Bills Posts

The Ordnance Survey produce some wonderful maps. I have Ancient Britain, Roman Britain and the Great Adventure Map. I even have very localised roll-up maps customised for me by the Ordnance Survey.

What I would like is a customised map that shows only some very specific features, namely prehistoric features and churches (mainly because they are some of the oldest buildings in the country.

I’m still working on my book, and that means I need to find Lay Lines in Dorset. There are some around the Stonehenge area, but I need them to be more local than that, so using a map like that will enable me to find my own. I could then go and explore them. In theory that should give rise to some interesting videos.

The problem is The OS don’t seem to do that kind of map not on their website anyway. Perhaps if I got into contact with them, they might do that. I will have to try.

I, I, I’m not going to show you (meant to show hesitation) the just under two minutes of video I shot very quickly and almost completely unprepared, in that I had given a bit of thought to the topic, even that I am not going to talk about. Eventually, i hope to do a video covering that, as you can imagine, it was pretty horrendous.

Video quality was good, as you might expect, but (I’m not sure what to call it – it seems incongruous to call it…) the filming was pretty atrocious, handheld. Clearly, I can’t do this without a tripod, or at least a monopod. Even though I haven’t used it for a while, it’s all set up. As is the external microphone.

Talking of sound, holding the phone at arm’s length, the audio was quite good, but there wasn’t much wind-noise, and even the diggers working on the new bus stop. I was quite pleased with it.

The decision? Well, having made a decision to go back to looking at the history of Gosport to practice my video-making, I need to gather my material and that means a combination of the Internet and books, but especially the books. And that is where the dilemma kicks in. Which book to read.

I have been talking about a book “Prehistoric Dorset” which I am very keen to read, but in order to support my efforts here in Gosport I need to read books that are partially localised here or put what happens here into context.

And No, I’m still not going to show you that video.

It’s called Prehistoric Dorset by John Gale. I bought the book quite a while ago, but like a lot of reference books, it has mostly lain unread. Until this evening that is. I was determined that I would start going through the book and identify the parts of the county it discusses.

I need to go back to the beginning of the book and start again. The problem is not the book, it is my reading of it. Every time I stopped on a page, I wanted to read it.

Because of that it is now off the shelf and on my bedside table as the next book.

The log in the picture? No significance whatsoever.

I came upstairs to be on the computer to do this post. I wanted to write a post about a frustration that I feel that I can’t find posts that I would like to find on YouTube. One response to that would be; if you can’t find what it is you want then the obvious answer is (provided it complies with YouTube’s rules) to produce it.

Well, I agree with that. In order to be able to do that I would consider doingb so only when I have the skill to at least produce a reasonable video, and I am within reasonable distance of the material that I wish to film. I’m not at the moment.

One thing I can do though is practice and that has always been the case. It what I should be doing, but I’m not – why is that?

I would have written more but I fell asleep in the chair, and only managed to scrape this together in a bit of a rush.

I had an alternate title to this evening’s post “Well, I messed that up”. Actually what I messed up was really trivial, but I found it personally intensely annoying. I forgot to do a post last night. Elayne and I were in serious binge-watch mode, bringing the current binge-watch to a truly gripping climax. We pushed it to 1AM to watch the last episode of the season, and the first episode of the next season to see what the outcome was – OK, a bit of a cheat, but we enjoyed it.

As we were going to bed, I thought “Oh Dear” I didn’t do a post last night before midnight. Apart from my desire to post everyday, because I missed a post the counter that shows how long you have an unbroken train of daily posting is reset to zero. it had reached 26.

and now, I start all over again. I am really annoyed about that. But there you go.

Yes, I am a bit. I was doing some research into what was on the Internet regarding UFO’s purely out of interest for my book you understand only to find that a person in the 1960’s no less was suggesting exactly what I wanted to make one of the key features of my book.

Now I find that not only shocking, but also worrying because I am about to borrow his suggestion and develop it into a theme. I think I am OK doing that, but I would like to know for certain. Is it literary theft if I use his idea (do I have to attribute)? And how badly of is it thought?

That leads me on to a very similar theme that I did mention not so many posts ago about wanting to use real places in Dorset, but being concerned about using real place names, so I thought about using Thomas Hardy’s “universe“ the place names he constructed for example Casterbridge being Dorchester.

I know of a place on Facebook where I can pose the question. I’ll let you know how it goes, but not tonight. Tired now.

Obviously, this is not unidentified, but it is a flying object and that will do for the time being.

One of my all time favourite films is Close Encounters of the Third Kind. When we experience First Contact, this is the way I hope it will be. Now, the danger here is that i am about to be labelled as a nut job, which would be unfortunate because i don’t think i am. I am planning a science/fantasy fiction, i am not proposing evidence, although it may look like that. That’s not to say though, that’s how I’d like it.

Earth mysteries are fascinating and that is what I am laying the ground for. Now, it may never get written, but who’s to say?

I picked up likes from two people last night. They both liked No. 1222, thank you to them. I’ve followed both of them because when i looked at their sites, they both had some lovely pictures;

https://leafandtwig.org

https://leannecole.com.au

I hope they don’t mind my linking here.

Characters, I need characters, and i am not at all good at them, well to be honest, I’ve never really tried. I should, shouldn’t I?

I get an idea for something, go at it and then realise that it is all too complex and so it slowly fades away, but never completely. Some things get incorporated into my “interest list”, which means that I am likely to return to it, say a couple of times a year. For a few weeks then, that thing becomes a focus and I find it difficult to concentrate on anything else.

Now I’m sure if writing a book is in that category because it is pretty much always there either at the forefront or remaining in the background, never really completely going away. The question though, is always what am I going to write about? Non-fiction? I thought that would be easier than fiction. Well, not really, because obviously, you have to know your topic. Whilst I might know a bit about something, that by no means makes me an expert, so if I am going to write about something it has to be that which makes me really interested.

The question is, have I found it? I keep a handwritten journal mainly because I enjoy a bit of handwriting, even though my handwriting is not at all good. Anyhow, I started writing down an idea that I had for a book, and actually, this one is growing a few legs.

It combines areas of interest and will require a lot of research, but it all maps into plans that I have for our future in Dorset.

I really want to tell you about it, but I can’t here. Somebody might take the idea and do a better job of it. Also, is it really a good idea. The only thing I will tell you is that it is a work of fiction.

We decided to go for a walk along the waterfront at Stokes Bay. Ever since the COVID lockdowns, I have carried very little cash. That can be a bit of a nightmare when it comes to paying for car parking. The council have tried several things and luckily just about every car park in and around the town have a number of options for paying; cash, of course, by using contactless – I’ve found that this has worked quite well, but then a change was made to use a phone app. I think people found this somewhat concerting. I’m not sure why, perhaps it was a concern about signal strength, but I’ve never found a problem pretty much anywhere in the town.

Car parking sorted via the app, Elayne and I set off. Elayne’s exercise regime requires a thirty minute walk, a slow and steady pace saw us reach Pebbles cafe at the turnaround point, reaching the car just as the thirty minute timer sounded.

I left Elayne with the heating on, she was fine and I went off for another quick twenty minute stroll, just to get a few more steps in.

One of the things I always look out for is what ships we can see out in the Solent. There were several moving around and one in particular caught my attention as it followed the channel and came closer to the mainland, I did wonder if it was one of the bunkering ships judging from its deck infrastructure, and indeed it turned out to be the Whitchampion. It’s been a while since I last saw her, so that was very nice.

By the time we left the car park to drive home for a nice cup of tea, we had just four minutes left on the parking app, so we definitely got our money’s worth.