Bills Posts

Took this picture in Malta. I’m guessing it’s a fire boat. It gives me though, a link

To the weekend which is upon us. We had a plan, which has changed because Elayne is poorly, which is sad because we were going have some dear friends visit us, and that won’t now be happening.

I was planning to go into town tomorrow any way. It seems that like an absolute age since I last updated myself on the progress of the roadworks on the crossways. I’ll see what’s happening there.

The seafront awaits me I very much doubt that ha changed. It’s even longer since I walked out to the end of the Haslar marina pier wall and had a stroll along the promenade.

I thought around lunchtime I would pay a visit to the GAFIRS car park and walk out to Gilkicker Fort, which is currently naked. It has had all of the huge mound of dirt removed, so should be very interesting.

It has rained pretty much all day. Apart from a brief trip down the garden to check the weather stats (I missed yesterday) so it’s for the last 48 hours, and that delivered 27mm of rain.

I put some food out for the birds and adjusted the anti-pigeon measure, which because I had only two barriers instead of the three, they would be totally ineffective. I had a busy day, so didn’t get to see the birds enjoy breakfast. It didn’t take the squirrell long to appear though.

Talking of the weather, on Tuesday the pressure was 1014 mb (Sorry, but I can’t bring myself to use hectopascals) today, it was 990mb, that’s quite a drop. 

Apart from that, nothing exciting to report.

The picture, from our trip to Malta, bears no connection to today’s post.

It’s been raining today where we are. I was fortunate enough to be downstairs when the birds arrived. I hadn’t put any food out, but there must have been plenty left from yesterday as the pigeons were desperately trying to keep the starlings off.

Trouble is the starlings are persistent little so-and-so’s, they don’t give up and will wheedle in wherever they can. I also noticed that they were paying a lot of attention to the fatballs which they don’t normally bother with, I’m glad I topped it up the other day.

There was even a police line of starlings searching the lawn for evidence of worm sign. That’s the effect of rain, it brings the worms to the surface. Even the magpies were strutting over the veggie patch.

Even the wagtail put in a brief appearance. I still thinks he’s frightened by the garden furniture.

Whoever it was visiting us, they are always a real delight to see.

I watched a wildlife clip on YouTubeTube today. During the clip he used camera that caught my attention. I have had something like it before, but the model I had lacked two key features.

The first is power through a mini solar panel. Very interesting and useful, the second key feature is accessible via wifi so I wouldn’t have to retrieve the sd card every time. Both of these are making me think that I might get one.

I’d love set it up that it would cover the bird table, and if possible some of the garden as well, that would be really good. One problem I can foresee if the camera were too close to the bird table, the birds would Pooh all over it. Wretched beasties.

Another type of camera I would very much like is a meteor camera. These point at the sky (obviously) and take a picture whenever it detects a meteor. Now that would be interesting.

I’m not aware of Misty chasing birds. I can’t recall her ever bringing one in. Now, mice are a different matter we assume there’s a colony somewhere in the garden as every so often we’ll wake up to one laid on the carpet. Presumably for us to top up our larder but we aren’t here for mice today.

I looked out of the conservatory this morning, just in time to see a full squadron of pigeons take off from next door. I was a bit late putting bird food out today, so I hope the starlings got their fill. I love that the starling I go visit us. I feel guilty that not all of them get a full meal, but I do what I can.

I bought a box of 150 fat balls for the small birds, would you believe it? They won’t eat them! I’ve seen the very, extremely occasional small bird at them. But, as did the two blue tits that were in the garden they completely ignore them. The get partially eaten if I put them in the blender.

At the moment, I’m on mealworms and sunflower hearts which seem to go down quite well.

Magpies are beautiful birds, but they don’t always have a good reputation. We quite often get a couple of them in the garden, marching about like they own the place. They are nervous birds though,flying off at the slightest disturbance.

Then of course there is the grey wagtail. It has been with us for three years now. But it disappears off when we put the garden furniture out. It’s beautiful, and we love it, we do worry about it though.

I had a thought today (I know, l know), it was about life in the garden. What triggered the thought was a cat – not our Misty, a nearby neighbours moggy. Cute looking thing, quite long hair, white with patches of faded grey, I don’t know its name but for the sake of argument, let’s call it Sooty. Anyhow, Sooty has taken to paying us a visit every so often and I think hangs out either under the BBQ or the table. Now, Sooty doesn’t know it, but I would absolutely never do anything to harm her (I think it’s a her), beyond giving her a bit of a shooing after all it is Misty’s garden.

Sooty isn’t the only cat to visit us. Next up is Harrison. He’s a bit of a strange one. He supposedly owns our friends a couple of houses down, but he is looked after,even to the extent of the occasional vets bill, by next door. We don’t know how it happened but he only has one eye. That wasn’t the cause of his extremely grumpy disposition.

Harrison does not like to be told to vacate the garden, to the extent that he and I have the occasional caterwauling contest, after which he slinks off growling, only to return once he sees me go in. Harrison sprays in the garden, I do confess to interrupting him mid-spurt.

There are at least two other cats that spend time in the garden, one a rather graceful black cat, let’s call him Blackie. He reminds me of Rascal, whom I miss very much. I don’t see him that often, and when I do, I am reluctant to shoo him away but it is Misty’s garden.

When we first moved here in 2014, we had to move a lot of Russian vine (also called mile-a-minute I believe, because of its ridiculously rapid rate of growth off the top of the shed. On that occasion, as I was doing so, I came almost literally face to face with a rather stunning fox, sleeping in the midst of the growth.

The vine hasn’t ruled the shed roof for quite a few years now, we keep it cleared. I think Mr. Fox was a tad fed up with us, and talked to the local skulk (that’s what a collection of foxes is called – I didn’t know that until just now). Which accounts for them using our lawn as the local toilet!

Then of course, there are the birds. But they are another post.

Something went wrong last June time. For some reason, I lost the urge to get up at 0535. I would do my walk and then before work I would do my Facebook post. A paragraph about the walk, had I seen anything interesting? Perhaps a cruise ship came in, or it was a particularly nice sunrise.

The next paragraph would be about Misty & Rascal who left us in March last year and very much missed. Misty likes sitting in the conservatory and chuntering at the birds feasting at the table.

Talking of the wildlife in the garden, there was a point today, when I looked out the window there was a magpie on the lawn, starlings and pigeons at the bird table, and a squirrel sat on the fence waiting on its turn.

I would then wish everyone a nice day.

I looked at Facebook yesterday, and realised how much I missed writing those posts. I’d like to re-start them, but I still don’t want to get up. With me doing these posts in the evening I think it would be too much to do two pieces.

I will have to think about this.

My brain at this moment is surprisingly like this picture; flat, not particularly exciting and devoid of anything to write about.

I am having to deploy the trick of writing about what it is that’s stopping me from writing tonight. At the moment it’s mainly a lack of fresh material.

I’m sorry,, it’s going to be another short post.

There’s this chap in the States, he looks for strange things on Google Maps, which could be anything from strange coloured round things laid in a straight line, through ancient rock formations and ancient buildings, he’ll then go and visit them and film the visit. These do make interesting videos.

I think it would be quite interesting to do something similar here, but there is a slight issue of scale, comparing the sizes of the countries; The UK is roughly 95,000 square miles. The USA is roughly 40 times bigger at just under 4 million square miles (around 3.8 million mi^2), here’s a link to his youtube channel; https://www.youtube.com/@TheTrekPlanner

Not only that, think about population density; now this is an average, and clearly there is a lot of variation, but still it averages out to around 93 per square mile for the USA and 700 per square mile in the UK. The kind of bottom line of this is there is a lot less spare space in the UK. There are much less likely to be any undiscovered things in the UK.

Notice I say undiscovered as opposed to interesting. Now, I acknowledge what you may find interesting will be different to me. To which, I’m likely to say that if I were to make videos about what I find interesting then people may not watch them. Which would be sad.

Just a quick note – I missed a posting last night. Annoying, my post count had reached 41. Oh well. Let’s start again.

I have an interest in visiting ancient sites. The problem is that there don’t seem to be any in this local area. It makes it difficult to do a quick visit.

The benefit of a move to Dorset, if only solely to serve my interest was made abundantly clear yesterday. Stood in the car park of the Weld Arms, and looking to the south the earthworks of Flower’s Barrow, a hill fort were obvious.

That was one site of several within only a few miles of our area. The thing is though that I feel inclined to make videos of my visit to these sites. All very well, but what’s my angle?

I could just video the scene and give my thoughts, what I’d really like to do is perhaps an interview of a local expert, what would be really nice would be a recreation but I think that is very unlikely. What I need is something that other people aren’t doing. Fine, but what?