Bills Posts

This is a scheduled post to make sure I keep the count going.

It had been a normal walk until I arrived at the cockle pond. Normally there is quite a large crowd of jelly fish in the south east corner so I was disappointed to see only a few in the corner.

Unusually there was a person ahead of me and they were stood looking into the pond, they then moved on. When I reached the point where they had been standing, I could see why they had paused.

I had never seen anything like it. Last week, I saw one jelly fish that had pink moons (the four horse shaped things on their top) today, the pink colour in the water is down to the swarming mass of the jelly fish.

It was an amazing sight, I have been following the swarm of jelly fish for three years now, and I have never seen anything like this. Absolutely fascinating.

It certainly is not the life style that attracts me, I have absolutely no desire to experience life in that era, four thousand years ago. It must have been harsh and brutal but at the same time a society was forming.

That society gave rise to farming, an people living in homes rather than caves. It gave rise to the megalithic sites we see around us today. Of which are Stonehenge, Avebury, Maiden Castle are just a few example.

Time Team is one programme which I thoroughly enjoy, and regularly gives us real insight to what life would have been like. But above all else, it is the why and how that bring those times alive for us.

This is the fourth time that I’ve written about committees since starting this blog series. I’ve just reviewed them. They become increasingly pessimistic as time goes on. It’s my fault because of my compulsion to become involved. I need to learn to resist that.

One thing I am pretty sure of is that when we get to Dorset, I will be joining U3A. I haven’t looked at the local branch, but even if they aren’t running groups I am interested in, I will seek to start one (or more). I wonder what is involved in that.

One thing I won’t do is become involved at the charity level. I have been there and done that. I don’t need that level of accountability or stress.

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.