I didn’t get out for a walk today, nor did I get any ironing done. It’s surprising how quickly the family can interfere with plans, as happened today. Luckily, it has turned out OK. Also, after my run to Portsmouth ended, I got home, sat at the computer, and promptly fells asleep. Another bit of the day gone.

Before this evening’s Camera Club, Elayne had been given an honour. She was asked to put a display of her pictures on the notice board in HEDCA. I’m not sure how long they will be up. It could be a month. I really can’t put in to words just how proud of her that I am.

I really should (another prematurely published letter – I think I have just messed up, I hadn’t noticed the time, it’s midnight. My 67 day streak has been messed up because of me. Aaaagh! It’ll be back to 0 for the Wednesday post). Anyhow, back to the post. I really should have written something about stargazing in last nights post.

I spent a good thirty to forty minutes in the garden, using my hunter’s chair. It worked really well. What didn’t work so well was a mechanism to hold my phone in front of my face, so that I could use Stellarium. I want an arrangement whereby I can have something like a heads-up display. I can swivel, look at the sky, and briefly glance at the phone for it to tell me what i am looking at. It worked after a fashion, but not as well as I wanted it to. I have an alternative plan, a compromise. Not good in most respects, but very good in a couple of others. I think I might have to start producing a series of pictures illustrating my failure, and hopefully, ultimately, my success.

The actual stargazing itself was successful; it always is when you look at a clear night sky. Even if you are not seeing as much as you wanted to because of; 1. A really bright Gibous Moon, and 2. light pollution. Most frustrating. But as my eyes became accustomed over the first 20 minutes or so, I could definitely see a few more bright stars.

Tomorrow is the 1st wednesday of the month, so its U3A in the morniing.. This month’s talk is about Rat Island. I’ll fill you in, hopefully tomorrow (well, today really as it is Midnight 14, 0014). Time for bed, I think.

I spent a couple of hours at the Gosport Shed. It was the Monday Meeting, which was really brief, literally about 5 minutes, and the morning auction was even briefer, with only three items; a table lamp and two coats on offer

I had to pop back home, but then went into town, I posted a couple of letters through the post office, and then went into the Craft Cafe for a cup of tea.

I did the cafe the wrong way round, really. I should do the walk first, which gives me even more material for my FaceBook Post for the day, like this header picture, taken after the Cafe. There are more that I want to show you, so I hope you don’t mind if I share a Flickr album with you; https://bit.ly/Monday02Mar26. Doesn’t really matter as I can write about today ,tomorrow.

Elayne bought a book of photography projects, that we are going to try to do together. This weeks topic is Shadows.

I had a very pleasant few hours.

Apologies – we had a long day out, not long back. Not able to do a post this evening, but wanted to keep the count going.

I’m fairly confident that the main vessel in the header is the Dredger Bluefin, which operates in this area a lot. From the direction it is heading (in towards Southampton), it’s either returning from dropping a load at the spill ground or coming in to prepare for a deredging task.

Tuesday was, as usual, Camera Club Night. A members night, which meant the club came up with something rather than having an external presentation. There had been a members night a couple of weeks ago, when three different desk top activities were set up and member given the opportunity to photograph them. i think I reported here, after that night, that I has spent the whole evening talking to friends, and took not a single picture. Elayne, on the other had had been merrily clicking away.

I paid the price for my laziness this week. We had been invited to bring in any prints (not competition mounted) that we liked, or wanted critiqued for issues. Obviously, had none, and Elayne had plenty to show.

I must admit that I felt quite guilty that I hadn’t made the effort to take some pictures so that I could take part in this week’s activity.

I really must make a better effort.

I went in to town this morning. I had a couple of things that I needed to do, not difficult. They were dispatched quickly, I felt able to carry on to the waterfront. Just in time to see this little fishing vessel come in. I used to see them going out very early in the morning, nice to see one come back in, I hope it had a good, profitable catch.

There was a professional unit doing a job on one of the trees on Stokes Road. That time of the morning, they were trimming the higher branches. When we went past again, later in the day, the whole tree had been reduced more or less to a stump. I do hope that this is the only tree affected, on the avenue, although small, barely 70 or 80 yards long is very nice, and offers welcome shade in the summer. More on trees later in the week.

I had ordered a chair off Amazon, a chair with a special purpose. It is a hunting chair. I guess it will be used for hunting. Stars. It’s my star gazing chair. It took a little bit of assembling, but luckily that went fairly smoothly.

The main thing about it is that it swivels, which is really useful when I want to look at the different parts of the sky that I can see from our back garden. Another really useful feature is that it folds up, which is very handy. Sadly, it doesn’t tilt, but I can get over that. I’ve stowed it with the summer chairs, under the awning of the main shed.

For three successive nights now, I have been able to do some star gazing. I’ve done more in the last three nights, than I have for quite a while. The lovely thing was being able to see the Moon and Jupiter quite close to each other. Another star caught my eye, and guiding Stellarium towards it told me that it was Procyon. Very nice it brought back science fiction stories that I’ve read featuring that star.

I also had a good look at Capella, which was nice.

In its ownright, Gosport is not a big town. The high street is not huge. At the moment, it’s not very weel populated with shop choice – but that is a different story. In population terms though, across Hampshire it sits between the 5th and 8th largest towns in the county.

If I were to say that Gosport isn’t a very interesting town, in terms of what is going on day to day, I would say that is a fair assessment. But, in terms of history, I really couldn’t be more wrong. In the last 500 – 600 years, the history of the town is rammed with events and occurrences.

Now this next one isn’t necessarily the fault of Gospport, but take half an hour and go and sit on the Esplanade de Royan (our twin town) and watch the different vessels that come through. Small boats, big boats, warships, warships from other nations, crusieships at the right time of day, and Role-on-Role-off ferries a real collection of different types.