Bills Posts

A picture of the machine that has beeen creating the piles of crushed rubble. Although the main building has gone, I suspect that its role here is not over. The hard standing it is on will have to go. I wonder how thick it is?

It seems strange now to see the empty space where the bus station once stood. It really is gone.

It was a quick walk this morning, the chill is still in the air.

I was amused to see all the pigeons gathered around the fountain;

They were waiting to be fed. There is a chap who does that regularly.

I said “Morning” to the group of people outside C2U – One of them gave me a smile and said Morning back. That kind of implies that they haven’t responded in the past. That’s not the case, it was just said with a bit more enthusiasm this morning, which was nice.

We are about halfway through Autumn (01 Sep to 21 Dec). The vegetation is starting to turn. It is that which has drawn members of the Gosport Camera Club out for a Sunday Morning walk.

Today’s expedition is Swanbourne Lake. Quite often, lakes like this are the resuly of quarrying, typically for gravel. But Swanbourne Lake appears to be natural. There are mentions of a lake in the area from the date of the Norman Conquest.

Surrounded as it is by hills, covered in trees, many of which are starting to assume their autumnal colours. I think it hasn’t quite reached its full glory, so perhaps we were a little bit early. But I am really glad we came.

As is usually the case we ended up at a pub, which had a surprisingly large collection of alcohol free beer – usually it’s only one or two, this pub had half a dozen, which was very nice.

We thoroughly enjoyed the morning.

Simply because I got to have a buffet breakfast with some good friends in Portsmouth, friends who had travelled a few miles and crossed water to meet up, enjoy food together and good chat. An excellent morning.

Also good because I got to spend a bit of time having a good browse in one of my favourite shops. I didn’t buy anything, but I did see a book that I will be buying. Probably for Christmas.

I got home and spent a bit of time on the computer, which I always enjoy and then fell asleep, so I did miss the evening zoom which I think was the only disappointment of the day.

Tomorrow is another camera club trip, so we’ll be looking forward to that, and talking of things forward, don’t forget that in the UK at least, the clocks go back by one hour at around 2AM this morning.

I thought it might be cold before stepping out of hte house. I have to confess that I almost turned round and came home. My heel was hurting a bit, and it was colder than I anticipated and I really should have had some gloves, but I haven’t looked for them, so I don’t know where they are.

There are some changes due for the high street. I can’t be any more specific about what those changes are, as I don’t know (with one exception, what used to be the Pound Stretcher shop). A couple of exploration holes have been dug inside the shop, but nothing appears to be happening there.

The next port of call was the bus station. I could hear it before I could see it. There was a new machine, The demolition engines were dumping rubble into the machine’s hopper, which was spitting out a much finer product. This all matches everything I’ve read in the planning documents (I’ve not read all of them. Only a couple).

There wasn’t much happening at the waterfront. Just the movement of the Gosport Ferry. Some interesting light at that time of the morning.

We had Aurora with us today, so we were looking after her.

I am going to try and do my thing of getting up early, working, then going for a walk. I’m OK with getting up, I just don’t want to go out when it’s dark.

The Bus Station will be the main focus of interest but I will take a walk along the high street, just to see if anything is going on there.

Let’s see how things go.

I’m sure there is a picture to be had of the ripples caused by a gull swimming in the Cockle Ponds. I’m not at all convinced this is it, and this is the closest I have got to the gull before it jumps in to the pond and swims off in a panic at my approach. I wish I could tell it to calm down.

The demolition of the bus station progresses. A Demolition Engine was working away at getting rid of the flooring under the main bus station building. I don’t think they’ve started on the pan in front of the station, where the buses used to go.

The town foxes really are getting quite brazen. I interrupted one that was eading for the oppen door of a shop. It wasn’t a food shop, so I don’t know what it was expecting it darted off when it realised I was there and our paths were merging. Even the shop keeper saw it, and came to the door. It was nice to have a chat about them,, whilst the fox was sauntering (only way to describe it.

We had an enjoyable evening at the Camera Club. Tonight was the first of the seasons PDI (Projected Digital Image) competitions.Elayne and I both had three images in the round.

The header image scored 9.5 points. It had been held back to the end of the competition, I was excited as that meant it could be considered for an award.

Unfortunately, the one thing the judge didn’t like about it was the background, so no award this time, but I was pleased with the hold back and the 9.5 – so no complaints there.

Elayne has made the decision that she is going to focus on trying to take better pictures this year, so that she has fresh material for next year. We have both been delving in to our archives for competition pictures.

Of course, in order to get some decent pictures, we need to create opportunities. That means doing something – even if it is just going for a walk. You never know what you will see. Plus, if you are carrying your phone, these days, you are pretty much guaranteed to have a reasonable (actually a really quite good) camera with you. So, no excuse.

Get out there, have your phone with you. Create those opportunities.

September was Aurora’s Birthday. We bought a couple of metallised balloons for the party. It’s over a month ago, and these two balloons, whilst slowly deflating are still floating. Their decreasing bouyancy is partially aggravated by the string holding them down. I cut the string off one of them, it’s now clinging to the ceiling, like the other.

Why am I going on about these balloons? Well mainly because they are fascinating. I. was wondering if they would show us air currents in the house. If they are still floating over the next few days, I might have a go at seeng what they do.

That kind of leads me on, in a very tenuous way, to the weather. I have a weather station. in the garden, it looks quite neat, it’s good to see the anemometer whizzing round when the wind blows and the vane telling me the wind direction (provided it’s not southerly – distorted by the house), but that is pretty much all it does. It’s time for a replacement. I might get one for Christmas. I do have one that I quite like the look of, but I am still researching.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’ve done a fair few courses on Future Learn. They are quite good. But I am reaching the point where I am running out of topics which I am interested in. There are some courses which I could consider doing again, but not for a while. They are something to come back to.

I was surprised to find that The Open University offers around 900 courses free. I’ve just started exploring those. I am sure there are some that will appeal to me.

I had heard that some of the major American universities offer free courses. In fact, i signed up to do a course from Harvard. To be fair, I realised that I wasn’t that interested in the course, it took me about a week to realise. I’ve withdrawn now. I may go back to the institution in the future, but not yet.

I have really gone out of my way to stress that I have no desire to write fiction. Well, that isn’t 100% true, occasionally a thought passes through my mind, followed by “Could that be a short story or a book”?

I am about to risk a Ratner moment, by saying that of late, I have becomed concerned about the quality of my writing, I am concerned about it, and would like to improve it. I have started to look into how to do this. Ironically, it appears that the tools and methods fiction writers use can equally apply to non-fiction.

On of the problems of my writing (I think) is that I tend to be what I call “Reportish” very linear, straight facts, no embellishments, metaphors, scenic writing etc. It’s a dry style that isn’t that entertaining (if you are still with me, thank you).

I think I need to be more open to different ways of writing, but as implied by the title of today’s post, that will require some imagination and originality. These are qualities that I do not possess to any great extent. Can I do anything about that? Not sure, but I can at least try.