Bills Posts

132/366 The Gosport Society & Books

The Normandie & the Gosport Ferries caught with a long exposure.

The Gosport Society have released a commemorating booklet, celebrating its first fifty years. It has been very active in preserving the heritage of Gosport. The value of the society was proven necessary in respect of the tower blocks that were built in Gosport (here’s a reminder picture for you);

These “system built” flats were modelled on those seen by a visit of town councillors to Moscow (The Gosport Society – The First Fifty Years, P15). I don’t know what the presentation schedule will be for next year, but if they do things correctly, at least the first half will be over Zoom so I intend to stay a member – it;’s only £12, and think the society is worth supporting.

The booklet only had seventy pages, and of course I have finished it. I am back in to my usual dilemma of what to read. Once again, I have three books lined up; The British Pilgrim Pathways, the Hubble Telescope (a more up to date book than the previous attempt) and Street Photography Now – this last one is kind of a partner book to the The Photographer’s Eye (I think the only link is the same publisher). I admit, I’ve been wanting to read this book properly (rather than just picking it up and leafing through it) for several years now. It’s been sat in our bookcase, just waiting for me to commit to it. Given that, I think it has primacy so I am formally announcing this as my next book.

That’ll give me the opportunity to do a few posts about Street Photography – of which I am very interested. So, here we go then; Street Photography Now by Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren, here we come!

131/366 Tuesday Morning & Rain

The Methodist Church on Stokes Road. I took a slightly different route to normal. It was quite pleasant to do that. The red streak bottom left is a car going past, left to right so I caught the tail lights.

I wanted to talk about the rain. I took some rubbish out to the bin, just before starting work. It struck me, the rain did, and the thought about the rain, big round, solid drops, they hit me hard and splashed. There was something refreshing about the quality of the rain. I thought I need to comment on the quality of this rain in my blog.

I didn’t walk in the rain, luckily it held off for my walk. Sometimes though, I quite enjoy being out in the rain. Normally, especially here, it’s accompanied by a fairly stiff wind, which breaks the drops up in to little needles being driven into your face, and then there is the really penetrating rain, which it doesn’t matter how well you are wrapped up, it seems to get everywhere.

There was just something about the quality of the rain this morning that just triggered a train of thought in me.

130/366 The Story of Art

The earth mound between me and Trinity Church are part of the Gosport ramparts built in the 1800’s. Taken on Saturday out on a walk.

So, I finished the Story of Art last night. I started reading it in October, so it’s taken me a fair bit of time to get through it. I have to say that it has been a thoroughly interesting book and I recommend anyone in the least bit in the story of art to read it. Before starting, I did check to see if I had the latest edition. I did – published in 1995. Of course as far as the book is concerned the story had to end somewhere, therefore I found it extremely ironic that one of the last art stories it talked about was the discovery of the Terracotta Army. Which, if Covid had not happened, we would happily be recounting memories after having seen it for real.

The book warned at the very beginning that having read it, don’t assume that you are able to talk on art as though you were an expert. I wouldn’t pretend to be an expert, but the book has definitely increased my appreciation of art. I’m quite keen now to visit an art gallery. Don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon. I’m taking a brief break from big books, I have the history of the first 50 years of the Gosport society (1970 – ), of which I am a member. I joined the society last year because I found out that it gives some rather interesting lectures about the local area. One of the last ones I went to was about preparing for the D-Day embarkation, in which parts of Gosport played an incredibly important role.

I didn’t go for a walk this morning. I didn’t wake up until 0700. That’s because I woke up at around 0300, and it took me a best part of an hour to get back to sleep. My wife has expressly forbidden me from even mentioning cats vomiting, so I shan’t – but it was from her (the cat’s) point of view a good one. It was everywhere!

129/366 Sunday & Vlogging

I haven’t been out at all today, except for one trip to the supermarket, to get some bits and pieces. I spent a bit of time tidying the office. There’s still much to do. I need to get better at compartmentalising things. I have a fairly big radio project that I am working on. There are various bits and pieces that are cluttering up the desk space, for which I not unreasonably get some stick.

I apologise for Friday nights post. It was a brief, feeble attempt. I’m not at all satisfied with it, but it stands there a matter of record of my feebleness.

Included in tonight’s title is the word Vlogging – yes, I am interested in the idea. I am slowly getting set up for it, I have an idea for a theme, and I want to do a good production. That’s as much as I am going to say for the time being. Today, I have mostly been playing with iMovie.

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.