Bills Posts

I changed my route by only a few yards. I wanted to have a look at the trees near the Cockle ponds. They are out in the open. Apparently, trees that are exposed to the wind develop their roots a little bit differently, building stronger roots on the side from the direction of the prevailing wind to make it harder to blow them over.

I have to be honest and say that I couldn’t see that in these trees.

Also, it appears that trees tend to build their leaves on the side away from the prevailing wind. Now, I was about to say that I couldn’t see that either but then I looked at the picture and noticed that the tree in the top right looks as though the leaves at the top of the tree look as though they are trending toward the left. Perhaps I need to take another look at those trees.

I have to say that at the moment, I am not massively impressed with the book, which I am not going to name tag this stage. I did have a little difficulty in getting going with the book, and put it down for a while, I’ve come back to it to give it another chance, now I’m not going to give up on it yet. Isn’t it sad and a bit of an indictment that I am finding an academic book about Saxon Britain More exciting than a book about how nature works. Interesting.

There are a number of channels that I follow on YouTube. Mostly, I have found these accidentally. Others through things like the magazines such as B&W Photography. I’m going to write about Teo Crawford, he is based in Austria, he releases a video about once a week. If you were to take a look at his pictures, they are not spectaculars, they are interesting. But there is something almost hypnotic about his manner of presentation here’s a link to his channel; https://www.youtube.com/c/TeoCrawford Have you heard about ASMR – Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response? It’s been a thing recently, people making. Programmes that have this sound that create a reaction. Google ASMR you’ll come across all sorts of weird stuff. Teo isn’t doing ASMR deliberately, there is a very relaxing quality to his videos. Well worth watching in my opinion.

Another photographer on YouTube I like is James Poppy’s, here’s his channel; https://www.youtube.com/c/JamesPopsysPhoto Now Iquite like his channel, because he’s got that kind of dry british self -deprecating humour, and he is very informative at the same time. I’ve only recently discovered him, but he is well worth watching.

Ted Forbes is an American photographer, who seems to do something every few days. I just like his way of presenting, he clearly wants was to engage with his audience. Here’s his link; https://www.youtube.com/c/theartofphotography One of the things does he calls Mail Friday, this is where he reviews material that his viewers have sent to him. A very pleasant chap by the looks of it, another show that I really enjoy.

My final YouTube artist for today is Ben Harvey, now here is a person, whom I think lives in the south of England, who clearly loves his hobby (he’s an architect in his day job) here’s his channel; https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4oop-sEgs4rb4nI3NxCkNA/videos

Now, I’m going add the trailer for Ben’s channel, which I just think is so cleverly done; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w878V-nExjM Again I just really enjoy his shows.

There’s something about all of these channels, they are all very professionally produced. It’s not only the quality of the photos I could aspire to; it’s the quality of the videos as well,

It’s nearly a week since I last went for my usual walks. My intention in the morning is to go, if I am awake in time and feel OK. I probably won’t do my usual full walk which in the morning is usually around three miles. I’ll see how I feel, as the tiredness hasn’t fully gone away.

I must admit, I have missed the walks obviously, and I am very curious to have a look and see if anything has changed. Come on, let’s get real – what’s likely to change? Perhaps work has started on the Haslar WaveGuard? And another few layers of bricks on the building site (it’s quite a large site, even just a few layers represents a lot of bricks.

So, let’s see how the morning goes.

I want to do a couple of posts about photographs taken by other photographers. You know I receive B&W photography every month, I make a point of reading it from cover to cover every month. I quite often talk about how a particular article may make me stop and think. But, I have rarely (indeed, I don’t think I have done this before) commented on the work of other photographers.

I know I like the idea of street photography, and would do more of it if I was a bit courageous, another type of photograph I like is minimalist, but beyond that, I just like a good photograph. I thought then that for todays posts, I would point you in the direction of a couple of photographers who are either featured or commented on in B&W photography.

Let’s take a look at the first photography I want to mention today, this is; Victory Tischler-Blue, here’s a link to some of her pictures, not B&W white, but I love them all; http://lenscratch.com/2014/10/victory-tischler-blue-of-beauty-and-ruin-2/ who would have thought that a regular service station could produce such a lovely picture. Any picture which highlights the night sky get my vote. Some really nice pictures there – now, you may disagree with me, but that’s the beauty of the subject

Next up is William Fortescue, https://www.williamfortescue.com/ Mr. Fortescue is a nature photographer. It’s worth spending a bit of time looking at his collections. These are wonderful pictures. Now, if I had the ingenuity, I could have taken pictures like Victory’s, but Williams would be almost impossible for me because of the travel. Is lack of opportunity and excuse? Not really.

Finally today, we are going to take a quick look at the work of Tim Clinch, Tim is food, travel, people, seems to be everything. Whatever you look at, it is good; http://www.timclinchphotography.com/portfolio-1

I hope you enjoyed looking at the photographs of some of the people that I have got a fair bit of pleasure reading about over the last few days.

This is Rowner Church, The church underwent “restoration” during Victorian times. I put the restoration in quotes because what the Victorians did to churches across the country would nowadays probably be called vandalism.

Rowner church, the original church, was built in the 12th century. The only remaining part of the church from that time, is inside the church.

When you walk along Gosport High Street, it’s difficult to miss the timeline, it runs from 948 to 1944. The 948 entry says “First Reference to Rowner & Alverstoke” I thought this would be a good place to start. I found this article relating to this; https://gosporthistoryclub.org.uk/gosport-history-archive-index/948ad-stoke-charter-translation

The piece gave me a name, well a couple of names, but the first one is Eadred one of several kings around in 948. I thought that would be a good place to start to try and do a bit of research on him. We have a collection of history books that I think could be academic reference sources, there were several pages which refer to Eadred, I read through to see if any of the references went to back to the Stoke Charter – they didn’t. But I took the opportunity to just have a browse and I have to say I found it quite gripping.

What with people going on the run for three years and other intrigues, who would have thought that a dry academic book could be so interesting.

Now with this, I am aware that this is now the third post with a common theme. I need to diversify a bit now, but I will come back to this.

I can’t recall the last time I posted a picture on the same subject two nights on the trot. I am doing so deliberately tonight, not because I can’t think of anything to write but because what I don’t seem to be able to do is to have a thread, a common story that runs over several posts, developing in depth an article. Oh, I have posted on a sequence of things; On Monday, I would write about the book I’m reading, Tuesdays I might talk about something interesting I saw whilst I was out on my walk.

History, is one of those topics, which if you delve deep enough would very easily provide an opportunity for a sequence of posts building a view of a particular subject. Party of it is identifying the topic and following through on it. Now, I think of things, and think that would be a good idea (like now I’m thinking of something) all I have to do is move it beyond that idea in my head, and it could open a door, a door leading to a whole series of posts. Will I do it? Who knows.

I’ll keep you guessing for the time being. I sometimes crave structure, but then do nothing about it…

The church is Knowlton, near Wimborne St Giles. The site is recorded in the Domesday Book, and the henge pre-dates the church. I visited the site twice, last year and the year before.

I was going to do a piece about “connecting”, and I was going to waffle on about how I didn’t really understand what connecting meant when it was anything but family. But then I realised that I connect with a lot of things; Now I am not talking about family. That’s a given.

History is one of the topics that even from my early school days I had an interest in, no that’s not to say that I was any good at the topic. History was one of the topics I did at college. I didn’t realise that it was possible to destroy an interest in a subject, but the tutor at college had a real good go at it. It wasn’t the subject, it was his manner of presentation. It’s not worth my saying anymore about that, sufficient to say that he failed.

Now, I find myself living in a town that is absolutely stuffed with history (let’s be honest there are probably very few towns in the country which aren’t). It’s easy to engage with the subject here. One minor problem, and it’s not really a major one (well, it is, kind of) Gosport’s history doesn’t really begin before the 16th century, acknowledging that the likes of Rowner and Alverstoke predate the town by several hundred years. I seem to be more interested in older things like stones, rings and henges. Now, I’m going to mention ley lines. I am fully aware that talking about ley lines and the history of henges and the like is probably on a par with comparing Astronomy and Astrology (I feel that is an unfair comparison, unfair that is to ley lines) and I know how stupid that is. But I am interested in the idea. Ley lines are really like a game rather than anything with a real deep meaning.

There is though, no denying the existence of stone circles and henges. Now regardless of the real reason as to why the people of those times expended so much effort in constructing these sites, we can respect them and appreciate the effort they made without understanding, fully, the why. I haven’t yet found any indications that there are prehistoric or Neolithic sites in the Gosport area. Perhaps there are. But nothing saw far as I can tell as spectacular as a henge. Now, that is a reason to be interested in history.

Thee first UK lockdown was put in place on 23 March 2020. Not quite two and over third years ago. Over the last two or so years we have put a fair bit of effort in to avoiding the illness. As time went on though, it became almost inevitable that at some point we would become infected. My wife did so last Friday,, but didn’t want it advertised, but it is common knowledge now, so little point in avoiding saying it now.

I felt incredibly tired last night, strangely I recalled that the last time I felt like this was the day after I had my first vaccination. I was shattered. That was the cause of my poor post for the day.

I didn’t feel too bad this morning. We tested and this time we were both positive. I’m typing this at nearly 9PM, and I do feel very tired, but nowhere near as bad as I did last night. But I am going to take it easy over the next couple of day.

I have suddenly realised that I feel exactly the same as I felt after I had my first Covid Jab – completely drained. It’s 1920, and I want to go to bed. If I feel like this in the morning, I won’t be going for a walk, which is a pain. Especially as I loved this morning’s and lunchtimes walks – the just after mid day walk was a tad warm, plus it didn’t help that I was carrying my DSLR. But that’s OK I want to get used to carrying it, because if I don’t I might as well sell it and use my phone exclusively.

I’m sorry not a good post today. I’ll try and do better tomorrow.

I don’t know why it has taken so long for me to realise that the back streets of Gosport offer some rich photographic pickings. I’m not going to become obsessed wit this, but it is something that I am going to keep an eye on.

I’ve been playing with my setup. This WordPress account now has an email address – I probably need to check the web page to see if its there. I’ve renamed the YouTube page to align with the blog. I call it a brand, but it’s not really that. Here’s a link to My first YouTube short

OK, I know the short is rubbish, but I have to start somewhere. YouTube shorts can only be a maximum of 60 seconds long, they are shot with the app and go straight to the site, minimal editing (actually, it seems mostly keep or ditch. Think of this, and the next few as dry runs.

Today’s walk was very pleasant, the cool breeze helped, I’m making sure I wear a hat.

It was nice to see the Jaynee W come in. I like to see different ships come in to the harbour. Most of the time my being at the waterfront when different ships come in is a coincidence, so it is really nice when it happens.