Bills Posts

I was walking across a car park. In front of me, a car started reversing. I’m pretty sure they hadn’t seen me, not a problem I was perfectly safe, so I stopped and waited. The car continued moving.

As I was waiting for the car to clear it’s parking space, a family walked past me, a mum and three kids (minimum age guess twelve) walked past me into the zone the car was reversing in to. To be honest, I was gobsmacked. Why would you walk in to a danger zone?

I am assuming that the family, especially the mum (dad not present) were utterly confident that the driver of the car would see them. I had stopped so that I did not pose a risk to the driver of hitting me. I cannot believe that the family did not see the car moving

I have to admit that I was intensely annoyed with the family, both putting themselves needlessly in danger, and presenting the driver with a real threat of injuring someone. Of course the driver did spot them and stopped. Whereas, I felt that I had stopped as a matter of courtesy to the driver, the family were clearly demonstrating either their arrogance or ignorance of a risk, There was just something about the whole scenario that incensed me almost to the point of saying something. I resisted the urge.

When I was very young, my mum worked in Swanage. During the holidays I would go with her. I was pretty much left to my own devices so I would wander all over the town exploring it.

Amongst my favourite places were Peveril Point, where I would watch the waves and explore the old WW2 bunkers, with I think at least one where you could just sit under shelter. Particularly useful when it rained. Also Durlston Castle, I was fascinated by the large stone globe.

Not much further on from Durlston was Swanage Lighthouse. For a lighthouse, it was (to my small eyes) quite a sizeable establishment. I wonder if the keeper lived there with his family? My first encounter with a lighthouse though would probably been Portland Bill. I can remember seeing the red and white building. We must have been on a day out.

Quite a few years later I was on a camping trip (yes, against my better judgement I went camping, never again though through chop ice. this trip was to the Scilly Isles, I must admit, it was a fascinating few days, exploring St Mary’s the main island, we visited fresco and experienced the sub-tropical gardens there. But for me the highlight of the trips was the boat ride out to the Bishops Rock lighthouse.

Sadly we weren’t able to visit the lighthouse, but to see it was impressive, especially when you think how it was built and when. I had always fancied the idea of being a lighthouse keeper. Not really sure why, it just really appealed me. Nowadays of course they are all automatic (I think. There may still be some manned ones).

Not sure what it is that appeals to me, but my interest has never gone away.

I think I mentioned the society a few posts ago. We were in Dorchester as I usually do, I went into every book shop I could find. This one particular shop had a pile of books that were “The Proceedings” of the society. These are published every year. I bought the 1984 proceedings.

It was the article about the smugglers that I read and found most interesting. This morning I sat down and went through the book, I started reading page by page. The first article was about the excavation of a barrow.

What got me was the level of detail. Details of measurements within the barrow, down to fractions of an inch in the excavations. I don’t need that, in the sense that I’m not bothered about that kind of detail.

What did disturb me was the findings. Descriptions of the positioning of the bones they found, including those of children, young children. The finding of bell beakers, so a fairly close dating over three thousand years ago. A fact of life, distressing nonetheless.

I suppose part of the name being archeological you would expect nothing less. But there is also the natural history side of things. I don’t know anything about the authors of the articles, but I get the impression that they are professional, possibly academically qualified or have received some training.

I’ve looked at the membership details. £60 a year buys unlimited entry into the museum, access to an extensive library, complimentary tickets, and a few other things as well as a copy of the latest proceedings. I am asking myself, is it worth it – oh, I nearly forgot, there is a magazine published twice a year. I’d like to see one of those. It might influence my decision.

I intended to go to the Discovery Centre to a b it of research in to Gosport’s role in the Civil War for example, was it a strategically important place for either of the protagonists, the Parliamentarians or the Royalists? Did any significant battles or events occur in Gosport during the campaign?

Well, it turns out that the Parliamentarians had two events that were significant localy (the seizing of the Mary Rose (not the one that sank) and the bombardment of Portsmouth) Apart from that Gosport had barely no notable invovlement in the civil war.

Still, that does give us a couple of opportunities for vlogging.

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When I got up first thing to make a cup of tea, I noticed Mr Squirrel having breakfast. I don’t mind that at all. It was yesterdays food, and I would rather that the squirrel have it than it go to waste.

I think that the birds aren’t massively fond of peanuts as I seem to get a fair bit of residue. So for a while, I’m going to mix the ground up fatballs (which they really appear to like).

Looking at the picture, you can see the cable ties wrapped around. I put them there to stop the pigeons from grabbing the fresh food, which I would much prefer the small birds to get. Which they do

But then I thought, well the small birds have all disappeared so why not open the cable ties up so the pigeons at least get ago. I’d much rather the food get eaten as much as possible. Seems reasonable to me.

Starting to prepare for the video about Gosport in the civil war. There were definitively activities here, particularly the bombardment of Portsmouth from the Falklands Gardens (of course, it wasn’t called the Falklands Gardens in those days). But, be under no illusions, the events recorded in Gosport were by no means a significant part of the conflict.

There have been at least two ships called The Mary Rose, the most famous of course is Henry VIII’s ship that sank over one hundred years before the events that we are interested in today. That ship of course resides in a spectacular museum inside the naval base.

The Mary Rose of the civil war was a ship in the harbour the parliamentarians attempted to take over the ship to use it for their mission. Successful capture of the warship provided the parliamentarians with a powerful platform and enabled them to control the harbour.

Once again my mind is wandering through the forest of my interests and has found the dilapidated little cottage called Vlogging, and my brain is wondering what can be done to revitalise it into a viable place to visit, and I have to say not being massively successful.

My thoughts are running along the lines of if I can’t produce a video about some aspect of Gosport, why would I think that I would be anyh better in Dorset? Perhaps there’s a lack of people that may make it easier there, rather than the busy town that is Gosport?

There are a couple of areas where I am definitely interested, these are the civil war and D-Day. There’s a fair bit of material for each, I’ll have to draw up a shooting plan or something. The thing is to just get out there and do it. I’ve been here before.

I follow a lady on You Tube by the name of Kim Grant. She is a very good photographer. She produces a video a week about her experiences whilst out photographing, mostly in Scotland where she lives.

Kim covers a range of different types of photography from Landscape (although she seems to be going off that lately) through abstract & surreal to macro. I must admit she isn’t covering portrait (which I’m ok with) or street (which I’m not too disappointed with, but only because I have other sources for that topic).

About a year ago, I spent £200 on a new macro lens for my DSLR. I’ve used it twice. Neither time was particularly successful. It has got to the point where I actually went on to MBP (a very popular site for selling photographic equipment) and priced up how much I would get if selling my kit. Not as much as I thought. I didn’t sell.

Back to Kim, a few weeks ago she did a video on macro photography it was an exercise in patience. Quite simply, not hunting out photographic subjects. Instead she sat on the lawn and let the subjects come to her. I thought I’d try it.

Sat in a chair, camera on tripod within seconds, a butterfly settled on my thumb that was holding the camera. It came back two more times. I couldn’t photograph it, every time I moved, I disturbed it. The two bumblebees were a bit more successful, but I found it a bit of a nightmare aiming the camera I did get some pictures but they are so bad that I’m not going to share them.

Clearly, I need to practice more.

To walk the streets of Gosport is to walk steeped in history. Walking past the railway station, no longer in use for the railway, housing stylish flats and conference rooms for hire. This is from where Queen Victoria Queen Victoria and her Prince Albert continued their journey to their home of relaxation at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

In 1901 it saw her last departure back to London after her death. Many years, indeed centuries before then Gosport had played its role in the Civil War, being a royalist out post, it was coupled in with the Seine of Portsmouth. What is now the Falklands Gardens was turned into a firing platform from which to bombard Portsmouth.

Later, feeding the paranoid fear of invasion saw the construction of a line of forts, nearly all of which remain today, admittedly in various states of dilapidation from almost pristine to barely just a mound of earth.

I’ve talked in recent posts of Gosport’s extraordinary role in the preparations for, and the run up to D-Day, of which evidence of the real efforts still remain.

I have by no means exhausted the stories that can be told of this town. Much remains to be explored.

Quite a while ago, I bought 150 fat balls at a very reasonable price. The only problem is that the little darlings (I mean all of them, not just the starlings) wouldn’t touch them. Well, they would but with great reluctance. So, I thought of a wheeze which I thought would fool them, the little darlings that is.

What did I do? I mash them up and put them on the bird table. Now I have another problem. It seems like the birds (and this time, it is mostly the starlings) May prefer ground-up fat balls to the other main staple I put on the bird table, peanuts – ground up of course. if I start the week with a clean table, by the end I have a table with a layer of residue that is mostly peanut. Time for another experiment.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

We wanted a bit of a relax so we went to Lee on Solent for an ice cream. We parked in the main sea-front car park and went for a stroll. We stopped off at the newly refurbished National Coastwatch Institute (NCI) coastal watch station. NCI would have been a prime choice to volunteer if I hadn’t gone with RAYNET. Unfortunately the move to Dorset means that NCI is out of scope and I’m not sure about RAYNET anymore. That though is a separate conversation.

We had a very nice ice-cream. We were leaving the car park when we saw a large puddle, with a flock of starlings around it. There were about a dozen of them all lined up taking a bath. They were fluttering away splashing themselves. It really was quite beautiful to watch.

Luckily, there were no cars behind us, so we weren’t holding everybody up as we paused to watch. I would have loved to take a few more photos or a video, but I really didn’t want to disturb them. I just really relished watching them.