Bills Posts

It’s kind of days because… I didn’t do a speak to the camera challenge yesterday when we were in london. To be honest, I had several opportunities when I could have said to Elayne that I wanted to do some videoing. Particularly when we had stopped next to St Botolph’s church. There was an open space, and I honestly wanted to do some videoing, can’t get much more public than the centre of London, after all. But no, I didn’t.

I think there were two reasons, I wanted to, but felt a little bit embarrassed, but I was also a little bit paranoid, imagining that some thief was waiting around the corner ready to rush out on their bike, to grab my phone out of my hand.

There were a couple of times when we needed directions, and to consult my phone, I would Tuen in to the building and hold it low. It did seem a bit odd, especially as I saw loads of people happily walking around with their phones held in their hand.

Today’s lack of doing a bit to the camera really came about by accident I intended to, but again felt awkward, but i did do some filming, it was mainly me not doing much talking, but trying to work out why my gimbal isn’t working – it would do so for about three minutes, and would then give up. The motor that controlled one of the axis was getting very hot. I think it’s broken.

Back to normal tomorrow.

We went to London today. We arrived at Waterloo, needing to get to Leadenhall Street. Never been there before, it’s near the Bank of England. We took the Waterloo & City line – that’s one I’ve never used before, but it was convenient. Only to stops Waterloo & Bank which means that you pay only at the Bank end. When you get off at back one way back to the surface is by using the travelator, it’s quite a long one. That’s today’s picture.

We went to do the War of the Worlds interactive experience, and it certainly interactive! It was really well done. The actors played their parts very well, and the effects were very good. I jumped in surprise a few times!. From that you’s take that I recommend it, and I most certainly do.

We were quite lucky. We arrived the experience over an hour early, and we thought we would try our luck. They let us in on a session that was starting only three minutes later, which meant we came out around 1400. As we’d had nothing to eat since breakfast at around 0700, we were hungry. We had a brief discussion, both agreed that we just wanted ”pub food”, we ended up at The English Pub, quite near Aldwych.

We took a slow walk back to Bank, taking in the atmosphere of the city. It seemed normal. Caught the train, got to Waterloo just in time to see the 1628 Portsmouth Harbour train pulling out. That was alright though, we had an open return and only had to wait half an hour for the next train.

We arrived home 1900-ish, the end of a lovely day.

No, we haven’t acquired a new pet. Although I think Elayne would quite happily have adopted one tonight. Jim one of the Camera Club members has a spaniel which has given birth to a litter of six of the most beautiful little puppies.

The camera club had arranged for them to be brought in tonight for us to have a photographic session with them. A play area had been set out for them, and they were given the run of the room. It was great fun. Jim was running around cleaning up as they poo’d or pee’d.

Everybody was loving them run and play as phot’s were taken. I took a few, but trying to photograph a very active little dog, that doesn’t want to stay still ia not the easiest thing to do – except towards the end of the session, when they were running out of steam and settling down for a sleep, where the cuteness factor went up several notches.

After the puppies went home, we went through to the bar and had a very pleasant half an hour or so having a chat.

A very pleasant evening.

I really didn’t want to get up this morning, well, it’s not that I didn’t want to get up, I just didn’t want to get out of a nice, warm very comfortable bed, into what felt like a really quite cold morning. But I did want to be up, and go out for a walk.

I bit the bullet and got up. As usual once up and out it was very pleasant and I was glad I’d bothered to get up.

Having said that, apart from a few people on the high street, there really wasn’t much going on. The only ships moving were the Gosport Ferry, the Victoria of Wight and a tug heading out. I didn’t bother to check why a tug might be outbound as I knew I wouldn’t be able to wait for it to come in.

It was a pleasant, if slightly chilled walk.

I apologise for the now corrected typo from yesterdays post. I wanted to write about a couple of things that occurred on my walk home from the ferry yesterday.

I was due to do my talk to the camera thing, day 12 I think it must be (day 14, review of the week is due tomorrow) anyhow, given my reluctance to talk to the camera in public, I did exactly that – I got the phone out, held like I was having a conversation, and just talked to the phone, it was as easy as that – I could have been talking to anybody. I have to say, that I was really quite pleased with myself.

I was coming to the end of my talk and was due to walk past the time memorial at the Morrisons end of the High Street, there was a group of maybe 10 people gathered around very focussed on their mobile phones, but at least one person also had a tablet. I asked a general question; “Is this Pokemon“? They said Yes. I wasn’t really surprised, yet I was. I really thought it had gone out of fashion. But, what we have here is a very dedicated group of people. To the extent that one bloke (I reckon in his mid 40’s – so not a kid) had three phones on a board and was playing all three together – very dedicated.

Anyhow, they are a group who meet regularly, starting at Coffee #1, usually for notified events, they have a WhatsApp group, but I couldn’t join as their admin wasn’t around. I shall make a point of looking for them. I told Elayne about it, she rolled her eyes (understandably) but said go ahead. I used to play a fair bit, only catching the beasties though, I stayed away from the gyms – that’ll have to change I guess.

It had been a good day.

I took a bit of time out today, to get out and use my bus pass. I never caught a bus from Gosport Bus Station when it was open. So I walked into town and arrived at the new interchange. As it happens there was an E2 bus waiting. As I boarded the bus, I did notice an official person in a yellow jacket, but didn’t really pay much attention to him. This minor piece of information is qquite important in a moment.

It was a normal trip up to Fareham, but I did think that there were fewer buses than normal when I arrived. I would normally get one of the X4 busses, which run almost directly to Portsmouth. I worked out that there was a bus due sometime in the next 5 minutes or so. When the bus didn’t arrive, I asked the inspector what was happening, only to be informed that the X service wasn’t running. The lack of buses was an accurate observation, as it turns out there was strike going on, with Unite the union for the local bus drivers.

The inspector told me that the only way of getting to Portsmouth would be to get a No. 3 and change to a 2, 7 or 8 at Corsham. I thought I might as well go for it, and boarded the waiting No. 3. At Corsham, I only had to wait for about two minutes for a No 2 to arrive. I must admit that I was a bit surprised that the other 8 – 10 passengers weren’t also walking towards the bus,, but thought no more of, beyond perhaps their stops weren’t on the No. 2 route.

It turns out that the No. 2 probably wasn’t the best bus to take. It went via Southsea, so was quite a long route, and certainly not direct. Not only that, but the traffic was dreadful in the city. I even thought that the bus may avoid the city centre completely, but then it took a right turn.

I didn’t really spend that much time in the city centre, A quick trip to the Hard saw me soon on the ferry, heading back to Gosport, and a casual stroll home that was good for two reasons, that I may talk about tomorrow.

I only mention YouTube tonight because it seems to have gone a bit mad with the Over 40’s taking over, and claiming that people can be successful with not many followers.

Without taking self-satisfaction into account I have to say I thought that was one of the main reasons for posting on the medium. I have to say that there are a few people that I do like to follow, and their goals definitely seem to be increasing followers, so not quite sure what is going on.

Feeling really tired tonight, so not going to be a long post.

To be honest, I just didn’t want to get up this morning. It was the first proper opportunity to get up and go for a walk (weather and timing), but I got out of bed and instead of getting dressed for a walk, I went and made a cup of tea, and went back to bed.

This afternoon, I needed to visit a couple of places so I went for a walk then. Whilst out, I took the opportunity to record Day 9 of the challenge. Do you know? I’ve just realised that I haven’t reviewed it yet, I will do so tomorrow, too late now.

It was a useful one as I wanted to talk about material for my episodes. This one was also useful as. I walked along part of the high street and Stokes Road, recording. I was walking next to people, and whilst I may have been talking a bit quieter than usual, i was doing it.

A reminder to my self to start looking at the books that I have which cover the local area, that should give me some ideas.

The location of this picture is in the Alver Valley Nature Reserve. It’s next to a place delightfully named The Apple Dumpling Bridge. It’s a medieval site. Just a few yards behind me is the site of the Rowner Motte & Bailey.

A Motte and Bailey is a small castle like structure usually on a mound, with a palisade surrounding a small area. The Motte is the castle and the Bailey is the protected area. The mound is still there, and it is registered as a monument, but you would never know it.

IS there a particular reason I’m writing about this? The site is one of the oldest locations in the area, probably constructed sometime in the 11th or 12th century.

Whilst the town of Gosport didn’t become anything more than a village until the 1500’s the Manor of Gosport was created by The Bishop of Winchester in 942. Alverstoke and Rowner are both mentionned in the Domesday Book, not Gosport though.

I want a list, a list of the historic sites in the area.

The topic for our next camera club competition, is Abstract. It’s prints. We spent a bit of time yesterday getting the prints ready, we got them professionally printed at a local printing office, and A3 print is quite reasonably priced there and lot of people from the club use it.

We were in a bit of a flap because the prints I got back last night weren’t right, they had a very noticeable line through it (we hadn’t checked them when picking up). I checked the images I’d sent, they were OK, so something wrong their end. Luckily when we went back today, they were able to sort it quickly.

Then we (well, Elayne – she’s much better at it than I am) had to mount them, couldn’t do that until this evening, and then label them, we finished at 6, just in time for a quick tea; scrambled eggs on toast.

We were rushing around with the prints because they had to be with the competition secretary today – or so we thought. Turns out they aren’t due in until next week. All that rushing around – oh well, it’s done now.

The print above is one of my entries. I confess it is very, very photoshopped. I’m really not good at into the camera abstracts. Its title is UIY1139, random title. – except the letters are shifted alphabetically & numerically by one from THX1138 an early 70’s cult science fiction film. No particular reason, it just appealed to me.

Want to know what the original undistorted picture was?