Bills Posts

It’s a bit of a stinker, my nose is making a serious effort to increase water flow in the harbour, and my body has told my brain, in no uncertain terms, that it is going to bed, which is where I am now.

I still have every intention of going for a walk in the morning but if I still feel like this I think that May not happen.

Sorry this is a short post, but it’s time to sleep now. Goodnight.

Since we joined the Gosport Camera Club I have been using my Nikon a lot more. To be honest I’m not massively impressed with the results. Let me make something clear; I am not blaming the camera for my dissatisfaction, it is entirely down to my lack of skill with the camera, and that I am finding the kit too bulky and heavy. That’s not the kit’s fault, it’s my weakness.

Looking back through my posts, in 2022 I actually got as far as setting up a sale of my setup to MBP.com, I think then, I would have got around £600. I wonder how much I would get if I set up the same sale today?

My view (not necessarily Elayne’s) is that Elayne should change her kit, for entirely different reasons – it is completely obsolete; a good camera but almost impossible to buy accessories.

Elayne said (and I don’t hold her to this) that she had been thinking about changing her camera, perhaps to a compact/. A couple of the ladies in the camera club use nikon cool pix or cannon ixus type cameras, and she had thought about ditching her ancient Sony and replacing it with a compact.

That immediately got me thinking. What if I did the same, and we both got the same camera. Between the two of us, we could get quite reasonable compacts with the proceeds from both our sales. I am seriously considering this. Elayne is thinking about it and so am I.

Qw’ll probably make our minds up what we are going to do in readiness for the next camera club season in September.

The picture was taken yesterday, it bears no relation to today’s post.

A while ago, we took delivery of a new set of garden furniture. We were only able to assemble it today. It came in three rather big & heavy boxes. Initially, we thought we were lucky that to assemble the furniture would only require two nuts, washers & bolts for each of the chairs. Simple one eh? Nice & easy, 10 minute job.

In fairness, 5 of the six chairs were fairly straightforward and didn’t require the use of a hammer. One of the bolt-holes had been blocked, but we were able to sort that fairly quickly.

The 6th chair though, which was actually the first chair, but we gave up on it several times was the doozy. Do you think we could get the holes to line up? No, we couldn’t we could see the bolt but we just could not get it through. I do hope out neighbours were out, because my language was, lets just say, a little bit fruity.

I don’t know how she did it, but somehow, two and a half hours after started the 10 minute job, Elayne managed to do it. The bolt is in the wrong way round, but it has been sorted.

I told Elayne that she was forbidden from going anywhere near stores that sold self-assembly furniture. Ever. She will of course, ignore me.

The Commodore Clipper zips past the Spinnaker. Luckily it’s just a photographic effect.

I have to confess that I so very nearly didn’t get up and go for a walk this morning. I could very easily have stayed in bed. But as is usually the case, having got up and got out, I am pleased that I did.

One of the major jobs on the high street is now progressing apace. The job at Number 8 hasn’t started yet. It’s the McDonalds that is coming along.

I read somewhere that demolition of the old bus station will begin in two weeks, mind you I read the same thing two weeks ago.

I took this picture this morning. It’s a fairly major change from even yesterday. Obviously, there’s a fair bit of activity going on behind the screen. I reckon the next this is the Burton branding will go. It might even be gone by tomorrow.

What I should have done before now, is look at the planning application, there are two, one of them deals explicitly with signage. If I had read that first I might have a better idea of what was due to happen.

I’m surprised that I haven’t taken the opportunity before to use the blog more obviously to expand on something I had written about in my morning Facebook post. It gives me a good opportunity to expand on a point of interest.

Don’t want to do that all the time though, it’d get boring.

During the week I am trying to get back into doing a regular facebook post in the morning. Sometimes, it would be so easy to make the posts here a duplicate of the morning’s writings, but that would be lazy.

Sometimes, I would like to make this a follow on, or slightly deeper comment from the morning. Like tonight. I’ve been looking at the lifecycle of the moon jellyfish.

I have to say that Chat GPT has been very useful in breaking down the lifecycle into easy stages, explaining them in simple language.

One aspect I have been exploring is how the population is regenerated after each cycle. There is a stage in the life cycle called the polyp, these are fixed. Whilst they are vulnerable to events like the ponds being emptied there will be places where they would survive, and it wouldn’t take much to see the population rebuilt to what I see in the ponds. Also, polyps can survive for up to an impressive 25 years.

It seems likely, that the repopulation of the jellyfish population in the cockle ponds mostly comes from polyps that have survived the various draining, with some support from the small mobile stage being brought in.

It’s all fascinating stuff, but it was a real delight to see them back in the ponds. I must admit I don’t know if the model yacht club don’t like them, and I’m sorry for that, but it’s nice to see them back.

Following on then, from the episode where I was labelled “weird” by a young chap in the high street, I guess that I should announce that some time in the next couple of weeks, somewhere in town, probably on Trinity Green between the Millennium Sundial and the church, I will be undertaking activities that are weird beyond anything that I was doing in town.

Not only that but, if the piece of equipment that I’ve just bought works, I will look…well, at the moment I don’t have the words for it, so let’s see what turns up and whether it works.

Not unreasonably then, I have left you with the reasonable question – what is he up to now? Well, this is the thing you see. Some time ago, I bought some dowsing rods, which I haven’t used yet. So I am planning to go dowsing.

Not only that, I want to film myself whilst doing so, in fact I want to record from two angles; I want to record my hands and what I am doing with the dowsing rods, but I also want to record my face as I am doing so. The first angle is straightforward to solve – I have a chest mount for my GoPro, so I have the forward facing camera sorted.

It’s filming my face as I am moving about that is the problem. I can’t mount a camera on the tripod, not close enough, and besides I will be moving about, searching for those lines of energy. No, I need something that projects forward on my body and can point back to capture my face. I’ve found something, and it is, well, weird.

Anyhow, I’ve announced it now, so I have to do it. Let’s see how it goes. Should be interesting.

You might gather we have spent a few days visiting good friends in the town. On Saturday I had to go into town to pick up a couple of things. A lot is happening to the town square. It is apparently causing a bit of controversy, something to do with the length of time to complete what appears to be a fairly straightforward job. What I could see looks nice, but it is very much a work in progress.

Whilst small, the branch of Waterstones is will stocked, and looks like it is well appreciated by the town. I spend a good bit of time having a browse, but sadly didn’t end up buying anything.

The one sad part of the high street was the state of Beales, it was when we lived in the town a quite a grand shop well stocked with a varied selection of stock. It was always pleasant to have a browse.

The building the housed the shop is closed down , and I’m not sure but it looks vandalised, with no glass in the windows of the 2nd floor – it is from a distance admittedly in a real state. At a prime position in town, it is really sad that it looks as it does. A place that needs a good refurbishment itself.

We had been visiting our friends, Helen and Mark in the Offords, and were on our way home, when we were stopped at the road leading to Toseland by a (non-police) motorcyclist in the road, with hazards flashing, allowing motorbikes off the Toseland road onto the main road. A lot of bikes, I mean a lot of bikes!

After a while the flagged last rider came out and we were allowed to continue (arguably, they had no right to do this, but there was no point in pushing it, besides it was interesting and we were in no rush.

We followed them to the point where they peeled off onto a road different to ourselves. Carrying on, we ended up at the local Lidls only to see them all coming along past us. We were out of the car, stood by the road. The bikes were stopped by the traffic lights, so I took the opportunity to ask one of the riders how many bikes, to my regret and stupidity, I did not ask what event they were involved in. There were 500 (yes, not a mistype – five hundred) bikes involved. An amazing sight.

Many of them took great delight in revving their engines when stuck at the lights. It was very noisy and very impressive.

Walking over the bridge I was greeted by a collection of swans that must have decided that I was going to give them lunch, because they all started to come towards me. It was only after I had offered my most profuse apologies that they realised I was of no use to them that they turned away from me in disgust and resumed normal grazing.

It turns out that a few swans I called a bevy. A lot of swans is called a bank. A group of swans in flight is called a wedge. I’m going to guess that around 40 or more swans is at least a bank.

We went to a birthday party today. The husband of a friend and former colleague of Elayne’s, 60th birthday. A very pleasant afternoon and evening.