Personal blog
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.
It’s 6 months and 11 days since I retired. Before retiring, I did what I like to do, and that is draft a retirement plan. I think at the 6-month point it’s reasonable to have a review, and do the usual thing of looking at what has and hasn’t gone well. I think what I’ll do is just work quickly through each. section and look at the high and low points.
Anchor & Morning Activity
It looks like i stopped doing the swing trading thing around mid-April. I was running a tracker against Robbie’s (The Naked Trader) criteria, and only 6 firms kept coming up. There was a danger that I could start random trading, so I decided to stop altogether. I’m not saying I’ll never go back to it, but at the moment, it is totally off my radar, and this activity is very likely to get deleted in the next version of the plan.
Even Facebook isn’t looking to healthy, I’ve had a couple of false starts that have petered out. I’m not by anymeans going to give it up, I just don’t know what to do with it at the moment.
Organising & Systems
It appears I live by systems, I like having them, and I like analysing them. The tools, though, are different. Google Sheets and Obsidian are both available, and I have (am ) using Obsidian, just not very coherently.
I had to go and remind myself what the anti-TikTok project was. It’s my normal stuff. I spend way too much time scrolling through videos that I found fascinating, I say found, as there are some that I am becoming bored with.
I’m not sure what the digital workspace relates to. This?
Evening Wind down
Writing is going very well; I’m doing it every day. (Holding back for the next panel)
Photo editing, some partial success, using Photoshop and Affinity. I’ve done a little bit with it; I need to do a lot more. Reading is OK, but I really do need to do more. I’m also holding back comments on planning vlog & blog. The TikTok plans are in disarray, only because some of them comes to me very quickly,
Creative Work
Part of this is a shocker, the other half an abject failure. On the creative writing front, I submitted a suggestion for a creative writing group in the Gosport u3a. It was accepted, we’ve had the startup session, and it went incredibly well. The first real session is next week, and it does look promising, with a potential 15-18 members.
Vlogging is another of those areas where initially I was very much “what can I vlog”? But now, I think it’s. When can I vlog that? I have two parts of the same vlog on. historical project, listed and ready. I’ve become a compost bin nutcase and am driving Elayne up the wall. Photography is going well, no major successes but some nice scores and a highly commended in a competition.
The one failure is the radio side of things. I was going to sign up to The Bath programme, but I just haven’t got around to it (that sounds like procrastination, and to an extent, it probably is).
Outdoors & Activities
Apart from the fact that about 6 weeks ago, something happened to my knee, everything here has been quite successful.
Walks are mainly around town, with the occasional trip out.
Field Research, I haven’t done an awful lot of. But I do have a project brewing that will change that. Plus, the granddaughter is of an age where she likes to play in the park, so we are outdoors with her.
Cloud watching, we can just do it anytime we are out.
Exploring local areas – I could do a bit more here, very focused on the walks that I know.
The Gosport Shed is good. Some lovely trips out; The Fleet Air Arm Museum, The Greenwich Naval Museum, and the Great Western Railway Museum, all excellent. Then there is the Shed Breakfast, which I thoroughly enjoy.
Council Activities
Are a bit of a damp squib (perhaps a bit unfair there is a good reason why activity is low). I haven’t been to a meeting in quite a while, although I do read through the meeting packs and minutes.
Intellectual Projects (I’m sorry that sounds really pretentious)
Ley line research, apart from the acquisition of a set of dowsing rods and a couple of failed attempts to buy cheap photo equipment that would allow me to position the camera so that I could film myself dowsing, which, because of my tremors, would be ridiculously ineffective, I’ve done nothing with this activity.
u3a – in my view, has been an outstanding success. I’m a member of seven groups, and have done several presentations on various topics, and have three more lined up, and am having so much fun it’s unreal. I’m just really enjoying it, and can’t recommend it enough to people. Two of the three topics on the chart (Local history and Astronomy) are covered under u3a. Earth Mysteries was going to be proposed as a group, but is on hold at the moment.
Slow Media
I’m not too sure what I meant by this now. I suspect it partially involved keeping up with the news, which at the moment is so horrible that I prefer to bury my head in a bucket of sand. I may remove this group.
Goals
Write a book – Well, you should never say never.
Become famous on TikTok & YouTube – well, I think I’ll tone that down a bit, to just have a presence on YouTube at the moment.
Start a newspaper – a nice aspiration, still at that level.
Live as long as I can – I need to get fitter, eat less, and walk more.
Get a PhD – I’d love to, but no chance.
Well I’m quite surprised actually. Well, not really – I did the plan as a bit of fun, and I have barely referred to it since last year, but it is hung there in full view. Where I’ve been successful, I’m really pleased. There are some things to do, and the plan does need tweaking, but overall, I’m pretty pleased with it.
Dear Steve
The mistake that I have made with tonight’s Letter to Steve is that I have not done very much with it, after a rather intense period of conversing with my assistant on Monday.
We had quite a wide-ranging discussion, starting mostly with how I discovered Gilbert White. Summarised: driving north on the A3, the roundabout after Petersfield has a tourist sign for Gilbert White’s house, it took me a while to remember to Google him, and of course, when I did, I found out about his book, the antiquities and natural history of Selborne. It took us a while longer to visit his house.
In the meantime, somewhat arbitrarily, I had become determined not to buy his book until we had visited his house. Which, of course, I did. Ironically, I have only had one opportunity to buy his book in a bookshop, and that was in Rye. Well, after I had already bought it. Of course, I could have bought it at any time on Amazon.
Last week’s letter, Letter XX, was in some respects a bit of an eye-opener, and started a train of thought that could lead to something interesting. I’m not quite ready to talk a lot about it at the moment, but I am sure that I won’t be able to resist dropping hints and tips as time moves on. The one thing I will say is that I did get quite excited at an idea we’d had, only to discover in Letter XX that someone had almost exactly the same idea back in the 1760s. That kind of made a link in a way. It turns out that our idea may not work anyway.
Gilbert’s letter this week was about the Stone-curlew and more bird observations. I can’t help saying that I felt horrified at what the young boys were doing to nests. Whilst it isn’t exactly the same thing, I quite often see children chasing pigeons; they seem to especially love running through a crowd of them, making them flap and fly away. I quite often feel like saying leave them be. They have as much right to be here as you or I. I don’t, of course.
Talking of observations, I had to pop out to the Chemist’s and Morrisons today. I heard the banging and clattering before I got anywhere near Clarence Road and The Tavern. Sad to see that another of Gosport’s institutions appears to be succumbing to the march of the House in Multiple Occupation (HMO). Not entirely, though, as apparently a small part is to be retained as a pub.
All the Best
Bill.
I was sitting in the chair under the hut awning. We were both admiring the garden, but what grabbed my attention wasn’t really the garden it was the spider webs.
I have no idea how many times I’ve said in my blog that I don’t like spiders; I am, in fact, arachnophobic. I’m afraid of them. But it appears that I am not afraid of all spiders, only big ones, especially if they are coming towards me. I also don’t like seeing pictures of spiders in magazines or papers. If there is a picture, I have to turn it over. If having turned it over, it is just face down, then I have to turn another page, so that I’m not touching the picture, because I can’t bear the thought of my hands being on the picture. ‘I know this is utterly ridiculous, but I tell you just so you know how ludicrous this is.
Because it appears that I am not afraid of all spiders, only big ones. Around a centimetre is about my limit. larger – definitely not. smaller- probably OK.
OK, having made myself look silly, one thing I can say is that there is no doubt that they are fascinating creatures. Note least of that fascination is their web building abiliities.
The frustration today came from my attempts to take a picture of the web built by one particular little beastie – it was on the web, and probably about 4 millimetres across, so well within the bounds of acceptable repulsiveness. This little chap was building a web, the main strand of which stretched between the bamboo rod on the right of the header picture to a bamboo rod hidden behind the burgundy flower, a distance of about 18 inches (45 Centimetres). Also, this was 4 – 5 feet above the ground. As much as I don’t like spiders, you can’t help admiring their skills and determination when it comes to web building. In fact, if you look at the green bowl hanging from the hut awning, you can see the web strand. It isn’t much to look at in the photograph, but thinking about the effort the spider had to put into it really makes it quite remarkable.
Not an issue with the kit, I think what might have helped is a dark background. I think I might have one somewhere. I need to find it, and then work out a way of hanging it.
I don’t know what it is about mornings, but come around 1030-ish, I feel irresistibly tired, no matter how good a night I’ve had. I’ve pretty much just given up fighting it and have taken to accepting the nap. To be honest, at the moment, it’s too hot anyway, and I am trying to avoid going out in the midday sun.
The rest of the day flowed fine. I reported to the Diabetes shop at 1300 ready for my afternoon stint, and we had quite a busy one, over the day, not just my time, we took over £400, which apparently is not bad for a Friday.
I went through the back of the shop today, and for the first time, noticed the book rack, which is very heavily stocked. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to take a good look at it, but I will try to make the time to do that.
As the shop was closing, Elayne met me at the shop, as it is very close to the ferry, we went across to Portsmouth, we had a burger at Five Guys, and then went to see Toy Story 5, and back home. A very pleasant evening. Toy Story 5 is still on the circuit, so beyond saying that we really enjoyed the film, I won’t give anything else away.
Today’s picture was taken through the glass on the Gosport Ferry, White Ryder II backing out and starting its next run over to Ryde. It’s a nice journey, I’ve done it a few times now.
I don’t know how many years I’ve been saying that I want to vlog, but I never quite knew what to vlog about. Over the last few weeks, though, I’ve come to a bit of a realisation. It might sound a bit odd, but I think it accurately represents things.
Now, the one thing that just about all of the “episodes” I have watched on YouTube have talked about is how important it is to know your niche and make sure that you only do videos that relate to the niche. The problem has been that I didn’t have a niche.
You’ll notice that I used the past tense there. Because, quietly, I think I have clicked what my niche is, and it can pretty much be summed up in one word;
Curiosity.
I’m curious about things. If I see a hole being dug in the road, I try to find out why. If there is an event going on, can I find out about it? I look at plants, what insects can I see on it, what plant is it, and will my app recognise it. What is happening in the sky? Is there a particular night when it is worth spending some time stargazing? What is happening to the shingle beach in Stokes Bay? How did the people who gathered the information for the Domesday Book know how to be consistent across the country? How did society begin? I’ll stop there; I think you get the idea that my niche is fairly broad.
The Thing is, you see, any and all of those subjects written about can be the subject of a vlog. It seems that I have some topics that I can write and vlog about. Oh, there is one more topic that could be in the list above but isn’t, and it’s all about compost bins. It’s a bit of a sore subject, it’s a bit of a bone of contention between Elayne and I, I’ve started treating the compost bins as a bit of a home science project, and have produced three vlogs on the subject. They are very professionally produced (oh, the sarcasm runs deep here), They are hardly BBC productions, but they’re real and I am learning something with each one. They can be found on my YouTube channel:
Yesterday, I wrote a post about observations: https://localitystories.com/2026/07/07/2047-observations/
As you can imagine, today, I was really looking out for observations that I could record. You know what’s coming next, don’t you?
I did get out today. I met up with some friends from the Camera Club at the Vine, which is about half a mile from us. I was watching as I walked out, did anything catch my eye? To be honest, no.
On the way back, I was on the Waitrose side of the road, and there were some roadworks, or similar. I was mildly excited as I tend to find holes in the ground worth of observation. As I got nearer, there were men working, and they were using a grinder to cut into the pavement, but no hole. For some reason, that. I can’t explain. I didn’t take a picture, perhaps I didn’t think what they were doing was really of value as an observation? I have had a think about that, and with hindsight, I think I’ve missed something. That needs to change.
I need to talk at this point about a project I had adopted several years ago, and like in a lot of cases, I did the initial work, but haven’t followed up on it. That is watching the shops on Stokes Road, and monitoring when they change. Well, I was walking along the street, and was quite shocked by how much some shops had changed. I don’t know if I’m going to follow up on that. Some changes, though, were quite major in terms of shop frontages.
Then, when I got home, I thought “Ah! Butterflies,” I would go into the garden, there are bound to be some butterflies, even if they are only Cabbage Whites. Although we have seen Red Admirals and Small Coppers. Because we have our granddaughter today, we spent a fair bit of time in the garden. How many butterflies did I see? Yes, none. Of course, later in the day, I did see one, and it even settled near my foot, but I didn’t have my phone with me, so no pictures.
although the day was unsuccessful in terms of observations, I actually discounted one activity which I really should have captured. That’s a lesson learned.
I haven’t been anywhere today, apart from a couple of small car trips. I haven’t walked, which is bad. As it got towards midday, I became aware that I would have a problem with tonight’s post as I didn’t have anything to write about.
Spend 10 minutes in a garden that a beekeeper had praised for being bee friendly. annd the chances are that you’ll find a bee. Especially a bumble bee, which are probably amongst my favourite insects e(unlike spiders, which aren’t in that list).
The bee in the picture was very focused. Taken with my iPhone, it meant I was almost millimetres away from it. I fully expected it to fly off, but luckily it didn’t. I hope it was getting a good meal from the flower.
One frustration is identifying the flowers. I have an app on my phone, which works occasionally – I think to make it work all the time, I would need to pay a subscription, which I don’t want.
I went looking for butterflies as well. I had been sitting under the shed, and a really big one flew by. I didn’t respond straightaway (I should have done, Gilbert wouldn’t have been impressed. My search was frustratingly fruitless. I think I’ll have another look tomorrow.
This is the story of how I discovered Gilbert White. Because of my work, we moved from Cambridgeshire to Gosport. Elayne’s family live in South London. The easiest route to visit them is to travel north on the A3. Just to the north of Petersfield is the only roundabout on the A3 outside the M25.
The first exit off the Roundabout is signposted “Gilbert White’s House”. For I don’t know how many years from 2014 (when we moved) as we went around the roundabout, I would ask, ” Who is Gilbert White? Why is his house sign posted”? And then I googled him. I then knew about Gilbert, and I then knew about his book.
It took us another couple of years to visit The Wakes. In the meantime, I was determined that I was only going to buy his book when we visited his house. That’s when my journey with Gilbert really began.
I started writing Letters to Steve in early February. I had been poorly in January, my first month in retirement. I had not enjoyed January, but February was getting better, and I wanted a mission, a task. I was getting them through u3a as well, but this was different, somehow it felt more personal, mainly I think because of Steve, my best friend who had died 23 years earlier. It seemed a bit strange writing to him, but I felt there was no one else who would have appreciated it.
What triggered tonights post is Gilbert’s letter 21 (XXI), My assistant and I had only just concluded a fairly detailed discussion about potential future aspects of the letters. I’m only on Letter 21, and they are evolving from what had been a direct response to Gilbert White’s letter into something else.
What got both my assistant and I was the fact that letter 21, written in 1769, referred to something that was incredibly close to what we had been discussing as a potential development. Talk about synchronicity.
Dear Steve.
Gilbert White’s Letter XX is all about birds. But it is also about the community and network that he has put in place to support his interests.
I can’t follow that. I don’t have the network, and I certainly wouldn’t want to receive a never-ending supply of dead birds. I’m going to say luckily, with our ability to communicate, and perhaps more importantly, send images anywhere in the world, means it isn’t necessary to exchange physical bodies.
Then there are the birds. If I were fanatical about them, I’m sure I could make the time to go bird watching, but I don’t. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like to casually watch birds, especially in our garden; I love doing that.
In some respects, mainly reach and speed, my network would leave Gilbert breathless. But, in reality, it is the kind of friend who would knock on your door to tell you something interesting.
I’m bursting to tell you about something which happened last Wednesday. The timing here is relevant, at around 1pm, I was feeling peckish and fancied some Polish sausage for lunch. I took a walk to our local shop, picked up lunch and got back probably 1:30 ish. Nothing unusual there.
It was around 2:00pm when our neighbour, Jacky, knocked on the door and asked if I knew we had a swarm of bees in the silver birch at the front of our garden. I hadn’t noticed anything on my return from the shop, but looking out now, I could see a small cloud around the tree.
Without getting too close, I tried to look at the core of the swarm; it looked like a very tightly packed bundle of bees, about the size of a rugby ball. My assistant (as I’m now calling ChatGPT) advised that I had three options;
The Bees had split off from a hive that had become overcrowded and were looking for a new home. I could leave them, and the chances were that they would leave when the scouts reported that they had found an acceptable residence. The danger there is that the new home could be our loft or chimney! To call the council’s pest control office to come and remove the swarm. The problem here is that it would mean the death of the swarm. Totally unacceptable, and absolutely the last resort. Call the Beekeepers association, they would identify a local keeper who would be prepared to come and recover the swarm
Option 3 was the one. After a brief exchange, I was told that a chap called Mark was on his way from Whitely to have a look and do what was needed. I have to say that I was very impressed with the Beekeepers Association. The organisation’s website and the response were very professional.
Mark arrived about thirty minutes later, he assessed the situation. Luckily, I was able to provide the step ladder for him to access the swarm and a table to set up the temporary hive.
He got suited up and mounted the ladder. I saw him vigorously shake the tree and the swarm drop in the box. The bees weren’t happy. But after a couple of minutes, it was obvious that he had got the queen, and that she seemed happy with the new home. By now, it was around 3pm. I was concerned as the bees were right next to the route people take from school. Mark, though, was relaxed.
I invited Mark through to the back garden for a cup of tea. I’m delighted to say that he was quite complimentary about how bee-friendly Elayne had it. She was very pleased when I told her later.
He left the hive in place until 9pm. He described the collection as a classic example of how to do it. I asked Mark what would happen to the swarm, would he keep it? “No, I already have ten colonies, which is enough. I’ll pass it on to a friend”. Although I didn’t ask who, I quietly hoped it was somebody who was just getting started and that their new colony would be well looked after.
As Mark was closing up the hive, I commented that there were still a few bees around. His response was very matter-of-fact: “You can’t get them all. Some will always be left behind” I knew about the method that would be followed; I think it was a singular honour to see it from swarm arrival to being taken away. A fantastic act of nature. I just felt sad about the ones who wouldn’t make it to their new home.
All the best
Bill
I spent a bit of time in the garden this afternoon. But not to work, oh no. Just to enjoy the atmosphere.
We have a couple of chairs under the awning of the shed. We can sit there even if it is raining – provided it’s not too windy and the rain too heavy. It’s really quite nice to be able to do that.
The header picture is mostly about the tomato plants that Elayne is cultivating, and it is very nice to sit at the end of the gharden, and just watch the greenery grow.
Today, we were there with an ice cream, followed by a cup of tea and a couple of good dunking biscuits.
It was a very pleasant hour, and yes, I did snooze a bit.
Nature's nuances in a nutshell
Our thoughts define us, so let's focus on a few.
Where art, food, and world travel are incorporated into the home with a feminine twist!
Hi! my name is Sebastian (You can call me Seb!) ...welcome to my Blog. I'm a photographer from Worcester, Worcestershire, England. Thanks for dropping by! I hope you enjoy my work.
Thoughts on books, language, meaning, and the culture around it.
Thinking about evidence and vice versa
Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process
Trying to live a creative life
Where observation and imagination meet nature in poetry.
I'm here to work on fiction. Occasionally I'll blog but that's certainly not my focus. You have a specific fiction genre or format you can't find enough of? Ask me. Maybe I got it. I migh share it with you. Otherwise, leave me alone; I'm toiling away at my workbench.
Recipes showing step by step directions with pictures and a printable recipe card.
Sanslartigue 2: The silent camera continued
My website for my blog posts, reviews and other random things
Learn more about an independent artist who creates a unique style of music all his own.
Health , wellness , wellbeing and positive mindset creation
A passion for photography
A Site Dedicated To Everything Pigeon
Bills Posts