Bills Posts

Thursday nights is Thursday Night Net time, between 8PM and 9-ish. Tonight I was set up and ready and raring to go. The first round went OK, although I didn’t really have a grip of the evening’s topic.

By the time of the second round of overs I’d lost it completely. I probably fell asleep by the time of the second or third person was taking their turn. I woke up just in time to hear Dave, the net controller calling me. Of course I was completely flustered. I made up some waffle about having to be away from the mic.

Of course straight after the net finished – not sure what time that was, just after 9, I think I went on to the TNN zoom meeting, and told them what happened. Of course, everyone was laughing. Anyhow, I only stayed on for a couple of minutes. Going to go to bed now, good night.

I didnv’t go for a walk this morning. We were busy doing things before Elayne had to go out early, and a couple just didn’t go right. A sense of frustration was building, and I needed to calm down. Also, I was very tired and just didn’t feel right for a walk.

I was looking at some of the video I shot yesterday. Somehow I had managed to put the camera into slow motion mode, so whilst it looked interesting it was of no use at all. It has all been deleted,

If things go according to plan, I’ll have another go in the morning.

The picture is of Gosport’s Victorian railway station. It’s strange to think that Queen Victoria used to be a regular passenger passing through here. Just one of those little nuggets of history that are peppered throughout the town.

Tuesday Nights are Camera club nights, and this week Gosport hosted the next stage of the South Coast Photographic Federation (SCPF) League competition.

Our club isn’t at the top of the league, our club is in the third division. I haven’t got this quite worked out yet. The club produces Some excellent work. Perhaps we don’t submit enough images/. I’ll have to try and work that out.

The clubhouse was pretty full, with representatives from some of the other clubs, which was nice to see. I think if whoever hosts the next league competition is nearby, then we may have to attend. We’ll think about it when we need to.

In two weeks time is the last competition of the 24/25 season, Elayne and I submitted our maximum 3 digital images each, which this time we had managed to get ready in time – for the first time I think.

It was a most enjoyable evening. Next week is all about macro-photography, it’s a practical session so we are going to take our kit in.

Over the last few nights I’ve mentioned the latest history book I’ve bought, Rebellion by Tim Harris with the subtitle of Britains first Stuart Kings. I have to say that the book holds a lot of promisr, starting with the fly leaf which informs potential readers that the book covers the period from 1567 (The coronation of King James VI of Scotland) through to 1642, the outbreak of the civil war. This is exactly the period I have been looking for.

The intoduction adds to the promise, at the bottom of page 7 of the prolog, it declares that the purpose of the book to be “to explore why things went so disastrously wrong for the early Stuart Monarchy. Again, perfect, exactly what I have been looking for.

As I said yesterday, when I bought Diane Purkiss’s book The English Civil War back in August 2023 (the paperback version, with the gruesome cover, yes, that one – I’m still shocked it was so long ago) I don’t think I had read more than two or three pages when I stopped and asked myself OK, I know it happened, but why did it happen? Which was what started me on what I consider to be a rather magnificent historical adventure, and I still have a bit of a way to go.

I really liked the style of Dan Jone’s writings in The Plantagenets and The Wars of The Roses and the rise of the Tudors, and I liked the story of Elizabeth’s Bedfellows, which finished with her death and the coronation of James VI of Scotland as James I of England. I don’t mind that these two books will cross over in their timing.

I know that Tim Haris’s writing style will be different to the previous authors but even though I am just on the prologue, I’m finding it very readable, and am eager to get into the book.

I took this picture from the upper floor of the discovery centre on Saturday afternoon, it looks out over the open area next to the council offices. There’s a burger van at roughly the one o’clock position part of the market that is on in town. The burger van is a regular, although I’ve never indulged from this particular vendor.

The market this Saturday wasn’t a big one, but it was still nice to take a walk along the high street. A while ago, I got a bit exercised about the High Street, and the number of shop units that were closed.

When I was in my office this morning I found the list of shops that I had been working on, but had dropped when something else (I can’t remember what) grabbed my attention. Perhaps it’s one of those things that I can do slow time. I suppose a big question is why bother with it at all? A reasonable question. I suppose the only response I can give, is because I’m interested.

A couple of nights ago, I wrote about how a book I’d ordered; Rebellion: England’s Early Stuart Kings had been due for delivery, but it went wrong at the last minute. My conclusion was that the book had probably been lost, not sure what I was going to do about that.

It was a good job that I didn’t do anything about it because the book turned up in the normal post. I quite often order second hand books through Amazon, they almost invariably in good condition, this one looks as though it is brand new. I’m willing to bet no one has read it fully.

As the title says, it covers the early Stuarts, the book itself runs from 1567 to the English Civil War, I’m presuming it will start somewhere around the coronation of King James VI (of Scotland) and the fly leaf says it starts in 1567 (when James was crowned King of Scotland) through to the Civil war, which is exactly what I was looking for.

That was a bit of a shock, I’ve just taken a bit of a time out to look up when I bought a book. I bought The English Civil War by Diane Purkiss on 20 Aug 2023. that’s not far off nearly two years ago (OK give or take five months). I knew when I started reading the book that I wanted to know about what leadd up to the civil war, but where to start, so that took me back to the 12th Century and the Plantagenets, I’ve followed them through the Tudors up until now, I’m almost caught up, and after Rebellion, I can start reading that book. I think I may take a pause though after Oliver Cromwell.

If you are able to read my Facebook Post for today,you’ll see that it tells you about my explorations today, having taken a day off work. Involving two busses in each direct, the outwrd journey was uneventful. I enjoyed a quick snack in Wendy’s the burger brand that had dissappeared from our streets literally decades ago, and have now reappeared.

The time I spent in Waterstones was quite a bit more constructive than it usually leaving as I do in frustration, but not this time – two books purchased, one that I stood reading for a few minutes in the shop, realised I was enjoying the read so went and bought it, was about TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) talks.

I hadn’t appreciated how structured and managed the format of a TED and haven’t paid a lot of attention to them, but I will do so in future. I could have got the ferry home; it would have been a lot quicker than following the bus route back, but it allowed me to carry on. reading the TED book.

There were a few differences with the return journey, it took longer, I had beern waiting for an X4, but it never turned up, instead a Number 3 arrived. I wasn’t bothered that would take longer. Traffic was very heavy coming back, and there were two instances where an accident could have occurred and involved a lot of horn use, and utterances of expletives from the driver could be heard.

Apart from that it was a nice day.

I was due to have a book delivered today, “Rebellion: England’s Early Stuart Kings”. From the title of the post, you’ll gather that didn’t happen. I was tracking the order, originally due for delivery b y 10PM.

As the day progressed, times changed, at one point it was 19:56. When it got that specific, I thought it was definitely unusual. Almost straight away it changed again. This time it went to a delivery date of the 18th. Clearly, something has gone wrong. Now the people I bought the book through are normally pretty good, and things happen so I am definitely not complaining. Doesn’t stop it being frustrating though.

I think it is very likely that I have written about this before, I haven’t looked at my list of blogs and done a search.

Tonight the thing on my mind is all about writing a book. The thing is that I never do it,, I may think about it a lot, and I may jot down ideas occasionally and the problem with that is I never get any further. One thing that is missing is that my ideas and thoughts are all over the place, I need something to bring them all together.

Another problem with this sometimes occasional fixation is no matter how much I want to write a book I have no idea what I want to write about, well that kind of isn’t true as I do have ideas. The trouble there is it never comes to anything. If you want something to happen, you have to do something to make it so.

Camera Club Night. At the moment there are two types of club nights, The Club books a room in the club every other week, where we have a formal night running competitions or other club activities, and the other night is a “Bar Night”. Bar Nights are a good opportunity to have a bit of a social, which is something that we wouldn’t do very often.

Tonight’s bar night was a bit of a mixture of topics of discussion from who needs 60 megapixels? Well there will be professionals for whom there will never be enough, and some amateurs who have a specialised interest, but in my view everybody else will never need images that big. Through to a person’s career in Kodak.

Kodak was definitely my go to company when I was using film or slides. I don’t know why, they did lovely books, and I liked the colour scheme of the company and the quality of their material was excellent. I don’t understand why they had the foresight to expand on their invention of the first digital camera (how ironic). I remember very well the visit Steve and I had to the Kodak factory in Hemel Hempstead, organised for us by my sister. I can remember the visit very well. We were treated very nicely, and the tour was fascinating. I particularly remember when they took us into the production area. You’d expect to walk through a set of big airlock doors to keep light out – no, I can’t remember what they called it, perhaps a light curtain, but it was a beautifully curved corridor, starting at one end in normal light, walking through in to total darkness.

That brought back some memories. A very pleasant evening.