Bills Posts

I’m sorry that there are so many pictures. The one of the glove and the sweet wrapper in the Cockle pond are one of those pictures that you take not knowing how it’s going to look on the bigger screen, but I like that all of them.

The light in the mornings has been lovely, it is only just becoming daylight as I start my walk, by the end it is pretty much full daylight. Sunday, the 20th was the Spring Equinox, and the clocks go forward next week end, meaning that for a few days at least, I get another go at the light of dawn.

As annoying as it is, and it really is annoying, rubbish does present some interesting photographic opportunities. But, so does the rest of the town.

It’s not because I’m political, well I am political, but I’m not going to talk about that, it’s because I am interested in what is happening in Gosport. This is a re-kindled interest, the last time I went to a council meeting must be at least 3 – 4 years ago, in fact it was 2019 – at that meeting I saw the appoint of Clr Kathy Jones as Mayor (2019-20).

I have been keen to go to a course, because I am interested in what is happening in the area. It’s very likely that I will focus on the community board and possibly the planning board as definitely the first, and both combined will give the best view as to what is going on the town. I missed the Community Board on the 8th of March, the next meetings are the Regulatory Board on 6 April and the Standards and Governance Committee. Should I at least go to these to see what they are like, but not the Standards and Governance meeting that’s on a Thursday and could interfere with the Thursday Night Net.

There were only half a dozen members of the public at the meeting, so we were able to be well spread out.

The meeting itself was as you might expect for a formal event very formulaic, and it turns out that it is the first face to face for two years, it sees the retirement of 5 councillors (who are not standing in the next election) including the current mayor.

There were some interesting points of discussion, but one of the main ones was a written question from a councillor from our ward, asking if anything could be done about the badgers and foxes in town. It appears they are a bit of a nuisance. We have personal experience of this, when they go it in to our garden and tried to trash the lawn.

Badgers it turns out are very difficult to remove from the area. Natural England, the body that controls policy for the admittedly cute looking beasties will pretty much only grant a licence for the removal of badgers if it involves building subsidence.

Foxes are a different kettle of fish. Do what you want with them.

It turns out that the best population control mechanism for both species is quite straightforward; stop feeding them. Stop making life easy for them.

But they are so cute!

I bought a selfie stick. I found that the gadget I bought at Lidl’s didn’t work out the way I wanted, it’s down to me, nothing wrong with the kit. I wasn’t comfortable with the way I was holding the unit with the phone attached, I was finding it difficult to maintain holding hte camera up, tending to let it drop down, which meant if you watched the video, you ended up looking up my nose!

One lesson from this is that I need to develop the habit of holding the kit at the right level. Now, the other issue that came to light is that I am not very stable, I have the shakes! I have device to get over that, its the DJI Osmo 2. Now Earlier this afternoon I put the osmo on charge, and that appeared to be OK, except the system status light is flashing amber, saying that the unit is not performing correctly. I’ve paired it with both my iphone and my android. One reason I though it need a software update, and normally, as soon as you connect the phone should let you know, and just do it. No indication that there is an update. All indications are that the unit is still in support, so I’m not sure what’s going wrong. It’s kind of leading me down the path that the unit is broken. There is no response at all from it, the app appears to have paired correctly, it found the device after a little bit of hunting.

One thing that has always bugged me about the Osmo 2 is that when it is turned off it becomes all floppy and there is not way of locking the gimbals, so the best thing is to get it back in the box – I found that really annoying.

I think I am letting myself come to the conclusion that a new device is required.

Wow (sorry for starting with that), but it’s just to ask how bad was last night’s post? Pretty dreadful, and I felt really bad about. I had started it very early in the evening, but wasn’t happy with it, so deleted the two additional blocks I had written with the intention of coming back to it after my regular Saturday Night Zoom, but got distracted and ended up panicking, because I thought I was going to lose my streak (the count goes back to one from 330, hence my being annoyed), luckily though, it appears that I didn’t lose the streak. Anyhow, apologies for a bad post.

We went to Titchfield and had lunch in the Garden centre. The other half wanted to go to the waterfront at Lee-on-the-Solent, and sit and read her book for an hour. By now it was nearing three o’clock and I was feeling frustrated as I could feel my Sunday walk slipping away from me. Then I thought; well, what I could do is walk back from Lee.

I didn’t though, want to walk back just following the road, so I thought I could head in to the Alver Valley, a local nature area. I found a path in, and found my self walking past an area heavy with Gorse, I was surprised with the smell, which had a delightfully surprising coconut tincture to it. It was lovely walking through the wooded area. For the first part, I saw no people, but I heard the barking of dogs, and at one point I think it was a terrier burst out from the undergrowth, took one rather surprised look at me and then ran off in the opposite direction.

I was heading towards Apple Dumpling Bridge, a small bridge crossing a small river that runs through the Alver Valley. I’d last been there several months ago, its a very popular spot for locals and ducks! When I got there, I was more than a bit surprised to find that the whole area was flooded. I didn’t know that would happen. I was just debating whether I must now re-trace my steps probably adding a a couple of mile to the day. At that point a chap with a dog appears on the other bank and just walks through the river.

Turns out it’s only two or three inches deep across its whole width. I decided then that I didn’t want to get my shoes wet, so it was shoes and socks off, and a very gingerly trodden path across the water. I had to sit down to get the dirt off the bottom of my feet and dry them off. I was then able to continue my walk home, a very pleasant four and a bit miles.

It’s a bit like being driven. I haven’t yet got the Vlogging thing out of my system. I have only just begun. Last weeks thing where I went down to the waterfront and sat with my microphone went very well. I also stood on the high street today with my DSLR camera in full view. That is the street photography thing that I also feel I want to do, but although a separate issue it all feeds in to building my confidence in filming in public.

I am now really annoyed having broken mybrunning streak because I got distracted. Sorry!

Although, apparently not. I thought the clock reset at midnight, it didn’t so my running streak is intact.

Sometimes, when you can’t think of what to write the thing to do is to sit down and write whatever comes in to your head. The Gosport Society meeting last Wednesday is the first time I’ve been out in the evening for quite a while. I think over the last couple of years I have become very used to at thee end of the working day, just going downstairs to a cup of tea, a crumpet and a couple of episodes of Grey’s Anatomy (we’ve now watched not far short of 400 episodes).

Now, admittedly I have been going to meetings of my Amateur Radio Club for a while now, but that’s it a couple of times a month plus the occasional committee meeting. It was nice to get out on Wednesday, although I think everybody there was still nervous about covid, coupled with a recognition, that we must continue.

Next Tuesday, the 22nd of March there’s a full council meeting. I want to go to that. I really want to focus on the community board as I feel that is the body that is most involved in what is actually happening in the community. The next meeting hasn’t calendared yet due, so in the meantime, I shall go to the full meeting.

Just bear with me on this one. This is a picture of Rowlands Pharmacy taken in May 2017, it’s one of over a hundred pictures that I took of the shops in Stokes Road, as I was starting to get on with my project of mapping the history of change in the street. Here’s the same pharmacy today;

As it happens, I didn’t take exactly the same picture as 2017, but enough that you can see that the frontage of Rowlands has changed significantly. Now, I can say that Gosport Best Kebab is present both today, and 2017, as is the unit to the right of GBK. Here’s the picture of that from 2017;

It doesn’t look like the curtains have changed. It does make me wonder happens about the rates for places like this.

Moving on to a slightly wider piece; reading the Book of Gosport, and looking at these pictures has made me think that perhaps I need to take another sequence of pictures, but this time perhaps include the whole building – especially if it is an interesting one – also I want to get it as close to the Book of Gosport as I can, which should be possible.

The good I have realised is that I don’t have to do this all in one go, I take pictures of a few shops at a time whilst I am out on my morning walk, seeing as I walk down Stokes Road most mornings, so over a few days I can capture everything. And make a not of changes. I will go back over that part of the Book of Gosport, and where they talk about specific shops or buildings I may go in and speak to them and ask them if I can write a piece about them – I’m not nervous about doing that, I’ll take the book with me. Should be fun!

I probably found out about the Gosport Society through an accidental link or reference on the Internet, this was probably about three years ago now. The thing that attracted me was the list of events they were advertising, a series of talks that looked fascinating. I got about a years worth in before Covid hit.

Over the previous two years, the normal members have had very little involvement in the club apart from almost irregular news letters and an Annual General Meeting. But I did keep my membership going.

Tonight was the first face to face meeting. And, in fairness the Executive committee organised the meeting very well. It started with a buffet and general natter. The only person standing at the front was the chairman. It turns out the other members of the Committee was sat amongst us. Before doing his presentation, The Chair went through the members inviting to stand so that we could recognise them. He then gave a very informative brief on the activities of the committee over the last two years, and they have been busy.

There was a. Brief rundown of likely activities that were coming up and the promise of a list of presenters arriving soon, along with a significantly revamped newsletter.

It all looks very promising, and I very much enjoyed this evenings meeting.

What is it I like about going down to the waterfront in Portsmouth? It’s not as if you’ll see hundreds of different ships coming in or going out. Little boats and big boats come and go, without any particular frequency, except perhaps the ferries; the gosport ferry going from side to side, the Brittany ferries. They (the Brittany Ferries) do change, Instead of the Normandie at the moment, it looks like the Barfleur has taken on that route.

We do get to see the occasional HMS vessel, and the Queens Harbour Master can be a very useful source of information, QHM publishes a daily ship movements list and also provides details about occurrences in the harbour such as failed lights on on hazard warnings.

There are other ships that come and go, such as Split Two, which is a small cargo ship and there’s also a ship (the Bladerunner) that every so often brings a blade for a wind turbine. I don’t know where it takes the blades, presumably to a berth where they are collected ready to go out to an installation.

There are some strange little ships small almost flat tops with cranes or diggers on that all appear to rush around doing maintenance tasks in the harbour. Interesting to watch. It’s fair to say that usually there is usually something going on in the harbour, which always makes the waterfront an interesting place to visit.

This is the old British Telecom Telephone Exchange building. It is the last building on the southern side at the western end of Stokes Road. That is its only significance in the incomplete project.

Around 2010 I became involved in a project in Cambridgeshire called the Cambridge Community Archive Network (CCAN). The project is intended to capture the history and the current activities around the county. I made it my role in the project to catalogue the changes to the shop fronts along the high street, so I baselined the project by photographing the shop fronts along the high street, and then when either I had noticed that a shop was changing role or ownership I would take a picture and upload it. The project is still running, and my pictures from 2010 are still there, here’s a link; https://www.ccan.co.uk We moved to Gosport.

I had enjoyed working with CCAN, and when I arrived at Gosport I wanted to do the same thing, except Hampshire doesn’t appear to have the equivalent project, or the same software. Not to worry I thought, I’ll go ahead and do something. So, I went out and took pictures of all of the shop fronts on both the north and south side. So, I have a set of street front pictures from 2017, but I haven’t followed up on monitoring changes. What’s brought all this up?

It’s the book of the moment, The Book of Gosport. The section I was reading dealt with Gosport High Street and Stokes Road, I quite like the pictures in the book and the details that they give. The book was published in 2005, I thought it would be quite interesting to do a set of pictures of all of the shops and buildings they mention in the book. I know this is another project to add to many that I have discussed on this blog, but I could actually do this. I will put some time aside for this.