Bills Posts

The picture is of an ancient site. It does not have any specific link that I am aware of with the subject of today’s post.

I went to Dorset today. We were driving between Wool and East Lulworth. The sun was shining, the countryside was a lot of the beautiful rolling downs that is typical of Dorset.

We went to the Weld Arms for lunch. It was a very tasty meal in a lovely and I definitely recommend the pub.

We were stood in the pub’s car park and as I looked southwards towards the hills I noticed patterns in the hill that looked very artificial – definitely shades of a hill fort. What I can’t explain is why I didn’t take a photo of it.

Turns out it was Flower’s Barrow, and it is a hill fort. I am doubly frustrated that I didn’t have time to visit it and just experience the atmosphere of the place. That is something I definitely intend to do in the future. One of may such places in the area.

Once again, I find myself with nothing particular to write about. It’s going to be a short boring post. Sorry about that.

James Popsys is a photographer. He has a YouTube channel. I enjoy watching his videos. He has a dry, self-deprecating style of humour. He certainly gets around a fair bit and has a certain photographic style.

He reviews a lot of equipment, but that isn’t the main reason I watch his channel. I find his style relaxing and can have it running in the background.

I like his style of photography. Whilst he does visit some exotic places he takes pictures that usually includes a human element, he deliberately does not avoid that. 

I managed to get out for a twenty minute walk this morning. Not very early, around half past seven. Nothing to report, it wasn’t very spectacular.

I haven’t been near the see front for several days now, or monitored the roadworks on the high street. All a bit sad really. I wish I could work out what has gone wrong. But there you go.

It’s a bit late so a short post this evening sorry about that.

I’m hoping this works; https://wordpress.com/post/localitystories.com/2174. That’s a cross reference to the link I am thinking of writing about tonight. That’s one of the frustrations of posting to this blog – will what I write about work? 

What do I mean by work? Well, make sense – ignoring my typos and occasional bad English, and they happen because I am a very poor proofreader. I usually know what I want to write and am keen to get on with it, and then don’t always check to make sure it says what I intended, see, that is one of the powers of Grammarly, which I have installed. It told me that I had made four errors in this paragraph, which I have now corrected.

Write, on with the topic. Post 590, was written on 25 Mar 2022, nearly two years ago. I was concerned then, and remain concerned about rough sleepers. The ones I speak to I wish well, but can do little about, but on nights like this and last night both of which were and are stormy, I’d hate to be in their position. During the COVID lockdowns, the local council put resources in place to keep them warm and secure. I don’t know how much that cost, but I know it was appreciated. I hope they are all OK.

For the first time tonight, I actively thought about giving up this blog. Perhaps when I reach the 1200th post. But then I started thinking, why am I even considering this? What is going on here?

Then I got to thinking about what is the blog for, if not mine to express my thoughts through the medium of the written word. Now, I will admit that I haven’t been very good at doing that, but there you go you see, me running myself down – why. This blog is now so close to achieving 1200 posts. Clearly something is driving me.

No, then, I don’t think I am going to give it up. Perhaps I should go back a bit and have a look at some of my earlier writings, and think about what I can do to invigorate myself even more.

I’m going to keep it going. Let’s see where we go next.

The phone, my phone has a superb camera. Whilst I may not actually, lets be honest whilst I am not anywhere near a good photographer, that doesn’t stop me from producing photos of an almost excellent technical quality. But, that is entirely down to the camera on my phone and nothing at all to do with me.

The phone makes having a camera with you pretty much all the time awfully, awfully easy. But with all that is positive about having an excellent camera I suffer from a degree of dissatisfaction. Using the phone as a camera is good and easy, but I quite often find myself yearning for a proper camera, that is not bulky and light, and easy to use but over which I can easily control. Unfortunately, my Nikon D5300 meets none of these in my view.

Every so often then, I end up doing a search on mbp.com, the website to go to for any second-hand photography equipment needs. Their selection is huge, and their costs are reasonable. I haven’t found what I am looking for yet. But I shall keep on looking.

We went to Dorset today. Family business – won’t say any more about that. But for lunch we went to a local pub that we have been to several times and know quite well. They always serve delicious food. Today, I had Pork and Stuffing pie, it was delicious.

The pub was the Sailors Return. There’s quite a story to the pub, and if you get a chance I can’t recommend it strongly enough, the setting alone is enough to warrant a visit nestled as it is in the vales and rolling downs of the dorset country side, not far from the coast in the village of Chaldon Herring, near Winfrith Newburgh. 

I can’t think of any Dorset countryside that doesn’t captivate me but the gentle ( and not so gentle) rolling hills of this area will be a delight to explore. 

Not these birds, gulls. Although a man almost at the bottom of the garden does feed gulls. Quite often I see half a dozen or so on his roof. Actually, I quite like that he does that.

He also has a flag pole and always has a flag up. It’s quite useful for wind strength and direction.

The bird table is something that we both enjoy. It’s lovely to see birds coming to it through the day, and of course they are not neat & tidy eaters so a fair bit of food gets thrown on the floor. It’s that which is a bone of contention.

Another problem that has arisen in the past was when I was putting out a normal seed mix. Of course, the thrown about seeds started germinating. All sorts of weird mostly grass was growing. I managed to stop that by using a no grow mix. That has worked well, but I think that there must see some seeds that the birds don’t like, because there has been a fair bit wastage.

I have significantly decreased the amount of wast by moving to an exclusively sunflower hearts and mealworms – the starlings love it. So, unfortunately do the pigeons. But that has left me with another concern; the grey wagtail which has been visiting us for at least three years now apparently doesn’t each sunflower hearts. I’ve felt quit guilty about that, so made sure I accidentally deliberately spilled some mealworms. I’m buying some no grow, no waste seed I’ll put a bit down for the wagtail every day.

I have a bunch of magazines to read. The dilemma is that I don’t want to interrupt my reading of the book I wrote about yesterday. The Magazines are;

• B&W Photography
• RadCom
• Dorset

I’m not sure what order I’m going to read them, and I probably won’t every article.

What do I get from these magazines? Well, the obvious answers are information and education, these are obvious, but also inspiration as well. The problem is though that as inspired as I may be, I rarely realise that inspiration which is, to say the least, frustrating.

I have a video running on youtube at the moment, called standing with stones. I’ve watched it a couple of times now, so obviously I think it is very good. But each time I watch it I pick up something different, and I find it relaxing.