Bills Posts

IT’s that time of year where you can’t be certain that you’ll be able to walk in the morning. Last night the forecast showed that rain might just clear the area at the right time. It was difficult to tell whether or not it was raining, and that being the case it probably means that it’s not heavy and the wearing of the heavy duty raincoat might be appropriate. As it happens, listening in the conservatory showed no signs of a downpour. Normal coat then.

Walking down the road, I suddenly noticed the quiet. Well, almost. The only things I could hear were my footsteps, the swish of my coat and a solitary bird singing a beautiful song. It must have lasted two minutes before a car came along. The rest of the walk though went well.

I reached the waterfront probably about five minutes after the Mon St Michell had passed in to the harbour. It was a little bit blustery, and a bit nippy, I appreciated the hat, gloves & padded jacket.

I hadn’t realised that when we talk about the spring and neap tides, they are in name only. Tides of this scale happen twice a month, all year round. Why didn’t I know that? Why hadn’t I learned this before?

Just goes to show doesn’t it? You learn something new every day.

The picture shows the tide is well out in Portsmouth harbour. Not fully out, but only about an hour after the tide had turned and was going up. When we were out walking yesterday, the tide was pretty much fully in. The range in the tide was really brought home to me, between low and high over the last two days has been at least 4 metres (12 feet ish).

Why am I talking about the tide in Portsmouth Harbour when the title is the Clipper Storms? I’m getting towards the end of the book, more than 3/4 of the way through. As a chronology of the Clipper Ships the book is naturally reaching a close. The graceful clipper ships ultimately will not bee able to compete with the steamers.

In an earlier post about the clipper ships I painted a picture of little loss of life and ships. Oh Dear, how wrong I was. This last part of the book is a litany of loss. Most of the time it is due to the storms of the Roaring 40’s and Cape Horn, ships being broken up at sea and being driven on to the rocks. Loss of life, and injuries resulting in amputation. Horrible Seas. In the day of the clipper ships, crew would have to be up the 100ft high masts, standing on a swaying rope, hauling in sails so solid with ice that they had to punch and kick them to make them manoeuvrable.

Waves three times higher than the ship wash over them washing people overboard, smashing deck fittings, ripping sails off their masts, bringing those 100ft high masts crashing down either on to the deck or over the side where the risk is run of them crashing in to the ship and holing them. Of the stories I’ve read one thing that did surprise me was the compassion of people. I must admit that I thought that they would think of life as cheap – far from it. Courageous rescues, efforts to save lives. One story in particular, although gory – the amputation by a medically unqualified captain and the determination that the injured man would be saved were documented in detail.

The book has not yet, soon it will though. I am thinking about the next book and have not yet made up my mind. Perhaps the Hubble book, or Secret Britain. Who knows. In he meantime, I continue with the story of those graceful sailing ships; The Clippers.

It’s around 12PM. It’s not that I’ve wasted the morning, I have been busy doing “stuff”. The realisation came that the day was marching on and I had plans for the afternoon, mainly involving Downton Abbey, a family Zoom and Roast Pork (which was especially nice). If I wanted to go for a walk, I was running out of time.

I said to Alexa (yes, we have one of those); “Is it going to rain in Gosport today?”

The response was “There’s a 56% chance of Rain at 2PM in Gosport, England.”

We decided to take the risk, and because it was a bit cold out we made sure that we wrapped up well. Following the counter-clockwise version of the walk I normally take weekday mornings. It wasn’t raining, but it was like there was a very fine & light mist, not rain, and note completely dry. There is a point on the walk, where we could easily cut it short and return home quickly. As we were nearing that point there was water in the air quite a bit more dense than when we started out, but still not really rain, we made the decision to continue.

As we reached the waterfront, it started raining properly. Not an absolute downpour, but enough to cause us to put our hoods up. Our reward for being out (as I see it) was to the see the ship departing the harbour.

we were quite wet by the time we got home, but our coats had held the water off. We were pleased to have a nice cup of tea, at the end of a walk that we had both thoroughly enjoyed.

If you read last week’s piece about the vlog. You’ll know that one of the decisions I am having difficulty with is where to do the to the camera bit. I thought today that if the weather were OK, I could do it out doors. Today, it has mostly been raining there was a point around midday where it did ease off, so I went out with tripod, and the face followin gizmo. Near the cockleponds I found a spot where I didn’t think too many people would pass. I’m still a bit self conscious about speaking to a camera in public. I don’t know why I should be, and having done it today even when people were walking by it was OK. I did get strange looks, but that was OK.

I’ve realised that I am self conscious in front of the camera. I want to stop that, I want to be used to being in front of the camera, myself not someone artificial. Also, I’m pretty sure you don’t want ten minutes of me talking to the camera, so I need to do things – like Victorias railway line and the tunnel through the ramparts. Or perhaps a piece about Gilkicker Fort? Or just me at the Haslar Sea Wall watching ships and working the radio?

Of course, underneath all of this there needs to be a bit of planning. I am trying to see if my daily writings can be fitted in to the plan for the vlog. It’s all waffle really isn’t it? I just need to get on with it and do it.

As I wrote last week, I wanted to end up at one place, where I knew what I could write about weeks ahead. I am not there yet. Will I ever be? I really like the moleskin notebooks, very nice quality. My first journal was a moleskin, as was the second (the current one). They are nice and linear, but I wanted to try something different.

I’ve bought a day to a page A5 diary. A4 would be too big and Filofax too small. The diary gives me a little more space, and being a diary there is a degree of inherent organisation. I was sad to make the decision to stop using the journal, but I wanted to give it a go for a year – just to see if it works. The experiment is ongoing.

I wonder if you have been following my writing? Over this last week, I have written with ease each night. I’m not saying what I’ve written is good, just that it hasn’t been too hard to write. It’s ironic then isn’t it, that only with tonight’s task of writing about writing, is when I should encounter writers block. The solution is to write about the block. Try to analyse the cause. Tonight’s analysis isn’t being very successful. I am thinking about what I’ve written over the last week. I haven’t made any note about what I’ve written, but I do know the topic for each day. I just haven’t reviewed the last weeks efforts in the context of tonight’s exercise. I had the thought that perhaps I need a theme sometimes. But I need it to not be too specific. Perhaps this is where, every so often I need to remind myself of my Locality Project (think about the name of the blog locality stories.com.

Really sorry, tonight’s post is a little bit waffle. I need to try and think about this.

I do like the way the morning lights of the Spinnaker and the “Lipstick” have been diffused by the low laying cloud. The weather plays such a significant role in almost every part of our lives that it is pretty much impossible to ignore.

One of the first things I do when I get up on a weekday morning is look out the window to see what is happening to the weather, I confess that sometimes I wished it was raining so that I could go back to bed. Most of the time though, I want an exciting sky. That could be anything from a clear sky in the depths of winter, with lots of stars. It’s especially nice when there is a planetary arrangement.

A walk where the weather is full of character is particularly nice, not a sky full of cloud, but clouds scudding along in a brisk breeze, just as the sky is starting to brighten in the East. As the year moves on, the light changes, the sun will be behind buildings, behind cloud – every day is different. That’s why I don’t get bored with repeating the same walk. Why I am always happy to take pictures of the same skyline, because the light and the weather always makes it different.

I want to talk a bit about rain. I love a good rainstorm. Sitting and watching the water hitting the window, and hammering on the conservatory roof. Sometimes, I am happy to go out for a walk in the rain. Making sure that I have the right coat of course. Sometimes I get caught, most of the time it really isn’t hat unpleasant. Enjoy the weather.

There was a fog in the Solent. It either hadn’t reached here, or was receding. The low cloud was causing the lights on the spinnaker to become diffuse. I didn’t notice it when I took the picture. But I like it.

I have set myself a goal of writing about photography every Wednesday night. I’ve given you a bit of history, and waffled about it a bit, been pretty indistinct really. Now is the time to get serious.

I am not a good photographer. I take pictures, if I am lucky one them, every so often might possibly come out reasonably good. Here I am been playing with cameras for more than 40 years, and probably once every five years, I produce, entirely be accident a slightly more than reasonable picture. And yet, and yet, why can’t I bring myself to read and follow a photography book? We have quite a few of them. Firstly, let me distinguish between a book about photography (e.g. Photographers eye, worked through here not so long ago) or a book about how to do photography, e.g. photography masterclass. I’m happy to read the former, but have real problems with the latter.

I can’t really tell why you why I have such a problem with that type of book, It certainly isn’t the case that I think I know everything – I definitely don’t. It might be because the photographs are always perfect, of places that I know I am very unlikely to visit. I would like to see a photography book that features pictures of a run down British town on a cold, grey, not sunny morning, that demonstrates the “rules” of photography. Any suggestions?

Then of course, there are the rules. It seems that most of the time, to get a good photo, it’s best to break those rules. Perhaps I need to commit to something. Somewhere in the house there’s a book on photography with your phone. Perhaps I should get that out and start working my way through it. I might then get a good picture more frequently than once in five years.

In Gosport, there isn’t just this waterfront, there is a stretch to the North, just the other side of the Explosion Museum (well worth a visit) and along Stokes Bay by Alverstoke is the Golden Mile. A very pleasant and popular walk. You will find people on these walks in just about any weather.

Stokes Bay is especially interesting if like me, you enjoy watching ships. It’s the main channel in to Southampton. A variety of ships; car, cargo & crude oil carriers, dredgers, ferries, and cruise ships. Merchant and military vessels of all types including the occasional US Navy Aircraft Carrier. I really miss the cruise ships, especially the ones we have been on. They do still come in to Southampton, even in these Covid times. But they are now a forlorn sight, barren of partying passengers. I am guessing, but I think they come in to replenish supplies, because there are still crews on board, and to make sure that the engines and all systems are working correctly in preparation for when they resume their proper role.

Stokes Bay, like many places in Gosport is absolutely stuffed with History. I’m not going to go into too much detail because there are opportunities here for future posts. To give you a taster though at each end of the bay is a Palmerston Fort; Eastern End Fort Gilkicker, at the Western end are two of the batteries installed to defend the Gosport Line. The water front at Stokes bay played a major part in the preparations for, and embarkation on D-Day, and the Alverbank Hotel just off the waterfront has a famous link with the RAF. I hope to explore all of these in future posts.

Between Stokes Bay and Portsmouth Harbour, is one of my favourite ship watching spots – the Haslar Hospital Sea Wall. Many a happy hour spent here watching ships glide by.

I’m not suggesting that HMS Warrior is of the same class as a clipper, but I did think it was appropriate to have a picture of a ship from the era of the clipper ships, and having been built in 1859, she is definitely of that time.

I am now about halfway through the book, which I admit I didn’t expect to finish, but every so often a little gem pops up that keeps me going. Today, I am going to be jumping around a bit.

To go back to an earlier chapter, the book talks about “Crimping”. It turns out that Press ganging was not just an activity of the Navy. Crimping was the equivalent for the clipper ships. Mostly though by the sounds of it, it wasn’t a gang of navy men bopping you on the head, it would be somebody like Maria Lee leading you astray in a drinking den, and you’d wake up on board, out at sea. Maria had a habit of dressing all in black, and whilst I don’t think the term is used today, this is where the expressions Black Maria came from – the old police wagons would come along to take the criminal away. The term “Shanghaid” came From a similar source. You were as likely to wake up on a ship heading for that exotic city, as you were anywhere else.

In last weeks piece on Clippers I implied that there weren’t many accidents involving clipper ships. How wrong I was. A lot were damaged and lost both on the high seas and on the reefs and rocks close to land. When the iron hulled ships were introduced, there were losses because it wasn’t always recognised that the iron in hull was affecting the compass. Hence the need to swing the compass arose to make sure it was set correctly.

I’m going to end this week’s piece with the Cutty Sark. She and her competing ship the Thermopylae were involved in many great races. They were big competitors. The story of their time as sea going ships is a story in it’s own right. Changes of owners and changes of names, and of fortunes. The Cutty Sark ends up gloriously portrayed in a Dry dock in Greenwich giving memories of a time past to future generations. The Thermopylae? She was sunk after being used for target practice by the Portugese Navy, A sad end to a magnificent machine. The story continues.

This week I’ve managed to clock up just over 20 miles. For some people, that isn’t much, but for me it’s a reasonable distance. For the month that’s about 70 miles, which keeps me on target for the Walk 1000 project.

Out for my walk this morning, I covered the route I normally take. The little beastie at the top of the post was performing at the back of Trinity church. There were three or four squirrels in the area, they are always a pleasure to watch – even if they are pests. I keep on meaning to take some seed with me on my weekend walks. I have managed to remember once! Not impressive.

There’s been only one morning where I haven’t gone out for a walk this week, that was Wednesday, it was because it was absolutely tipping it down. The rain lasted all day, so I didn’t go out at all. That was a bit frustrating, but there you go.

The morning sky has been quite variable as you might expect, with some clear skies, heavy clouds, threatening rain and on a couple of occasions delivering the same, whilst out walking. One of the more interesting mornings had streaks in the sky that were visible from the moment I arrived, and developed in intensity over the short period of time I was at the waterfront. Here’s a picture of that sky;

I walk a loop of about three miles Monday to Friday part of which is along the waterfront. There are usually only three occasions when I don’t walk, if I’m poorly, if I oversleep (but even that has changed, and I have become less rigid about when leave the house) and if it is raining.

We are a little bit paranoid about encounters with strangers at the moment, and I do my utmost to avoid them as much as possible. I’m probably adding several hundred steps to my normal walk where I keep crossing the road to avoid people. It’s frustrating to have to be this careful but we do think it’s worth it.

I’ve just been watching the weather forecast for the week ahead on Countryfile, whilst it looks quite variable and there are definite patches of rain, especially on Wednesday, the forecast doesn’t specify time so I don’t know if It will affect me in the morning.

What I’ve also noticed is that my notes for each walk are inadequate, so I need to focus on that a little more.