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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.

2076 – u3a Summer Break

The months of August and September are probably the months of least activity within Gosport u3a. Most groups suspend activity for at least august. September is winding back up to full speed again.

I’ve recently gon through a phase where I’ve done small presentations to:
Local History
Exploring Art
IGO Archaeology

I have also agreed to do a presentation to the next IGO Astronomy on naked eye and the use of binoculars. With three events coming up this month (the solar exclipse, The Perseids and The Lunar eclips). Provided I’m able to stay up for them, I should have plenty of material for the talk, so not too worried about that (I just need the clouds to stay away).

I did wonder if three presentations in one month, in addition to anything I’m doing in the longer term projects I have is just a bit too much, and yet, here I am drafting a proposal for another group. I think I am very close to submitting that proposal, if it works I think I will have to give up at least one other group, and unfortunately I do have one in mind.

We’ll just have to see what happens.

2075 – I should have gone for a walk

I was going to honest, but then I did that usual thing of sitting at the computer. On sunday evening.

I’m sorry, it’s 2350, and our cat has just landed on my keyboard, and won’t move until I’ve given her a brush (the keyboard is on my lap), it’s so near midnight I’m going to have to publish this.

0010 – Ah, I’m back – sorry about the interruption. Misty’s happy. I ws going to say that I sat at the computer asnd was only intending to be a minute, but I hadd an idea in my head that I wanted to get into writing. It relates of course to u3a.

It’s for a new group. I’m not going to go into detail yet. I, of course, think it’s an excellent idea, but what will the members think?

I’ll have to run it past Fiona, the Groups coordinator.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

2074 – Nature’s Radio Telescopes?

I took this picture today of an open Passion Fruit flower. Luckily it haas a bumblebee doing its thing (look at its back, covered in pollen).

The flower has been open for a few days now. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve looked at them since we have lived here. This time though, because of my interaction with the letters of Gilbert White, I’m trying to look at things in a different way.

I’ve never denied that trhe flowers are pretty (the fruit are a bit of a pain when the drop and are crushed underfoot.

The strtucture of the flower does remind me of a futuristic radio transmitter or telescope. I’m going to get some more pictures of this, from different angles.

Fascinating stuff.

2073 – Letter to Steve XXIV

I spent a bit of time about a week ago, dissecting a passion fruit seed pod. Gilbert dissects a bird and finds eggs forming and food in its crop. I don’t think I could dissect a bird. I can remember one Rural Studies lesson at school where the teacher was going to dissect a rabbit. I had to leave the room. I hated the subject (RS). It was ironic that I got a grade 2 CSE in it; actually, my best exam result at school.

In letter 23 (XXIII), I wrote about observing clouds and butterflies. This week, I couldn’t help noticing the number of spider webs there are about. I can understand Gilbert waxing lyrical about the summer, but I was surprised to see his poem.

For some reason I can’t fathom, I shy away from poetry. But I feel obligated to properly read The Naturalist’s Summer Evening Walk. I shall do so after finding out if the poem is in the public domain for reproduction here. Yes, it is fully in the PD.

Here it is;

By Gilbert White

The Naturalist’s Summer Evening Walk

equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis
Ingenium. Virgil

WHEN day declining sheds a milder gleam,
What time the may-fly haunts the pool or stream;
When the still owl skims round the grassy mead,
What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed;
Then be the time to steal adown the vale,
And listen to the vagrant cuckoo’s tale;
To hear the clamorous curlew call his mate,
Or the soft quail his tender pain relate;
To see the swallow sweep the dark’ning plain
Belated, to support her infant train;
To mark the swift in rapid giddy ring
Dash round the steeple, unsubdu’d of wing:
Amusive birds!- say where your hid retreat
When the frost rages and the tempests beat;
Whence your return, by such nice instinct led
When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head?
Such baffled searches mock man’s prying pride,
The God of Nature is your secret guide!

While deep’ning shades obscure the face of day,
To yonder bench leaf-shelter’d let us stray,
Till blended objects fail the swimming sight,
And all the facing landscape sinks in night;
To hear the drowsy beetle come brushing by
With buzzing wing, or the shrill cricket cry;
To see the feeding bat glance through the wood;
To catch the distant falling of the flood;
While o’er the cliff th’awaken’d churn-owl hung
Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song;
While high in air, and pois’d upon his wings,
Unseen, the soft enamour’d woodlark sings:
These, Nature’s works, the curious mind employ,
Inspire a soothing melancholy joy:
As fancy warms, a pleasing kind of pain
Steals o’er the cheek, and thrills the creeping vein!

Each rural sight, each sound, each smell, combine;
The tinkling sheep-bell, or the breath of kine;
The new-mown hay that scents the swelling breeze,
Or cottage-chimney smoking through the trees.
The chilling night-dews fall:–away, retire;
For see, the glow-worm lights her amorous fire!
Thus, e’er night’s veil had half obscur’d the sky,
Th’impatient damsel hung her lamp on high:
True to the signal, by love’s meteor led,
Leander hasten’d to his Hero’s bed.

Totally unrelated to this is from the film The Monuments Men. In the film, Hugh Bonneville (who, in my eyes, will always be The Earl of Grantham) manages to get shot, and as he is dying, scribes a letter to his estranged father. To be honest, perhaps it was his voice as he was reading, but the letter really moved me. Sadly, I don’t think I can reproduce it here (it really does need Hugh’s voice) because of copyright. The poem was nice, but it didn’t move me in the same way.

I’m watching the passion fruits now, like a hawk watches for prey, looking for any state change up to and including the pods dropping. I’m going to keep a watch out next year, for when the fruits start budding. I missed that part of the process.

All the Best

Bill

Previous Letter to Steve XXIII Index of Letters to Steve

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.