Bills Posts

I woke up around 3AM this morning, trying to get back to sleep, but feeling stressed. It was about whether or not I was going to get up and go for a walk. I still don’t understand why I am stressing about this. It is really annoying. Somehow though, I managed de stress. I can’’t believe that the method I used was to ask ChatGPT a couple of questions, and that was it – stress gone. If I feel the same in the morning, I’ll try that again.

I followed my normal route, but didn’t add in the small extension to take in No. 8. That’s the old Pound stretchers; that’s the one which is going to be made in to flats. I don’t see how they can do a conversion, but there again, what do I know? I think a once a week check of that should be enough.

Now, McDonalds is a different matter. The screen is still up out the front, but looking in, it’s getting near. The branding is almost all done (even down to the door frames being painted) tables and chairs are being set up, the food counter has been set up, and biggest of all the meal ordering machines are in place and were switched on!

Now I think it could be heading for an opening almost literally any day now, much more rapid than I expected, I shall hold myself to that promise of a breakfast wrap.

I had a chat a homeless person, he was quite pleasant.

Had a good chat on the radio.

I start the week with good intentions. For example, tomorrow morning unless it is raining, which I don’t think is forecast, I’ll be getting up for my morning walk. It’ll give me chance to set a baseline of the high street for the week ahead. The plan is, later in the week, to shoot sone video of the various activities that are going.

Tomorrow morning though is mainly a #Breakfastclub thing, a chance to have a chat with friends over the radio. Tuesday evening will be interesting. It’s my turn to host a camera club walk. I have some things planned, and have to do a little bit more research to finalise things.

Wednesday is likely to be videoing day as I won’t get a chance probably on Thursday, which means that I can use Friday to top up or correct. Video if I need to. Hopefully, over the weekend I’ll put together another piece for YouTube.

In my mind then, I do have activities mapped out. How close to reality they will be, remains to be seen.

I didn’t get in to town today, so I don’t really know what is going on, but I am reasonably confident that McDonalds hasn’t opened. I could be wrong of course, I think we will have to wait until Monday to find out what the latest state of play is. Assuming it’s not raining of course.

We spent a lot of time in the garden doing bits and pieces, and I had a run to the Gosport Recycling centre, which went better than I expected – mainly around the disposal of old paint. That went fine, It was the old tiles that got me the minor lecture from one of the staff.

Once we had finished what we needed to do, we took a quick trip into the Discovery Centre to see the pictures from the Camera club annual exhibition. That was lovely, there were some beautiful shots. Elayne had four pictures on display, I was so proud of her. I had one picture, and I was very pleased with that.

After, we went to Stokes bay and sat for half an hour just watching the sea, with an ice cream of course, a very nice 99.

Elayne had bought a spiraliser, it cuts food in an unusual way, she used it on some courgettes. We had pulled chicken, chips and spiralised courgette – it sounds a bit odd, but actually it was delicious – the courgette definitely tasted different.

Actually, if I’m honest, the day was really quite pleasant.

There’s something about Fridays. It’s a bit like all the sleep that I need suddenly rushes to catch up with me. It leaves me exhausted, I’ve just spent the last two hours crashed out on the sofa.

Oh, and although I wrote last nights post (1694) last night I didn’t publish it until this morning, meaning my 91 day count of conti buoys posting has gone back to zero. Aaaaaagh!!¡

Sorry, tired, going to bed.

Another rather pleasant, lucky shot of the fox, down at the waterfront.

At the end of the last season in the camera club, people were asked if they had any suggestions for a walk that members of the club could do between seasons.

I of course immediately got one idea (well, actually two, but I quickly realised that they made more sense together, as they both involved the high street). The first was to look at the blue plaques; admittedly erected by the local council rather than any national scheme, there are several of them, and between them they tell some interesting stories

The second walk though, was the more interesting, as it directly related to the idea for next season at the club, I suggested that we just take a walk down row high street, looking at the various architecture types. There are.

I’ve taken pictures of some of the buildings, and am going to run them through ChatGPT, getting it to tell me about them. Should be interesting, and offer some blogging (as well as vlogging) opportunities and idea

No, nothing bad. I read something that was along the lines of; The tendency to worry is a throwback to our Neanderthal and earlier days when there was a risk of being chased by woolly mammoths it helped the flight reflex. It (the tendency to worry) was never meant for worrying that an email was late.

I’m pretty sure that it also wasn’t meant for walks being taken later than usual. I was worrying because I normally leave the house before 6AM, this morning it was nearer half past 6, but it was a nice morning and I was determined to do some videoing.

When you leave the house that much later for a walk, you see the town in a different light. There were a lot more people around – no problem with that. There was a chap on the high street whom I always say good morning to when I see him, I paused for a couple of minutes for a chat.

The waterfront was lovely, calm and warm. If I had felt a bit more comfortable (and to be honest, I had stopped worrying about the lateness of the walk, but wanted to get my facebook post done before work, so was still a bit concerned about the time).

I was walking toward the seaward end of Trinity Church when I saw this gentleman. My immediate thought was Mary Poppins and Feed the Birds. I stopped and had a chat with him. He was quite happy for me to take his picture and put it on my blog. I’d tried to keep a distance from him, he had at least half a dozen pigeons on him, but they dispersed as I approached even as far as I did. I really thought it was a lovely sight.

It was one of the best morning walks I had done in quite a long time. The weather was lovely. As it happens, I didn’t get the facebook post done until nearly 5PM.

For some reason I felt quite good as I went to bed last night, even though I’d had a bit of a rough day. To the extent that my brain was so active that it took me a while to get to sleep.

That good feeling continued to this morning, I continued to feel good enough to get up and go for a walk. I said as much in my FaceBook post, which I am in danger of repeating here. Given this is a more open forum, is there a problem with that?

There was an aspect to this morning’s walk which I really felt quite good about. But’s not sure what it was. Because of a dodgy stomach I hadn’t eaten for about 18 hours, but I wasn’t feeling hungry. I was though, feeling good.

It was a nice walk.

It’s quite nice having a project in hand. I’ve got a couple on the go. Slow time, there’s no rush. In fact on one of them I’ve kind of had to re-wind things a bit as there are a number of elements, and I’ve kind of lost track of things a bit.

There’s a book that might help me. I actually have a copy, but the edition I have (Ed. 4) is now ten years out of date, and Ed. 6 was published last year, so I’ve bought that. The older book can be consigned to the charity shop.

I might as well tell you that I had put my name down to do a TEDx talk, here in Gosport, the event is scheduled for September. To be honest, there was no way I was prepared for it really, so I was quietly relieved to be told last week that my talk hadn’t been selected. Strangely though, they didn’t dismiss me completely. I think it is something that I will have to keep on the boil.

There is one major event that I am starting to plan for. Not quite sure when it is going to happen as no firm date (Dbut no later than August next year, and potentially any time in between now and then really) – just to add to the mystery. Anyway, I will let you know when it is going to happen.

Breakfast at Wetherspoons doesn’t quite have the same romantic appeal to it does it? The breakfast was nice though, so that was good.

As I didn’t get into town yesterday, I made a point of going out for a bit of a walk this morning hence the slight deviation for breakfast. Being Sunday there wasn’t much going on but I could hear people working in McDonalds. No sign as to when that will open.

I stopped along the water front to ask a chap who had an electric bike with those ridiculously wide, almost car-sized tyres what difference they made? I was looking at his face, which was really quite battered. He said the make the bike more stable, but his face was as a result of falling off the bike at 20mph the week before!

There was a large group of people, I’d say about thirty on the field next to the cockleponds being taken through a Tai-Chi session. To be honest, I didn’t the town had it in it to do something like that. A nice bit of culture, and very nice to see.

Alex called me yesterday and asked what I was doing today. Beyond walking into town to have a look to see what was going on, I told him nothing in particular, at which he suggested a trip to a large local shop – seemed like a reasonable suggestion, so that became The Plan.

The Plan was scheduled to happen this afternoon, which meant that the morning remained free. That meant that I did have time to get into town in the morning. At least that was a plan until Alexa told me that there was a good chance of rain. It was one of those kind of awkward times, when it was too warm for a coat, and I didn’t fancy getting wet. So, I made the decision to stay at home. Well, as it happened it didn’t rain but it did get quite a bit colder, so that by lunchtime I was wearing a cardigan.

The afternoon plan pretty much worked pretty well.