Bills Posts

This weekend the blog has been hijacked by our good friends Mark and Helen! We’re meeting them at Windsor for a trip round the castle and a well needed catchup so a leisurely dinner in the hotel is happening.

Both of us suffered from excessive traffic this morning. Mark and Helen got stuck on the M4 as it was closed and thousands of cars were diverted round the countryside. The speed camera was flashing every few seconds as cars went down the closed lanes…..I bet they don’t bother with sending fines though. bill and Elayne spent an hour trying to find somewhere to park but eventually the hotel park came free.

It’s been a lovely sunny day and the castle was busy with tourists from everywhere, nice to know they are back in force. A cream tea afterwards was just the ticket as none of us had had any lunch. Now where’s that dinner menu? No odds on what Bill will have for his main course!

Having re-acquired my iPad, it has been lovely to meet up with our cruise buddies for a lovely day paying our respects to Queen Elizabeth and a delightful tour of Windsor Castle. We are now having a drink and looking forward to a lovely meal.

We sat at the waterfront at lunchtime, and enjoyed a sausage role for lunch. I can think of no link at all between the waterfront at Gosport and the departure of the Commodore for Jersey and Stone circles – there just isn’t one.

For a bit I am going to stick with the Neolithic era Like yesterday, we are going to be looking at West Kennet Long Barrow and wider afield. Today, I watched two more videos. The first of these made and narrated by “TaxiDriverJ”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0bhE67HuDY covers the four main. Sites; The long barrow, Silbury Hill, Stone Henge and Avebury. Now, don’t get me wrong, I felt there was something missing. The commentary points out the route and the key features. But it makes no attempt to add any depth. No looking at who might have lived or built the artefacts. Now, this may be perfectly adequate for some people, but not for me I’m afraid.

Now this second film; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0bhE67HuDY is an entirely different kettle of fish, the first film is about 15 minutes long, this epic takes us across England, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and that is as far as I’ve got, with still an hour of the two for which it runs to go. For a YouTube programme, it is one the best and most professionally produced that I have seen.

The second programme acknowledges that we can’t really know what many, most of these sites were used for. It was during this show that I found out about the Dorset Cursus – apparently one of the longest in the country.

An absolutely fascinating couple of hours learning about megalithic & Neolithic sites in the UK.

The picture is nothing to do with the title. It’s from Gilbert White’s garden. I don’t have a picture of the Henge that I have taken. I haven’t been there for a good ten to fifteen years, although I have driven quite near it a couple of times.

I was watching a YouTube programme about the area, not just Stonehenge the programme talked about Silbury Hill , Avebury, & Amesbury Archer whom I had never heard of but turns out to be a tremendous archeological find. The programme looked at the people who would have built these sites and tried to explore why they put in so much effort into constructing these artefacts.

I find these things absolutely fascinating, and would really love to visit them and shoot some video there. What is it about these things that draws me so much? Now, it is very difficult to write about it without straying into an area that I amdesperate to stay away from online, becasue it is one of those areas that can so easily lead down alleyways that I really don’t want to go down.

Think about this, Whether it is the Kennet Long Barrow, or the Avebury Rings what are they all about? and how are they linked, and what word links those sites and their meaning to today? I’ll leave you to guess.

It’s that time of the year again. My wife is now pestering me to write the family Christmas letter for inclusion in all the Christmas Cards we send.

Writing the Christmas Letter is sometimes, well, most of the time, a surprisingly stressful activity. Sometimes it’s really easy, other times it is much more difficult. The two previous years were seriously impacted by Covid, with 2020 in particular being devoid of interesting events. 2021 was slightly more interesting, involving as it did our break away from home to Pagham.

We quite enjoyed Pagham, to the extent that we went twice this year. There are a couple of other things going on, but this years letter has been a little bit stressful, but the first draft is complete.

Let’s see how it survives the wife’s red pen!

It would help a bit if it weren’t really autumnal weather. The showers are intense and frequent. Whenever I get ready to go for a walk, it starts raining. Most frustrating. So yesterday, I wrote about struggles that I am having. I was thinking this evening that perhaps I could start a project of some kind. Now, that would be good if I were in Dorset, I have quite a few thoughts about what I want to do.

I have been saying for quite a while that I wanted to read about the history of Hampshire, I am doing so and it is interesting, but bI’m not really being gripped with locations at thte moment. For example, yet another book was added to my Dorset collection on Monday; Prehistoric Dorset by John Gale. Now it will go on my reading list, but it is definitely a reference book. But, having had a brief look through it I am vewry keen to visit as many of the sites mentioned in the book as I can.

The impression that I get is that certainly in Neolithic times Hampshire was nowhere near as active as Dorset – I wonder if that is partly because the area that we think of as Hampshire is almost completely forested. There’s something lacking here that I can’t get a grip of. I’ll keep trying.

It sounds wimpish and excuse-ridden. I have been having a struggle lately. I’ve given up my role as treasurer of my radio club, a position I have held for six years. I confess to some relief at having given up the role.

Sometime soon, I will be giving up my role as secretary of my local Raynet group. I am going to be honest and say that in this second role, I have never felt so utterly ineffectual. There are several reasons for this that I won’t go in to, but it has been deeply frustrating. I will be actively glad to give up that role.

I am using these two events as an excuse to articulate my struggle, a feeling of “absence” but whilst true, that’s not the real reason for my struggle.

I want to do something, whether it’s Vlogging or writing a book, something but the absence is a complete absence of what to do. I don’t know if the move to Dorset will liberate me really, but I do feel locked in here. Sorry for being maudlin. I’ve not been in a good place these last few days. This wretched (definitely not covid) cough has not helped.

To be fair, I didn’t intend to walk in the rain, but I knew it would be the only time I would be able to get out today, and we needed a couple of bits. Although the clouds were heavy there was always the chance the rain would hold off.

Luckily, I wore my decent rain count, because it was one of those downpours where the rain is so heavy the drops don’t just splash when they hit the ground, they explode. I was drenched by the time I reached the shop.

The return trip was no better. If anything, the rain was heavier. At one point I have to walk down a narrow alleyway. The gutters couldn’t cope with the amount of water, and it wasn’t only like walking through a waterfall, the rain had nowhere to go once it reached the ground, so there was a river running along the alley.

By the time I got home, my bottom third was a bit wet. The raincoat had done its job with my top two thirds, but I still had to get changed. It was quite exhilarating really.

To be fair, I didn’t intend to walk in the rain, but I knew it would be the only time I would be able to get out today, and we needed a couple of bits. Although the clouds were heavy there was always the chance the rain would hold off.

Luckily, I wore my decent rain count, because it was one of those downpours where the rain is so heavy the drops don’t just splash when they hit the ground, they explode. I was drenched by the time I reached the shop.

The return trip was no better. If anything, the rain was heavier. At one point I have to walk down a narrow alleyway. The gutters couldn’t cope with the amount of water, and it wasn’t only like walking through a waterfall, the rain had nowhere to go once it reached the ground, so there was a river running along the alley.

By the time I got home, my bottom third was a bit wet. The raincoat had done its job with my top two thirds, but I still had to get changed. It was quite exhilarating really.

We did talk about what we were going to do today. We have a busy, but very pleasant weekend to look forward to next week, and the visit to Gilbert whites house last week went well, so we decided that this weekend would be a bit of a lazy one.

We walked in to town and had a coffee (in my case a cup of tea) and, naughtily a piece of cake. Then when we got home we watched a few episodes of the good doctor. I had a zoom event, during which I nearly fell asleep, and that was pretty much it.

Sorry. This is more of a diary post than any kind of analytical writing. Must try to do better tomorrow.

At 2335 last night, I woke up enough to recall that I hadn’t done a blog post. My iPad was on the bed beside me. I picked it up and then my brain said “Nope, not doing it”. I forced my brain to think of a few choice words of an unpublishable nature and promptly fell asleep. So once again the counter is reset to zero, and another day when I didn’t post can be added to the calendar. The main thing is though, here I am again.

For the last few weeks (not sure how long) I have been listening to Jeffrey Archers Clifton Chronicles. I am on the last book now, with about an hour to go. I have to say that the series has been absolutely gripping. This last book particularly so for two reasons;

The first is around the main character Harry Clifton who is by this stage in the series a famous author. Archer goes into a reasonable bit of detail as to how Clifton develops his stores and characters in relation to other (real) authors. I found that fascinating, and food for thought. I won’t go into detail, read the books – I recommend them.

The second reason is, around another key character, who re-visits Berlin at the time of the collapse of the wall. This is particularly poignant for me, and he describes the atmosphere in the city so much better than I could. I know, I was there. He really caught it.

Up until this evening, and for the last six years, I have been on the committee of a local amateur radio club. I have given up my role. Not really sad to do so. In the end I was happy to surrender the responsibility.