Bills Posts

Between 2020 and today, we have owned (and still own) two 100% electric vehicles. The car we have is an absolute delight to drive and we love it. Any frustration we have is something other that the vehicle itself, I’ll give you one guess as to what it is (pausing)…

Did you get it\?

Yes, it’s the battery.

So, what would ease my frustrations, lets see;

A battery that;

• Delivers at least a 500 mile (actual distance travelled rather than “Battery miles”).
• Can be re-charged in the same length of time that it takes to fill a 50L Petrol or diesel tank from empty, at a standard rate of delivery (i.e., you drive onto any forecourt and use any relevant pump).
• Has a life of twenty years, or the cost of replacement is negligible. I must admit, I’m not confidently able to quantify negligible but let’s say a cost of less than £1000 over the same period.

Battery technology, is not there yet.

Doesn’t stop us from having an EV, but even now, our second vehicle has almost double the range of the first one. This means of the three long journeys we normally make over the course of a year, two of them we can do as returns without recharging, and the third we usually stay for a couple of nights so can recharge.

There is one journey though, that we would like to do, which I have no confidence about doing, and that involves going to France. It think it’s quite likely that the infrastructure is there, but I just don’t know and that gives me the serious jitters. It’s a bit more than range anxiety, it’s a fear of poor infrastructure.

Infrastructure is another issue. I have a few thoughts on that – but that’s a later story.

Yes, I did get out for a walk. It was quite late. I think it was quite near seven, that I left the house. I have to confess that I walked down the high street to McDonalds and bought a breakfast wrap.

I then walked down to the waterfront and was going to sit in one of the seats, but I hadn’t taken into consideration how much water there would be on the seat. So, I sat on the wall, set up the camera, and filmed myself eating the wrap and talking to the camera.

The whole premise of the video was quite interesting and might work. I’ll try it again, but properly this time. I was just glad to get out for a walk.

I suppose there is the possibility that I may get out tomorrow. As usual, I’ve had an idea for a vlog series, that I am keen to explore and would really like to get out tomorrow to try a couple of aspects of it out.

It is now a week since I was last in town, I know that the Erasmus Wolfe has opened. Have they started pulling down the bus station? Is there anything else going on in town or the waterfront?

If the weather is OK, I am hoping to go for a walk.

When I was poorly over the weekend, I made some short posts just to keep the post-count going. I’d reached 52 on Monday evening, 52 posts//days since the last time the count reset.

Something went wrong last night. I don’t know what it was, but somehow I managed to forget to do a post, and now the count has been reset.

I can’t tell you how frustrated and annoyed I felt with myself when I realised what I had done.

I really should have gone for a walk this morning. I had an idea for a bit of filming, which when reviewed would probably have been absolute rubbish, but I think I would have enjoyed doing it. But I missed the window because we were having a delivery that was due to arrive at 0700, and usually on a Wednesday, if I do go for a walk, I am back a good few minutes after that. Well, as it happens the delivery turned up right on time, so it’s a good thing I didn’t go. The bit of filming will have to wait a while.

I’ve only done one facebook post this week. For various reasons I may not do one tomorrow we’ll have to see how it goes.

In some respects, a frustrating day really. But there you go, they do happen.

I was off work today, poorly. I am feeling better, but it has been a bad few days. What do you do when you are poorly and really don’t feel like moving? Well, watch TV of course.

We were watching a TV series from 2009, called “Collision”. I think it was episode 4/6 where there was a scene where a lady talked about her dreams. Those dreams included going to different capitals of the world, finding a hill and listening to the sounds of the city.

I found (I find) the idea fascinating. Gosport definitely has a sound, in fact it has several sounds, depending on the time of the day, and the day of the week. One small problem, there isn’t a hill that I can go to, to distinguish the sound of here, from others.

On the other hand I can stand in the town and listen. That should be distinctive enough. But can write a written description of the sound? I can certainly try.

OK, this is a bit unusual for me, I spent all day yesterday in bed. I’ve admittedly move, but only to the sofa. I’ve not eaten since Friday.

So, today is another short post. Really sorry.

Apologies, this this is going to be a short one. Stop I have been feeling very poorly all day. It started at about 4 o’clock this morning.

One of my joys in life is laying in a comfortable bed listening to the wind and the rain hammer on the window, but not when I’m feeling like this. Just posting this to keep the count going. 

Last Sunday, when I did my week ahead, I put Friday down as a walk, and an opportunity for more videoing, if I wanted it. Of course, what you can’t always take into account is the weather. Misty woke me at her usual stomp around the bed time of about 5AM. She reminded us again that it was even nearer breakfast time than her last visit.

This time though, when I reached out to give her a stroke, she was absolutely drenched. A clear sign that it was raining. This was around twenty to six. I got up and looked out the window, yes it was chucking it down – I could be fairly confident that there would be no walking this morning. To be honest, I don’t always view that as a disappointment.

On Fridays, for tea, we usually get a take-out, as we did today. Instead of delivery though, we wnt to the shop – that was quicker than getting it delivered and we then we drove to the waterfront at Stokes Bay. The Solent was surprisingly choppy.

It was lovely to see the windsurfers out, enjoying themselves. A small to mid-sized tanker was heading in, presumably to Fawley and the ship in the header picture was making her gentle way out to the main channel, The ship, Disney Fantasy is about 130,000 tons.

I can’t help wondering what she is like on board. I have to be honest, I can’t ever see myself going on a cruise on her.

I think you have to be very careful these days about saying things in videos. I don’t mean naughty stuff, I’m talking about quoting facts or making assertions without being confident that you are saying is true. What’s brought this on?

In the video I’ve been doing over the weekend, I talked about the controversy that preceded the construction of the bus station in 1972. This was around the developments that were going on in town, sometimes involving the demolition of buildings that today, would probably be the subject of a preservation order.

i asked ChatGPT to research the subject of the controversy. Mainly, I wanted to confirm that it was more than a rumour. Whilst it didn’t give details, it definitely confirmed that it wasn’t a rumour and gave me a number of pointers to research it deeper.

I’m sorry to go on about vlogging, but this weekend I have been driven a bit up the wall. I have found the various combinations of tech to not be performing as well as I had hoped or expected. Especially the dropping into slow motion mode without any intervention from me.

I made the decision this morning to have one more go, this time with just the iphone, external microphone and monopod. The results? Well, whilst not technically perfect, and my presentation not being very good at all, yes there is definitely stuff I can use. I will pull it together into a video and release it. I’m not even going to attempt to edit out what ever bloopers there are. It’ll be there warts and all.

The one frustration is I would like the monopod to be free standing, and I am disappointed that the lack of gimbal means the phone can’t track me should I want to move. At the moment, until I am able to rule out the problems.

I don’t want to carry a tripod, the one I have is very good, but it’s heavier than I am prepared to take. I would consider another monopod but with three feet. They are about, but I am uncertain just how safe and stable they are.

At least now though I have some video to work on.