Bills Posts

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.

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.