Bills Posts

I’m sat here, having written the title of today’s post, and thinking OK, what can I write about? It’s the unfocussed thing. There have been times over the previous 1124 posts when I have been fairly obsessed over things, whether that’s history, vlogging, books, photography, the birdtable, the weather, walking, not walking.

there have been times when I could churn out a post in almost seconds. I have to confess that has become slightly more difficult over the last few months. But, whilst I feel massively guilty at not writing every day, the recent holiday has shown me that there will be times when I simply won’t be able to write every day (or I could write if I was inclined to). But there have been a couple of times since coming back, when I haven’t written.

I’ve watched several videos about blogging. They all stress the importance of maintaining blogging at a known frequency. The thing is though, all American blogs seem to be very business-oriented. This is not a business blog. I’ll do what I can.

Feeding the birds is an activity that gives me intense pleasure. There is of course the grey wagtail, which I don’t see every day, but I am fairly confident that there is a squadron of starlings that drop in for a refueling session at least once a day, and individually over the course of the day.

I love it when the starlings arrive, they are an absolute rabble and I know that there can never be enough food to feed them all, and the thought of any of them going hungry seriously distresses me. But I am comforted to a degree by the knowledge that my bird table is probably one of many across the town, and I think the various squadrons either have their own area. I remember I was out on a walk and I stood for a couple of minutes watching the garden of a house where the starlings were even busier than they are at our place. there must have been a couple of hundred of them all diving in in batches. I think starlings are quite communal, the way they were working in batches. I think it would be quite interesting to study their behaviour. One of their roosts is on top of the church at the bottom of the road.

Then of course, there are the pigeons which are forever trying to get on the table, and quite often succeed defeating my anti-pigeon measures.

I have to confess that I’m not even trying to stop the squirrells. Quite often, they get on to the table after the starlings, in which case they are getting the leftovers and I don’t really object to that.

It’s not unknown for me to get in to a situation where I have more than one book that I want to read, and can’t make up my mind which one to stick with. Currently, I have three books on the go;

• Terry Pratchet’s Mort
• The Geology of the Jurassic Coast
• My Trading Room

I’m not being consistent about reading books alternately I might read one for two or three days, plus I tend to only read them during the last hour of the day and usually, not the full hour, so as you can imagine, it can take me a bit of time to finish a book.

Sometimes I deccide that I am going to focus on one particular book, and that becomes it, but not this time. I really can’t make up my mind which one to read through.

So, I shall stick with the three for the time being.

I don’t have a picture. Not of what I’m writing about at least.

we were pottering about doing bits and pieces and Elayne asked me to do something in the garden. As I exited the back door, a bird took off showing a flash of yellow and streaking away with a bit of a squawk. I went back in and said to Elayne “I’ve just frightened off a small bird. It’s either a blue tit or a grey wagtail”.

Having said that, I looked out of the kitchen window and there it was, a grey wagtail doing its little bobbing dance. Absolutely beautiful. I have no idea if it is the same bird, but it seems likely. The last time we saw it was towards the beginning of the year, just before we were thinking about getting the garden furniture out, and here we are now, thinking about putting the garden furniture away.

Having just googled it appears that grey wagtails, unlike their pied counterparts which move between us and North Africa, the grey moves from uplands to lowlands. And here we are, and there it is. What an absolute delight.

Ok. So I might not have blogged every day, but I am trying to get back in to the routine of writing every day. I’m aiming now for 1200 posts, with 80 days to go, that takes us towards the end of the year, quite apt really.

The thing for me is writing about things that interest me. I tend to go through cycles of interest. At the moment it is geology. I’m still reading the geology of the Jurassic coast, between Weymouth & Studland, coming a little way inland to follow particular formations.

I’ve recently been reading about the fossils that have, and continue to be discovered. We’ve visited the Etches collection fossil museum at Kimmeridge, it’s quite amazing and well worth a visit. Here’s a link; https://www.theetchescollection.org/

We have a couple of Alexa’s. The one in the lounge is set up to give weather warnings, which it did for Gosport for tonight, when it is supposed to be absolutely chucking it down. It’s just on 10PM, and it is raining.

I was then reminded of the beginning of the year, when I went through a phase of collecting some basic weather stats; max, min & current temp, humidity, pressure and I also had a wet rain gauge. I’d record these in a spreadsheet and then chart them.

I stopped doing it and I’m not sure why. I think I’ll start again, as it’s getting to the time of year when changes become even more pronounced.

I haven’t written about photography very much at all recently either as a practice or as an interest. I pretty much always have the intention of trying to take at least one photograph per day, I don’t always succceed, by quite a long stretch especially recently.

Taking pictures with my iphone is absolutely fine, especially if it using one of the three focal lengths, but there is just something missing, not holding what people might call a “real camera” and I’m not talking about a DSLR (digital single lens reflex) – the ones with interchangeable lenses, the smaller alomost pocket cameras, which may also have interchangeable lenses. I’d quite like to have one of those.

A very good website is mbp.com. it buys and sells second-hand cameras. I’ve considered selling my Nikon to them, this was not so long ago when I was ‘disengaging’ from photography. I don’t use my Nikon much, I think basically, I have the feeling that it is too bulky. Perhaps if it were a simpler, lighter outfit would I use it more?

A poor photographer always blames his tools. There’s nothing wrong with the tools. Don’t worry, I’m not beating myself up over this. I think I would just like a different camera, whether that is instead of or as well as my Nikon, I don’t know. Not yet though. What ever I’m going to do, I have to save up for it!

Depression is a strange thing. It doesn’t always manifest itself in the ways you’d expect. I certainly didn’t expect it to show itself as basically a withdrawal from society, I stopped going for my morning walks, I stopped going to my radio club. Stopping the morning walks were particularly distressing. I have no idea how I managed to keep the Thursday night net going.

There were times when my desire to not do the TNN was so intense that I really had to force myself to sit down. Usually, I was ok whilst it was running, and releived when it finished. There were definitely times when I wanted to stop doing it.

The walking, getting up at 0535 used to be a pleasure, it stopped being so. I’m afraid that getting up at that time is off the menu certainly for the time being.

I’m not sure what has clicked in my brain that has made me realise where I am, something my wife said, and something I read I think. I’m probably going to have to speak to someone about it.

I had to pop out quite early this morning. The first morning mist that I have encountered as we move well in to October. It wasn’t that it was chilly, presumably the air just has a lot of moisture and warm air is meeting cold. Either way, it was really nice to see.

I need to get back in to the habit of writing something every day. I’m very aware that I haven’t written anything for the last three. I’ll start looking the plan I used a while ago, and see how that works.

Sorry about the shortness of this one. I’ll try to do better tomorrow.

It’s frustrating isn’t it? You be doing something, for example I went for a very short walk this morning, just to get a bit of fresh air at the start of the day.

At one point on the walk I can remember thinking a thought, which was immediately followed with that would make an interesting topic for tonight’s blog. Now, this is where I make the mistake of not making a note of what I found so interesting.

I’m now sat here thinking about what to write for tonight’s blog, and nothing comes to mind. Then I remembered that I’d had this thought. If only I had made even a brief note because do you think I can remember what it was that I found so interesting at the time? Of course not.

When I go somewhere usually to visit a book shop for example, I take my NASA man bag with me, it contains amongst other things, my reading glasses and and a note book and at least one pen, for me to jot a thought or other note down.

I really need to make sure that as much time as possible I have a means of making a note with me. Well, I do don’t I my phone. Which is perfectly capable of recording a note. So why don’t I do it?

Sometimes, I get really annoyed with myself. I have been extremely annoyed with my self this past week. Actually, damned furious with me!