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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.

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.

2063 – About Letters to Steve

I thought I had got the picture a bit wrong. But looking at it, the horizon is fairly level, and then you realise that the ship is tilted just a little bit, ever so slightly, not much. Interesting. I got the head-on picture from the Gosport ferry, halfway across its run.

Next week’s letter to Steve will be number 23. Getting close to the 6-month point. I must admit, I didn’t know when I started doing it whether I would be able to keep it going, but actually it is enjoyable, so no problem.

I do have a piece of work to do on them, though. I want to go into each one of them, put in a forward reference to the next letter, a backward reference to the previous issue, and a link to an index page. Unfortunately, I can’t give my assistant access to the pages to insert the links, but it is being massively helpful in getting ready for the exercise and making it as easy as possible.

I like the thought that there is an established path through a specific series of posts.

2062 – u3a IGO – Astronomy From Deep Space to Binoculars

Today, it was the turn of the u3a Interest Groups Online – Astronomy to grab my attention. There were a good 12 or 15 people on the Zoom call. Whilst I didn’t know much about the backgrounds of any of the people, I’m sure there was at least one member of the Royal Astronomical Society present.

We had a really interesting discussion about various topics, from interstellar invaders into the solar system to the use of telescopes like the Square Kilometre Array and what they can do for the subject.

Towards the end of the session, the group leader went down the usual route of asking about individual contributions. Well, like all the other topics I follow on the u3a, I really would like to do something. But the distinct impression I got from the group was that their real focus is deep space. I’m happy to watch The Sky at Night, even read Astronomy Now, which I can get free on BorrowBox (although, I’d prefer to have the actual magazine), so to a reasonable degree, especially as Colin has realised where I volunteer, and so will doubtless be giving me the third degree on the latest activities of the likes of NASA, resurrecting a situation that exist in the office 10 years ago (which I don’t really mind).

Anyhow, I got sidetracked there. The group leader went around all of us individually asking us what we thought, and I confessed my inability to contribute meaningfully to discussions on deep space, but that I was a member of our local U3A stargazing group, and mostly enjoyed naked-eye observing with some use of binoculars, especially the ones in the header photo, which are called constellation binos. The magnification isn’t huge, but they do capture a lot of light. For example, I have seen satellites that are not visible to the naked eye with them. I haven’t really used them much, as the long days have made it a bit harder to stay up late.

With the nights drawing in now, evening observations are becoming a practical possibility again, so I am hoping to get out and watch the sky a bit more. When I mentioned this on the call, quite a number of people said they would be interested both in hearing about the group and also in a bit of a report on using binoculars, especially the new ones. So it seems I do potentially have something good to report on. Good.

2061 – A really quite nice day

Today was the first real session of the u3a Creative Writing group that I managed to set up. We had 15 attendees, a number that gratifies me massively. Luckily, I had put a bit of effort into preparing a fairly detailed plan that really only went wrong once. I planned for a two-hour session, rather than the 90 minutes we actually did. I’ll have to adjust that slightly, but that’s OK.

From there, we went on to Exploring art where I did a short presentation on what is a portrait, and when you include things liike Tracy Emin’s bed which showed both her comfort space, and by the way it was cluttered illustrated her period of poor mental health, the argument was “That’s not a portrait, you can’t see her face” and other sicussions, so I had at least cause a bit of a controversy, but made them laugh at the end, when I showed my equivalent to her bed;

The talk actually went down well, I’m pleased to say.

I also got to re-take the civil war video, this one is a bit better.

https://youtu.be/FUoIZ8hpmaw

Have to publish, or I’me going to miss the midnight deadline.

2060 – scripting a vlog

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Apart from doing some jobs around the house, and watering Elaynes plants (luckily, no hose ban under Portsmouth Water – at the moment), I have been re-working the Gosport CDivil War cards.

When I did the bit of filming on Friday, I said I would post the video provided it wasn’t too bad. Well, I’m kind of in between. If I’m prepared to show to the u3a creative writing group, then really I don’t have any excuse to not put it on YouTube.

Why is the video so bad (don’t get me wrong, I’m not apologising for it being bad) is mainly because of practice. Actually, the story isn’t so complex, but as soon as I get in front of the camera, I can’t remember anything, so I resort to reading the cards. So it’s no issue with the quality of the video. It’s the quality of the presentation that needs some work.

How did I get it down to two cards? Well, I know the story, and if it is on the cards, why do I need to remember it? Taking the story off the cards means I have to remember what happened. What the cards then give me is the who and the what. I have the names of the main people involved on the cards, as I would forget them or get them wrong.

So I’m all set up to have another go. If I can’t do it tomorrow evening, it’ll be the weekend.

2059 Letter to Steve XXII – Churches & Passion Flower Seeds

Gilbert’s letter xxii, first paragraph, was a bit of a departure, commenting on the lack of church spires or steeples in West Sussex and Hampshire. I knew he was a vicar, so his religious work would naturally impact his life. As we go around the countryside, it’s always interesting to see the different styles of church towers.

Gilbert talks of the goat-sucker, a bird that I have never heard of. Known as the Nightjar today. I don’t know the bird at all.

Gilbert carries on about sitting for frequent half-hour sessions watching the birds’ behaviour, and it hits me that we sit down at the bottom of the garden and watch the starlings as they dive bomb and squabble over the feeders. The sparrows that flash across the garden into the bush where they perch before deciding if it’s safe enough to approach the feeder. The magpies on next door’s rooftops are bouncing, chattering and prancing around like they own the place. How I wish they’d come into our garden whilst we are there, they’d be perfectly safe. Meanwhile, the pigeons are waiting on the roofs, determined to get to the feeders. We also have fairly frequent observation periods. It really is lovely.

Do people really keep bats, caged?

Disappointingly, I don’t have any weather stats to offer. We’ve had some exceptionally hot days. I try to avoid going out in the sun, unlike the mad dogs.

I did something this week that people might think of as being “Very Gilbert”. The front hedge between the neighbour and us, to the east of us, is a passion fruit bush, which is a prodigious producer of flowers and seed pods. I found a seed pod that had fallen to the ground, but was in very good condition. I thought, “I know, I’ll cut it open to see what’s happening inside”. Nature really is amazing, isn’t it? The delicacy of the seeds inside and the level to which the plant goes to protect them is amazing. I’m not sure how many individual seed pods there were inside, possibly 20. – 30, each individually connected to the wall of the pod by a thin stalk. A beautifully neat arrangement. I was reminded of something slightly similar from a few weeks ago. I had been eating a corn cob, and had been thinking how neat nature worked cupping the individual corns on the cop, that was as I was eating it, of course. Yummy!

All The Best

Bill

2058 – In the shop

I volunteer, normally on a Friday afternoon, in a local charity shop. I got asked if I would do today, Saturday, as well. I said yes to help out (I don’t know how to say that without making me sound noble for doing that), but it’s not. I made it quite clear that my offering extra help does not establish a precedent.

It’s the first time I’ve done a Saturday, and I have to say, I quite enjoyed it. Yesterday and today, I’ve seen a couple of old friends from work, and because it’s Saturday, it felt like there were more families out. Oh, that reminds me, yesterday’s friend reminds me that I need to resume watching the sky at night
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b006mk7h/the-sky-at-night
as he has a bit of a tendency to ask me about the recent episode.

I had a few opportunities to show where the use of AI could be useful. One was with a customer asking what a particular stone was in a small collection, I was able to confirm that it was Malachite and Azurite. The customer bought the stones so that was good.

On another occasion, the shop had been given a camera lens, but it wasn’t clear what the mount was. I suspected that it was a Nikon Mount, and luckily, we were able to confirm that (the lens was a non-marque manufacturer, so it wasn’t clear by just looking at it.)

And finally (to be honest, the one that I am most interested in) I was able to show how by taking a photograph of a bookshelf, AI was able to identify, categorise and value the books, Also, by comparing a bookshelf in the shop by taking a picture a week apart, AI would be able to identify what books had been sold. What would be the most popular?

I also suggested that they stop putting non-fiction on the bottom shelf, where it is most inaccessible to people who are more likely to be interested in them.

Apart from being an enjoyable afternoon, it was also useful for me.

2057 – Vlogging at The Falklands Gardens

It’s coming up to 7PM, and I had decided yesterday that this evening, I was going to go to the Falklands Gardens to vlog about Gosports role in the civil war in the 1640’s.

Luckily a bus came as I was about to pass the bus stop opposite Royal Arms. As I was carrying two bags, I didn’t fancy the idea of walking to the waterfront.

The Falkland Gardens were mostly empty; there were maybe half a dozen people spread out across the area, so I got set up and went for it.

OK, so there’s a trick I have to learn, and that is how to work with the cue cards. The story they tell is actually not bad. Translating that into me talking on camera is an entirely different kettle of fish. I have, I think, 6 or seven clips to bring together. Once I’ve done that, I will post it, no matter how bad it is, unless I judge it to be completely horrible, but my thought is that no matter how bad, it’s there as a lesson.

One delightful little episode afterwards, when I finished, a chap who was sat about 20 yards away stuck his thumb up and said it was good (I think he’d been drinking), but we did have a bit of a chat, and he was very complimentary, more I think that i had made the effort to get out and do something.

The other thing, the decision to film in the evening was the correct one. The sun didn’t feature in any of the shots, whereas had I gone in the mornigng it would have dominated every shot.

I think it will be the other way around when I go over to film the Portsmouth part. The sun will hopefully be behind us for most of the shots.