Bills Posts

January 18, 2020 – That was the last time I was in London. I had to go yesterday, I was on a bit of a mission. The journey up via train was the firs time I had been on a train. More than two years since I last visited the capital.

I took the opportunity to go for a bit of a walk, and I have to say that I was a little surprised at how busy the city was. Restaurants and pubs were all busy, even spilling out on to the streets. There also appeared to be a lot of tourists. I took the opportunity to take some pictures;

Was this a piece of art, or just an old bike?

And, part of this building was made to look as though it was falling Von top of you;

It made me think that I would very much like to come back to the city and take in a few more of the sights.

Just a very quick & short post today, I don’t want to lose the sequence. I went on a bit of a trip across the water. It gave me an opportunity to grasp a picture of The Cumbrian Fisher from the seaward side.

Sorry it’s a bit short. More tomorrow.

I went for my usual lunchtime walk today. I’ve taken to going along the high street to the waterfront. It’s partly because I want to see the high street, just to see what is going on. but, I was very struck today by a feeling as I reached the Ferry terminal.

There was a hazy quality to the light, a kind Haley, but bright quality to it. There was a busker on the high street, lets just say, not the best I’d heard. A couple of weeks a chap was playing and he was good, both in voice and his ability to play the guitar.

Once again, the high street was surprisingly busy, with lots of small groups of people and individuals moving around.

Many of the seats along the Esplanade were occupied with people just taking in the view and the see air, and seeing things like the TS Royalist, one of a number of Training Ships for the Sea Cadets, of which there were two in portsmouth harbour today, this one was coming into harbour under partial sail, which was nice to see.

Of course, when I do my morning walks, things are very quiet, understandably. So it has been very nice to see facilities being used.

In yesterday’s post I wrote that the road works happening on North & South Cross Streets that cross the high street, and are part of the pedestrian area. I said that I would try and find out what is going on. I spoke to the workers today.

They confirmed that this was related to the construction worker associated with the new bus station. The workers had been digging trenches along each street looking for services (gas, water, electricity etc.) that cross the streets. This is because the two side streets are going to be opened up to traffic during the construction of the new bus station, and the road structure needs to be of a certain standard and the supporting surface needs to have no services in the top one metre.

It appears that North Cross Street is OK, and conversion can start. South Cross Street it appears may have an issue – investigations continue.

This set of roadworks on Mumby Road the the investigations of an ongoing gas leak. The work people were very good. I apologised for interrupting their work and left them to it.

Don’t worry, there’s no crisis. Just me doing a little bit of introspection on the purpose of the blog. I watched a video about photography earlier on this evening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SurgXdSOix4 It kind of reinforced something that I learned a few weeks ago, whether it is in regards to getting out and shooting my vlog, or being seen by people taking weird photos the thing to do is not to be afraid, to not worry about what people think. Just get out there and do it.

That “just do it” thing applies equally to this blog as it does to the associated activities. Having said that makes it sound like I have some seriously exciting plans. I don‘ t. I’m just thinking about what I want to do with it.

One thing I’d quite like to do is something “Newsy” so the occasional article on something that is happening in town. Now, admittedly my thought was to look at what the town councillors are doing. Trouble is they don’t seem to be doing anything newsworthy – as far as I can see.

Perhaps then the thing to do is find something that is happening in town and follow it. Here we go;

There are some roadworks going on in the centre of town. I’m not sure, but I think it may be something to do with the new bus station. Whilst work on the bus station is progressing, I think the plan is to turn this part of the pedestrian precinct into traffic bearing road, isolating the road at the ferry end of the high street, allowing construction work to proceed which would other wise be very dangerous.

I’m going to keep an eye on this, and do the occasional piece. There is another bit of work going on, which I think is cable related. I have no pictures of that – until tomorrow. I also have no idea what they are doing or why. I’ll. try and find that out tomorrow.

I went out for a short walk today. I did think of doing a slightly longer one than I ended up doing; down to Gilkicker and back up via the sea wall. Instead I walked all around the Cockle Ponds. The Jelly fish are doing well, and I am seeing some that are three or more inches across. There were also what I can only think of as a sea water minnow. I’ve tried looking it up, but haven’t found them yet.

The walk down the high street kind of highlighted how things are going to be for the summer. The weather was lovely, and people were out enjoying themselves. A number of places had seating outside and they were all busy.

Perhaps this is the way a high street should be a social place rather than a shopping space?

OK, it’s a Bumble Bee in the picture. I’ve tried to take a picture of a hover fly just as it passes my I phone, Oh I caught it, but it’s just a black fuzzy blob.. You can’t tell what it is, but I know.

I suggested to Elayne that we should do more to encourage an increase in the number of hover flies, by not cutting the grass (a recommended method). As you can imagine the prospect of lead balloons being involved was mentioned. I cut the grass.

We have an area at the bottom of the garden that the hover flies seem to really like. There are usually four or five of them there. I love the way they just sit there, and yet move with such precision. It is incredibly graceful.

That contrasts completely by the bustling randomness of bumblebees, there is a myth that they shouldn’t be able to fly. Of course that’s bunkum, because plainly they do. If we couldn’t explain it, that would be our problem, not theirs.

Isn’t there something stunningly beautiful about a garden full of insects? I absolutely love it, I am so glad that we have a wild patch again, I am really looking forward to seeing it develop, and the insects it brings in.

Except Spiders. I don’t want them anywhere near me. There’s sign up saying Arachnids not welcome. Trouble is, I think they’ll ignore it.

H

Because we went to London yesterday I didn’t get out for a walk. Today I managed to get in nearly 8 miles on Thursday. On the walk 1000 it’s possible to chart the progress of your walk by setting “Missions”. It’s possible to set a route on the map, so I have a nice circular route set up For Northern Ireland. I knew as I set this one up, that it was a bit ambitious and as of today, I have covered 42% of the distance, but in 55% of the time, so I am well behind, and can’t see myself catching up.

I managed to get a couple of miles in today, it was very nice actually, I took a walk down the high street. The SaturdayMarket was on, but it wasn’t a very big market, not many stalls at all. But the street itself was pretty busy.

I took a walk along the prom (or the Esplanade as it is properly called). There were the usual collections of people, some just sat as individuals, couples or small groups ambling along, drinking in the nice weather and a thought occurred to me; I’ve held a view that the waterfront could be place for entertainment, but it is a place where people go to relax and get away from the bustle. So I may be changing my views on the use of the waterfront.

Once again, the header picture is absolutely nothing to do with today’s topics.

We went to London today to visit family. We had a lovely day, and I’m pleased to say that everyone we saw were OK.

We drove to London in the Leaf. We left home with a full charge, and we knew that we could get to south London without having to stop to charge. I didn’t want to do that, because I knew that plugging in at our destination with the 13 amp connector would not give us sufficient charge even after six or more hours, and we would have to stop on the way home. I didn’t want to do that.

On previous trips north our first port of call has been the Genie Point charger at Liphook Services. We knew that if we stopped there, had a cup of coffee whilst we charged would give us sufficient to get home (with the home charge in London). We pulled in to the services, went to where we knew the charger to be. What was evident as we drove in were the rather extensive construction works that were underway. What was not evident was the charging point! It had gone.

We had a good look around, just make sure that it hadn’t been moved. It had, but only to remove it.I think it reasonable to say that our lack of being impressed was rather profound. To say I felt a tad grumpy about the issue would not be an understatement.

Subsequent research has revealed that the northbound services are being subject to a multi-million pound re-vamp, to include a MacDonalds, and possibly other outlets. Which is fine and good, at I would be shocked, very shocked if it didn’t include a bank of chargers – I just hope they include the connection standard we have on our car.

Subsequent to our not getting a charge at Liphook we proceeded on to Cobham Services on the M25. It has three EV points we can use. As we drove on to the M25, ZapMap told us that all three charging points were in use, which was good in that they were working, but how long would we have to wait?

Upon arrival, one of the cars was in the process of disconnecting, so we didn’t have to wait long at all. All connected up, charging progressed apace, a minor discussion with Elayne about my stress over the whole issue. charging complete, journey complete, a good day was had by all. Why-oh-why do I get so stressed about this? I was not happy about Liphook. Absolutely nothing I can do about it.

It has been a while since we had a morning like this. I must admit, I looked up the definition of a pea-souper, but that’s a fairly precise definition of a fog involving pollution, giving the mist a green & yellow colouring and is very unpleasant and unhealthy to breathe in. This was thick. I reckon visibility was 250 yards but it wasn’t at all unpleasant. Well, not unless you were driving or at sea.

On the cruise before last, the Iceland cruise, the ship we were on went through a fog bank where if we were stood at the bow or the Stern, we couldn’t see the other end of the ship. Given that we weren’t that far outside the arctic circle and we were passing a huge iceberg, it was just a tad disconcerting. Not at all relevant to todays post, just an interesting aside.

Back to this morning. The key feature was the mist, it was everywhere. I do like a good mist, it offers some really nice photo opportunities. I particularly like the rather forlorn, solitary or almost solitary boats looking abandoned, there’s something spooky about it. There’s a lot here in Gosport that makes me think of the Charles Dickens story, I’m sure it’s great expectations, but I’m not certain. For some reason I recall it being a very disturbing film. Apparently the location in question was Chatham Docks.

Even before I left the house I could hear the fog horns. Then as I was down at the waterfront, there were not only the land based horns, the ships were sounding theirs as well. It was quite a noisy morning.

I changed my walking route, I did a full circuit of the cockle ponds. There weren’t very many Jellyfish on the southern side of the south pond, where I saw them yesterday morning, but there were thousands on the north side and, unusually in the north pond. I don’t recall seeing them there last year, but they probably were. By far the greater bulk of them were very small, around a centimetre across. I’m really looking forward to seeing them grow.