Bills Posts

The Scarlet Lady, the aptly named Virgin Cruise Ship is not a small vessel. It looks like the tug is about to get run over. But when you see them in action you begin to appreciate not only the power of these little vessels, but the consummate mastery with which they are captained. It was stationary, The Scarlet Lady was heading right for it, and the tug just started scooting backwards, the power and agility of these little craft make watching them at work an absolute delight.

RThings like this are one of the aspects of my morning walk that I enjoy most. It’s like that job where you never know what is going to happen from one day to the next. Yesterday, one of the Marella cruise ships, Explorer 2 was in. I didn’t see her arrive, but hopefully I will do at some point when she returns. She’s not as big as the discoverer ship we went to Iceland and the Fjords aboard, but still nice looking.

On a side comment, I was travelling back over Portchester hill this evening. I had to stop to have a look at The Scarlet Lady in port, all lit up. For the most part, Portsmouth is not a high rise city, and even from that distance you could see how the ship was dwarfing that part of the city she was near.

Whilst the rest of the walk was routine, I had a problem with my radio, both batteries failed. I must admit, I new the second battery would be low, but it failed quicker than I thought it would. For some reason Echolink wouldn’t let me connect. But, it was an enjoyable walk nonetheless.

I have registered with our local council to be notified when anything is added to the Gosport Borough Council website in respect of committee meetings. Last night I saw that a meeting of the Community Board has been scheduled for 08 Sep. It gives the paperwork for the meeting, including the briefing pack. I had a skim read through. I noticed an item relating to the Cockle Ponds. This is where the picture comes in to play. I read that the intention is to remove the concrete barrier between the two ponds, and replace it with a boardwalk.

The rationale for doing is that the water in the North (the smaller) pond is refreshed as much as the larger, south pond. Replacing the barrier with a board walk will make North Pond healthier. I get the logic of it, it’s just that I am always wary of change.

After a few days away, it has been really nice to go out for a walk this morning. It is quite surprising as the nights are lengthening, and we are heading for the Autumnal equinox to notice how quickly it is happening. Soon I will need to be taking my tripod with me instead of the monopod. Although the tripod is heavier, it’s quite nice to use.

Whilst I enjoyed the break, it was very nice to get back and get out.

We bought an electric vehicle. I think anybody who reads this is well aware of that now. As we started using it I became very aware of its limitations. When Fully Charged the display shows 180 miles. Of course, that doesn’t mean you get that distance. It all depends on how the car is driven. For example, we drove down the A3 this afternoon. I did not exceed the speed limit, but I kept as close to it as possible. I used RHS Wisely as a marker to home, gives a distance of 57 miles. To cover that I used 84 miles of energy. I was not driving economically.

In contrast to that, when we were northbound we joined the M25 at Junction 10, and using Heathrow Terminal 5 as a measure, a distance of roughly 14 miles. We joined the M25 showing 135 miles on the clock. We passed the M4 Junction still showing 135 miles. We discovered that EV’s absolutely love traffic jams. At one point in the slow moving traffic, our distance reading went from 135 to 136 miles. It actually went up. We both laughed, we had been watching it.

The return trip went as smoothly, we had a good (non-traffic-jam) run southward. We reached a recharging point that we had used before. We took the car up to 90%, so I was able to deliberately test it’s capability.

When we arrive at our destination, the ability to recharge via a 3 pin plug means that provided we have time (and overnight, or a long daytime stay is perfect) we have no problems.

The absolutely key, most fundamental aspect to this is;

• Don’t risk the distance – keep a good margin of safety.
• Plan.
• Plan
• Plan

If you do this, there is no need to worry or be anxious. Also doubly important is know your car. We have now done the three long journeys that we might normally expect to take. Provided you do it properly, you can sit back and enjoy the car.

I had the opportunity to visit three good book shops today. I went on a really good browse with no sense of frustration, I think it’s because I was looking for something different to the self help area that I normally end up in. I think that’s a lesson I need to take from this, to stay away from this area. I’m not going to find what I’m looking for, so why bother?

I am both surprised, and not at the amount of information that is available from history. I am curious about the nature of the records, how they were made; when and why and by whom. They are there, and they are used.

I saw a book of a radio programmed they listened to; Alistair Cooke’s Letters From America. I was very tempted to buy the book, but I decided to wait until I had found out whether an audio version of the book exists. There must be many issues of the letter that I’ve not heard. It must have been going for years before I found the radio programme. Seems like there are. I feel an audio book coming on.

The 2022 edition of the Writers & Artists Year Book is out. I’ve bought about three versions of this book over time, and have done very little with them. Once again, I had a browse through it, found some interesting stuff, in particular an area of publications that I have been looking at recently. It seems that this years edition has quite a large section on the subject, So, once gain it is in my shopping basket.

There were also a couple of books that I’m not yet prepared to talk about, So, I’ll leave them until a later date. It was a real pleasure to spend a good bit of time in there, for the first time in a long time.

This is NOT Rowner Church, this is Trinity Church in the main part of Gosport. I don’t have any pictures of Rowners’ St Mary’s the Virgin – Yet! They come next.

This coming weekend, if I have time, I am intending to visit Rowner’s St Mary’s (as opposed to the Alverstoke church of almost the same name). I am going to take some pictures there, and I am going to see if I can get inside the church for a look around. I think I may also ask if it is OK to video inside. Respectfully of course.

The first visit is to set the frame of reference, I want to try and do at least a semi-reasonable job. That means stable shots on a tripod, things like establishing shots, long short, close-up pictures etc.

I’ve never even visited the church before, so how can write with any confidence about producing a vlog on the matter? This all goes back to my previous posts about doing some decedent research. I have done a couple of practice runs, and I have not been happy with my presentation, this is why I am not rushing in to this.

Once again. The picture bears no resemblance to the subject of this post.

Last nights post, which I won’t delete or change was born out of a sense of frustration. We arrived at a particular charging point wishing to do a top up. With the level of almost paranoid caution I am experiencing with our electric car, I we decided to top up even though we had more than enough charge to get back. That was a good thing, as one of the charging points was being used by someone who indicated that they would be quite a while, and the other was out of service.

Now, I admit I have no idea how long the point had been out of action, but I am hoping that the point’s failure is reported back to the providers control centre as soon as it stopped working, and that the provider has put in place steps to get an engineer out to it and that the charging point will be out of service for a very limited period of time. My concern is that (the maintenance that is) is not happening in anything like a reasonable timescale. Now to me, a charging point out of action for more than a couple of hours is way too long, but I don’t know how reasonable that is. One thing I am going to do is for the service providers that we are confident that will be using for the journeys we know we are going to want to use is to look at their websites to see if I can find out their Service Level Agreements are for charge point down time. Should be interesting

Yesterday’s post was a bit of a rant (I think that’s fairly obvious) and as such is very poorly researched and presented. Oh well. Such is life.

My wife and I have been saying for quite a while now that either our next car or the one after must be an E-Vehicle. Then we we received a letter from Nissan, suggesting a special offer. We’d had our car for four years, and thought we would go and have a look at what was on offer. But, we were definitely NOT going to buy a new car! Hah!

Of course, we walked out of the showroom having put a deposit down on a brand new Nissan Leaf. OOh My, what a journey we were about to embark upon. We had given no thought to this at all, Naive isn’t the word for it.

The first thing is getting our own charging point. Now, there is a story there, but I want to leave that until later I wish to focus on another matter – infrastructure.

We have now undertaken the three long journeys that over the course of a year we would expect to do to visit family and friends, and and I have to say that the Leaf has performed beyond my expectations. You may have heard of the term “Range Anxiety”. This comes from worries about the availability of charging points along our journey, and then there is “Petrol Envy” – there’s not a lot the government can do about that as it is really down to battery technology, and that is the ability to recharge a battery in the same time as it takes to fill a tank with petrol (I have no idea if that is even achievable) but I have a suggestion for that, which I will talk about later,

Since acquiring our electric car, I have been disappointed to learn about the issues with charging points. Particularly disappointing is the frequency with which they are out of service. Has the Government stipulated a minimum service requirement? What is the recovery time for returning a charging point back in to service?

Government involvement; I know there is a strategy paper, I have read it (I need to read it again) and it does say a lot of good things, such charging points in lamp posts. There really does need to be a lot more charging points, lay-bys. What would be Nice is, trains with carriages, holding car charging points, I put my car on the train from Portsmouth to Newcastle and get off at the other end fully charged and ready to go. No stressful driving, similar to the euro tunnel trains. There really does need to be a lot more done. OK. I know this is a bit rushed, and I haven’t really finished it, but I may continue tomorrow. Love Bill.

I assume that this is a scaffold pole, it’s the right size. It’s been in the water off the Haslar Marina Pier Wall for a long time. It was bedded in to the in to the seafloor but it was at an awkward angle. It could easily have been a danger, to anyone (illegally I think) diving off the pier wall, and definitely to any small ship that might come in close – even if they aren’t supposed to (I have no idea if that’s correct). But it makes for an interesting picture.

It was a little bit cooler this morning, for the first time in quite a few weeks I wore joggers, light ones, but I really appreciated them. It was the coolest morning of the week. But it felt like a good morning.

Just over a month ago we were talking on the #Breakfastclub about the absence of the jelly fish, and the lack of life bigger than insects. Jo, G6RTE just happened to ask about the salinity of the water. I had no idea how to measure that and so asked google the question. Turns out it’s a straight forward inexpensive device (£10 or thereabouts) called a Refractometer, so I bought one. Very simple to use. It’s easily calibrated using a solution of a known salinity level, using a very small sample of water, it works on the basis of refraction (hence the name) having been calibrated the more or less saline the sample being tested refracts the light against the scale. Very easy to use.

Just a few days later, another member of the #Breakfastclub suggested that nitrate levels might be affecting the viability of the ponds. This gets a little bit more complicated, but devices for measuring the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Electrical Conductivity (EC) and PH, now, my understanding of PH is a measure the acidity or alkalinity of something, but nobody seems able to say what PH stands for with any degree of certainty. Anyhow, it turns out that devices to measure these three parameters are even cheaper than a refractometer (as cheap as (£6). Anyhow, I bought them (there are two devices involved. I did my first full set of readings today;

• Salinity 38 – 39%
• PH 7.77
• TDS 2300 ppm
• EC7700

I have to do a little bit of research into what the last two mean, but I think the PH is pretty much normal. I think I’m going to have to report on this at least once a week now.

Out for my lunchtime walk following my usual route over Forton Lake bridge, up near the Explosion Museum, coming back I thought I’d try taking a picture of the end of the handrail, it’s one of those “let’s see if this works”. Is it the big white circle, the lines, the contrast with the blue sky? I don’t know. It’s a bit unusual, perhaps it’s that alone which is enough to trigger a like in me?

Back in 2010, we had a holiday in the South of France, Carcassonne – inspired by the Kate Moss Novel Labyrinth. Carcassonne is a fascinating place, well worth a visit. Anyhow, we paid a visit to the beech, where I took this photo;

Now this was one of my early introductions to minimalism. Now I know the header picture isn’t minimalist, but I do like it. The thing is to get out and take pictures.

As usual, the picture has no relationship with the content of the post.

The Book is; The Walker’s guide to outdoor Clues & Signs by Tristan Gooley. I was going to share a link with you, but it’s a long horrendous amazon link, that I don’t want here, possibly at the bottom of this post.

Anyhow, I I have been wanting to read this book for several weeks, but had three others that I was determined to finish before starting this one. Usually, I can’t do that, if I want to read a book regardless of how many others I have on the go. As it happens, I do have another book on the go. I’ll write about that one later. Back to Tristan. No less an August publication than the The Financial Times describes the book as “A charming and intelligent guide to exploring the local landscape”. Sounds right up my street, so having finished the other books I picked it up Monday Evening and started reading.

the introduction was OK (yes, that sounds a bit weak mom, intended to be) and the first few pages were of a similar vein, not making it sound very exciting am I? Anyhow, I get to page 22, where I encounter the piece on the different colour of soils, and the story of the early 20th century American, Albert Munsell, who developed a system of categorising soil by it’s colour. The scheme, you can google it, it will come up, is still used by scientists today, Indeed, the Munsell system would have been used by yourself, when you were selecting which colour paint you want to use in your lounge. Ok, that was interesting. So now my curiosity is peaked. What else is here that I’m going to find interesting? Now that might sound like a boring thing to get excited about, but it’s these little things I get interested in.

I’m a few pages further on now. talking about how to track animals. I honestly don’’t think I will be doing much of that, but it is interesting. I’m going to stick with the book.

The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues and signs Now, there you go. I’ve just learned something else about links in WordPress. How excellent is that?