Bills Posts

When we woke up this morning, as we were drinking our first cup of tea, we made a plan for the day. It was a good plan, and we were both looking forward to putting the plan in to action.

The plan did not survive first contact with The Lad. He phoned us and within the first ten words of his call demolished our plan, and replaced it with his plan. As it happened, his plan was quite acceptable so neither of us were very stressed about the change.

Both plans included a need for me to go to the shop. List in hand, off I depart, and proceeded to fill my trolley with the various necessary items, and I arrived at the till.

Don’t worry, everything was OK, I had a means of payment, and the till operator was quite happy beavering away, then he asked that question “Any plans for the day”. Now, normally, I am almost monosyllabic at the checkout, but to today, hoooboy, did I have a topic.

Now this was all said in a laughing kind of way and there was no malice in my words. But I lamented the inability of people to make plans with any degree of notice and the flexibility we need to demonstrate on a regular basis.

The till-person interjected with the occasional “yes,yes” “dreadful” “Quite agree”. Focussed on getting my trolley contents scanned as quickly as possible. This all got me wondering.

It probably took about 5 minutes to get my shopping processed. Let’s say that’s average, that means all the shop assistants probably get through 12 people per hour on an 8 hour shift, that’s 96 people. But obviously, there’s breaks so let’s call it 80. That’s the number of conversations they are having during their working day.

I have to go now, if I don’t publish this I will miss the midnight deadline and the counter will be reset to 0.

I read a blog called The Gorse Fox. He writes about his life. Only a few paragraphs, perhaps four or five, rarely longer than that.

I found his blog years ago, well before he retired. What I liked about, apart from the fact it was very well written was that he’d given everybody pseudonyms. For example, his wife was the silver vixen, friends had names like pistol Pete and whils I can’t remember what he called his place of work, the names were Star Trek related so his workplace may have been Federation Headquarters or something similar.

I’m only talking about this because tonight’s is one of those short brush off posts where I’ve really left it too late to say something reasonable and I need to post something quickly to keep the sequence counter going.

Not got out enough this week, really must try and do better. Well, that’s one goal for next week, I should set myself another, but I really can’t think of one at the moment.

I downloaded a list of shops on the highstreet from the council website a few weeks ago it’s dated 2019 so a lot of shops have either changed hands or closed down.

One frustration is that not all the shops are showing a street number. Perhaps I could spend a bit of time working them out and what the status of the current unit is. That’ll be interesting – for me anyway, for my readers I think it will be an episode of watching paint dry.

This building always attracts my attention when I’m on the high street. I’d love to know what style of architecture it is.

The shop on the ground floor is run by a chap who is very trusting. A couple of weeks ago, I went in to get a new screensaver for my phone. He put it on and that when I went to pay with my phone he said they only take cash. Of course, I didn’t have any on me. I was apologetic and said I’m really sorry, I don’t have any. Take the protector off.

His response was to say that’s OK, you can owe me £10. Thanking him I left, and of course went back a couple of days later to pay him.

I didn’t go for a walk this morning, didn’t feel like it (that’s all, just didn’t). Planning to go for one in the morning.

I was playing with the phone, as I was walking around and unintentionally took this picture. It makes me smile.

The walk this morning was very pleasant. Nothing much going on. The new road between the cross streets isn’t taking traffic yet, but it can’t be much longer.

The bus stop is being worked on, I think there’s probably about another month’s work there. Then I am wondering when will they start on the bus station?

The Contentin came in as I was taking my usual picture of the Spinnaker.

Nothing going on at the Cockle ponds, oh… wait, yes there was – trolly had been tossed in. Streetscene are pretty good, I expect it will be gone tomorrow, if not, I will report it.

That’s about it really.

So, this idea that I have had to get me back on to facebook on a regular basis, or at least try requires a little bit of thought because I don’t want to just dive right in, as i might miss something.

So it will be a little while before I resume as I want to get in to the position where I know what I am going to be posting as I don’t want to suffer from writers block.

You never know, I could end up with some vlogs as well. I really kind of lost the drive for that but clearly I haven’t forgotten it. I need to have a proper sit down and think about it.

I think probably about a year ago, I pretty much stopped doing regular posts on Facebook, I lost the facebook mojo, so to speak.

A surprisingly humbling number of people have repeatedly told me that they miss my posts, and could I start them again

The thing is, I want to start posting again, but as usual, what to write about? Well, this time I think I may have an idea. So, I’m thinking I might give it a go.

I meant to do a post last night, but then I got distracted. It was the case that the number (in this case, 1364) was the number of days since I started this blog. Holidays, forgetfulness and falling-asleepfulness means that link is well and truly broken, but it is a count of the number of posts, with which I am quite pleased. And, at some point in the next few days, it will have been four years since I started.

The picture is of a vase that was in the pub where we had lunch after the camera club walk. There was something about it, possibly the contrast of the background colour against the unusual choice of flowers. It all fits actually quite well.

I started writing this post last night, with the intention of posting it, but then got distracted. I ended up not getting to bed until gone 1AM and completely forgot about. Tonight isn’t quite as bad, it’s 2349 so I only have a few minutes left to publish before midnight.

We had a lovely day today, we went to Fareham, where I had a good browse of the oxfam bookshop when I bought an interesting book – more on that later, and Waterstones which I left feeling frustrated. Not their fault. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, not only that. I didn’t find it.

What ami looking for? That’ll be another post then. When I can work out what it is.

Just finished listening to Andy. Wires Hail Mary. Superb book. Almost on a par with the Martian.

Ok, it’s not a good picture, but I was walking along side the Cockle pond, looking in the water to see if there were any Jelly Fish (there isn’t) I looked up to find myself only about 15 feet from the Egret. In fact, I got the impression that it was looking at me with as much surprise as I. Then it flew off, and I managed to grab this picture.

Actually, the Cockle Ponds are pretty disgusting at the moment. If you look at the picture, the blobs you can see in the water are some kind of weed plant. It is literally infesting the pond, and for the most part, it looks pretty disgusting. I would imagine that it is putting a stop to the modellers. I hope they get the clearing machine back soon.

The bus stop is coming along, but as I look at it, I’m beginning to think it is too small. It doesn’t look like you can get more than three or four people in each section. Still, we will have to wait until it becomes operational to see.

There were a couple of rough sleepers about town, one of them a regular. He was in his usual spot on the promenade, he was asleep so I didn’t talk to him.

Quite a pleasant walk, certainly warm, and I was thinking, but didn’t reach any conclusion.

I didn’t go for a walk this morning. No particular reason other than I didn’t want to get up. That’s OK, I was happy with that. I did feel a little guilty though.

I enjoyed yesterday’s walk. but I had a strange feeling over part of it, feeling that I want to write about some aspect of the town, but I couldn’t really identify what. There’s obviously a niche there that I haven’t yet identified. I need to go for another walk and have a think about it.