Bills Posts

Last week, I emailed the Ordnance Survey. I was after a wall map with a particular level of detail and as it was very customised it wasn’t available even as a customised map. The response to the email said that it would take up to five working days for them to respond, which they did today.

The OS don’t do the kind of map that i want, but they sent me a bunch of links to companies that do, so perhaps over the weekend, I may get a chance to have a look at them.

So, what am I after and why? Well, I want two maps the first is a very localised one to the area that I am interested in, and the other a map of the whole of Dorset.

On both maps (I think I’d almost prefer them to be monochrome) I want, roads and town and place names, but not a lot of detail, but able to locate specific areas, but the main elements are churches and prehistoric sites.

Why would I want that? Well, it’s research for my book. I’m looking for Ley Lines. And I’m all excited about it.

I actually managed to get out for a walk this morning, only a quick stroll down to the waterfront. I was just going to visitor and then come straight back, except there were two tugs loitering. I checked Marine Traffic and there was a Brittany Ferry coming in. The tugs wouldn’t be for the ferry, all the masters have a ticket that allows them to navigate without escorts through the channel and in the harbour.

It was the Columbia Star. Unfortunately, she was too far out for me to wait for her, but I could wait for the Pont Aven which was only just outside the harbour, and I felt as though I had enough time to get to the end of the Haslar Marina Pier Wall, arriving at the end just as the Pont Aven came in.

It’s interesting at the moment half way down the high street efforts are well underway to turn a pedestrian area into a road suitable for vehicles, buses? Or busses and cars. What used to be the taxi rank and ferry drop off now looks like the lunar landscape as it is being turned into the new bus stop, and the bus station looks more dilapidated every day.

Even at 8AM, the high street looks sad.

Cenozoic – Now that’s a word to conjure with. I had never heard it before yesterday, and it cropped up when I was doing a bit of research on a particular place (to be revealed in a minute).

Cenozoic – what does it mean? Well, the dictionary definition is; relating to, or denoting the most recent era, following the Mesozoic era and comprising the Tertiary and Quarternary periods. So, quite recent then – only within the last 66 million years apparently – who’d have believed it?

So the place that I was researching (No, I’m still not going to tell you where – only a few sentences to go – and don’t jump ahead) turns out. to be the highest Cenozoic hill in England, and I see it every time I go to my part of Dorset, it is very iconic, and I always think of it as Dorset’s Mountain because of its conical shape (if you know the area, you’ll know where I’m talking about).

I did a post a while ago about the Purbeck Monocline, the almost right-angle curving of rocks around Lulworth Cove, which has been described as one of the last ripples of the Alpine Orogeny (mountain building period). It turns out that the Purbeck Monocline was formed in the mid-Cenozoic roughly 30 million years ago so in a way, that and Creech Barrow (Yay, yes that’s the place) are geologically related.

Unrelated and aside; do you find that phrases stick in your mind? The Purbeck Monocline is one of them, another is the Louisianna Purchase, I’ll do a piece about that.

Just to add to my frustration; I don’t have a picture of either Creech or Lulworth Cove for you – I’ll have to change that.

Oh Dear, this is not good. I had written this post last night, and saved it as a draft intending to add a picture and then published. I was distracted and forgot to do that – so two days without a post, which means you may get another post later today – really, not good.

I’ve clearly been having some problems with postings, notwithstanding the issues I been having with binge-watching, so I thought I would revert to a strategy that I’ve used in the past when I’ve had problems keeping going with posts. That is to produce a list of topics that I intend to write about.

Now, the list will be very broad, and I may even write two or more posts around a single topic; conceivably, I could create a post every night for the coming week about the same topic, I set myself no constraints in that area, but to-pics I expect to cover are;

• Photography (including Vlogging)
• Walking
• A TV or youtube programme I’ve watched
• The book or magazine I’m reading
• A tweet I’ve read
• Something I’ve readd in the news
• Something I have or haven’t done

I think that should get my thoughts going and potentially result in some interesting posts, which remains to be seen.

We were binging a boxset again last night, the same box set as I wrote about last week. This was the end of Season 7. Only one more season to go before the series ends. Annoyingly, we were so engrossed in it that by the time we finished I looked at my watch and it was after midnight. Like last time then, I managed to reset the counter back to zero.

Sorry for the short posting. I’ve not long got back after seeing the second part of Dune, tired now so it’s going to be a short one tonight.

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.