Bills Posts

Featured

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.

The thing is, I am loving u3a – every session I have been to has been really enjoyable, and in some cases has sparked a piece of self-imposed home work. Some of which I have done, others I am working on, and one piece of long term (months to a year) of work, it’s not really work – I do something when I think about it.

But, I have been looking at the amount of time over the u3a 4-weekly cycle I am committing to activities (Monday to Friday, and not counting weekends. The way I have done it is by splitting each day into two blocks, morning (AM) and afternoon (PM). So, over a four week period there a 4*5*2 blocks or 40 blocks in total. Now, if 40 blocks = 100% of time, then 1 block = 2.5%.

Next, 8 blocks are taken by u3a 8*2.5% = 20%, so 20% or 1/5 of my time is taken up by u3a. Is that too much (bearing in mind that I haven’t added in homework time to that)?

Now, in addition u3a, I am also a member of The Mens Shed. Now, I commit Monday & Friday mornings to the shed (except for the 4th Monday, which is u3a (AM & PM). I therefor commit 7 blocks to The Shed = 7*2.5% = 17.5%.

All of this means that over the course of a 4 week period, I can account for 37.5% of my time being taken up by some activities. Is that too much?

I should qualify this a little bit, a block of u3a time = 1.5 hours, plus say 30 minutes travelling time, or two hours – not a whole morning, but a goodly chunk of it.

These figures will get “worse” as there are potentially two groups that are to be set up, so I’ll be over 40% of my time occupied, and over 50% (as it is now) if you include the shed. Is this too much?

Spread out as it is, u3a doesn’t feel as though it is. The shed is flexible, I don’t have to stay all morning, and sometimes I will be helping. It just doesn’t feel like it’s too much, what do you think?

1952 – Oh Dear!

I was writing a post, and tried to publish it early, because it was getting very close to midnight. I had an error message pop up, and I clicked the wrong button, meaning that I lost the post, and actually it was very close to the end, with only one or two short paragraphs to go.

And now, I have lost all enthusiasm in the idea of re-doing the post to the same level as originally written. So here it is in summary;

The post was titled; A race against time.
Our car had to go in to the garage for a problem to be fixed.
Our dealers Garage is a lot closer to where Alex lives than it is to our place.
I had to drop the car off at 0815.
I wanted to get back to Gosport by 1030 for the monthly u3a presentation.
I had no idea how the buses worked in the area.
I wanted to order an uber, but I didn’t have the app on my new phone, reception was poor, the app took an age to down load (actually, less than 5 minutes – still, it seem like an age).
The uber turned up one minute after I placed the request for a ride.
The uber got me to the hard for 0840. I went for breakfast at the premier inn.
I got the 0945 ferry across to Gosport,
I caught an E2 to Memorial hospital, and walked into the meeting hall at roughly 1005.
I saw the presentation, which I enjoyed, and went for a coffee with friends after.
I went home.

1951 – An Experiment

Tonight was another competition at the Gosport Camera Club. The last print competition of the season. There’s one more PDI competition after this, then we are in the rundown to the end of season.

Elayne and I both put three prints into the competition, I think for us it is a case of put something in because you never know what the judge is going to like so it is better to get a poor score, than no score at all.

Now, I want to show you the three prints that I submitted (the header picture is not one of them), but I am aware that every picture I post here uses storage, and I’m not sure how far I ‘ve got to go before mine thinks about running out. So, I have created a flick album. The flickr album has a link, that when you try to read it is pretty meaningless.

I also have a bitly account. Mainly meant for shortening long links, but I can also use it to create links meaningful – to me, at least. But, I don’t know if the link will work and I can’t see the effect until I publish this post. Here it is then, here is the bitly link to an album in my flickr account; https://bit.ly/GCC_Comp_7_260331 Because the flickr album has been made public, I am hoping that you don’t need a flickr account to view it. If you do, then I don’t know what I am doing and will have to try something different.

At the begining of this post, I said that we are getting close to the end of the season. Luckily though, this is a very good camera club, and the end of season doesn’t mean all activities stop. We have a weekly theme (people can post pictures for others to enjoy and comment on, I suspect the coffee mornings will continue (these were new this year, and have been very successful), along with other occasional get-togethers.

OK, I’m going to publish this now. I’m also going to bed, so I probably won’t do anything to fix it it if it goes wrong, until sometime tomorrow. Or, possibly never.

OK, I needed to have a go. It didn’t work the way I wanted. Let’s try this; https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCPzaw

Nope, that didn’t work, how about this; https://flic.kr/p/2s52eCk https://flic.kr/p/2s52eCv https://flic.kr/p/2s586Je

Smples. Just paste the flickr URL into a WP block, and the image comes up. Not quite as efficient as i wanted, but the result is there. I think there is a more efficient way, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.

1950 – Book Mapping

Here is something that I have never done before, and I don’t know why.

I buy a lot of books that I think may be useful for reference purposes. But, how do I know whether they will be really useful? Obviously, you need to get at least an overview of what the book is about, and what it contains. I am also exploring different methods for mapping books.

Why am I doing this now? Well, I have a project in mind that was inspired by my attendance on the u3a Archaeology online group. A lady there did a presentation on fashion during the Neolithic times, for which, it turns out, there is a fair bit of evidence.

My though was; is there a topic in which I am sufficiently interested such that I could even consider doing a presentation that would last an hour. Well, it turns out there is. It is going to take me a fair bit of time to work out whether the idea is a good one (of course, I think it is), but it may turn out to just not work. Either way, I need to understand what the two books I have, so far, are telling me.

The picture is from our visit on Sunday to Hillier’s Gardens. Wat an excellent day out, with a lovely casual stroll through gardens in late winter are still beginning to burst in to life and colour. Definitely well worth a visit later in the year (I don’t know the people in hte picture, they just happened to be there, and I didn’t think they were out of place).

1949 – Letter to Steve VI

Letter VI

Gilbert’s Letter VI talks of a fairly extensive forest adjacent to Selborne. The Forest of Wolmer. Now, I am not aware of a forest of equivalent size near Gosport (the New Forest is too far away), but what we do have is the Alver Valley. This is a lovely nature reserve with a number of walks through it. Sited within the Valley, one of Gosport’s oldest sites, the Mott and Bailey, is near the quaintly named Apple Dumpling Bridge that is over the River Alver that flows through the Valley.

Definitely, I can say with confidence that, unlike the Forest of Wolmer, it has never been used as a hunting reserve for royalty.

Let’s talk briefly about hunting, which was done extensively in Wolmer Forest, bearing in mind that this was the 18^th Century. In terms of today, we would condemn people from those times for hunting species to extinction, but we would view activities then through our lens. In truth, there is little point in doing that, as that was how things were – then!.

What I can tell you about are the delights of the wildlife that visits or lives in and around Gosport; Annual visitors include a large flock of Canadian Geese that gather at various points around the town. I love hearing them talking as they fly over us in their V-shaped formations and decide upon a feeding ground, and then small numbers break off to circle down and land. It really is a delight.

There are so many Starlings in the town. I have bird feeders in the garden. They will descend en masse, devour the contents of the bird table and fly off to look for the next meal. They squabble and fight amongst themselves, and occasionally a grey youngster will get control of the table and fight to keep all others off. I know it is because they are hungry, and I am sorry for them for that, but they give me much delight when they eat the food I put out for them.

Titchfield Haven is another place nearby, well worth a visit, many waterbirds visit through the year, and the hides there provide excellent platforms to watch their activities.

The Foxes abound around town, and they are getting more daring. The one fox that sleeps in our garden was put off today because Elayne was pottering out in the sun for most of the day; it looked most put out as it slinked away upon realising that there was a human about.

Gosport is by no means perfect, but there are some seriously delightful natural experiences to be had here.

All the Best

Bill.

1948 – Project Hail Mary

A while ago, I think on the order of a few months, Alex strongly suggested that I read a science fiction book, Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir (Author of The Martian – both the book and the film are superb). I listened to the audio version rather than read the book, and I have to say that it was absolutely gripping. If you haven’t read it. I strongly recommend that you do.

Now, here is where a bit of conflict comes in, because today, I went to see the film. From memory, apart from just a couple of places, the film, in my view, stuck pretty closely to the book, and even where it didn’t, the story made sense. But I left the cinema with not quite the same degree of satisfaction as I felt at the end of the book. Would I recommend that you see the film before reading the book? Ooooh, I don’t know, please don’t ask me that question.

Now, let me talk about another science TV series that I love (No, not Star Trek, but yes I love that as well), I am talking about The Expanse. I watched the TV series before reading all of the books. I loved doing it that way, because when I read the books, I knew the characters, I knew the spaceships, I was familiar with the politics.

In the case of The Expanse, watching the TV series first definitely worked for me, and really helped when the books at the end of the series went beyond what was covered in the TV series. I’d go so far as to say that watching the TV series before reading the books could work for you. It certainly worked for me. It was, though, deeply frustrating that the TV series didn’t cover all the books.

Don’t get me wrong, the Project Hail Mary film is very much well worth watching.

1947 – Shed Breakfast

I said to ChatGPT please create a picture of a full english breakfast. The header picture is the result, and I have to be honest and say I’d eat that.

This morninngs breakfast with other members of the Shed was slightly smaller than that. But I have tosay was very nice. in a local cafe, where the she has an arrangement for a fixed price they produce 2 cups of tea or coffee and a very nice breakfast. Which is then followed by a small presentation, either by a member of the shed, or an invited speaker from outside.

There wasn’t an external speaker this morning, so members of the shed were invited to tell us about our first memories. I told the story of when my father used to take me to his pub, The Pure Drop. Lovely to recall that.

It was a very nice morning.

1946 – Greenwich Maritime Museum

I wonder if this is the world’s largest ship in a bottle? It’s the one boutside the Maritime Museum, the subject of this month’s Gosport Shed Outing, and another excellent visit it was as well. Well…the journey up didn’t go too well. The drive from Gosport towards the M27, took us an hour, and I say towards because we took a diversion over the hill. We went over the motorway, and the eastbound lane was stationary. So that decision by the coach driver was a good one.

Traffic going in to london was heavy, so we ended up arriving an hour later than was intended, which meant that we had from 1130 – 1630, which actually for me, turned out to be just about right.

The first thing that I noticed was that the Amateur Photographer of the Year exhibition was on. it was a no-brainer, really, so I spent a good hour going around that. I loved all of the pictures, particularly those of the Aurora, which were beautiful. Well, they all were. But I think there were two areas that were impressive: the dep space images. These were amazing, and don’t forget they were being done by amateurs. The second impressive area was the junior section. Those were just amazing. An hour well spent.

I then went into the rest of the museum, which turned out to be quite a bit bigger than I thought. Broken down into areas, there were only a couple of interactive displays in each area, but I thought that was right, pluse they were all working (well, there was one interactive service that was broken, but instead of saying that, the sign on the display said “We are sorry, but this service is lost at sea” which made me chuckle.

All of the areas were interesting and informative, but the area which I found most interesting was The Antarctic. i don’t think anyone can really appreciate how harsh that environment can be without having been there.

The only disappointment of today was that we didn’t end up in a Wetherspoons. Apparently, it was just too awkward to reconcile going to eat and parking the coach, so we had to give it a miss.

Still an excellent day though.

1945 – u3a

OK, I’m going to be honest here. I hated school; I was rubbish there. I really didn’t do well. It was a relief to get away from it when I was 16.

I think ever since I learned to read, I have not shied away from difficult topics, my main reading genre was science fiction (there was a point where I pretty much refused to read anything else), and later I did go to university as a mature student – twice, and part time at that. I wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t enjoyed the experience.

And now here I am at retirement, and what have I done? I’ve thrown myself into the University of the Third Age. Learning for the elderly (that’s probably a bit blunt, but hey-ho). I have to say, it’s difficult to explain the fun I am having with it, and I’m only three months in.

I have a todo list of, admittedly self-imposed, homework. I don’t have to do any of it, I do it, because I am enjoying it. This is how school should have been.

I’ve spent a bit of time this evening reading an absolutely fascinating book, and have been using padlet, which I think I am beginning to find really useful.

I think one of my best Open University years was when I did THD204 – information Technology & Society. It was a mixed group of techies and sociologists, and as you can imagine it got a bit fiery at times, and I got quite excited the course – I loved it.

I think I’m reliving some of that enjoyment now. Learning what I want, when I want. Simply because I can. Love it.

1944 – Camera Club

Tonights Camera Club was slightly different to normal in that members brought in a memory stick containing up to three images for showing to the members, and giving a chance to comment on other peoples work.

I must admit, I did think that not enough people might bring USB’s in, and we would run out. I needn’t have been concerned, if anything, the last couple were rushed because we were going to run out of time.

There was a big selection of images, and I have to confess to a small degree of admiration for judges, they do have a difficult task.

The header picture was one of three I had put in. I had put the colour version of this into a competition, and it hadn’t done very well. The judge thought that the bird had been photoshopped in, whereas I knew that was not the case. The bird really had been there, as taken.

The evening reinforced the view that as an amateur photographer, I take the pictures I like taking, sometimes even if I don’t understand why I’m taking a particular picture, especially if I end up actually really liking that picture – does that make sense?