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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.

I am very disappointed with myself. I was nearly 30 minutes late for today’s Local History session. I had somehow managed to translate a 1400 start into a 1430 start (and as a result of being late, triggered a review of other sessions. I would also have been late for Exploring Art next week.

As it was, I turned up to a room with I’d estimate about 30 people in, and no spare chairs. 3I nearly backed out, but luckily, the course lead very kindly gave me their chair. Those plastic chairs are not the most comfortable, and I’m concerned that when I lean back, I can feel the chair remoulding itself, making it even worse, so I end up just sitting upright and not leaning back, which is what the chairs are probably designed to do.

Today’s Local History session would have been a bad one to miss. It was a presentation on Press Gangs. A topic that is particularly relevant to Gosport.

What I hadn’t appreciated was that Press Gangs operated under a warrant. They had a legal basis. I’d never considered that before. To me, a press gang was a gang of roughneck sailors who went out to club a few men over the head for them to wake up on board ship.

Even just that small part of the talk was quite enlightening.

I’m slightly frustrated. For various reasons, I am going to have to miss the next session of Local History, which is member research into Prison Hulks and the Prisoners of Rat Island. Looking for an unusual angle, I was potentially heading for a book review of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, featuring the character Magwitch, who was an escaped prisoner from a prison hulk. Interesting. I’d have liked to have done that.

No Post Tonight

I hope you don’t mind.

I attended my father-in-law’s funeral today.

1990 – Letter to Steve XII

Dear Steve,

If I were in a position to be able to photograph the nest of a harvest mouse, I’d eagerly grab it, obviously without disturbing the occupants. The nests are quite a feat of engineering. I certainly wouldn’t do what Gilbert did, take one indoors and roll it around on the table, apparently with the babies still inside. Attitudes to such things were very different in his day.

Gilbert’s mentioning mice reminded about the time we were getting ready to move to Gosport. We had stored some old rugs in the shed, and as we moved them, hundreds of seeds fell out. We undid the rug, and it had been a mouse home. What struck me wasn’t the nest itself so much as the sheer effort that had gone into gathering the food.

Misty, our cat, very occasionally brings a mouse into the house to play with. We try to get it away from her; we have a technique now that is moderately successful in rescuing the mouse. When the mouse gets away from us, we end up putting a humane trap down. We use peanut butter as the bait. It smells and draws the mice in. Sometimes it can take a couple of days, but usually I’ll pick the trap up to see a mouse staring at me. We make a point of letting it go well away from the house.

I was out for a walk this morning. As usual, I swung past the Cockle Ponds. I was chuffed as monkeys to see the seaweed clearing machine in operation. I’ve been waiting to see that for a long time.

There are a lot of jellyfish in the ponds at the moment. I couldn’t help noticing that some of them looked a bit different to others. Their reproductive organs looked swollen and full. Initially, I was concerned as I thought they may be sick. But then, I realised that they were full of eggs, or possibly early-stage larvae. Either way, I’ll keep an eye on them.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a swallow or a swift. I hope they are still about. Gilbert was writing about early beliefs that when they disappeared in the wintertime, they were hibernating underwater. People were reporting that Swallows were appearing in Senegal, Africa, but there was no way of saying that the birds seen there had come from the UK. Today, tiny tracking devices can show astonishing journeys across continents, but in Gilbert’s day such claims must have sounded impossible.

All the Best

Bill

1989 – Taking it easy

I have to confess that I don’t like talking about any ailments that I might have. The one exception to this is if it affects something like going for a walk. Which is what happened to me on Thursday.

I’d been for a walk along my usual route, past the Cockle Ponds, along the sea front, up the high street (pausing at the Craft Cafe for some lunch) and then home. Except this time, as I approached Gosport Museum, I started getting a twinge in my knee. Within no more than about 10 yards, the pain was so intense that I had to stop walking, and I really couldn’t move. I hobbled up to Morrison’s and was seriously considering getting a taxi to take me home. I didn’t.

By the time I got home, I was still in a lot of pain and really quite worried, so I phoned 111. They took me through a diagnostic and said they were arranging for the Doctor to give me a call, which they did a while later, and followed that up with a face-to-face on Friday. In the meantime, the Doctor prescribed some painkillers.

By the time the Friday appointment came round, things had eased a lot, and I was able to walk. Elayne took me to the Med Centre.

The Doctor asked more questions and had a feel of my knee. There was some fluid there, but not enough to justify inserting a needle to draw it off. The doctor’s guidance was to finish the course of painkillers and to take it easy with walking for a while.

I’m still hobbling, but it is definitely easier. I don’t think I’ll be visiting the Cockle Ponds for a few days. I’ll see how it goes next week. I’m following the pill regimen, and things are easier, but I will take it easy. I’ll have to see how things go in judging when I’m ready to resume walking.

That’s frustrating, because I’m keen to get to Stokes Bay for my geology project with the u3a.

Sorry for going on about it.

1988 – A u3a Project

Only 5 days ago, I did a u3a review. The Geology interest group was one where I had recorded “No Task – Yet”. Well, I think I have found one.

We go to the beach fairly regularly, say a couple of times a month, even if it is only for fish and chips. Recently, I have found myself looking at the beach differently than I normally do.

I’ve never given much thought to all the shingles before. I’m wondering about the stones that are there. But now, I am wondering where the stones come from? Are the stones being moved along the beach?

It’ll give me a reason to get out of the house, and when I’m there, pay a bit more attention to it. v

1987 – The Cockle Ponds

The Model Yacht club was active today, racing. There was one yacht which was well out of it. I couldn’t help wondering if a prospective new member was controlling the yacht and was doing the same as I did when I was thinking about joining the club,

I was able to watch the pond clearer in operation. It is a good few years since I first saw so it was lovely to see it clearing the lake grass.

The jellyfish were out in force today. I am sure there are thousands of them in the pond. I’ve said in other posts, I wonder if they interrupt the models’ sailing.

Talking of the jellyfish. I have some exciting news about them, but I am going to leave it to the next Letter To Steve (No. XII)

I did have one unpleasant experience. Whilst on the way home, I developed an intense pain in my left knee, it left me hobbling to get home. I have a Drs appointment tomorrow.

1986 – How did they Know?

A while before I joined u3a, I started reading some history books. Briefly, I became interested in the English Civil War, and bought a book about it. The problem with the book was that it didn’t tell me what led up to the start of the war.

I temporarily gave up on the book (OK, temporary being almost 3 years). I went back to a period where I expected there would be good records as evidence for today’s history books. That period turned out to be the time of the Plantagenets, the 12^th & 13^th Centuries, and I started reading from there. I reached a point in a book about the Stuart Kings where I felt comfortable going back to the original book.

This detail is important because, as I was reading the books, I became increasingly interested in the societies in which these people lived, and the level of organisation that existed at that time.

Ironically, I am going to mention an undertaking that happened roughly 100 years before the Plantagenets; the Domesday Book. With that, and society after that time, there were events that continually caused me to wonder, “How did they know how to do that?” It wasn’t what they did, it was how they did it.

Enter the u3a. There are two groups of which I am a member, the Gosport group “History”, and the online interest group, “Archaeology”. As I’ve taken part in those groups, I have been reminded to ask that one question.

I suspect it is a question that will stay with me.

1985 – Macro & Stacking

Tonight was camera club night. It was a member’s night, when we get to choose what we are going to do, well, almost. I think it might have been Tim, the club chairman, who decided the topic for the evening.

Some members brought in setups; Jon was showing how to do photo-stacking, Mike was doing macro, and another member was showing his setup for doing still life. There were a couple of those.

I had taken in my D5300, the macro lens, the lights, and of course the lego figures. I got the figures set up so that I could focus on each figure in turn, and that should provide the basis for a photo stacking exercise.

I did a couple of different configurations of the lego figures. I am not really that competent with macro lenses, and wanted to learn some things about them, e.g. how fare away can I be for the subject to fill the screen. I also learned that I really do need to get a remote control for the camera. When it came to the stacking, the end result had a slight blur on one of the figures, indicating that it or the camera moved during the exposure. Much more likely to be the camera, rather than the figure.

Tim was using his laptop to demonstrate how to do focus stacking. He was talking Elayne through it, so I stood and listened. He had produced a quick guide on how to do it, very useful. The way he laid it out, made it look very straightforward. I’m looking forward to having a go.

We all agreed that it had been a good and entertaining evening, with a bit of learning thrown in as well.

1984 – A u3a Review

I joined the u3a in early January. That’s nearly five months ago, I can hardly believe it. I thought this would be a good time to sit back and look at how things are going. I wrote a quick list of the groups I’m involved in.

Where there’s an opportunity in a group, I like to come away with a task. A good example of this is Stargazing, and my hunt for asterisms (https://localitystories.com/2026/05/01/1981-asterisms/).
Of the seven u3a groups I’m a member of, I’ve given myself tasks for three of them, plus. my ongoing Letters to Steve.

None of these tasks is tied to a specific timetable. I certainly don’t feel overwhelmed. What particularly delights me, though, is the learning, including the research techniques, some of which I wish I had learned years ago.

The u3a is giving me the opportunity to learn, both at my own speed and in areas that genuinely interest me – not what somebody else thinks I should learn.

1983 – Letter to Steve XI

Dear Steve,

I read through Letter XI, and I confess, I was more than a bit surprised by the first paragraph. Gilbert had acquired a dead falcon. Taking it into his home, he took measurements of it, and looked at its characteristics. That kind of floored me a bit. What could I do that was in any way similar to that?

I wouldn’t pick up a dead animal and bring it into the house, and then start poking and prodding it, so there seemed to be no equivalent activity that I could comment upon. But then I remembered Road Kill.

Deer, foxes and badgers are probably the most common animals that I’ve seen at the roadside. It always saddens me when I see them. I wonder if there are people who would stop and pick it up, especially the deer, as that means venison. I also wondered if there was any legislation that deals with roadkill, and organisations responsible for removal? I had to Google that question.

The law is very confusing. Not even a search could clarify things for me. Apart from the health risks of picking it up for food, it’s probably best to just let the local authorities or police know it’s there.

Gilbert’s letter XI goes into a lot of detail on his local bird population, including species names. I’m not going to do that, but I do like talking about the birds and other life that we get. The starlings in particular deserve a lot of attention.

I do feel a little bit guilty. I could have used the word entertaining when watching the birds in the garden, on the table and at the feeder. We are being entertained by their urgent need to hunt for food. I just don’t think it’s right that we draw pleasure from their activities, but at least I do put food out for them, and it is lovely to see them take that food.

Hover flies are fascinating. I quite often sit in the garden and watch them. They do settle, of course, and if I were to get a photo of them, it would be then. The chances of getting a picture of them in flight would be verging on impossible for me. They are so fast, and their direction appears to be random.

Another area that I can explore and introduce a regular update on my blog is the two compost bins we have. They are both full at the moment, and when I lift the lids, there is frantic scurrying. We even have slowworms, which we see occasionally. I am going to keep an eye on how the bins are doing and will comment if I see any big changes.

All The Best

Bill