a mental rather than physical sense, is to go through the pictures I took at The Partridge last night. The last time I took pictures in there they needed a lot of artistic touches added as well as selective noise reduction and brightness/contrast changes. I took quite a few pictures last night, probably a silly amount, and so I reckon I could be busy until bedtime !

 The second time I met Angela by those swings was in the spring this year. I think it was during a period of time when John was on some strong steroids as part of his cancer treatment, and they made him so ratty that Angela had a partial breakup with him. A few tears flowed when I met her, but 5 minutes later we were walking hand in hand through the park, and the more we walked and talked the happier she became. The exit from the park we aimed for comes out near the stall that sells builders breakfasts to all the builders who use Wickes. I treated Angela to a cheeseburger with extra onions, and a cup of tea. Eventually we ended up at my place, and maybe an hour or two later Angela went home with a smile on her face instead of tears.

 When I got home from my walk yesterday I did some extensive resting in preparation for some evening madness. After feeling so physically wrecked after my walk I was not even sure it was sensible to go out in the evening, but I was determined to give it a try. First of all there was M.T. Pockets playing in The Mitre in Greenwich. Gigs there usually start at about 8pm, but M.T. Pockets were really quite late starting. It must have been at least 8.30pm before they started.

 I had three pints of ale in the pub, and because it was a Wetherspoons pubs I could use some of the 50p off vouchers that I got from CAMRA. After three pints it was time to leave. I felt fine right up to the time I went through the ticket barriers to come out of Blackfriars tube station. At that point I didn't realise that there was a train almost due, and that rushing would have been a good idea. So I took it relatively easy until I had got up to platform level at Blackfriars national rail station. I then had to rush along the very long platform (at least 12 cars longs, and maybe more) to try and get nearer the front of the train to Catford that was starting to pull in.

 It was a very packed train, which wasn't nice, but fortunately I hadn't started the uncontrollable cough that happened later. That uncontrollable cough really got going once I was about half way between Catford station and home. It really felt like I couldn't get enough air in my lungs as I approached home. It would have been sensible to stop once or twice, but I just pressed on feeling worse and worse.

 Once I got home I felt a bit better, but all my hopes that I was almost over the cold, or whatever it is that ails me, were completely dashed. I felt pretty terrible, but the worst was yet to come. By 10pm I was in bed and fast asleep, but that sleep only lasted a few hours. The first time I woke up I felt slightly chilly. I think I put the heater on half, and tried to go back to sleep. Eventually I managed to sleep for 15 to 20 minutes before I woke up shivering. I turned the heater up full, and while I waited to warm up a bit I took my temperature. I was expecting a raging fever, but if anything my temperature was slightly low ! I am not sure how that can happen. Anyway, I got my bedroom up to tropical temperatures (28° C) and that seemed to help me sleep a bit more, but it was very lumpy sleep, and I doubt I managed any more than 20 minutes at any one time.

 Eventually I woke up feeling far too hot, and so I turned the heater off and just laid there sweating. It was about then that I realised I had mostly stopped coughing, and my nose was mostly clear (neither was perfect, but both were a huge improvement on even a few hours earlier). Fast forward to right now, and my nose only needs an occasional blow, and one good cough can last an hour or so. (except when I stop to write about it !). Earlier on I was feeling particularly weak, and maybe if I wasn't sitting here quietly typing I would still feel weak. In the last hour I have stopped sweating, and I feel neither hot or cold.

 Once again it feels like I have beaten the cold into submission, and now I just have to get my strength back. Maybe it's the truth this time, but this time I will only believe it when I can look back and say I have felt good for at least a couple of days. I fear that if I go out into the damp air it will trigger it all off again. Today I will try and be prudent and stay in and do my best to recuperate. I feel a nice snooze coming on soon. It would be nice to have several good, long snoozes, but it's hard to predict how I'll feel when laying down again. Perhaps all the snt and bogeys will come flooding back to places they are not welcome. I feel sort of pessimistic at the moment.

 I stayed to the very end, and then 10 minutes extra, and I felt fine. Maybe walking home in the cool night air affected me, but not initially, and after a quick snack I was soon in bed, and fast asleep. By 3am I was awake again, and my throat felt dry and tickly. Worse than that was, as I described earlier, a globule of mucus almost at the top of my windpipe (or so it seemed) that would not budge when I coughed, but would quiver and gurgle whenever I breathed in. It, or similar globules, would spoil my sleep for the rest of the night, and still occasionally afflict me even now.

 I think it is fair to say I have done bugger all today. I am sure that should mean I've had a very boring day, and yet I don't know where all the time has gone to. It won't be long now until it is 5pm, and it's feeling like the greater part of the day is already over. What I should be doing for the rest of the day is going through the rest of the pictures I took last night. In theory it could be enjoyable because I think I took a few good pictures, but I am finding it hard to raise the enthusiasm. I seem to be letting a certain tiredness control what I do today. It is probably because I didn't get up in any definite way this morning. I sort of slouched around most of the morning barely dressed. Had I washed and dressed I may have felt completely different.

 Tomorrow morning I will definitely be getting washed and dressed fairly early, although not nearly as early as if I had to go to work. Tomorrow I have a very important appointment in an inner London Wetherspoons pub for my once a year meeting with my friend Barbara from Cumbria. Over a pint or three we will discuss life, the universe, and everything before heading our own ways until next year.

 I stayed out quite late last night. I caught the 11.45pm train from Sidcup, and it turned midnight while I was half way home on the bus. Now the thing is, I had drunk about 5 pints of Guinness (maybe 6 !), and I hadn't eaten anything significant since my meatball and red cabbage lunch at around 1pm. I was both drunk and hungry - the perfect excuse to buy some fried chicken on the way home. I bought rather a lot, but when I got in I decided that I would only eat the "fries", and save the chicken for breakfast/brunch/lunch (it was actually breakfast and brunch).

 I still had a sore throat when I went to bed, and it definitely felt quite sore. It was partly responsible, along with sporadically having to pee out pints of used Guinness, for spoiling what might have been a good nights sleep. In fact it was probably the need to pee that actually woke me up, but every time I woke up my throat felt dry and I was very close to coughing. I guess I got nearly 6 hours of sleep before I gave up and got up.

 So far today I have gone through all the pictures I took last night, and selected the best. I've eaten cold fried chicken, and I have done some laundry. I first washed the small blanket. It was very hard to wring out, but not as hard to wring out as the two jumpers I washed next. It seemed impossible to wring them out. I would squeeze and twist until I was blue in the face, and then as soon as I hung the things up they would start to drip quite freely. They are currently still dripping quite freely into the bath.

 The other thing I've been doing today is feeling ill. As I write this my throat isn't really sore, but after a morning of my nose feeling stuff it is now giving every indication that it is about to start pouring ! I've also had some intermittent headaches, but as I write this my head seems clear. I have a strong suspicion that if I still smoked I would have a hacking cough right now, but while I have had a few brief periods of light coughing, it doesn't seem to be a problem at the moment. There is one strong indication that I am fighting some bug - temperatures ! Several times I have gone through periods of feeling cool (although not shivery), and several times I have come out in fierce sweating (which I choose to believe is a good sign).

 It does feel like I am going through all the symptoms of a cold rather quickly, and that gives me some hope that I will be OK tomorrow. Only time will tell. Generally speaking, nothing I have experienced today has made me feel particularly bad with the exception of one probably unrelated thing. Mostly I have just felt a little lethargic, although I suppose the periodic light headaches have been pretty annoying. The one huge exception was a brief period, maybe no longer than 30 minutes, when I had a very fierce bout of the runs. Three time I had to run to the toilet, and on the last two occasions I literally exploded ! Since then everything has been fine in that department.

 Tonight I should be going for a drink with the Thursday night lads. Tonight's venue is The Partridge in Bromley, and I am wondering of I should try and steel myself to go. Apart from the fact that all of sudden I have just got through three tissues in three minutes, I feel that I am not particularly incapacitated at the moment (although my nose is really itching now - almost like, and maybe is, hayfever). On the other hand there is the theory that I ought to stay in and get on with mending myself if I want to be fit and well for tomorrow. I guess I have about 90 minutes to solve the conundrum, although I think I am probably going to err on the side of safety.

 I will be paid for this job at just my old rate (unfortunately) at the end of the month as per usual. The only unusual thing is that I will have to pay emergency tax, and then I will have to wait until next April for a tax rebate. I am assured by the lady who does the wages, and who has great experience in all matters financial, that the tax office do these things automatically now, and I wont have to do anything to get the tax rebate. (I guess it will come as a lowering of my tax code rather than actual cash).

 Getting home from work turned out to be easy. By the afternoon they managed to get some trains going in and out of Waterloo, and so I went to Earlsfield station as normal. I just missed a train, and had to wait an unusual 10 minutes for the next train (the usual wait at that time of day would only be 3 - 5 minutes). The journey to Waterloo was about 10 minutes slower than usual because we were held at red signals several times. I got there in time to just miss the train I caught from Waterloo East the day before by about 5 minutes. That meant a 10 minute wait, but overall it was quite a satisfactory end to another working (half) day. Whether that was my very last day, or if others will pop up to interrupt my retirement is anyone's guess. I suspect I will be called on again sometime, and I did leave a parting comment that I would be happy to do 2 or 3 days a month if they needed me badly, but it would have to be when the time suited me rather than on demand.

 When I got home I decided that I ought to make some sort of effort to try and not get too carried away eating. I just had some assorted fruit and some cheese for a sort of late lunch, and that satisfied me until later in the evening. Despite getting a reasonable nights sleep the night before, I still found that the travelling and work left me feeling really tired. I did have vague thoughts that I might even go out yesterday evening, but by 5pm (or thereabouts) I seemed to be fast asleep on my bed. An hour later I woke up feeling almost groggy, and with no desire to go out at all.

 That left me feeling a bit bored despite having things to do. One such thing was to change the tap on my bathroom wash basin hot tap. It has been playing up a bit lately, and the evening before yesterday it seemed to have seized up (fortunately in the off position). Yesterday I tried it again and with a sort of a click and a bump it started working again. So I left it, and I'll probably leave it today, and so on until it stops working again, and when I am in the right mood to change it (I have a spare here already). One good thing I did yesterday was to check that the stop cock at the bottom of my multi-point water heater is still usable, and hadn't siezed up over the years. Fortunately it turns easily, but it drips badly unless fully open or closed.

 It was a boring evening, and that lead me to start eating some dairy free ice cream. Unfortunately it still has a lot of sugar in it, although less than many ice creams. Later on in the evening I found I had a craving for bacon (actually it was probably more for sausages, but I knew I had bacon in the fridge). The bacon I had was Tesco's "cooking bacon", and it's pot luck what you find inside the packet. Some times it's very small off cuts, but the packet I had last night had what were like to bacon steaks in it (obviously end pieces from when they were slicing off conventional bacon from the bacon joint). It was all terribly unhealthy, but I very much enjoyed them.

 I slept quite well last night, or so I believe, and this morning I feel fairly good again. I have no idea what I am doing during the day, but I feel that what I should do is to get washed and dressed after writing this, and go out and play somewhere. One idea I do have is to go all the way to Sidcup tonight for an open mic session at The Iron Horse pub. My record for going out in the evening has been non existent for the last week, or even fortnight, and yet this is supposed to be what my retirement is all about. I had better conserve my energy in some mysterious way so I can enjoy an evening out tonight !

 After my wildlife photography I wandered back to the gig, and the solo singer was just finishing his set. I amused myself by taking pictures of all the food stalls, the portaloos, and general crowd scenes, but nothing seemed to be happening on the stage. If I had some company I might not have got bored so quickly, but I was on my own, and I felt I had seen everything there was to see. So I went home again. I did hear later reports that there was some good music on, and if I had had the stamina to stay to the very end, at about sunset, there were some spectacular fireworks promised.

 Once I was back home I had something that approximated to breakfast, and got on with going through the pictures I had taken the previous Saturday at Petts Woodstock. I have now done all but one band, and I am expecting to do their pictures today....although I am having thoughts about going out for a few hours to catch a bit of sunshine. By 6pm, or was it 7pm, I was starting to feel quite strongly about food, and I was contemplating ordering a takeaway. I was saved from that by a ring on my door bell. It was my next door neighbour, and she had some Thai food for me. It's been ages since she last offered me some, and I thought that now the minor inconvenience of the building work had finished she would not be giving me any more, but evidently I was wrong. It was lovely pork penang with rice.

 I guess it was the fresh air earlier in the day that was responsible for me getting a much better sleep last night...or maybe I was just exhausted after getting a lousy sleep the night before. I woke up a few times after 5am, but each time I manged to get back to sleep with little difficulty until I woke up around 7.30am. I couldn't seem to get back to sleep after that, and while I am still not washed and dressed even now, I sort of got up then. I feel moderately OK this morning, at least I think I do.

 I think there are four things I might do today. One is to get some shopping from either Aldi or Tesco. Maybe Tesco because I still have money on my soon to be discontinued "Clubcard Plus". I am tempted to go out in the sunshine. Maybe I'll take a train to somewhere, although my choice is limited in that respect because there are no trains from Catford Bridge station today. There are trains from Catford station. I ought to try and do something with the pictures I took of the last band I saw at Petts Woodstock - The Kristian Baker Band. I had never seen them before, and I have no idea who they are, and I wasn't terribly excited by their music, but I ought to do their photos as a matter of completion.

 Finally there is an acoustic gig on at The Wheatsheaf pub in West Wickham tonight. It starts at 6pm if I recall correctly, and it is a Chain gig. Getting there could be an arse with no trains to West Wickham, but if I was really keen I could get a 54 bus all the way to Elmers End, and then a 194 bus all the way up the hill, and along the main road to practically outside the pub. Having thought about that I suddenly feel less keen to go, but you never know....

 Tomorrow morning I am back at work ! It is only for two half days, and I won't be getting to the station until I can use my free 60+ Oyster card to travel at 9.30am. I estimate I'll be home again by 3pm. If there were early morning trains to Earlsfield I would have gone in at my usual early hour and get it over and done with, but two half days doesn't seem too bad. I wonder how long it will before the next emergency, and I get a call pleading with me to rejoin the company again for a day or two ?

 I was supposed to go out last night. Chain were playing in Beckenham, but I had got so bogged down photo editing that I left it too late to go out. Not only that but to sustain me through the photo editing process, which while it can be very satisfying, can also be a huge bore when doing it in industrial quantities, I realised I was on my third very large whisky, and had also too many snack. So I stayed in doing more photo editing !

 It was probably the last snack I had, which might also have been classified as my dinner for the evening, that probably caused me to have a very bad night because it was a very bad meal ! It consisted of slices of bacon flavoured spam like stuff with two small packets of plain crisps and a lot of grated mature cheddar cheese melted over it all. It was hideously unhealthy, but also very, very nice ! The trouble was that I ate it late in the evening (by my usual standards for an evening meal), and it gave me indigestion.

 I went to bed feeling a bit uncomfortable, and it took me some time to get to sleep. At 2 am, possibly as little as an hour after getting to sleep, I woke up feeling a bit acidy. To make matters even worse I turned over too quickly, or carelessly, and crunched my "twisted ribs". I took some "Settlers" and they calmed down my stomach, but my chest still gave me a lot of discomfort. If I laid on my right side it felt quite painful, and if I laid on my left side it was less painful, but still painful. If I laid on my back, my back hurt, but worst of all was the crunchy, possibly bone against bone, sound and feeling whenever I breathed in and out, If I could have stopped breathing for the rest of the night I would probably have got away with it, but that is a bit tricky !

 I took a couple of Paracetamol tablets, and they eventually calmed things down, but while waiting for them to work I went to my PC and confirmed my worst fears - I still have untouched pictures from two more bands - G-Force and The Kristian Baker Band. Once they are done, and it could use up quite a few hours today, I should be finished with the Petts Woodstock pictures - except for selecting the very best of the best for a Flickr album.

 Sometime after 3am I got back to sleep, but I didn't seem to sleep well, and woke up quite a few times before finally deciding to get up at 8.30 am (at least I think that is when it was). Initially I didn't feel too good. My biggest complaint was a pain right across the very top of my chest - a pain made worse by doing things like moving my hands and arms around for things like brushing my hair. That pain seems to have cured itself for now, but I still feel rather stodgy. That stodginess is unfortunate because I planned to go to another outdoor gig today.

 Party In The Priory, or "Priory Live" as I think it is called this year, is on again in Priory Gardens in Orpington. I don't know anyone who is going, and I don't know any of the bands playing there, but it is free entry, and I thought I might drop by for an hour or two. I have done all my preparations to go out - I've washed me and my hair, and I've charged the battery in the camera I am taking  (My Canon 600D), and I've cleaned it's lenses - now all I have to do is to wait for the sun to come out again, and I'll be off....probably.....in theory. To be truthful I am not feeling terribly keen to go, and I have to keep reminding myself that I'll probably feel good once I am moving.

 At about 4.30pm I went out to get the train to Shortlands where the Thursday gang were drinking in The Shortlands Tavern. The train I caught was the 16:47 from Catford, and it had a minor novelty appeal. Most trains from Catford go to Sevenoaks, but in the rush hour a few (possibly even just one !) goes to Orpington, and I caught one such train. I don't recall if I have ever caught one before. It would be rather handy if more trains went directly to Orpington. In an ideal world we would have four train an hour from Catford, instead of just two, and half would go to Sevenoaks, and half to Orpington. Ah well, one can but dream !

 I thought I would be daring last night, and not rush home from the pub like I usually do (or did). This was partly because I had eaten earlier in the day. When I used to go straight from work I would be drinking on an empty stomach after fasting for 24 hours. Last night I stayed for four pints, and went home on the 20:02 train. I may have eaten earlier in the day, but four pints was still enough to warp my intentions, and once again I went home with a couple of chicken burgers.

 I didn't have a great time once I got home. I felt a bit tired, but not sleepy at all. I would have loved to go to sleep but my brain was in overdrive...or something. I was considering heaven and hell. My conclusion is that heaven is hell ! The place must be full of gurning Christians all happy and helping. It would be like waking up and finding yourself trapped in a Mormon church or something. Then there are the rest of the people. You spend your life avoiding many people because they are boring or irritating, and slowly they die off, but you get to heaven and there are the bastards again. They say you get to meet your mum and dad and relatives again. It would be nice to have a beer with my dad, and talk about thermodynamics or something, something I never had the chance to do before he died, but if the rumours are true there is no beer in heaven, and the laws of thermodynamics probably don't hold in such a place. There are so many other problems possible, but I'll only mention one more - I bet it is impossible to get a power chord out of a harp so there will be no decent music there. I think when I snuff it I prefer oblivion !

 All that philosophy kept me awake for a long time, but I finally got to sleep at some time past 1am. Maybe I had only slept for an hour when I had to get up for a pee. Now the really annoying thing about that is that I just know I was having a wonderful dream before I woke up. I can't remember a thing about it, but I feel certain that beer was a significant thing in that dream.

 Today I have similar choices to yesterday. I feel the urge to go out, but I also don't feel like do it. I feel in a state that I know all too well - I feel sort of vaguely ill right now, but I also know that once I get moving I could feel wonderful. There is also the pull of even more photos to edit. The next lot were taken on the outdoor stage, and should be easier to do, but even there the light was sort of funny. There is a very good photographer who has gone from amateur to pro over the last 3 or 4 years, and who I get inspiration from. I noticed his photos from the outside stage lack the "glitter" than he can usually impart on his photos. In fact he has posted a few that look rather amateurish - like they had been taken on a mobile phone. So maybe I am not too bothered if my own pictures look a bit flat.

 So at this very minute I have no idea if I will go out or stay in editing photos....A thought suddenly occurs to me....If I did stay in I could break up my photo editing with a few visits to the garden. One of my long term aims now I am retired (apart from going back to work on Monday and Tuesday for two half days) is to try and rehabilitate my garden. If I could fight my way through all the spider webs (is it autumn already ?) I could slash down some more weeds and brambles, and uncover a small area of bare earth...maybe.

 Then there is tonight. Chain are playing a semi acoustic set in The Coach And Horses in Beckenham. I would like to go and take a look, but for some reason I don't feel that enthusiastic about it right now.

 You can click on any of the above pictures for larger versions. One of several reasons to go to Earlsfield station was to take a snap of the message above the way out. It's been there since the station was refurbished 5 (?) years ago, and I had never stopped to take a snap of it on my way to work. It had to wait until I had quite work, and didn't have any better reason to re-visit Earlsfield station.

 All this dashing about on various railway stations was good exercise, and ultimately I felt much better for doing it....at least I think I did. One problem I had while actually doing it was a nasty little pain that was like a stitch. It started off on my left side just about the point when the ribs end, and it appeared to slowly shift position to end up a hands width above my belly button...and then it just faded away. It was very mechanical in nature, and was most easily provoked while going down stairs, but could also be quite painful when walking on the flat.

 It had reached it's final position when I got back to Catford, and it was going down the stairs at Catford station that inflamed it after it had gone dormant while sitting on the train.  It was often really quite painful, but not so bad that I didn't embark on some extra walking. I walked from Catford station, via the main roads to the pharmacy where my repeat prescription was ready for me to pick up. It was somewhere on that 10 - 15 minute walk that the pain faded away, never to return...well not yet, anyway.

 Once I got home I prepared what was basically a very big, but very low naughtiness, dinner. It was essentially a green vegetable stew - loads of fibre, and not that much else. It was initially very filling, but as the bulk of it was just stock it drained away pretty fast. Several pints of hot stock had the almost instant laxative effect that is one of the unfortunate side effects of such a meal (where instant was probably slightly in excess of 90 minutes).

 I felt I had achieved something yesterday evening, and I thought I felt tired, but neither was good enough to shut my brain up. I think it was gone 2am before I fell asleep, and even then I didn't sleep well. I had a lot on my mind, and while I can't remember the dreams, I can remember thinking that those things on my mind definitely influenced my dreams. The dreams didn't directly reflect reality, but the negative themes in them reflected my mood.

 This morning I have been ultra lazy, but I have done one good thing, and one bad thing. The good thing was simply hand washing a couple of shirts and underwear. The bad thing was opening a jar of lime pickle. That stuff is so moreish that I could not help myself finding other stuff I could eat with it as well as the chunk of cheese I originally opened it for.

 I'm not sure what I will do next. The heavy rain means it is most doubtful that I'll be going out anywhere. What I ought to do is to get cracking on more of the photos I took at Petts Woodstock, but I have a funny feeling I am going to lay on my bed, read a page or two of the book I am reading, and then have snooze - preferably a long snooze !

 These five pictures represent a small proportion of the pictures I took of Chain. I still have loads of pictures to process of the other bands I saw. The pictures taken on the inside stage are going to be a real challenge ! It was dark in there, but with a lot of very bright back lighting. My camera was struggling to focus, and I was struggling to see what I was doing ! I'll be surprised if one picture in 50 is going to be usable ! Later today, probably while it is raining, I'll make a start on M.T. Pockets. They were performing on the outside stage, and I should be able to find qite a few usable pictures of them.

 There are two things I should be doing the morning. The important one is to pop along to the pharmacy to see if my repeat prescription has been auto-generated like it was last time, or if not  to log onto my doctors web site and order a new repeat prescription. I have actually run out of most of the drugs I take - and I took the last of them up to two days ago. I guess I should prioritise getting new supplies. The other thing I want to do is to go to Waterloo and see what is happening with the great station rebuild !

 Yesterday's weather was nothing spectacular. On the whole it was a bit grey, but I seem to recall that was at least one light shower, and the sun did manage to come out for a few brief sessions. It wasn't hot and it wasn't cold. It wasn't wet and it wasn't dry. It was just sort of grey.......

As you can see, the train's poor little brain thought it was going to Horsham (Calling at and Horsham !!). Horsham is a destination on the Thameslink network, but it is in Surrey (I think), and my train was heading to Kent ! Here's the offending train leaving Shortlands station where I changed trains for a service that would take me to Petts Wood station.

 Despite feeling tired, I didn't go to bed very early on Saturday night. When I did go to bed I probably failed to sleep well because I felt stuffed after treating myself to a large takeaway - which was the highlight of my evening.  The good thing was that despite a slightly restless night I managed to keep going back to bed, and getting back to sleep until 10am. If I could have done that in one non stop sleep I may have felt wonderful on Sunday - and maybe I would have if I didn't also feel rather depressed  at the same time.

 There were an assortment of reasons for feeling depressed, and it was really only the combination of them that was so bad. I am not sure if one reason was cause or effect, but it was to do with the pictures I took at Petts Woodstock. Having spent so much time selecting and editing the photos I had taken the previous weekend at Chattfest, I couldn't face the idea of spending hours and hours and hours doing anything with the Petts Woodstock photos. I'll have to do something with them soon, and maybe soon is today, but yesterday I decided to do other stuff.

 One of my first tasks was a bit of mindless, but distracting, and also sort of satisfying, hand laundry. Then I played around with a couple of ancient laptops I have laying about the place. It is my intention that one of those laptops will be put into useful employment as a new, hopefully lower power, and definitely more compact firewall. (My current firewall is a big old desktop PC with specialised software on it). I didn't actually do any work to further that idea, but I think I have selected which ancient laptop is going to have the privilege.

 There is one thing I did that used up many, many hours. It was the continuation of a project I started a little while ago. It was/is all to do with de-cluttering my living room in long term preparation for an eventual project to re-decorate the room. What I did yesterday did not make a huge difference, but it helped, and while it was going on I did do just a tiny bit extra tidying up. I have several large "book-style" CD/DVD containers, and each can take something like 96 disks ! Apart from about three disks, I have now "decanted" all the mp3 files of a huge heap of CDR disks onto one tiny little memory stick.
 The old dusty case is on the left. To the right of it is the little memory stick that will be able to "consume" several CD cases like this one. Also in shot is an extra large rum and coke. I had quite a few of those to sustain me through the tedious process. I should add that I won't be trusting that USB memory stick to hold all those files by itself. I'll be making a back up of it on a second drive. As I mentioned, during the long waits for data to be copied off the CDR disks, I did a little bit more tidying up. It is hardly noticeable now, but it does pave the way for more notable changes. I can now almost get to a large cardboard box that contains lots of memorabilia, and I think I might throw almost all of it away. As it is all paper I can put it in the recycling bin - there is always space in that bin. One final thing I did last night was to watch a bit of TV. I haven't really watched any, specially actually on my TV for what seems like ages now. Luckily I found an episode or two of The Simpsons on one channel that amused me for a bit, and a couple of old episodes of Mash that provided a bit more distraction.

 Then it was time for bed, and I couldn't get to sleep for ages ! One thing that has been on my mind all weekend is Angela, and her recent reluctance to respond to me. I know what the problem is, and I have to keep believing that it will go away once enough time has passed after John's funeral - whenever that is. It is all terribly complicated, and I am probably a bit, or a lot mad, to think that it will all be OK in the end. In the meantime, being patient is killing me !

 The chances are that I fell asleep a few times before 3am this morning, but seems to be when I finally went to sleep sort of properly this morning. I think I got up for a pee once or twice, and I know I had some exciting, but of course rather weird dreams until I finally gave up trying to sleep at around 8am this morning. Since than I have washed a few t-shirts and a few other bits and pieces, and I have washed me and my hair. I have now almost finished writing this.

 What do I do next. If the day was going to be a bit brighter I had wanted to go out and have a look at the chaos at Waterloo station. We are now into the three week period where the station is being remodelled with longer platforms and stuff. It's the period of time when there are no peak hour services to Earlsfield station, and the inspiration for the timing of my retirement. I would like to see some of it, and of course to take photos, but in reality I am going to have to get stuck into playing with the photos I took Saturday. It's a shame really because staying in is making me feel peckish, and thinking about it is making me feel starving. I managed to be moderately careful about what I ate yesterday, but I am not sure I can do that today. Oh well, let's see what happens.

I think I mentioned I took a couple of snaps while I was at the open mic night at The Catford Bridge Tavern on Thursday night. Here's one of them. I assume this dog had something to do with it. Maybe his job was the guard the mixer. It is out of shot, but you can just see a mic lead coming from it on the far left of the picture.

 This is the host of the open mic night. I spoke to him briefly, and I think he said he was the under manager of the pub. He started singing and playing shortly before I left. He was playing some really tedious blues number that sounded like, but wasn't, the Rolling Stone's infamous "Cock Suckers Blues" (a song that was never on general release, but appeared on some bootlegs, and also appears on You Tube). On the whole it didn't give me the impression that it would be a very entertaining night, and on top of that the acoustics seemed lousy - there was no P.A. and the output of the mixer was just pumped into the pubs sound system.

 
 I didn't actually finish the Chain photo album until this morning, but I did finish photo albums for two other bands yesterday. I am at a loss to even guess when I will upload the best of the best from Chattfest to Flickr, and with a another very long photography session coming up tomorrow at Petts Woodstock, it feels like I'll never get around to it ! Anyhow, after a day of either snoozing or being stuck on my PC selecting and editing photos, it felt like it was a good idea to go and have a beer with the Thursday night crew.

 I sort of enjoyed those beers, and yet I didn't because I felt tired. I don't think I was particularly grumpy at that point, but I was on the edge. In such circumstances it was probably stupid to go to The Catford Bridge Tavern and expect to be entertained by their open mic night. It turned out to be infinitely worse than I expected. For a start, an hour after the official start time there was no one there except the pubs under manager who was the compère of the session.

 That was not strictly true. I was lead to believe there were a few people there who would step up to the mic later, but not before I had drunk up my second pint and gone home. To make matters more miserable there were hardly any facilities there. They had one microphone, a mixer, and no P.A.. The sound, from that one microphone was sent into the pubs piped music system. I can imagine that it could really piss off some people sitting in other parts of the pub who didn't want to hear out of tune singers !

 I went home from the pub feeling pissed off enough to buy chicken and chips. The ironic thing is that I think my guilt made them less enjoyable than they could have been. I went to bed feeling bloated. Not only that, but after drinking 5 pints of beer I had to get up a few times in the night to pee, and for some reason, fart a lot !  For all that I had a better sleep than the night before, and while I was doing little more than lightly dozing off for the last couple of hours, I managed to stay in bed until 7.30am this morning.

 I haven't felt terribly wonderful today, but at least I have managed to do more than just photo editing today - although I have spent quite a few hours doing that as well. One thing I tried to do this morning was to fast for as long as possible. If I could have done it I wouldn't have eaten at all today, but I think I gave in as early as 10am ! I looked at all the possibilities of what I could eat, and I didn't have anything that could really be described as healthy eating, and so I though I would just be weird. I had a can of "Hot Chicken Curry" for my breakfast. It was actually more like a chunky soup, but it partly did the trick.

 Just after midday I got myself dressed for the great outdoors, and went to Tesco. I had a deliberate plan in mind going there, and that was to spend over £50 so I could claim a £7 discount. The only way to do that was to buy booze. Now booze is one product where there is some sort of parity between the prices of Tesco and Aldi - this is particularly so for their own house brand of blended whisky. I actually prefer Tesco's "Special Reserve" whisky to Aldi's, and it is my favourite whisky of all time. To increase the size of my bill I also bought a bottle of Bushmills Irish whiskey. Aldi don't really do anything equivalent to that. Not only did I get my discount, but I managed to use up some of my Clubcard Plus credit. Clubcard Plus is being discontinued in September and I want to drain my card down to zero before then.

  The only other thing of significance that I have done today is certainly significant. I have removed the box of assorted crap from next to my TV in the front room, hoovered behind the TV, plus most of the rest of the living room floor, and installed a small plastic chest of drawers next to the TV. I have been intending to do this for several months now, and at last it is done. I think it looks a bit neater in there now, but there are other improvements I want to make at some point. I also made a very small start on clearing out my workshop. That room is just piled high with all sort of old crap. Today I threw out one bin liners worth of stuff, and I reckon another 20 of them will be enough to make my workshop almost usable again. Another ten after that, plus some redundant test equipment and it will be almost empty in there !

  Eventually I will upload the best pictures from Chattfest to Flickr, but that is low on my list of priorities at the moment. Today, if I can find the time and dedication to stick to it, I will finish off doing the photo album of Vince Lightning & The Thunderboltz, and then tackle the last band who were on at Chattfest - Chain. Once Chain are done I will be up to date - for now !

 I am slowly trying to wean myself off being an early bird, and not doing too well at it ! I felt really tired last night when I pushed myself to carry on working late, and not going to bed until about 11.30pm. I hadn't been asleep for much more than half an hour when I was awoken by a message coming through on my phone. If it were not that I had promised Angela she could phone me any time day or night if she felt too sad and lonely, I would have turned my phone off for the night. Unfortuanately it was not Angela but my friend Jodie, and I am guessing she was drunk because after I replied that she had woken me up she persisted in sending more completely pointless messages at 10 minute intervals. I almost managed to get back to sleep after the first one, but the next three seemed to unhinge my brain.

 I think it was almost 3am before I got back into some sort of deep sleep, but none of this stopped me waking up at 5am. I feel sort of tired and irritable now, but not really sleepy for some reason. I will attempt to snooze as much as I can today, but there are things I ought to do. For a start I want to try and get all the photo editing done, even if it is not really high priority. but there is other stuff to do.

  I have already done one little task for today, and that was to wash my favourite pair of shorts. They are my favourite because the pockets are of the right size and in the right places - plus they seem to fit quite well (or they did before being washed, and before eating too much yesterday !). They were another thing that I used a lot when I was a heavy smoker, and while I didn't smell fags on them, the water I washed them in came out a yellowish green - the shorts themselves are blue !

 The other tasks (or pleasures) for today include a bit of shopping - I've run out of brocolli, and there are a few other things that it would be useful to buy. It's Thursday, and so late this afternoon I will be off to Bromley for the Thursday night drink. It is after that, that things get interesting. I don't know if it is the first one, but there is apparently an open mic night in the rather handily placed Catford Bridge Tavern tonight. I have a feeling it will be rubbish, but it officially starts at 7.30pm, and that is when I would be arriving back in Catford from the drink in Bromley. I intend to pop in there for maybe an hour to see if anything there can tempt me to stay later. If it seems terrible I have the option of jumping back on a bus to go to Beckenham for the open mic there, but I doubt that I will do that....although you never know...

 Some notes on the pictures -

1. Horses and ponies in a field next to the track that leads down to the roam villa.
2. The Lullingstone roman villa. I've never been inside it, but I visited it on a school journey way back in the 1960s before the building was built around the excavation. There should be tiled floors on view, and probably lots of small finds - coins and household bric-a-brac.
3. A nice shady walk with the river Darent flowing along behind the tress on the left.
4. A memorial seat with a view of the river slowly flowing past.
5. The Hop Shop. The sell all sorts of Lavender stuff plus home grazed beef, but sadly no high quality bacon.
6. The flies just love these cattle in the field by The Hop Shop.
7. It looks like the path I was following goes on forever (it felt like it too !). The sun had just gone in when I took this picture and made the cereal, probably barley, look darker brown that it actually was.
8. The cereal looks a bit closer to golden coloured here in the foreground of of this view of the distant hills.
9. The final hurdle. Having walked up the hill to the station you have to walk up a staircase as high as the one pictured, and then you have to walk up this staircase to get to the London bound platform. It completely knackered me !!!

 I felt really tired, and my feet were killing me when I got back to Catford, but I found the energy to walk the long way home via Tesco to buy some sandwiches for instant food gratification. I also bought some bacon and a few other bits and pieces. I had hoped to find some special, non water-logged, bacon in The Hop Shop, but they only sell beef in there. I'm glad I didn't find any now. I to would have been very expensive, and I found the "cooking bacon" that Tesco sells to be perfectly good for the bacon and broccoli, and cauliflower stew I will probably be having for dinner tonight.

 After eating my sandwiches I laid on my bed to relax. I was going to read for a while before checking the photos I had taken, but within about five minutes I was fast asleep. I have no real idea how long I slept for, but I think it could have been as long as two hours. I felt very blurry, or even "bleaurgh !!" when I woke up, and it was very hard to concentrate on photo editing, but I managed to finish off another set of photos taken at Chattfest on Sunday, and the photos I took yesterday.

 Then it was time to sleep....or so I thought. It took ages to fall asleep, and once I got to sleep I didn't sleep that well. During my whole time out yesterday, even when my body was working it's hardest, and even when hand doing laundry, I didn't get a single pain, not even an itch from my chest. At about 3am this morning I woke up feel a bit cold. Before trying sleeping under the duvet instead of on top, I tried turning onto my right side and partly curling up. As I did so there was a sort of silent crunch from my chest, and while it is not actually bothering me as I write this, it seems I set off another period of chest pains.

 The good news is that I managed to sleep until 5.45am this morning, and I even had a little nap when I went back to bed  a while after half getting up. So far this morning I have washed myself, started the process of washing a medium sized bath towel ( a job I must finish when I have finished writing), and I have done all the washing up - including all the stuff I used to prepare and part cook tonight's dinner. Once the laundry is done I will take a breather, and maybe even another nap, and then it's back to the photo albums of the bands I saw at Chattfest last Sunday. I thought I had just two more bands to do but I was recently reminded that I actually have three bands to make photo albums of. It could easily take the rest of the day to do, and I still want to try and get to an open mic session in Bromley tonight. Being retired is hard work !

  Maybe tomorrow I'll have a set of pictures of The Shenanigans set. The next thing I have to do this morning is to see if I can get hold of Angela to see if she is coming out to play. With tomorrow looking cold and damp I feel I ought to get out today regardless of whether I have company or not. So for now everything else is on hold, including designing a web page for August, until maybe later this afternoon or evening !