Bills Posts

I had a strange dream last night. I’m not going to go into details here but it was sufficiently disturbing that at the point the dream ended I was wide awake feeling a bit disturbed. I had trouble getting back to sleep, but eventually I did.

The next thing I knew it was 5AM. I stayed awake long enough to have a quick look at the news on the iPad. But then fell back to sleep. I woke up a roughly the time I normally leave the house, which meant that insofar as I had a schedule, I was well behind.

The walk felt strange from the outset. It was colder than I expected. Carrying the tripod, my left hand got so cold that I needed to put a glove on. There was a pretty cold northerly wind causing the chill.

As I was stood on the Haslar Marina Pier Wall, I could see something above fort blockhouse, a ship coming in I didn’t recognise what I could see, so it was unlikely to be any of Mon St Michel, Normandie or Victoria of Wight. Perhaps a cruise ship coming in? It turned out to be the Star Cafe, a Reefer. It’s the ship in the header picture. The white containers are all refrigeration units. Probably bringing in a selection of fruit and veg, Portsmouth is known for handling that kind of produce.

Walking past the cockle pond, I noticed a lot more jelly fish with pink moons. I wonder if that means they are getting ready to lay their eggs. Because of the timing I cut the rest of this mornings walk.

The picture was taken a couple of years ago. The power station has since been demolished, and the weather was much calmer today.

We both wanted to get out of the house for a while, so we quickly put together a packed lunch and drove out. It was a very pleasant couple of hours. There were quite a few people around. Not surprising really, it was lovely weather.

We saw a couple of cargo ships negotiating the bramble dog leg. I don’t know if it has an official name. There were three cruise ships docked at Southampton including Anthem of the seas. They weren’t due to leave whilst we were there, so we didn’t see them.

It was a very pleasant couple of hours.

From a military point of view, Gosport has quite an extensive diving history through the submarine base, HMS Dolphin. The Escape tower is a major skyline feature of the town even today although it closed down a few years ago.

I’ve just been looking at my photos and am surprised to find that I don’t have any outside of the museum. I find that surprising because the outside area is a minor extension of the museum, with some interesting equipment on show. It is the one museum which we have not visited, and I am determined to in the next few weeks.

I understand that there is a connection between Gosport and Diving, but I couldn’t help wondering if there was something about the history of the town that justifies the town hosting a diving museum. Please note that I am not criticising the museum one little bit, just wondering. Unlike the submarine museum where the link is strong with submariners or the explosion museum, the history of Naval Firepower, given the towns link with history. What is it thast causes the existence of the museum here, in this place?

Of course, you only have to look at where we are on the map, this must be one of the most active maritime areas in the world. There are very likely ships that pre-date The Mary Rose (that’s a story in its own right) which sank in the Solent in 1545. There are many D-Day wrecks that are explored by divers, including as training for the Royal Navy.

I wonder what else is in the museum? I can remember many years ago reading about the descent of the bathyscaphe Trieste to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the ocean. There’s only one way t o find out.

This morning, I have to confess that I wanted it to be raining so that I didn’t have to get up and go for a walk. Of course, it wasn’t and I did get up and I did go for a walk and of course I was glad that I did. Not that anything spectacular happened.

In fact, the most exciting thing that happened on the walk were the jelly fish. As usual, there. We’re thousands of them. One of them though, had pink naughty bits. According to the internet, that meant it was either female or it had been eating shrimp. Now if it had been eating shrimp, that must have meant there was shrimp in the cockle pond. If that is the case, then shouldn’t there be a lot more of them. There are shrimp in the pond, or at least there were. Last year, there were thousands of them along the side of the pond.

Conversely, if the pink naughty bits meant it was female, it was the only one I have seen. One female in a pond full of thousands of males? I’d be surprised. It must be something else.

After my peanut masher broke yesterday and my feeble attempt at chopping them up I needed to get a replacement masher. I have, on my two previous purchases, gone cheap. It was time to go upmarket and at least a model for which replacement parts can be purchased.

It’s bigger and more powerful, and chews up peanuts so that’s good. The birds will be pleased in the morning.

A couple of years ago, I think, I started giving the birds peanuts because they were less messy (the peanuts, not the birds) but I had to grind them up. I tried by hand at first peanuts in a tea towel or bag, hitting or mashing them with a rolling pin. Didn’t work well,

So I went to Asdas where they had a food processor for £10 that’ll do I thought. In the mornings I would fill it to the top, not realising that I was well beyond the ‘not above here” mark and then grind the nuts for a minute without stopping. It broke, the plastic connector where it sits on the spindle split apart. Annoying, but it had given good service considering the amount of use. I went back to asdas and bought another one. Still £10 not bad I thought.

For some reason, this time I read the instruction book. Amongst the first things it said were; DO NOT fill beyond the line and DO NOT run for more than 15 seconds without pausing. “Oh” I thought. I had better follow the instructions. This one lasted about a month before breaking in exactly the same way. “Oh dear” I thought, but a little bit more expressively. What can I do I wondered? I know, I’ll see if I can superglue the bracket together.

The trouble with superglue is that once opened and resealed, it can glue the cap to the body. It is a very effective glue. Taking a pair of pliers to the tube doesn’t loosen the cap, it tears it in half.

I have a go at delivering the glue to where it needs to be. I manage to knock the loose half of the bracket deeper into the body, because it is covered in superglue it immediately binds and I can’t move it. “Oh dear” I mutter, a little more expressive than last time. I now have superglue on my fingers, the tube of glue, the pliers and the work top.

Not thinking, I pickup the kitchen towel to wipe the glue off. Not only does that not work, I now have bits of tissue glued to my hand. Writing this three hours after the event, I have managed to scrape off the tissue and residual glue (well most of it).

The now completely useless blade resides in the small processing tub, staring balefully at me. I will dispose of in the morning, when I hope it will not glue itself to the dustbin.

No squirrel was superglued in the writing of this post.

This is a picture of the ducks at the Apple Dumpling Bridge in the Alver Valley. On this particular day I was walking back from Lee on Solent. I had come this way. Through the nature reserve to visit the bridge, and a very historic site (for Gosport) the Rowner Mott & Bailey.

There is a story as to why it is called the apple dumpling bridge, but it’s not the one I want to tell today. What I can say is that when I arrived at the bridge, which is quite a picturesque site, the stream it went over was a tad more swollen than I expected, rendering the bridge ineffective.

I did have the choice of turning back, but I didn’t want to do that. So I took off my shoes and socks and waded across. It was only three or four inches deep, so that was ok, but it was a bit painful, not being a smooth river bed.

I knew where the Mott, the mound where the defensive position stood is not very big so I don’t think you can call it a castle is still there. It is a preserved site, but freely accessible. Of the Bailey, the larger communal area that would have been surrounded by a protective wall there is nothing remaining.

It was a little bit of adventure. I did do some videoing at the top of the mound, but my words were badly formed and the quality of my input, not the equipment was quite dreadful. I really should give it another go.

In 2015, I developed the concept of locality. The thing about Locality is that it acted like a kind of framework, bringing together a lot of my interests; walking, photography, history, just knowing about the area.

In comparison to Wareham, the history of which goes back to the romans and the Saxons, and I’m probably sure before. I have to confess that I was very surprised Gosport’s (note; not Alverstoke or Rowner) history really goes back only around one millennium. But what a thousand years it has been, especially the last few hundred.

There is some very obvious evidence of Gosport’s history not the least of which are six of the Palmerston Forts, and the ramparts – Gosport’s defences.

Three rather good museums serve to highlight aspects of Gosport’s history, particularly the role the military continues to have, admittedly to a lesser extent today. Although I think the link between the town and the diving museum needs to be explored a bit. Gosport itself was home to HMS Dolphin, a submarine base. The Submarine Escape tower which was decommissioned in 2020 is a clear link but what is the link with the specialist equipment in the museum?

I enjoy writing about the town, but one thing I would really like to do is vlog. I am beginning to think that I should put more effort in to that. It’ll be good practice for Dorset.

I read the article in Dorset Life about Wareham. It was of course very interesting and I knew some of it (Saxon town, major port before Poole, sacked by the Dane’s, besieged, extensively destroyed by fire), interesting key points in the towns history. But there is so much more detail to be disc overed.

The article is based on a book; A portrait of Dorset by Rena Gardiner. Of course, I went to have a look to see if I could get a copy. Well, I could get a copy of the book, but at a price £75. It appears that the book has been published twice, with very limited print runs in each case (750 copies), so I’m not going to bother with that one.

The next article featured another book; Real Dorset by Jon Woolcott, this also looked quite interesting and is available for a much more reasonable price so a copy is winging its way toward me as we speak.

The good thing about my interest, which I’ve called Locality comes with me. I am very much looking forward to applying it in Dorset, and I think I need to start planning how I am going to approach this and what is involved. I need to think about that.

The latest edition of Dorset Life has arrived. I will take a few days away from my book to read. I’m particularly interested in an article on Wareham. I always look forward to receiving the latest edition. The first thing I look at is the map of Dorset on the first page. This shows the places in Dorset, that are covered in that edition.

I have to say that there appear to be regular places including Shaftsbury, Dorchester, Gillingham. I’ve been to Dorchester quite a few times. I can’t say that I have been to either Gillingham or Shaftsbury. I certainly intend to correct that.

The picture has nothing to do with the coronation. We didn’t go to London, we did spend most of the day in front of the TV, eating some of the things that we shouldn’t. Well, we don’t do it often.

As usual, the ceremony was superbly conducted. Of course not everything went according to plan. You can’t really account for the actions of horses. One of the large kettle drum shires wanted to March sideways for at least part of the route, and apparently one soldiers horse wanted to investigate what happens when it crashed reversing into the crowd barriers. I’m not sure but I don’t think anybody was injured beyond a loss of dignity.

The ceremony itself was fascinating to watch, I loved the music, Zadoc is particularly impressive, and Holst’s Jupiter I always find quite emotional for some reason.

It was for us a very lazy day. I will try and make up for that by going for a walk tomorrow.