By The Sea

Something I haven't done in a while - a home movie.  This has been a long time in the making: the footage was shot more than five years ago and, for some reason, I never got around to editing it into a film.  Having finally remembered its existence and having located the thumb drive it was stored on, the challenge was to try and shape it into something vaguely coherent.  When I shoot stuff, I generally have an idea of how I intend the finished product to look.  The problem here was, that at a distance of five plus years, I had no clear recollection of my original intentions for the footage.  So, I had to try and make sense of it all and put it together in some more or less logical order.  The film captures a day I spent at Milford on Sea in early June 2015, highlighting various aspects of the seaside village.  The opening sequences highlight the seafront, which, behind the extensive car parks, a mix of modern and traditional buildings.  The village had been hit hard by violent storms early in the year, as evidenced by the wrecked beach huts, which had had their roofs torn off by powerful gales sweeping inshore. (They've since been torn down completely and replaced).  The restaurant, which can be seen in the distance, beyond the excavator, was also seriously damaged.  We then move on to the village centre, arranged around a green and featuring various tea shops and other tourist attractions, before finally moving westward, in the direction of Barton-on-Sea, to look at the more modern blocks of flats that sit back from Hordle cliff car park.  (These have some pretty magnificent views out to sea).

Despite not recalling how the film was originally meant to go together, I actually well remember the day itself.  It was a Friday that I'd managed to get off work.  It was a stroke of luck - I'd been trying to get a day off to go to the coast for a while, but couldn't get any cover, (I was 'on call' at the time, with no back up), then, out of the blue, a colleague needed to take a weekday off and I agreed to to cover for them in exchange for them covering the Friday for me.  I was feeling exhausted at the time,providing sick cover for another colleague (which is why I had no cover), dealing with an inept line manager and more senior management who, despite the fact that I had been covering for various sick colleagues for months, as well as doing my own job, were giving me a very shitty time.  So, I took the day off and headed for the sea.  Milford on Sea is somewhere I often wind up.  Not only does it feature a beach, but it can be reached via the main roads through the New Forest and you can have a pleasant drive home by the scenic route, via Barton-on-Sea, New Milton and the Forest.  It has a certain significance for me as, the first time I remember visiting it as an adult was following a family bereavement when, after the funeral, I needed to clear my head and the tranquility of the sea.  So I drove south and eventually wound up in Milford.  It's a great place to sit and watch the sea - I end up going there for this purpose at least once a year.  Despite the fact that it is overcast, windy and practically deserted, this was the start of the summer season for Milford on Sea.  By August - when I'm usually there - it is far busier, not to mention sunnier.  Anyway, it was a great day off, providing a real relief from all the crap I was enduring at work.  

There are a couple more of these unedited films on the thumb drive, neither quite as old as the footage that made up this one, though.  At some point, I'll get around to trying to edit them into more or less coherent films and post the here.