Bills Posts

I do like a nice dramatic sky, and there it was this morning. I should have done a facebook post for it, but I ran out of time. Hopefully I’ll be able to do one tomorrow although, Alexa gave us a rain warning from 0500 tomorrow, so whilst my intention is to walk, it does depend on the weather.

I’m only slightly sorry for going on about McDonalds, it’s only because they haven’t started demolishing the bus station yet, I’ve nothing big to get my teeth in to. There it is though, the covers are still off, and the wooded panel above the glass is prime for branding to be put in place, I wonder if they will delay that until the last minute.

There was a rough sleeper at the ticket office. The other side of the ticket machines to the ticket window. I couldn’t see if it was someone I had spoken to before, they were well down into their sleeping bag.

I had a chat with a fisherman on the Haslar Marina Pier Wall. He hadn’t caught much, but at one point he’d had quite a large bite, that had made his rod jump. I asked if he was ever bothered about the fishing rod being pulled into the water – he didn’t seem to be. He was the only person I spoke to, except to say good morning to a dog-walking lady.

Once you know the context, then the picture tells its own story. For weeks now I have been burbling on about the McDonalds on The High Street. Up until yesterday morning, for a lot of the time, the frontage of the new restaurant has been covered in a high quality screen shielding activity from prying eyes.

Sometime between yesterday and this morning, the covers came off literally. And now we start to get a glimpse of the new eatery. I’ve already said that on the first morning it is open when I walk past, I will partake of a breakfast wrap.

But it’s not that I’m writing about, it’s the fact that this unveiling was going to be the subject of one of my vlogs. I really wasn’t expecting this to happen, possibly for several weeks. So I am a bit shocked at the speed of events. Have I missed the boat, so to speak? Well, in fairness, it was always going to be a look back.

If it isn’t raining in the morning, I am going to record some video.

I watched a YouTube a few days ago, it talked something called “Meta-Information”, it’s a bit like meta-data, When you take a photograph with a digital camera, you don’t just get the picture, you get lots of other stuff, the exposure, the details of the camera & the lens, geo-tagging & possibly more. That’s the meta-data.

I put a picture on facebook, and write, it’s a lovely day, the bus station is still there. All this is blatantly obvious, why am I repeating what you can clearly see, the meta-information is something you can’t see for example, “demolition of the bus station is due to start in two days” (I don’t know if it is, that’s just an example), that’s meta-information, detail you can’t get directly from the picture.

When I write my daily posts, I sometimes feel that there’s something missing, a lot of the time I feel I am stating the obvious. I really do feel I need to get a little bit more creative with my writing. How can I do that? Practice, I guess.

It was another Camera Club walk today. We returned to Swannick Lakes. The last time we were here was late October, conditions then were very different, being autumnal.

Thew whole area was very green. Admittedly, not much wildlife. But what there was, was lovely to see. It was a gentle walk, and really enjoyable.

After, we returned to the Elm Tree Inn, where we enjoyed an excellent Sunday Roast followed by Sticky Toffee Pudding and custard. Probably an over-indulgence but well worth it.

I’m sorry for the short post this evening, I’ve had a long day and am just really tired. This is just to keep the count going.

I enjoy studying, I have done for a long time. I found Future Learn a few years ago their courses are not too difficult, but it’s definitely a case of the more you put in, the more you get out.

I’ve really taken that mantra to heart with this course, and whilst I do think that I have identified a good feature to focus on, and will follow it up, I am beginning to wonder if the chosen feature is just a little bit too much for the course.

I will come back to the course in a few months time, each one lasts for up to four weeks. This course is actually number 5 in a series of 6 courses, it linked in to what I was thinking. As I say, I will be back.

Perhaps I should think of something perhaps a little less controversial. Something like the Model Yacht Club, or the men’s shed? The Camera club? That’d be quite a good one. Or the state of amateur radio in the solent area – another potential.

The problem is that the feature subject I have been focussing on, is probably just too controversial.

I still don’t know what is going with the railway station, whether this work is routine maintenance or to fix a problem.

I’ve been sitting, looking at the ipad for the last 10 – 15 minutes, waiting for inspiration to strike, and it has blatantly failed to do so. Hence I am falling back on an old trick; when I can’t think of anything to write about I write about the fact that I can’t think of anything to write about.

Actually, as I was sat here, my brain was whirring away, thinking well, I could write about what I had been looking at on Future Learn, but no-one would be interested in the fact that I have paid and gone unlimited for the year. I decided I was enjoying the feature writing course and wanted to do the other related courses as well.

I could also have written about the fact that when I woke up this morning (well, I had really been awake for well over an hour before hand but. Writing it this way adds a few more words) it was raining, admittedly very lightly, but it was still enough to put me off going for a walk,- so I went back to bed.

So after all that I did manage to write a little bit, so that’s OK.

Last night at the camera club was a bit of a social occasion, food was laid on, which we had forgotten about and had had tea anyway. Still we had a couple of bits and pieces and sandwiches, all of which were very nice.

The final competition was to choose a picture that people had put together with all bits and pieces. Elayne had put a picture in, but didn’t win.

Next week is the AGM, and the end of the season. Club activities will continue over the summer though. Including club evenings. I suggested a couple of walks to Tim, the Chair. He liked them and of course it is now up to me to organise them.

No immediate rush, but I need to get on with it.

How can a day be busy, lazy & relaxing? That pretty much sums today up. We got a few things done. I paid a visit to The Gosport Shed. I’m not ready to join yet, but l’m pretty much certain I will do.

Their model railway layout is big, and impressive – I bet it’s not DCC. That would take some effort, I don’t think I would do that, but I would build new one, or at least attempt to.

After my visit to the shed, I drove down to the waterfront (ordinarily, I wouldn’t dream of driving to the shed, but it was chucking it down) I wanted to see if demolition of the bus station had started – it hadn’t.

I’ve been doing the Future Learn course. Once you get over the fact that many of the comments on each module can be more than a year old and indicate that there only a few people that have recently done the course, and that I am currently possibly the only one doing hte course, I just treat the comments as current, and am putting an comment up on every segment, and reading a lot of the comments, it becomes like a Time Machine – looking in to the past. The whole thing, the course, is very interesting, and I am enjoying it much more than I expected to, means that I am now seriously considering buying the annual licence to do the other courses (there are five or six of them I think – that’ll keep me going for a while). It’s all interesting stuff.

I’ve just taken a quick look at my FaceBook timeline, and my last post was only four days ago. I have to confess, I thought it was a lot longer than that since posting.

I really should have done a post over the weekend but hadn’t. Not through lack of opportunity. We had spent a bit of time in Wickham, and could easily have found something to focus on.

Consider the header picture. I took this in a back alley in Gosport. I had no idea it was there. Somebody has put a lot of effort into these two pieces. I was heading for the back of McDonalds and these were on the alleyway I just happened to turn down.

I hope that I am able to get into the town centre tomorrow. I doubt very much that anything will have changed as it has been a bank holiday weekend.