Bills Posts

128/366 Tier 4 & A walk

It’s not so much that this is a diary, it isn’t really. It’s my meanderings, which you are kind enough to read. But there are times, moments I suppose of history, which are worth marking. The last and biggest for me was being in Berlin in November 1989, when the wall came down. I’m not going to write about that tonight, but I am going to write about Tier 4, just a little bit. Of course we are upset about the whole covid thing, the disruption it has caused. It is fortunate for me that I have been able to do by far the largest part of my job from home. I somehow knew that plans forChristmas wouldn’t last, and they haven’t. But we adapt, and survive to celebrate another day.

I went out for a walk today, down the railway line (as was, now a path & cycle track – and a good one at that). Along Clay Hall Lane, down to the waterfront at the Haslar Sea wall (the picture, unusually for me, the picture is relevant to at least part of today’s post. I enjoy going to the sea wall and spending a couple of hours there watching the ships, having a chat with people on GB3IW (do I need to explain that?), taking pictures of ships as they move. I usually take my full camera and my spotter scope so I can get a good look at things. Wrong time of year for anything other than a quick look.

I walked along Haslar Road that runs between the Qinetiq establishment and the now (non-operational) Haslar Naval Hospital, from Clayhall to The Submarine Museum, it’s just under half a mile of what is probably one of the most boring roads in the country, the road is bordered on either side by a (I think) 10 foot high brick wall. In the summer, it’s like walking across the Sahara, in the winter it can be like walking down a wind tunnel.

I only got rained on once. It was a very nice walk.

127/366 The Holiday

OK, so really, the picture bears no relationship with tonight’s post. We are sat watching a film, the main stars are Kate Winslett and Cameron Diaz. It’s one of the Christmassy films, you know exactly how it’s going to work out, but you still watch it. It’’s entertaining.

I didn’t go fora walk this morning, it was raining. Even though I woke up just after 6, in theory, I should still have gone out if it weren’t for the rain.

It’s 21:55 and we are just a couple of hours away from being moved in to Tier 3 of Covid-19. I’m not sure how we got here. At one point, before they introduced the tier system, we were an area with one of the areas of lowest infection. I’m not sure what effect going into the worst tier will have on us, given that we apply measures of fairly extreme caution as a matter of course. We’ll wait and see.

126/366 Magpies & Ships

When the birds condescend to attend the bird table whilst I am watching it, it’s either the pigeons or the magpies first. Now, if it is the pigeons, they are a little bit hesitant, obviously mapping out the garden to make sure there is no risk to them. Now, they aren’t the most attractive of birds, I think it must be that scowling look and hooked beak, so I don’t view them positively. Anyhow, after a couple of minutes, they are on top of the bird table and working out how to get on to the feeding area as the table is only just a bit larger than a single bird. I must admit, I think Navy pilots could learn a thing or two from them about landing on a carrier. It is very interesting to watch.

Now the Magpies; they are very good at letting you know they are there, their chittering at anything which annoys them can be heard from a long way off. The first thing is that they are quite bouncy birds. They land on the shed roof, and bounce about sizing up the area. They might land on the ground and bounce around there for a bit, and then they make the decision to head for the table. For such an up front, noisy brash bird, they really are remarkably timid and flighty. They one stay on the table for a few seconds at a time, off, and back again. They don’t stay long. A pity. They’re a nice looking bird and, despite their reputation, I like them.

The ships side of thing. I arrived at the waterfront just as the Normandie was passing the Spinnaker, with my camera set to night mode and with a 5 second long delay before moving the shutter I wouldn’t get that picture so the one I got is the image at the top. Even if I say so myself, a reasonably interesting one.

125/366 The Story of Art – Abstract to surreal

OK, that didn’t work. This is the source picture, from which I attempted to create a surreal image;

That point in time at which artists realised that they weren’t tied to producing pictures of scenes from the bible unleashed their brains. We entered and adapted the age of the impressionists and moved to the abstract. It looks like the first real abstract picture produced by Wassily Kandinsky, his Cossacks picture (see the link below) was labeled the rather delightful name of “colour music” this era takes us through a number of very well known artists including; Matisse & Picasso.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=colour+music+kadinsky&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwj2ut6WnNPtAhXN4YUKHSTsAcsQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=colour+music+kadinsky&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1CfC1jkDGDrDWgAcAB4AIABYYgBrgGSAQEymAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=3l3aX_bTK83DlwSk2IfYDA&bih=927&biw=1366&client=safari&hl=en-gb#imgrc=E459-adnHk_WXM

The topic of form focuses the artists minds. Now this is an interesting exercise, because I am finding that my notes are inadequate. Starting to move into the area of art where normally, my appreciation starts to wane, because I just don’t get it. But, that is because I am seeing the picture but not getting the back story. Now, the realisation that I needed the back story came, I think it was last year, when we went on a tour of Goodwood house. The tour guide took us around the house, and rather than just letting us look at the pictures without comment, gave us a brief history of the picture and how it related to the house. Many of them were produced at the behest of the owners. That added a level of reality to the pictures.

The reality of the abstract and surreal lay in the minds of the artists. The mental agonies (literally) that some of the artists went through to identify their forms and styles, literally pushed some over the edge. You have to appreciate them just for that. I won’t pretend to understand pictures like Picasso’s Violin and Grapes, but that is the whole point to me. I don’t understand Picasso’s mind.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=picasso+violin+and+grapes&client=safari&hl=en-gb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjH1sako9PtAhUBZMAKHSNaCqYQ_AUoAXoECBEQAw&biw=1366&bih=927#imgrc=SMygNR0JryNb0M

We are getting towards the end of the book now, and this phas, perhaps because I lack comprehension is definitely the most uncomfortable part for me so far. But that doesn’t detract from the pleasure of reading this amazing book.

124/366 Squirrel

This was around lunchtime. I’d put food on the table early, and hadn’t had a chance to check it, but it hadn’t taken the squirrel long to find it.

I don’tthink the squirrel was there all morning, but it was still there at lunchtime. At first, it was on the table, and was being pestered by a couple of pigeons, but it was holding it’s own. Then it went for a wander round the garden. I’ve seen two of them in the garden together, rushing around burying things, the garden must full of the stuff.

There were a few starlings about, not the normal rush. I have to confess, that we are waiting for another bird table to turn up. We want one nearer this end of the fence line. We have a Robbin and a blackbird who gather there and don’t go near the far end where the main table is. I will of course have to sweep up the residue, but it’s worth it see them feeding.

The Starlings in particular are messy so and so’s. When they visit the birds table, it’s like one massive food fight. There are bits of stuff flying around everywhere. It’s amazing how far they throw things. I put a suet ball on the table, next morning it was about 5 feet away. I know they need to eat, and I do try and do my best to keep them fed, but it is a real pleasure to watch them eat.

123/366 Monday – Trains

Or lack of them, and no this is is not a commuter thing. The thing is, I like trains. I like watching trains. I like knowing about the signalling infrastructure. I’d love to have a decent model layout. I don’t think I have the skills to build one. Mainly because I have never really tried.

There is a parallel here, blogging. I didn’t know I could do this, write something every day. I’ve been driven in a good way to do this. Anyhow this is a piece about real trains, not models, The frustration is not living near an active rail line. Before moving to Gosport, we lived quite near the East Coast Main Line, now that is a busy line, but mostly passenger traffic (or at least it was, wonder what it is like now). Passenger trains are fine, and I love watching the intercity trains speed by or a slightly slower local units.

What I would like is to live near a busy freight line, with multiple types of freight runs. I could probably get some of that if I went up to Eastleigh. That appear to have a bit of a freight yard, looking at Google, it looks like yard used to be quite a bit bigger. Pity about that. I don’t like seeing any shrinkage of the rail network.

122/366 A Wow! Milestone and Feng Shui of Mugs.

122 days ago, I embarked upon a bit of a mission. I’m quite shocked at how quickly the time has gone, and to be honest how much I have enjoyed this. Just occasionally A little bit of a struggle to write something, but I have achieved it. There is always a fear that I would give up or miss a day for whatever reason. I’m not saying that still won’t happen, but I see no reason to stop.

When we (what do I mean we, when my wife) buy mugs, we tend to buy multiples, that is a minimum of two. Have sets of two mugs of different patterns. The problem comes when one of the pairs gets broken. That happened a few days ago.

So, we have an odd mug. Actually we have several odd mugs and cups but the were generally not bought as pairs so they are not odd, and therefore don’t disturb my mug feng shui. We have a mug tree which disturbs me; it only takes nine mugs, and so unless there is a random mug laying around, I have to break a mug pair and not stack them on the work top. I stand there contemplating this. My wife Stands there contemplating whether I am bonkers. We look at other, we grin. I re-arrange the mugs. I am not obsessive about it honestly.

121/366 Saturday Walk

You get two for the price of one today. Come 3PM, we’d had breakfast, cleaned the house, put up some more Christmas lights, had lunch and some other bits and pieces and apart from the walk to top up the bird table I hadn’t left the house. I wanted to go for a walk. I popped out for an hour or so.

Not really knowing where I wanted to go – actually, that’s almost not true. I thought about getting on my bike and cycling to St Mary’s church with the GoPro mounted on the handlebars recording, or I could cycle up to Rowner church and have a look at that, or the Mott & Bailey (site) in Alver Valley, but then I looked at the palm tree which was waving about quite a bit so I decided that I’d rather go for a walk than a bike ride, I decided on old faithful, a walk to the waterfront.

That didn’t disappoint, whilst a little bit breezy, it wasn’t too cold stopped off near Walpole Park to watch a gaggle of geese feeding next to the cockleponds. There was quite a large gathering of pigeons there as well, and a chap quite close to them trying to get some pictures. I didn’t want to disturb the birds, so I avoided going near them. Only for a couple to just blithely walk past them. As it happens the pigeons just moved out of their way, and then resumed their position. OK, I thought I can do that. Then as I was walking past them filming with the GoPro, a lady with a very large dog (on a leash so not their fault) spooked the geese, they took off and flew within a few feet of me settling on the pond. I’m wondering if I have got that recorded. I’ll have to take a look.

I arrived at the water front via Trinity Church, walked out to the end of the Haslar Marina Pier Wall, then back along the promenade. I was about to walk away from the waterfront when I realised the Bunkering ship Whitonia was coming down the channel on her way out. So I had to stop and get a couple of pictures of her.

Then as I was about to leave the water front for a second time, I realised that the Commodore Clipper was following the Whitonia out. So obviously, I just had to wait for her to go past. Which gives you your second picture;

120/366 The Bird Table

A problem is that there is little point having the motion sensor active because it picks up the movement of the leaves. It can’t distinguish between that and a squadron of starlings. Neos will let you define more precise zones for the camera, but like everything have to pay for it. I need to get better at watching the camera between 0930 and 1030 which seems to be the main session.

Having said that, Yesterday afternoon was a pleasure. There was a squadron of starlings and three or four pigeons and two squirrels all around the bottom of the garden. There was plenty of food about, and I hope they all had their fill. One of the squirrels came right down the fence line, very close to the house. Once again, I didn’t have my phone with me and I didn’t want to move in case we frightened it.

It has made us think about getting a second bird table, to put on the patio. I’ve tried bird feeders, as I really would like to get the small birds, sparrows especially and the Robbin who is a regular to the fence and blackbirds who we see, but they don’t stay. I feel that it is a real honour that they visit us. I will try and get some pictures.

119/366 Windows & Trains

This window is part of the way along the Gosport High Street. When I go out tomorrow, I’ll have to make a note as to which building it is a part of. That’s only partially important. For me, it’s thinking about who has sat in that window since the building was built. The window looks really old and a bit worn. I can imagine people from a while ago sitting there, watching people go past, what was street life like a hundred years ago (it looks that old and older), horse & carts, perhaps early cars? Ladies in their finery, men drunk falling about and fighting. Waiting to be press ganged?

Why Trains? It suddenly hit me today when I opened the latest edition of the Railway Correspondence and Travel Society’s monthly magazine, The Railway Observer, that I hadn’t written anything about my interest in railIways. I’ve always loved trains. I don’t know what it is about them. I love watching them, I always loved watching the mechanics of the semaphore signalling system. And yes, I definitively aspire to having a model railway layout – with digital control of course.

Being a member of the RCTS gives me access to an unparalleled (for amateurs) level of information. That’ll do me for the time being.