Bills Posts

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.

There are several books about various aspects of Gosport, and there is a book, the story of Gosport by Lesley Burton & Brian Musselwhite. It’s getting toward time to read that again and use it as a reference.

Also, I need to make a bit more coherent and actually start using it. I learn bits and pieces but it is very disjointed. What am I saying here? I’m not committing myself to anything, but I do want to learn more about where I live. I have some of the basics, I do want more.

I still haven’t identified a good book about James VI & I, and then Charles I, the Stuarts I guess and the run up to the civil war, in which Gosport played a part.

I’ve just found a book. I’ll report on it when it arrives. That’s not due until 12th – 13th of April. I have 5 – 6 days where I am without a firm book to read. I shall have a bit of a read of The Story of Gosport in the meantime. Quite a good temporary compromise.

Not Really, it’s tonight’s Radio net, called the Confusion Net mostly because the radios we use for the net are a specific brand – Yaesu, and most Yaesu radios support a mode called fusion, one aspect of which is a method called C4FM (I’m probably getting the basics if this really wrong, which will drive a radio amateur up the wall, but I suspect other people might not care a bit).

Anyhow, the Confusion net is run over thee C4FM way of working. Tonights net had ad good number of callers and we covered a wide range of topics form ships in the Solent to dog breeds. It all made for a very pleasant hour and a half, and brought to an end what had been for the most part a really rather nice weekend.

With some things to look forward to over the coming week, and some the prospect of which I am not relishing quite so much, it promises to be an interesting week.

Last night’s post was very short. I haven’t felt that bad (tired, exhausted, drained) for quite a while. No idea why it should come on like that. I was in bed just after 9PM, and barely managed to get that blog post written. I feel tired tonight, but not like that.

I’ve been going on about vlogging a fair bit, and saying how I wasn’t going to post any just yet. Then I go and add a piece to a FaceBook post during the week entirely accidentally. A couple of people have commented on it in a positive way. If you’ve seen that, and have read this – thank you for the positive response.

I am eager to learn about vlogging and posting on youtube, I’ve done something a bit daft – I’ve become a patron for a youtube channel. It’s Paul Whitewick’s “Footnote in history channel”; His first post was about seven years ago. I’ve got it lined up and ready to watch. I suspect that it will be nowhere near as bad as I expect mine to be.

I am just so tired tonight, sorry.