Bills Posts

Every day (well, mostly every day) as I settle in the office chair I am trying to develop a routine involving looking at three books; Ian Dale’s On this day in politics, Andy Beer’s Every Day Nature and finaly, The journals of Gilbert White. The great things about all three of these books is that they are not a linear narrative. They run day by day. Ian’s is one page per day, Andy’s is just a couple of paragraphs per day. Gilbert’s is just one sentence per day – I’m not reading just one sentence – a double page. All this doesn’t take long, just a few minutes.

Gilbert was born in 1720, and lived in Selborn. He was an amateur naturalist. He makes very simple observations; Woodpecker Laughs, Flights of snow, Wild geese appear in a flock – that kind of thing.

I bought a small A5 week to a view diary. I record pressure, relative humidity, temperature (min, current and max) and rain. Just occasionally I see or hear something. I want to write it in the book (journal!), but I also input the data in to a spreadsheet, and chart all the measurements. Even though only the first month is coming to an end, I am building up some interesting charts, here’s the pressure chart – yes, I was eager to get going, hence th incvclusion of half of December.

I’m sure that there is more that I could record. Part of it becomming a bit more observant.

Just a brief comment about last nights post. It looks like we are planning to do the walk next year, not 2023. Stand by whilst things are sorted.

I’ve titled today’s posts Projects as a bit of a reflection of activities. Why, for example, have i done nothing with the model railway? or why I have done nothing about vlogging? and numerous other activities that I have lovingly thought about and even done some planning, but activities there are none. I acknowledge it is a bit frustrating. Not so long ago, I came up with a couple of ideas I’m not going to describe them here, but I think they are viable and I really should get on and stop procrastinating about them. As they say, just do it.

The photography side of things ahave been flagging – not through lack of interest, more than lack of walking. I really do need to do something about that. Microscopy, I have two quite good amateur microscopes which I had lots of plans for. They have sat on my desk barely used. Part of the problem here is my crammed, untidy office that offers very little available desk space. It’s really annoying, but I don’t know what to do aboujt it.

The Serpent trail is a winding, twisting 64 mile walk that covers three counties, starting in Haslemere and ending at Petersfield. Alex has suggested we should do the walk later in the year. I’ve said yes.

To be honest, I really do want to do it. I’m not at all bothered by the prospect. There are a couple of issues that needs to be addressed; I don’t do wild camping, or camping of any kind come to that. Every evening we will either be in proper beds in hotels, or the walk is close enough for us to get home each night. A pain for whoever taxi’s us backwards and forwards. The second part is training. I have to show a steady programme of walks slowly building up to a daily target which may be either fifteen or twenty miles a day.

Last Sunday, I did a walk it was eight miles. I felt pretty shattered afterwards. Admittedly, I’m used to doing two milers, I jumped in to an opportunity to do a longer walk. Two miles is, to be honest easy. Three miles not that much harder. Time is a problem. I can fit in two and three miles each day, but not much more than that. Weekends are slightly different. I could go for a longer walk, and Elayne would support me with that.

I will research training programs for walking longer distances. I guess I am going to have to keep you informed as to how I get on.

I had left last nights post far too late, hence its feebleness. Sorry about that.

I thought I would write a little bit about audio books. I have an account with audible, I pay about £7 a month for which I get a credit. The credit buys a book, which could if bought independently could cost as much as £25 or £30.

Are audio books real? Of course they are, but they are different to paper books, in that there is no tangible object beyond the playback device. In my case this is the phone.

I have just finished a series of books that I have listened to before – James P Hogans inherit the stars. He writes what reads like quite hard science fiction (that is there is a lot of tech) it is a very good series, and I enjoy Mr. Hogans books – I have a couple of others lined up. In the meantime though, I have back to Larry Niven. He’s written a series books based around his universe, a sphere of space within which human events (mostly) take place. The book of the moment isn’t of his known space universe. This time it is alien invasion – Footfall.

I repeated the bird food experiment today. It did not go well. The birds and the squirrels got their food. I didn’t get out to check the table to see what was left. Not to worry, I don’t think the birds are complaining – they are being fed.

Normally, when I put the bird food out I layer it in the plastic pot I use. Ground up peanuts at the bottom, mealworms in the middle and no-grow birdseed on the top. i then just upend the pot on to the birdtable, andd let them get on with it.

The birds waste a lot of birdseed, a lot. I’m asking myself if I should ditch the bird seed and just stick with the other two? To try and work out just how popular are the three elements I put on the table I did a little experiment this morning.

Having cleaned the birdtable off, I prepared this morning’s food in three separate containers, and with a little bit of fiddling to get around the anti-pigeon-measure-that-doesn’t-really-work control I deposited each food in a different corner and retired, working on the premise that I would be able to go out later and check what has been eaten. It almost kind of worked, but I will have to repeat it. So, what went wrong then?

Well, I wasn’t able to get out to have a look at the table until lunchtime. As I approached the back door I could see a guest at the table and realised it was the squirrel. Now, he was definitely focussed on the corner where I had deposited the seed. Now, was he there because the starlings had cleaned the table elsewhere? The other problem was that the wagtail was bouncing around, running in after a seed, and dashing out again. I didn’t want to disturb it, so I had to wait until it was gone.

When I was able to get out in to the back, the only thing I could say for certain that the only food left was the birdseed, of the worms and peanuts there was no sign. I could conclude that the peanuts and the worms were more popular than the seed. I need to have another go tomorrow.

I managed to get out for a walk today at lunchtime. It was a bit nippy, but nice. Usual track down to the waterfront and back. HMS Queen Elizabeth was undocked and looking at Marine Traffic (AIS) she’s not back in her berth.

The High Street reasonably busy, with the usual Tuesday Market set up. A few posts back, I made the comment that a different camera won’t make you a better photographer (namely don’t blame the tools). It has been quite a while since I’ve thought about street photography.

Now, I didn’t walk down the street with my phone poised, in fact I think even if I had I wouldn’t have taken any pictures. Simply becasue nothing had attracted my attention. That only tells me that I am looking wrong. I am fairly sure that if I had paid proper attention, I would have found something worthy of photography.

Perhaps I’ll take a dry run tomorrow, and pay a bit more attention.

Just to comment a bit I something I did see today and usually see regularly, is what looks like a family of four pied wagtails. They are always there and they always seem to be in front of me as I walk down the steet. I love seeing them. It reminded me of the gray wagtail that has taken a liking to our patio. The pied wagtails obviously get something out of it. Lovely to see.

The No morning walk situation is getting a bit dire. Today, it would have been the only exercise I had. I wasn’t able to get out at lunchtime, which was frustrating.

I woke up in time to go for the walk, but I just couldn’t get out of bed. I am very aware that this is hurting me. Let’s see how this goes.

I’ve put some fat balls out for the birds, I got them as an offer with the peanuts I ordered. I think I’m going to have to change the hanging feeders, I have had them a couple of years, they really don’t cost that much, so it is about time they were changed. Of course it may be that the birds either haven’t discovered them yet, or even just don’t like them.

Because the last few mornings have been cold and frosty, I have tried to get the bird food out as soon as I could. This morning, I saw a flash of yellow in the tree. By the time I had got the milk out of the fridge, the grey wagtail was bouncing around getting its fill of seed. It didn’t take the starlings long either. As they usually do, they dived onto the table, demolishing the pile of food. Lovely to see.

Elayne was going with Sian to a Wedding Fair in the Paulsgrove area. Elayne asked if I wanted to go. I didn’t really want to go to the fair, but it occurred to me that I could go there and walk down to Gunwharf. It couldn’t be two far. Google maps said it was about five miles, add another mile the other end and that would be about right.

Turns out it was just over eight miles. Part of the walk was along a path called the Tippernora. It was quite interesting. It Turns out that Tipper was a Saxon ruler. There were information boards along the walk. There was one which explained the origin of the term Tippernora. In the Saxon language possession was indicated be appending the letter n to the end of the owners name and the word ora means port, therefore, Tippernora means Tipppers Port.

The pathway along the 1waters edge was very popular. There were lots of people; families’ people with dogs, cyclists, joggers. Understandable, it was a lovely area for a walk.

The lagoon in the picture is followed by the pathway. The lagoon itself seems to be a bit of a nature reserve, there were a lot of sea birds there. The rest of the walk was quite normal.

It was very nice to walk somewhere different.

Whenever I go for a walk during shop opening hours, I always try to walk past a certain hardressers on Stokes Road. That’s because they usually have a little board outside, with a saying or something. Today’s made me smile;

It’s like winter is mad, and keeps storming out. But then it comes back in yelling “And another thing..”

It was one of those days, bright but cold. I took as stroll down the high street. There was a market on, but very limited stalls. Quite a few people out though. I had the intention of trying to look for interesting shadow or lighting and angles to take some artistic (or at least, what passes for artistic in my eyes). I didn’t have any success.

The walk though was very pleasant. I went down to the far end of the esplanade and back. I saw the Victoria of Wight go out, and was hoping that there might be some other ship movement, even one of the bunkering ships would have been nice. Nonetheless, it was a pleasant walk.