Bills Posts

I was walking through town this morning, looking for things to photograph, and I saw this shop window and just took a picture. I have cropped it quite a bit. I don’t even know why I took the picture, but when I looked at it on the iPad there was something about the picture that appealed to me, the colours and letters, perhaps its the confusion of the elements of the picture.

With the daylight starting come back (for a while, until the clocks go forward) signs of spring are starting to appear the Daffs are really coming out all over place.

The Cockle ponds were emptied earlier this week, by this morning, they were nearly full again. Apart from one small part of the ponds, the water in the ponds were really clear. I do hope that the recent filling includes Jelly Fish Larvae. People, especially the model yachters probably view them as pests but I think they are fascinating.

There was a bit of a mist developing, the very top of the Spinnaker was obscured by the low cloud. It was a very pleasant walk out.

The ship in the mid-range of the picture is the Blade Runner Two. Normally when I see this ship it is carrying a single wind turbine blade, and the cabin is toward the bow of the ship. This is the first time I have seen one of these without a blade and this time the bridge is at the stern of the ship, I’ve never seen this before.

I didn’t go for a walk this morning, it was raining quite heavily, unlike Monday when the rain was very lite and gentle. In a way, I was very glad as I hadn’t slept very well from 3AM onwards. It was nice to be able to go back to bed.

Of course, that has meant that I have clocked up no miles today, but I have still managed 6,000 steps, which is admittedly probably just more than a third of what I normally do. There is an argument that on my walks I do 3,000 – 3,500 steps per mile, so in theory I could log two miles, but that is not coherent walking.

Apparently rain is scheduled through the week, so let’s see how much of a disruption it is.

For all bar two years of my education history was a favourite subject. I won’t bother With the two years, they were an aberration. Now it gets interesting, because I wasn’t particularly academic at school so, a lot of what I was presented with didn’t sink in. I am on a learning curve.

What makes it difficult is that I’ll read something, for example there are two topics that are interesting me at the moment; The Jacobites and the English civil war. Now for each of these, the historical facts are clear (well, as I’m learning anyway).

But, as I look at a topic and learn a bit, I find that there is a trigger event or person that caused that moment or period in history, so I want to look at that, to understand why or who. It all takes time, time is a valuable resource, and I have some, but not a lot. I shall have to try and control the urge to delve back, deeper and deeper into the forever fascinating past.

I’m on page 36 of the book. It turns out that just in the first two chapters it’s an absolute mine of inspiration. I’m in the process of producing a video that features the role of Gosport in the Great Rebellion of 1642 – 1646. I went out this morning on my normal walk, but I rushed to the waterfront so that I would have a bit of time before the breakfastclub started to try the microphones, which worked very well, and also I wanted to do some videoing in a very public place, to get used to doing so.

Luckily there were very few people around, I was very self conscious, but I did it. I’m not going to publish this video. It really wasn’t very good, but it met my purpose.

Naturally, I’ve kept on reading and the next chapter is about the Gosport ferry, Now, there is a very interesting story about the whole process of transporting people from one side of the harbour to the other. Definitely a video there. Now, I am only on Chapter 2 of the book, so I don’t know if the other chapters will be as inspiring. I hope so, but we will have to see.

One of the authors of the book, Lesley Burton has written, or been involved in more than one book. I like the style of writing. It makes the book very readable.

I’m looking forward to reading the book. I think I will be able to produce at least two videos, and hopefully more.

It’s been a sunny Sunday. Even with a little bit of a bite to any breeze the might be about. Too nice a day to stay indoors. For the last few days I had a route in mind that I wanted to follow. I didn’t quite make it fully, having to cut it back by about a mile, I still managed just over 4 1/2 miles. If I had completed the full walk, I think it would have been nearer 5.5 miles, possibly six, but I’m happy with what I did. The route was;

• After leaving home;
• West on Stokes Road, up to Gosport Memorial Hospital
• Along Anns Hill (where I took the head picture), pausing and the old part of Anns Hill Cemetary
• Briefly along Brockhurst Road to Avery Lane.
• Along Avery Lane (See Note 1)
• Along San Diego Road in to Mill Lane
• Back on to Forton Road
• Right on to Clarence Road
• Briefly on to the High Street, right past Morrisons
• Back on Stokes Road, then home.

(Note 1): At this point in my walk I had to make a decision, turn left to head towards Priddy’s Hard & the explosion museum, or the shorter route back towards home. I needed to be in a position to go home in short order should the need arise, meaning that I would cut the walk short. Whilst I had to cut the walk short , I wanted to exceed my daily Walk1000 requirement, taking in to consideration that yesterday I only managed 2.3 instead of 2.79 miles, meaning I had to do at least 3.2 miles. Today’s total of 5.6 miles easily meets that (admittedly, that includes a quick trip to Tesco Express).

I wanted to see what old buildings I could find on my walk. An obvious one is the Gosport Memorial Hospital, here’s a picture that places the construction of the present hospital building (I’m not sure if there was a building before this one, a quick search didn’t reveal one).

I saw another building that had a plaque with a very faded date on Anns Hill, which I think also said 1921. Those two were the only ones I spotted.

The header picture was taken looking up the cycle track heading up towards Fareham. This is the route of the railway and is an excellent cycle route, which I use a lot.

The book I’m reading at the moment is The Book of Gosport. As you might expect it covers the history of the town. The chapter I am reading at the moment is the role of Gosport in the English civil war (1642 – 1651) between Parliamentarians (Roundheads) and Royalists (Cavaliers).

It turns out that Gosport was Parliamentarian and Portsmouth Royalist. The confrontation between the two resulted in bombardment by cannon especially from Gosport. The fight between the two town lasted only a few days and luckily whilst there was some damage, there were only one immediate casualty, and a subsequent execution, very limited loss of life.

The book provides an almost event by event description of the siege by the Gosport Parliamentarians of the Portsmouth Royalists.

I thought it would be fun to go to the Falklands Gardens, the site of some of the cannons used to bombard Portsmouth and do a “Breathless” recounting the events in a dramatic way.

Now, it’s easy enough to produce a “script” of the things I want to cover. The main thing will be to actually go and film it. That means me exposing my behaviour to the public. There will be people about regardless of the time of day seeing me acting in an unusual way.

Now, I’ve pretty much managed to cure myself of worrying about what people think of me when I taking a picture from an unusual angle. It’s a whole other matter to create a video which will involve quite a bit of action. Now I really want to do this. I just need to get over my nervesnous of that.

Sorry about going on about Vlogging. Watch this, it’s crap. No, seriously it is. But, it was fun doing it. I hope I get better; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJjfaUYFX_U

I’m writing this at 2330. I started doing a piece much earlier this evening, but I deleted it as I wasn’t happy about it. Almost suffering from a bit of block. But then I got involved in trying to do some video editing in iMovie. Now I’m not going to say it’s easy, but it’s fiddly.

There are things I can do to make it easier, using a virtual clapperboard for example, so there are a few points where I do the umm thing, or lose my words completely. When I am videoing and that happens I need to do something like put my hand in front of the lens to signify the edit point.

Using iMovie will obviously take a little bit of getting used to but I shall practice. I’ve watched a number of videos about beginning a YouTube channel and the one piece of advice they give is produce, recorded to get used to being in front of the camera to get the confidence, learn How to use the tech and so on.

Actually, when you have enough knowledge to know what you want to talk about it can be quite fun. And what makes it easier is that my knowledge is very basic. So it does become entertaining. I shall keep practicing.

The header picture was one of those which I took thinking who put the glove up there, but when I looked at it, I think it’s a slightly unusual angle almost giving it the look of a flower – Well, I think that. You might think it’s just a glove.

Is’m sorry that last nights piece was so short. This one isn’t that much longer, but there is a bit more.

Historical research can be both difficult and easy. A resource is Wikipedia, now it obviously depends which aspect of history you are researching. Some of the more recent stuff is still subject to research.

Something like the Jacobite Revolution though unless there are things still to be discovered the history is pretty much set, I think. This all links into my Walk1000 exercise, where we are walking through Bridge of Orchy, which is linked to the Battle of Culloden over 100 miles away. I’m going to do a little bit of digging in to the Jacobites, wouldn’t it be great of there were as link to Gosport.

Sorry tonight’s post is a bit short, it’s getting near bedtime, I still have the Fantasy Holiday piece to do.

No, no – there’s nothing wrong. I think it’s more of a continuation of last nights post, where I talked about wanting to re-create pictures from the Victorian era. It ties in with my locality project and that involves me learning about the area where I live, both it’s history and today.

I’m not used to doing historical research, so I’ve been thinking about my approach and it really boils down to asking basic questions; the what, why, who, when, where and how questions and building an article or even a vlog around that.

I have a list of places that I want to visit and write about. What I think will make things a bit more interesting is for me to learn a bit about it and try to answer those questions. It only partially helps me in my research goal. I have a couple of books on Gosport that I haven’t really looked at. I should spend a bit of time with them. After all, if I haven’t read them, I don’t know what they can tell me.

I’ve pontificated so much about doing things, it’s not that I’m running out of reasons for prevaricating, I really do need to get on and do things.

Over the last couple of years I have read a fair few books. Quite a number of them have been about life in the past. There have been lots of pictures of working people, in the fields or in shop, families in the home, people relaxing.

I would like to re-create some of the Victorian photos, people working or relaxing, shop keepers – you get the idea. It’s. A combination of an unrealistic recording of history – people nowadays just don’t pose like the Victorians. But, it would put pictures into a context and probably add a touch of humour. Would it be disrespectful to the Victorian era? I’d like to think it doesn’t.

The issue, partly, of course is that pretty much all of us carry what are now really quite good cameras. Billions of pictures must be taken every day. All life is recorded (I was going to say on Facebook, but I’m not sure about that).

The header picture is of a chap who passes me quite regularly passes on his skateboard. At around 6AM this chap comes down the high street and it is really noisy. There are a lot of people who live in flats over the shops. I’m sure they really appreciate that! But this isn’t a complaint, this is an illustration of normal activities. I know that these will be recorded somewhere, I would just like to photograph everyday people, doing everyday things.