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Bill’s Locality Stories

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.

Me and my occasional posts, mostly about the town of Gosport and occasionally my thoughts. So stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

2072 – Put yourself out there

i’ve beeen going on a fair bit recently about vlogging, you might reasonably ask why?

There is a youtuber, Rob the Maritimer, click his name to see his channel.

Rob has set up a community, called Creators Cove, and issued a challenge to his 117,000 followers. Over a period of four weeks, issue three “long form” (that means not shorts) on YouTube. I have been able to respond with three videos, one of which was this effort

I think I can honestly say that if Rob had issued that challenge three months ago, I would more likely than not have wanted to accept the challenge. What then, has changed?

It is pretty much all down to u3a. The various groups have during the time I’ve been attending, which is six months now, have also triggered ideas for presentations, and in turn has lead to an increasing list of potential Vlog topics. I have two at the moment in my mind that I want to do. I might as well tell you, that these are another compost bin episode, and a video about Portmouth and The Civil War.

The second one I had to do a little bit of research, and I spen about an hour in the Gosport Discovery Centre. I was a bit concerned, that I felt that my research was unfocussed and random. I was considering approaching a member of staff to ask for some assistance. Before I did that though, I found a copy of Portsmouth Papers No. 7 “The Siege of Portsmouth in the Civil War”. Even my assistant said she was envious.

I’m fairly confident (although I haven’t reviewed my evidence yet) that I have enough material to start building a plan for the Portsmouth video. The Gosport video is already on Youtube, although I may do another version as my videoing (hopefully) improves.

Robs Challenge was an excellent idea that has worked very well for me. It has built a vibrant community, which I sincerely hope he continues to support and develope.

2071 – The Book Shelf

this is a picture of a couple of the bookshelves that are in Goports Diabetes Shop.

The book shelves are one of those areas in the shop that keeps me intrested. I have a similar picture taken last week.

The difficulty is that as I only volunteer in the shop for one afternnon per week, I have no idea how books are managed between my stints. Books could dissappear off the shelf, simply because they aren’t sellin.

What is good about it is that I can ask my assistant to look at both pictures, and tell me what has changed about the books, even if they are in a different order.

A number of cookery books have gone from the shelves (the assumption is that they have been sold, rather than taken off, to save space. Overall, it appears that non-fiction is selling much better than fiction – which surprises me.

On the other hand this is on the basis of only one weeks pictures. I want more examples before I can draw any legitimate conclusions.

All very interesting. stuff.

2070 Messing around

Those passion fruits look almost good enough to eat, don’t they? I won’t of course, but I am keeping an eye on them, and if they start to swell or drop, I’ll have another one to disect. Next year, I want to watch the whole process from budding – I missed that bit this year.

You may have noticed that I have been doing a bit of messing around on the blog. Not a huge abount, not changing the structure or anything like that. But, I have a series of posts called “Letters to Steve” – actually, they are inspired by the 18th century amateur naturalist, Gilbert White. I’m working my way though his book, The Natural History and Antiquitites of Selborne. It hasn’t been out of print since its publication in 1789.

Anyway, There are 22 letters mixed in with the other posts, normally at a weeks interval (some have occasional delays, for good reasons) Ultimately, there will be around 124 of them if I’m able to keep them going (at the moment, i’m enjoying them way too much to stop). What I want to do is go back into the previously publiished letters and add a pointer to the previous letter, a link to the index of the letters, and a link forwardd to the next letter. This is so that any reader can immdeiately follow the thread, or jump to any letter via the index, or move on to the next letter (Previous, Index, Next) kind of thing.

It’s proving to be a little bit more laborious than i thought, and I am just grateful that I am getting around to doing it now rather than waiting until I’m at letter 50 (not sure what that is in Roman numerals (M))?

It makes me wonder if there is an easier way of doing this, but my problem is that I don’t know wordpress well enough to be able to try any alternaives, plus I have no idea how else it could be implemented. Anyone got any suggestions?

Index to Letters To Steve

2069 – Portsmouth in 1642

I have done a video about Gosport in the Civil War, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUoIZ8hpmaw

The next video in this series is a video about Portsmouth, but not the military activity (in detail), I’m more interested in what life was like in the town during the siege. I’m going to have to go into the library to research that. I can get some material off Google Scholar, but I’m not convinced that will be enough.

It’s going to have to be sometime next week though, although Saturday is a possibility.

2068 – Just one of those walks

I had just dropped Elayne off at the shops, and was on my way home, when I had this thought that things just looked really nice and I very much wanted to go for a walk.

Not a particularly special walk, just my normal route past the Cockle Ponds, along the waterfront and back along the High Street. But, having said that it did, in it’s own way, turn into a special walk.

It started when I arrived at the Cocklle ponds the weed cutter was operating. By the time I reached the south side of the large pond, the driver of the cutter had stopped and was having a break. He was a very amenable chap but I think he was dropping subtle hints. Because he was telling me about a pond he works on over in South Sea, which is aappparently quite shallow, He gets frustrated because his work keeps getting interrupted by people asking questions. Now, I honestly think that he wasn’t aiming that comment at me. but,, I gently eased myself out of the conversation and carried on walking.

There wasn’t much wind blowing, only a very gentle breeze, but the Model Yacht Club was making the most of it and the ten or so boats on the pond were all making a good run of it.

I had only moved on a few yards, when I was nearing a cojuple of young ladies, out with their alsation, and one of them was picking up litter, by hand without a picker. I must admit I was a bit concerned about that, but said nothing. Anyway, I thanked the lady for doing it, and then stopped for a five minute chat, mostly lamenting the lack of car a lot of the members of Gosport displayed in respect of their local surrounds. Theirdog was ver4y well behaved, and just pleasntly friendy, without jumping up. That was a very nice chat.

When I arrived at the water front, there wasn’t a lot happening, only a few small boats, and of course The Gosport Ferry moving around the harbour, and surprisingly, not many walkers.

At one bench was sat the chap who had approached me at the end of the first attempt at the Civil war video (the one never to be published because, yes, it is that bad). I paused and had a chat with him, he seemed quite happy. this was about 10:00. I don’t know wahat he does, but for some reason I think he may be a rough sleeper.

At the falklands Gardens there was a chap with a van with drums of water on the back, watering the flower beds. I paused ot have a chat with him. Praised him for his work, and appreciated that there was one area where the Borough Council does put some effort into making the town look nice. The street scene mob do a good job at that, I and I do take opportunities to tell them that I do appreciate it, when I can.

There wasn’t much happening in the high street. I didn’t go into the Craft Cafe, it was a bit too early in the morning. I just headed home to get on with the ironing.

I really did enjoy the walk.

2067 – Little Monsters, marching into sea.

The photo is I think, of a groyne that is breaking up. It made me smile, because it made me think of a line of little monsters marching back to their home in the sea after a day out monstering.

Today is the 4th Monday of the month, and in u3a terms for me that means Stargazing in the morning and History in the afternoon. No shed today.

I always look forward to Stargazing. The group leader always makes sure that we stay on track and don’t go down rabbit holes, given the nature of the members of the group. I went to today’s meeting with a degree of nervousness. The group leader is on the verge of either resigning or stepping down as leader. In either case, if we don’t get a replacement, then the group has to fold. I really don’t want that. It looks like, if nobody else steps forward, I will end up offering to be group leader.

The u3a website has changed, and I am now the group leader of the Stargazing group.

This afternoon, it was the turn of History. The subject today was Royal Courts and Courtesans. I didn’t have anything prepared, so no presentation from me. I didn’t know what the subject was until last week. I had other stuff on, so I just did not have enough time to prepare anything. Which, in a way, was lucky, as I had a really good book to research it, but I had given it to Charity; how silly was that?

My lack of knowledge was, of course, my fault. I only had to look at the website; it gives the list of topics until next year.

2066 – Letter to Steve XXIII – Butterflies & Passion Fruit

Dear Steve

Gilbert mentions Guernsey lizards being introduced at Oxford but not breeding. Is that the case? If so, are we lucky that we weren’t overrun? For how much damage do we blame people from the 1600’s onwards for the introduction of species from overseas that were incompatible with the UK?

Witnessing the migration of birds raises a question in my mind regarding starlings; do they migrate? I have seen none for several weeks now, and cannot believe they would ignore the food in the garden, even if insects were abundant and the like. Consultation with Google indicates they our starlings do migrate.

I had a bit of an experience with the clouds; I’d sat in the chair outside the shed, with my head back. It was quite breezy at ground level, and it made me wonder about how fast the higher clouds might be moving, but the perspective was relative; they were apparently crawling along.

Then there were the butterflies; strangely enough, they didn’t appear to be at all disrupted by the wind. I couldn’t help wondering if they were just amazing at calculating their paths, or if they did just go with the flow. Having said that, they didn’t appear to be interrupted in their flight path, even when there was a strong gust.

The highlight of the week came when I said I’d have another look at the passion fruits. The pods are now turning orange, so I cut one open to see what had changed since my first examination. The difference was remarkable.

Cutting it open was a fascinating experience; the outer shell came away very easily as I moved it away, and I found the inside to be very soft, very pleasant to the touch. The seeds were now bright burgundy red, and all clustered together in a protective membrane. I cut the membrane open; the seeds were individually moist, but there was no general moisture, and no smell. Of course, I took photos, something that Gilbert would not have been able to do. I think he would have loved some of the tools we have available to us today.

All The Best

Bill

2065 – Thinking about clouds.

The picture was taken a while ago; it’s Butser Hill. It’s a lovely view, but for today it’s the clouds. I was sat in the chair at the bottom of the garden, and my head was back, just looking at the sky.

What had started off as a calm day was turning into a breezy one. The anemometer on my weather station was quite happily whizzing around, and the weather vane couldn’t make up its mind which direction the wind was coming from, except that it was mostly westerly.

The thoughts I had about the butterflies in the garden, I’ll leave to the next Letter to Steve; it was the clouds that caught my attention. I have a chart on the wall of my office; it shows me the different cloud types. I’m fairly sure what I was looking at were altocumulous, probably 6 – 7km high. They were barely moving at all.

I knew that was deceptive; they were definitely moving, but you really had to sit and watch them to detect it. I realised afterwards that I should have filmed them. My assistant can estimate cloud speed from a short video. Based only on my description, she reckoned they were probably travelling at something like 20–30 km/h. It’s remarkable that something moving at the speed of a car can appear almost stationary simply because it’s several kilometres above your head.

Which, of course, led us into a completely different conversation about how high airliners fly, how far away their horizon is, and how differently we perceive movement at those distances. One observation in the garden had opened the door to a whole chain of questions. That’s one of the things I enjoy most about simply sitting and watching.

2064 – Box Sets

It’s 2345, and it’s all the TV’s fault that I am going to have to post this very soon. What have I been doing? Finishing off Season 21 and not being able to resist the climax of the season (no spoilers), continuing on to Season 22.

Sorry about that; my cat demanded that I brush her, and I always do what she says (most of the time). Anyhow, we were talking about box sets. I guess it really started during COVID; we didn’t go out, I was working from home (no commute), and at the end of the working day, we did not watch terrestrial TV. We discovered:
Grays Anatomy
Station 19
Chicago Med
Chicago Fire
Chicago PD (the relationship between the three series was genius)
Bones
Most of the popular British police series, too many to list.

We tend to swap between American and British series; sometimes the US programmes are just too slick, but that doesn’t mean that British series aren’t well made, absolutely not; Morse, Lewis, Vera, Silent Witness and many others are equally as watchable. It’s just nice to have a change.

So, that’s what caught us tonight. We reached a point where we could turn the TV off. There have been a couple of points over the last few years where we have gone to 2 or 3 AM because we were so caught up in the story.