Bills Posts

I would really like to improve my writing. How am I going to do this? Given that this is post No. 1648, and I have probably done a couple of hundred FaceBook posts, clearly I can write, the absolutely burning question in my mind is; Why am I bothering?

Well, the main thing is I enjoy it. So from my point of view, I bother because I want to. So, my concern, regardless of what anybody else might think, I want to improve the quality of my writing. How can I do that? Well, there are in my mind two factors; material and tutorial or mentoring and more practice.

Unfortunately tutorials or mentoring means courses. Now, I do have a couple of options; am I going to do it? Well, I’m inclined to say yes, but a little bit of investigation before committing to a particular course of action;

St Vincent College run a writing workshop, it appears that the creative writing course I attended a couple of years ago is no more. I don’t know how much it costs or when it is run and that means if it is run on either a Tuesday or a Thursday then it is a no-goer due to other commitments.

Future Learn are running a series of courses about journalism. The cost for the next year is £175, but that is for as many courses as I want to do over the year. The slight problem is that if I want it to run it for two years, the cost rises to £275. But the series of four courses that I am interested in will include videoing, which I am extremely interested in, so a down-side is I don’t know how much writing is involved, so will there be enough mentoring? I will continue to investigate. But there is a time limit. The Future Learn offer runs out in a few days.

Something, presumably restorative, is being done to the railway station, I don’t know what, but I will try and find out. Beyond that, the header picture has nothing to do with today’s post.

Talking of today’s post, we took a trip out to Wickham, {I’m not sure if it is a town or a village, certainly the approach sign says Village centre. Quite a large car park in the centre, surprisingly reasonably priced, £1 for 3 hours. There are a couple of emporium-like alleyways selling all sorts of stuff, and is always good for a browse.

I haven’t gone into the history associated with Wickham, but I’m happy to bet it’s reasonably interesting. It was a very enjoyable few hours.

It was a video morning. I’d prepared to do a bit of video in the Falklands Gardens and it had gone quite well and I was walking along the esplanades past a couple of young lads, I reckon they were late teens, 17 plus, they asked “are you vlogging”? I said “yes”.

We then had a 5 minute chat about what I was vlogging and they really seemed interested and encouraging, they said a couple of time that it sounded interesting, and that I should make sure that I carry on with it, they were quite enthusiastic about it.

That really was really nice and very encouraging. I was quite buoyed up by it.

I replayed the videos later in the day I am still saying ‘umm” occasionally, but worse I prefix a lot of my words with a kind of “aah” type sound. I’m not sure if that’s because I am under confident about what I am going to say or some other reason, either way – I need to stop it. I’m inclined to think that will probably be through practice. If I’m going to do that, I might as well start publishing some stuff.

If I say “The Backs” I suspect most people will think of Cambridges area from the town centre, a rather attractive part of the town, showing off the backs of the various colleges leading down to the river.

Those are not the backs I am referring to. For my interest here are the backs of the shops that face on tro the High Street. Whilst nowhere near as attractive as the real Backs, they do hold an interest of their own.

The header picture shows tha back of the new McDonald’s As you can see, the building is a shell, with a lot of work still to be done. Contrast that with the view of the front which is very neatly covered off, and that cover is not coming off in the immediate future. I think it’s going to be worth me taking a walk along the back every couple of weeks.

The walk along the backs was interesting on its own. There are few places where the occupants are clearly quite house or garden-proud, as they are cultivating some quite nice settings in very limited spaces. I don’t know why I should be surprised at that. It is very nice to see though.

Apparently, it’s an excess of carbon that make wrought iron more brittle than it should be. Back in the 1700’s this was a big problem for the Navy. It was possible to produce a higher quality wrought iron but it was a slow and expensive process.

Henry Cort came a long as a producer of wrought iron. I must admit that I’m not sure how, but Henry found a way to mass produce high quality wrought iron quickly and cheaply, through what was called the puddling process. The high-carbon version would be sat at the bottom of the kiln, and a man, known as a puddler would stir the iron, and would hook out the carbon when it started to bloom (I have no idea how to visualise this).

Henry Cort and his foundry started mass production in his foundry, which was off Mumby Road in Gosport, where Henry lived. To this day Henry’s achievement is celebrated partly through a blue plaque on the wall of a car park in the town, not far from the water front.

I want tonight’s post to act as a bit of a reminder to do some little mini-projects like;

1. Who is Henry Cort, what process did he invent, why was it so important and what are his links with Gosport?
2. The Falklands Gardens existed well before they were so called. What is their history?
3. What do we know about the town with which Gosport is twinned, which part of that town is named after Gosport?
4. What is the correct name for The Haslar Marina Pier Wall (a name entirely of my own composition, hence its lack of originality) what, if any, are the stories of the HMPW?
5. Who designed the Millennium Sundial and does it work? If so, how do you read it?
6. What is the history of the two large green buoys outside Haslar Marina? Did they actually ever float?

That’ll do for a start.

I’m wondering if you found last nights post shall we say, a little disconnected? I wrote it more than half asleep, I was well on my way to the land of Nod.

In the post I mention the intent to try an experiment. Anyone got any idea what I was talking about? Because I have no idea. whatever activity it was I was planning has gone.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to go for a walk in the morning. I’ll have to wait and see.

When I go for my morning walks during the week I share my time between two activities, radio or videoing. Three days a week are committed to the radio, and two to video, not including weekends o f course.

I’m expecting to be on the #breakfastclub Monday, Tuesday & Thursday this week, so Wednesday & Friday I can commit to video,. Which is good as I’m going. To try an experiment.

I think from my point of view, it would be quite nice to have a plan §of what I’d like to write about over the week ahead. Now it may be of course, that something will happen that completely disrupts the routine (for example the starting of the demolition of the bus station would be quite a big thing, even though it is anticipated).

Vlogging is obviously going to feature, as will any other big changes that may appear. There’s also one small but quite nice thing that I did photograph but haven’t yet commented on, so I’ll say something about that. Plus of course if anything interesting happens in the harbour itself.

I may also have a comment on TEDx Gosport, which I am viewing with great anticipation,.

This was taken using panoramic mode. I took it for two reasons; To put the Navy mural into a context of the old bus station and to show the increasing dilapidation of the building, mainly visible through the broken windows. The signs have been changed, I think within the last two weeks to indicate that demolition is imminent. To the extent that I pretty much expect it to have started every time I walk here.

I’m a bit stuck now as to what to write next. I don’t really want to write about changes happening in the town, to be honest there at the moment only two of any significance in progress (McDonalds and The Bus Station) although there are more bubbling. I’m covering those both in my Facebook posts and here, when something significant happens, so enough of that here at the moment.

I am trying to think of something, a direction that I can go in and I will take a look at some previous ideas I’ve had, not least of which is the vlogging. I’ve kind of committed to getting something out preferably in the next couple of weeks. I’m not too worried about that as I am nearly ready.

So there are things I can do, it is just working out what and when. Let’s see how things go.