Bills Posts

Clarence yard, in its heyday must have been a very interesting place. One of two victualling centres for the Royal Navy. The site contains a slaughter house (still called the Slaughterhouse) and the ovens for backing bread for all of the ships in dock.

I heard a story about how small boats would collect bread and take the loaves out to ships in the Solent, moving from ship to ship. When you are here, it’s easy to imagine. But, you could have no idea of what life must have been on board ship, especially for those who had been picked up by the press gangs. Horrible life.

I walked around the yard, taking pictures to do a series on the project 365 website. I think I get everything I need.

Again, the picture bears no connection to tonight’s topic. I had a plan where I was going to prepare a meal and video it. Just to get some practice in, both in food preparation and videoing. It didn’t quite work out in the way I intended.

I wasn’t able to get out for a lunchtime walk. I decided that after work, I would go for a walk so that I at least get my five miles in. I managed to. do that. The plan was that after the walk, I would come back, get set up and video the preparation.

What I actually did was come back, get the food ready, and as I was taking it out of the microwave remember that I was supposed to have filmed this. I quietly swore tomyself and got on to edat my tea.

After tea, I got the phone set up as my camera and did a bit of experimenting. I’m fairly confident that the wireless lavalier microphones that I haven’t used for a while aren’t working. I tried a sound experiment and with or without the mics there was no difference

I have this habit of getting set up to do something, and then not doing it. I end up with kit that doesn’t work, because I haven’t used it. I need to be aware of that, and perhaps not indulge my whims quite so much.

Here are the magazines I subscribe to;

• Country Walking
• B&W Photography
• RCTS Observer
• Dorset Life

I’ve been taking the first three magazines for a number of years now, and Dorset Life for just over one year. The things is, when I first subscribed, I would flick through the magazines, and read the odd article here and there. But then the lockdowns came. Once that happened, I made a vow that I would read all my magazines from cover to cover. Right up until the one before the most recent issues, I did that.

For some reason I can’t fathom, I broke the habit. I went back to the old way. I think it was partly because I had a book that I was more interested in reading than the magazines. The book was Gilbert White’s A Natural History of Selborne. I bought it at his house, I was determined to read it. I still am, but a bit slower. The book comprises a series of letters. I’m adopting a practice of reading a letter a day. Nothing to report on the book yet, I’ve read the first twenty letters so far.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do when the next round of magazines starts. The one exception is Dorset Life – that one, I continue to read front to back.

I have an audible account. If you aren’t familiar with that, they have a very large collection of audio books. But I also like proper paper books.

It’s been quite a while, two possibly three years since I read a fiction book I’ve been going through a non-fiction phase. That doesn’t apply to audio books though, those have been heavily SF oriented, so I have by no means given up on the genre.

I have bought a few SF books in second hand bookshops mostly, it’s quite often the case that it’ll be a book I’ve read before and haven’t seen for quite a few years. Have you seen the film 2001 a Space Odyssey, focus on the scene where Hal kills Poole, and pushes his space suited body away from the pod.

Clarke’s book 3001 the final odyssey is the story of what happens when, a thousand years after those event, humanity had progressed to a point where Poole’s body is inadvertently discovered just as it is about to depart the solar system and is recovered and what happens after that recovery. I’m not going to give way any more of the story.

What I found surprising is that I had really got out of the habit of reading rather than listening to fiction, and I more or less had to force myself to read. As it is, I am enjoying the book.

I don’t think I’ve done this before. Sat down and thought about the week ahead. I am hoping that this will give me an opportunity to think about what could occupy this space over the coming days.

There’s always the chance that something interesting could crop up on one of the morning or lunchtime walks. I don’t mind a couple of entries covering that side of things.

I’m going to have the chance to cook my tea at least once during the week. I’m planning to do something with the air fryer. That’ll be an interesting experience that might be worth a post.

Then there’s the book of the week, I’ve got a science fiction audio book by Ben Bova and a paper book which is my current going to bed reading on the go. Perhaps a piece about my reading habits seems appropriate.

Talking about reading habits leads me on to magazines. Now there has been a bit of an issue there, but I’ll talk about that in the piece (a hint to myself; why have I stopped?).

I think next Saturday or Sunday is I’ll try and get out for a walk. That is likely to be worth an entry. I’ll assume at least one random piece and that’ll do me. Having mapped my week out, let’s see how well I stick to it.

Actually, the picture is from earlier this week. The Commodore Clipper, inbound passing the Spinnaker. It was a misty, drizzly morning hence the top of tower missing. Apart from Wednesday, when it was raining in the morning, it’s been quite a good week for walking. There have been three days when I haven’t been able to get a full complement of miles in, which has left me about 13 miles short for an average week.

There is of course, nothing I can do about the weather but the intention is to get in a full week. Let’s see how it goes.

On the photography front, I didn’t realise at the beginning of the week that I would later on have done my first photo story on Project 365, about the tunnel Queen Victoria had built through the ramparts. It was quite interesting. I’m now looking for the next story. I think I’m going to do one around Clarence Yard. I can get that done at lunchtime.

The frustration I had was that I didn’t take all the pictures I needed in only one session, so I need to plan this a bit better. Sorry about last nights post, it was pretty pathetic. Tonights isn’t really much better, but it is an improvement.

I quite enjoyed putting together a sequence of three pictures to illustrate a railway story on project 365. It was a relatively easy story to illustrate.

I would quite like to find another story to illustrate. I’m sure there are plenty around.

I’m sorry, tonight’s post is going to be brief. I’ve left doing tonight’s post too late. Sat in front of the TV we have over the last couple of hours both drifted in and out of sleep and now I am just summoning the energy to type this.

Avenue 141 is a bit of a special restaurant. An annex of Fareham College, it is run entirely by the students who are on various courses. Chefs, waiting staff, managers. There are usually three or four choices on the menu for starters, mains and desserts. I had halloumi with salad, followed by steak with the cheeseboard as dessert. The food was really delicious, and the staff (students) were meticulous in their service. A delightful experience that I expect to repeat before long. What then is the link between that and the header picture?

Absolutely none.

The picture is of the tunnel that around 1844 Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband had punched through Gosport’s defensive ramparts. I have no idea what the Navy must have thought of that, but seeing as it was for the ruler of Britains empire there’s not a lot they could do about it.

The iron work of the railway line extends forward of the tunnel by only a few yards until it reaches the roadside fence line. Up until after the war it went across the road to Gosport railway station and was very important to the navy allowing as it did the conveying of bulk resources to one of the navy’s main victualling facilities at Clarence yard.

Part of the iron works extends for about 40 yards out behind where I was standing take this picture. Here’s a picture of that;

Elayne had gone out for a meal with friends. I had watched an episode of The Orville, and had started thinking about tonight’s blog. I went and looked at what I had written last night about want to vlog and “just doing it” I was thinking about the setup. Would I want to use multiple cameras, of which I could potentially use four.

I have a tripod, and bracket that I use for videoing the net I run on Thursday nights. It occurred to me that I didn’t need multiple cameras, I just needed to set up each shot. I also wanted decent sound so wanted to charge the wireless microphones. The problem here, I can’t find a usb-c cable. I’ll have to order one.

So I had reached the point where I was going to do some practice shots, and then Elayne came home and we finished the episode of Bones, the American TV box set we are watching at the moment.

I have this thing say, for example, Vlogging that I would really like to do. So, I rush about making sure that I have everything I need to produce a vlog of actually quite good quality. There are three fairly major problems.

I had this thing about speaking and videoing in public, actually getting out with the camera probably my phone mounted on the tripod or on the gambol. I was extremely self conscious, really embarrassed to speak if there was somebody about. Plus I wasn’t speaking in what I’d call my normal voice, it was very artificial.

What to video? My thoughts were to produce some videos talking about the history of Gosport. Now that should really have been easy because there is a lot of it about. So what is stopping me from doing it? So part of it is preparing to produce the video. What do I say? How much time is needed to prepare to shoot? Time for post production, so many things to think about and how often would I do this? Did I even have the time?

I did come up with an idea, indoors with some videos I end up with the same problem; actually getting out and doing it. Setting up the kit for indoor really doesn’t require much, what I want to film is straightforward (this is the the indoor thing), and my talking will be mostly ad-lib. Now this should be really easy, so why can’t I do it? Now outdoors is a bit more complex especially in terms of what to say. I think that it is the amount of effort required to prepare for the act of videoing that is putting me off. It’s a bit more than that though, I haven’t done it, so how do I know how much effort is required? It’s just the thought of the effort, which really isn’t good enough.

As they say, just do it.