Bills Posts

We went to Southampton today. In particular we wanted to look at some stuff in John Lewis, after that I had a bit of spare time so I went and had a browse around waterstones. There are a few books that I’d love to read, but I have more than enough to get on with.

After that, we went on to Ikea, where we followed the well worn path. We were looking for some other stuff there, but ouur main interest strangely enough was wardrobes. Until, that is, we reached the restaurant, where it being time for a bit of lunch I indulged in a few sweedish meatbballs and some chips, and very nice they were as well.

From there we went to costcos where we did a little bit of shopping, and as a snack we had one of their hotdogs. We had to because they are proper hotdogs, done simply, but very, very well, and at an incredibly reasonable price.

Going back to the early part of the day, we came to Southampton via the Hamble Toll Bridge, which is always interesting, as it is our first opportunity to see if there were any cruise ships in. Well, as it happens there were at least three of them, what we thought might be a P&O, another were fairly sure was a Royal Caribbean another, from the funnel might be a Cunard. Regardless of the line, it’s always nice to see them.

Turns out, it was P&O’s newest ship, the Arvia, currently on it’s way down the English Channel about to cross the Bay of Biscay, a notorious piece of water, heading for Coruna in Northern Spain.

The Royal Caribbean Ship was the Anthem of the Seas. When she was in port, we could see bubble on the end of the arm was extended, it must have been a heck of a view from up there. Anthem is (at the time of writing) heading toward Bergen.

The third ship we could see was Cunard’s Queen Anne, heading towards Hamburg.

There was a fourth ship, The Norweigan Prima, she’s presently heading towards Zeebrugge. I haven’t been there for quite a few years.

The Aurora Borealis is a natural phenomenon that i have always longed to see. A few years ago, we went on a cruise that included visiting various parts of Iceland, and we even had a brief foray into the Arctic Circle. I was very hopeful that we would see the Northern Lights, but sadly it was the wrong time of year, so it was not to be.

Yesterday, there was an exceptionally energetic storm on the sun sending particles our way. This triggered the significant event last night with the lights being visible over pretty much the whole of the UK. And where was I – asleep, that’s where I was. I missed the damn thing. How frustrating is that?

Well, there may be another chance tonight, apparently the sun has continued to be active and has thrown more material in our direction, so there may be more aurora tonight.

We shall just have to wait and see, I’m going to try and stay up later.

Things went aa little awry today. No real problems, I just ran out of time, and haven’t really thought of a reasonable post.

So, this is just a place holder.

Every day that I go for a walk, if I follow my normal route, I will walk past the bus station. To be honest, I don’t pay it a lot of attention, or at least I haven’t been. Whilst not becoming obsessed, that will change a little bit.

I’ll hazard a bet that sometime in the next year, they will start demolishing this place. The new bust stop is being built behind where I am standing to take this picture.

I keep on meaning to look up what the plans are for the traffic routing and the land for the bus station. The council are promising that the plan will be used to enhance the waterfront. If it is done properly (and please don’t ask me what properly means here) that. That should be very good, it would be really nice to be able to sit and have a coffee, and just watch the boats.

I was a bit fired up after yesterday’s facebook post, which was incredibly well received by my friends, and was going to do a post about what was happening at the cross streets (north & south), which are about halfway down the high street.

From a period sometime before we arrived in town these two side streets have been pedestrian as the cross the high street. I have no idea when they last carried traffic. They are being changed back into traffic lanes, but single lane.

MY assumption is that the traffic will be one-way, but I’m not sure in which direction.

This is all part of the bus station project. I think that normal traffic is not going to be allowed to use the part of the road past the eastern end of the high street, between it and the ferry terminal, that area will be restricted to residents, deliveries and busses.

I didn’t go for my walk I woke up feeling very tired so made the decision not to go out. I have every intention of going tomorrow.

I went for a walk this morning. Before I left I checked the temperature and it was 10C. I thought that might be a bit cold, so in addition to my coat I put on a fleece, my flat cap and started out.

Pretty much by the time I reached the end of the street I was too hot. Coat and fleece unzipped. I didn’t go home to ditch the fleece. I think I’ll (hopefully) go for a walk tomorrow and if it is 10C again, and provided there isn’t a cold wind I’ll ditch the fleece.

I started on Facebook again, I’m really pleased about that. The response was amazing. I want to start posting regularly. I remember a couple of years ago doing the fantasy holidays. I don’t really want that again. So, I like to think of themes. A TV programme I used to like watching, (parts of which you can still get on YouTube) was Out of Town, with Jack Hargreaves. I used to enjoy his way of presenting, calm and interesting. If I were doing YouTube videos, I’d seek to emulate some aspects.

Of course, it can’t be “Out of Town”. probably illegal, but how about “In Town” or “our Town” – Ah, I know “About Town”, yes, I think I will try that.

I want to tell you a little bit about the bird table, I am delighted to say that it is quite popular with the local bird population, particularly the starlings. They are an absolute delight. It is also popular with the pigeons, now really I don’t mind them – most of the time. But just occasionally I think they (the pigeons) take it a little too far and block out everybody else. To try and control things a little I put cable ties around the uprights (not the bird table in the picture, another one). It doesn’t stop the pigeons completely, they can get at the edge of the food, and a really determined one can get on the table, but it does hold them back, giving the smaller birds a better run at the food. The ties have no impact on the squirrels, we don’t mind them either, but prefer the birds to get first dibs. After all that, this story isn’t about the birds or the squirrels, but does give a bit of context – the cable ties.

When I went to sort out the bird table this morning, this first thing I noticed was that a snail, sometime in the last 24 hours, had started a monumental journey up the bird table leg the pillar, had gone on the underside of the table, up around the edge and was almost out of its shell where it had stretchers itself over the cable tie and was desperately trying to get at the bird food.

Now, I have to be honest with you, I think snails are disgustingly fascinating, horrible slimy things, but with impressive homes. I can’t bring myself to touch them. Elayne just picks them up and drops them in the brown bin, I can’t do that. I had to get the snail off the table so I twanged the cable tie, flicking the snail off. After all that effort to just be thrown off like that.

Questions were going through my mind; How did it know that there would be food up there? Did it really climb all the way up? What ever the answers it was quite an impressive feat, and I then wished I’d my phone with me to take a picture of it.

I felt quite guilty at flicking it off the way I did, but I really didn’t want it on the table.

I did my weather thing, got the bird food ready for the days feed and took it back to the table. Only to find that, what I assume was the original snail, was on the bottom part of the table leg, starting a new journey up. I left it to it.

I’ll have a look in the morning to see how it progressed.

I want to write about my plans for the week ahead. The trouble is that if I go into specific details of what is on the schedule and I then don’t accomplish the plan, I both look and feel a bit silly.

I have some stuff planned, which I may or may not do, but if I do I will report at the end of the week as to how I did.

At one point today, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to follow my plans to visit Ron Lines, the Railway shop. But, in the end the change of plans worked to my advantage and the visit went ahead.

The manager (owner?) and his assistant were very friendly and extremely helpful. After a brief introduction I explained what I wanted and took the list from me and went with me around the shop pricing things up and where he couldn’t give a price explained why.

As you might expect the most expensive items will be the DCC controller and the engine, I knew that would be the case so it was no surprise to me.

There was no pushiness for anything and I was delighted with the visit. I will most definitely be going back to spend some money.

Our visit to the Watercress line last week has once more inspired me to look at my non-existent model railway. At this stage I have a very rough idea of what I want to do, but only the most basic idea of how to do it.

So tomorrow I’m going on a little adventure. There’s a shop in Southampton, Ron Lines, I am going to pay a visit. I should add, not to buy anything, but to look at the shops, and I am of course taking a list of what I think I need and I am going to see if I can price things up. I need to work out how much this is going to cost.

The main thing of course I think will be the digital control unit. The American model railway club here in Gosport (yes, oddly, they do focus on American railroads) use digitrax, so it is obviously a good system, but is it expensive? Does Ron Lines even sell it? All this will come out tomorrow.

The one thing I will comment upon; I do like to support the local exonomy, so my intention is to buy as much as I can from the local shop, but there may be things that I just won’t be able to justify doing. I wonder if they’ll have 2nd hand stock? It wouldn’t surprise me, it would be perfectly acceptable.

Let’s see how the day goes.