Bills Posts

What an honour to be writing Bill’s 1300th blog.

Today had been full of…….food. A trip to the 3 horseshoes in Gravely forced us to eat a range of yummy meat and a splendid range of vegetables. The only answer to this stomach extension was to sit in the summer palace and wait for digestion to work.

Dilly the cocker spaniel had other ideas. The tennis balls had to be thrown round the garden. By everyone, without stopping. that’s my little princess!

I need to be careful she isn’t stolen by Elayne!

The thing with Dilly, is that you can’t leave things laying around. A lesson That Elayne has still to learn, especially when it comes to the wool she is using for crocheting baby clothes. Dilly very adroitly grabbed a ball of wool and excitedly ran off around the garden. Luckily, she followed instructions and trotted back to hand it over along with a small clump of cut grass she had managed to pick up. Courtesy of Bill’s efforts to copy Forest Gumps grass expert cutting, but seeing as this was the first time he’d sat on a ride-on mower was not expert at all, but an enjoyable experience.

A really quite relaxing day, not doing very much at all. We did go to a plant fair thing, where Elayne bought some plants and some metal works, which will be useful in the garden.

I started reading the Plantagenets book, which is quite well written in that it reads a bit like a story, rather than a list of facts. So it’s quite entertaining. I learnt about Henry 1 lost his heir after a drunken episode on a ship that got wrecked and nearly everybody drowned.

Whilst he tried appoint his daughter Matilda as the queen, it turns out that the Barons weren’t having it so supported the other son, Stephen, and so it looks like there’s going to be a bit of a fight. Of which there seem to have been quite a lot in those days.

Through School,, but not through colllege, and then beyond that, I have always had an interest in history. The colllege thing is where it went a bit awry, but we can ignore that.

I have been wondering what to doo with the blog, I was in Waterstones, and I had a thought. What if I looked at a particular period in history? But which period? Well, the thing is I want a period which has a good written record. Whilst the Saxons would be kind of OK, I think something a bit more recent would better.

I got to thinking about the 14th century and what period that represents. It seems that the Plantagenets ruled. I know nothing about them. Seeing as i was standing in Waterstones, it seemed reasonable to buy a book on the topic.

That’s fine, but how is the blog going to work? Well, obviously l will have other things to write about, but I think at least one or two posts per week should be about the historical topic. I think I may devote a bit of time to this. Working out what I want to do. Let’s give it a go.

Pre-history, according to my understanding, is what happened before written history. In my mind, I am trying to work out how Dorset has so much pre-history in comparison to Hampshire? Now that may be a misconception on my part, but when searching, many more instances of pre-historic features appeared in Dorset than in Hampshire.

On the other hand, Hampshire, particularly Winchester appear to have a lot of history, with many written records. I’ve been reading about some of the things that have been written down. One thing in particular piqued my curiosity, the names and titles given to the kings and the queens of England. For example, Eathelread the unready. Who was he, and why was he called unready?

It appears that at the time he was called unread, which meant ill advised, unread became unready. I hadn’t known that.

Winchester has played an important role in the history of both the county and the country. I feel the need to explore it a bit, but first, I wonder how far back Portsmouth goes – it’s a bit nearer home. Gosport is not anywhere near ancient.

The header picture? It’s of the clouds in this mornings sky, reflected in the waters of the Cockle Pond, which were still to the point of being mirror-like.

I’ve started writing on Facebook again. In the past, generally I wouldn’t do FB over the weekend, but since I started numbering this blog, I’ve done it (nearly) every day. I stopped doing FB almost a year ago, about the same time I stopped walking in the early morning.

Having started both walking and FB (OK, not everyday at the moment), I need to pay a bit more attention to both mediums are for.

I view my facebook entries to be about the town, the wildlife & Misty the cat. My blog on the other hand should be about other stuff, the model railway, vlogging, when we visit different places, when I have something I want to think about.

It is important to keep a clear separation. So that is what I am going to try and do.

I don’t know you’d call this place “a shop unit“? It used to be a charity place. I think they’ve moved to a better, bigger, brighter place, which in its own right is a good thing. The problem here is that you have to look quite closely to see that there is a broken pane in the window. More than broken, smashed.

I’m going to keep an eye on that to see how long it takes to get fixed. I find it distressing because to me it’s a sign of dilapidation, and if one window can be broken, why not more? Are we content to live like that?

A change of direction; last Week I started posting on Facebook again, only two, or was it three posts over the week but it was nice to when I was doing it regularly and I was doing this blog, I think I must have made a subconscious effort to keep them topically separate. I think I’ve lost that a little bit. I don’t want to be writing here what I would normally put into FB.

So whilst I am developing my thoughts on what I want to put in to place on FB, I think I might ponder a little the role of this blog. Perhaps a little introspection might go down well. Will there be more on this tomorrow? I think so.

I think there is one area of Gosport’s services that I think does a pretty good job. Gosport StreetScene. The organisation is part of Gosport Borough Council. I’ve contacted Street Scene a few times, initially it was about abandoned shopping trollies

There are hotspots for abandoned trolleys around town, and I used to report them. I gave up. I realised that I was doing the people’s job for them. I have since up to three of them together, quite a collection.

Other times have related once again with shopping trollies, but this time thrown by some people into the Cockle Ponds. I would contact Streetscene, show them where the trolly was, and it would be gone usually a couple of days later.

But this time is a bit more positive. Streetscene are responsible for the flower beds around town, and I have to say that they put a lot of effort into their upkeep and provide some lovely displays.

even to the extent of the wild patches. From this morning’s walk, it looks like they are preparing the beds for the next round. I shall keep an eye on them.

We went to Southampton today. In particular we wanted to look at some stuff in John Lewis, after that I had a bit of spare time so I went and had a browse around waterstones. There are a few books that I’d love to read, but I have more than enough to get on with.

After that, we went on to Ikea, where we followed the well worn path. We were looking for some other stuff there, but ouur main interest strangely enough was wardrobes. Until, that is, we reached the restaurant, where it being time for a bit of lunch I indulged in a few sweedish meatbballs and some chips, and very nice they were as well.

From there we went to costcos where we did a little bit of shopping, and as a snack we had one of their hotdogs. We had to because they are proper hotdogs, done simply, but very, very well, and at an incredibly reasonable price.

Going back to the early part of the day, we came to Southampton via the Hamble Toll Bridge, which is always interesting, as it is our first opportunity to see if there were any cruise ships in. Well, as it happens there were at least three of them, what we thought might be a P&O, another were fairly sure was a Royal Caribbean another, from the funnel might be a Cunard. Regardless of the line, it’s always nice to see them.

Turns out, it was P&O’s newest ship, the Arvia, currently on it’s way down the English Channel about to cross the Bay of Biscay, a notorious piece of water, heading for Coruna in Northern Spain.

The Royal Caribbean Ship was the Anthem of the Seas. When she was in port, we could see bubble on the end of the arm was extended, it must have been a heck of a view from up there. Anthem is (at the time of writing) heading toward Bergen.

The third ship we could see was Cunard’s Queen Anne, heading towards Hamburg.

There was a fourth ship, The Norweigan Prima, she’s presently heading towards Zeebrugge. I haven’t been there for quite a few years.

The Aurora Borealis is a natural phenomenon that i have always longed to see. A few years ago, we went on a cruise that included visiting various parts of Iceland, and we even had a brief foray into the Arctic Circle. I was very hopeful that we would see the Northern Lights, but sadly it was the wrong time of year, so it was not to be.

Yesterday, there was an exceptionally energetic storm on the sun sending particles our way. This triggered the significant event last night with the lights being visible over pretty much the whole of the UK. And where was I – asleep, that’s where I was. I missed the damn thing. How frustrating is that?

Well, there may be another chance tonight, apparently the sun has continued to be active and has thrown more material in our direction, so there may be more aurora tonight.

We shall just have to wait and see, I’m going to try and stay up later.

Things went aa little awry today. No real problems, I just ran out of time, and haven’t really thought of a reasonable post.

So, this is just a place holder.