Bills Posts

I’m a little bit conflicted. If you follow me on Face Book, since before the lock down, we have been on initially a virtual and then a fantasy holiday. We should have been going just as the lockdown was beginning to become a reality, I like writing and decided that I would write about our virtual holiday, running it pretty much in real time.

Then, as the holiday was due to finish I decided that I was enjoying writing about being on holiday too much to stop, and so I turned into a fantasy holiday. The thing is about a fantasy holiday, is that you can do what you want, so I have all my friends with on the Queen Elizabeth that I’ve chartered and the captain does as I ask. We are in New York at the moment, we’ve been there the best part of two weeks. We had two weeks in Florida, holidays within holidays. It’s an all expenses paid experience. Tomorrow, everybody who wishes will be visiting Bloomingdales for a days shopping. We’ve had lots of days shopping. We’ve shipped crates of clothes home. Who knows what will happen with it all.

Anyhow, Tomorrow night, we set sail from New York. Also tomorrow, I’ll be giving an indication as to when the fantasy holiday will be coming to an end. But, it is a Big But, I am enjoying this fantasy holiday so much that I am planning the next one.

Why am I telling you this? (Especially if you are following me on FB). Because I’m debating whether to run the holiday here on my blog. I might do it on both. Of course, it’ll be a copy and paste. Which do I make the definitive source?

Just a quick addition, post number 60 in this thread. Almost two months. Wow. I’m surprised.

In episode 18, I talked about my book choices, they were;

Hubble Vision

The Story of Art

Britains Pilgrim places

At the time, I was finishing off The Photographers eye, and couldn’t make up my mind which book to read, so decided that I would have all three on the go.

As it happens, I reached a point with Hubble vision, when reading about Saturn that I realised just how out of date the book was. I couldn’t bring my self to continue reading it. I’ve a Hubble related book lined up that I will buy myself for Christmas.

I continued with Britains Pilgrim Places and the Story of art, until today when I made a decision.

Who would have thought that a book about art could be so utterly engrossing? I’m finding it difficult to put down. In The Story of Art, E H Gombrich (16th Ed published 1995, re-printed 1996) weaves a story of human kinds ability to create art from the stone age toward today. I have worked my way through the Egyptian art of the Pharoahs, through how the Greeks discovered how to improve the view of the human form, and how from roman days art is suborned entirely to religion, art extends not only to statues , but to church building, and am at the tenth and eleventh centuries, when cathedrals such as The Notre Dam (how sad I was to see the picture in the book, of a beautiful intact building, to carbonised husk it is at the moment. Chartre, we were there several years ago, but I certainly didn’t appreciate the effort that the architects of the cathedral put in to the design of the building, and how that design is dedicated to the story of god, and ensuring that the gospels are given to the peoples.

So, here I am. I have made the decision that I am putting Britain’s Pilgim Places on hold until I have finished The Story of Art. But, there’s more, because I don’t want to forget what I’ve read in this book, and so I will be writing more about it here.

I started doing this aspect of the blog (x/365) coming up to two months ago. To be honest, I’m a bit shocked that; I’m still doing it and how quickly the days go. Most of my waterfront pictures are at present being taken in low light. This is a picture I took today, at around 3PM this afternoon, just to show that I do go to the waterfront during the day.

I saw an advert on FB today it’s an animation studio for an iPad, it looks very good, but I just want to know if it is possible to develop characters other than those the developer includes and if it’s possible to use self made backgrounds. A bit more investigation is warranted.

I had always been a devotee of the iphone, since the first generation, it was in my view a game changer of a phone. Then, probably about two years ago Huawei released the PR20 pro. Whilst I liked the iphone camera, I was very drawn by the PR20. I used it for almost a year, before I admitted that I didn’t really like android. I had been much happier with apple’s IOS and returned to the iPhone XR – and I am more than delighted with the move with one exception. The camera. The PR20 camera is better than the XR’s mainly in colour rendering and of course the zoom range.

The walk was very pleasant, if a little chilly. Nothing spectacular happened. There were three itinerants at the end of the Haslar Marina Pier Wall, I think they were drinking, but not sure, I said good morning to them and they moved off – no problem. As it happened, I saw two of them again when we went to the chippy. Had a pleasant chat.

It’s obvious from the sky in the picture that this morning it was cloudy, so I can’t say whether the moon caught up with Mars and what happens when she did. In fact, the walk almost didn’t happen, I really didn’t feel like getting up. And for a brief period went back to bed. Couldn’t stay there though, I felt obliged to get up because it wasn’t raining.

It did rain later in the day. There was one point this afternoon when I was looking out the kitchen window. The wind was blowing quite heavily and there was a persistent downpour. I turned to my wife and said “It’s very autumnal, isn’t it”. And it was. I have to say that Autumn is definitely one of my favourite seasons. Not only is it cooler than the summer, but the weather has more character; I like the wind and the rain, I don’t mind being out in them, for brief periods admittedly.

OK, so I think I got it wrong yesterday. The moon wasn’t chasing Orion to stop him from chasing Mars, having had his way with Venus; she was chasing Mars to batter seven bales of whatever out of him herself, having overtaken Orion, and continuing on full tilt.

Hopefully tomorrow will be clear enough to see how this saga develops.

This leads me on to one of my recurring themes; what to write about. I’ve realised that I now practically nothing about the mythology surrounding the constellations. That would be something quite simple to research and write about on a recurring basis that I can dip in to whenever I wish.

I had a friend, actually he was only one of two people (not family) whom I would call true friends. The first one I lost at school, when his family emigrated to the USA. The second when he died about 17 years ago now. Yes, he was too young to go, but he did. I would never forget him. One of the last gifts he gave me was a small blue box, called the box of stars. it contains 32 cards, each showing a different constellation, star charts of the northern and Southern Hemispheres and a book describing some of the mythology of the constellations.

I think I may dip in to this occasionally and explore a bit of the night sky.

OK, so perhaps the photograph doesn’t even begin to do justice to the topic. It was when I walked out of the front door this morning. I was greeted by a very bright Orion and his hunting companion Sirius. Running ahead of him was a vibrantly orange Mars. Running along behind the trio was a very bright moon presumably trying to stop Orion from chasing Mars. Perhaps this was all happening because Mars had been inappropriate with Venus, whom I got the distinct impression was trailing behind, her brightness showing her weeping forlornly at a broken love?

That’s all very well, but the sad thing was that these were, apart from one aircraft, pretty much the only lights in the sky. We all accept that urban areas are brightly lit and that light pollution reduces what we can see in the night sky. It is an intense source of frustration that whilst we live like this, many of the wonders of the night sky are hidden from us.

Ironically, turning off the streetlights later at night is not appreciated by much of the community, possibly leading to an increase in criminal activity or anti social behaviour, but if you are able to stay up until the lights go out, it becomes something of a revelation as to what you can see with the naked eye. Even a pair of binoculars increases significantly what you can see.

Try it one night, If you are interested in supporting the quest for dark skies, then look here;

https://britastro.org/dark-skies/

When I go walking in the morning, I nearly always follow the same route, it is very rare I don’t. This morning was the same as usual. I normally see the same people. There’s one lady who is walking in the opposite direction to me. We normally pass each other somewhere around North Cross Street. That varies depending on whether I am slightly earlier or later than usual. Then, when I arrive at the waterfront nearly always the same people there. Apart from one time, long ago when a lady approached me to ask what I was doing, I don’t speak to anybody.

On my journey back, there’s Bob outside Gregs having breakfast. We exchange pleasantries.

This morning was the second time I took the tripod. I do think that it has improved the quality of the pictures, they are sharper. Seems like it’s going to become a regular feature.

I took the picture yesterday at West Dean Gardens, an interesting bit of wood with a rotten centre that went the entire length of the trunk. The only link between the picture taken yesterday and today was that it was raining on both day.

I just thought it would make an interesting B&W picture.

Today, Elayne and I went out for a walk. We were on a mission. We were compiling clues for a Treasure Hunt being put together for Elaynes Women’s Institute Group.

The follow on to Storm Alex arrived over night, and persistent rain has been one of it’s primary deliverables. It was, to coin a phrase, chucking it down all morning. But we needed to get it the treasure hunt sorted. So we walked out taking the route to test the clues.

I must admit it was lovely to be out, even though it a raining quite heavily. Of course, you need the right clothes. In my case this is a weatherproof coat that I bought in 2012. I remember the data because of the olympics and that I needed a coat because we were on holiday in the Lake District.

I enjoyed the walk far more than I should have done.

We escaped from Gosport today, going to West Dean Gardens just to the north of Chichester. We had a good wander around and followed the forest trail. Although the weather wasn’t perfect it really wasn’t that bad. We had an excellent day out.

Whilst we were aware that West Dean had a college associated with it, we didn’t know that it offered degree level studies in arts and conservation. We weren’t able to go in to the college but the Orangery at the back of the building has been set up as an art studio. There were a couple of pieces we could see, and a lady busy grafting away.

Our walk around the walled garden revealed a lot of fruit trees that were very heavily laden, it was a temptation to take an apple or a pear off a tree to taste, but we resisted the urge.

The day out reminded us how much we enjoy doing things like this, and that we really must make an effort to do more like it.