Milford on Sea – Page 2 – derrickjknight

Making The Most Of Milford Seafront

This morning I accompanied Jackie to the GP surgery where she was prescribed antibiotics for what is now a chest infection. Afterwards, she drove us to the car park alongside the

Needles Eye cafe where she sat with a coffee whilst

I ambled along the upper and lower promenades.

The fog warning sounded as I took this hazy picture of the Isle of Wight and The Needles, after which the cafe has been wittily named.

This gentleman was perhaps searching for a sight of the island whilst his bored best friend was suggesting it was a waste of time.

A group of energetic retirees strode out, past the barriers that border the lower promenade where concrete huts once stood.

Should they be taken short, a state of the art Public Convenience ushers in the prospective

rebuilding of the, now removed, damaged beach huts.

Throughout the day, Paul and I continued exchanging material for the forthcoming The First Gallery exhibition and flyer.

This evening we dined on Mr Pink’s, fish, chips, and pea fritters. Nothing was imbibed.

Portrait Of A Village

A sprinkling of rain refreshed us as we wandered round the garden this morning, discovering everywhere a fine varied crop of hellebores in full bloom.

This afternoon Jackie had a coffee date with Helen. Although the high temperature in Milford on Sea was only forecast to reach 3 to 4 degrees, we were to expect sunshine and showers, so my lady drove me there before going on to Highcliffe to meet her sister. It seemed to me that this would be an opportune time to wander about the village with my camera. No-one had mentioned that the showers would be hail and sleet, the first of which struck as Jackie drove away. I spent the next two and a half hours alternately circumperambulating the one way system and the green; taking shelter when necessary; and sitting on wet benches; but I was rewarded with suitable light.

The Red Lion pub can be seen in the above picture. The village also boasts The Smugglers Inn, past which a woman with a walking aid carried home her shopping. Other residents, some with dogs and some with children, were similarly occupied.

One woman was forced to keep tugging her dog away from the gutter as she passed the Post Office. The Telephone and pillar boxes stand beside The Old Smithy which is now a gift shop.

The usual airborne warfare took place over the rooftops as gulls battled for perches.

There are a number of good quality antique shops like ‘The Village’ which has interesting china and glassware in one rain-spattered window, and one of those dolls which are so lifelike as to appear ghoulish to us, in another.

The Charity Shop received regular visitors, and Marjory’s Florist and Fruiterers next door displayed rich red rhubarb and, I think, persimmons.

The eyes of a stunning child’s portrait gleamed through the glass window of Lynk Photography Studios, which occupies an attractive building on a corner site.

To the rear of this building steep steps lead down to someone’s cocooned entrance door.

At the high point of the green can be found other residences I though worthy of note, such as:

Green Cottage,

Myrtle Cottage,

and Milford Cottage.

Towards the end of my photoshoot, driven by sleet and hail, and attracted by its appetising window display, I, almost literally, since the dining area is quite a bit lower than street level, dived into Polly’s Pantry where, in convivial company with friendly service, I enjoyed a warming pot of tea. Some two hours before this I had exchanged greetings with a plucky, disabled, elderly gentleman who, with the help of a wheeled walking aid made his cheerful way along the undulating pavements. He did say it wasn’t very pleasant weather, but hardly in a complaining manner. This was Percy who, as I sat at my table, opened the door and manoeuvred his frame down the step where he was warmly welcomed as an obvious regular, and assisted to his seat, by the young lady who happily entered my shot of the shop. Nick, the young proprietor bakes all the cakes you see in the picture.

I was rather relieved when Jackie arrived to take me home to thaw out and, later, to enjoy her delicious lamb jalfrezi and glorious savoury rice, accompanied by Castillo Albai reserva rioja 2010.

Laundrette Or Launderette?

4.9.14

Clematis Hagley’s hybrid has bloomed at home in my absence. It has been chewed a bit.
Bournemouth is not a city you would wish to negotiate by car unless you had to, even if you could follow the utterly confusing signage failing to lead you to it. With further research it may be found to rival Southampton, but I don’t fancy carrying out the investigation.
My capacity for emulating Dan’s Grandfather was so extremely limited that I needed a trip to the seaside town to visit the O2 guru for him to take me through the basics of the Samsung Galaxy. On the phone Paul, the wise man, gave me the address and said it was ‘just down from Marks and Spencer’s’. With a print-out of the Google map, it should have been easy to find. It wasn’t. After driving round and round in circles for a while, we decided to abandon the car in a multi-story park. Jackie walked to the sea front whilst I ambled up the steep hill to find 5 Commercial Road, which wasn’t where the Google arrow indicated. A helpful woman directed me to the site in a pedestrian precinct around the corner. We’d never have found it by car.
Paul acquainted me with the simplest of operations offered by the device, then, figuratively, of course, held my hand while I phoned Jackie to tell her we were all done and I was on my way to meet her.
From O2, I walked through the Pleasure Gardens to the sea front for our rendezvous. Jackie then drove us home. That public amenity is most impressive. Sightseers sat on benches, walked around, played mini golf, ate ice creams; and, with camera lenses, their own eyes, or fingers, admired the splendid flower beds. Beautiful cosmos lined the railed footpaths.
Later this afternoon, taking the Shorefield/cliff top/Park Lane route, I walked to Milford on Sea and back. My link between the cliff path and Park Lane was The Beach House. This recently refurbished hotel/restaurant has a clear view of the Isle of Wight and The Needles. A dangerous footpath remains closed.
People sat on or walked along the beach, and a group of youngsters dragged rubber boats to the water.
I have often been confused about the correct spelling of the name of that establishment offering coin-operated washing machines and dryers for the use of members of the public who do not have the use of such facilities at home. The producers of the 1985 comedy-drama film ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ favoured one spelling. Peg, in Milford, seemed to be slightly misquoting the film title in the name of her launderette. However, whoever painted the signs on the windows favoured film director Stephen Frears’s version. What does it matter anyway? Many people say ‘laundryette’ (my computer didn’t like that).
Our evening meal consisted of lamb curry, cauliflower baji, and boiled rice, with which we drank Cobra beer. I have never eaten a cauliflower baji as both crisp and succulent as this one of Jackie’s.

I Think He Was Warning Me Off

Last night those, unlike me, who were awake to see it experienced the phenomenon known as supermoon. The moon in these circumstances is larger and considerably brighter than normal. According to Wikipedia ‘A supermoon is the coincidence of a full moon or a new moon with the closest approach the Moon makes to the Earth on its elliptical orbit, resulting in the largest apparent size of the lunar disk as seen from Earth. The technical name is the perigee-syzygyof the Earth-Moon-Sun system. The term “supermoon” is not astronomical, but originated in modern astrology. The association of the Moon with both oceanic and crustal tides has led to claims that the supermoon phenomenon may be associated with increased risk of events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but the evidence of such a link is widely held to be unconvincing.’.
A series of photographs I discovered in my camera suggested that Flo had been up and about at the relevant time.
This morning Jackie drove Sheila and me to Milford on Sea, and home via the beach and The Needles Eye Cafe where the ladies drank coffee whilst I wandered along the wave and spray buffeted shingle. Balls of the foam that the Japanese call sea flowers reached the car park as they rolled along in the wind which had torn them from the creamy surface of the water.
Boards along the footpath give details of the damage wrought in the February storms, and an update on the ongoing work. Today the winds were strong enough to make the destruction of concrete beach huts entirely credible. Back in February, barriers were erected around the damage site. Signs suggested a rather optimistic timescale for the necessary work to be completed. There has been considerable delay which will, no doubt continue for some time, because of wrangling over New Forest District Council’s plans to replace all 118 huts. The buildings are privately owned, but on council land. Many of them have been discovered to contain asbestos. The Local Authority wish to replace them all and charge their owners what a repair would cost. Some owners think that replacement is unnecessary; some residents consider them an eyesore anyway and would prefer their removal. I can see this debate outliving some of the protagonists.
For lunch, the rest of us enjoyed pizza and salad, whilst Scooby gnawed at the bone from yesterday’s lamb joint. I think he was silently warning me off.
This afternoon Jackie drove us all to Boscombe, in order to view the:
Community Support Officers were in attendance, and Scooby was happy to be held up by Flo.
We drove round to the cliff above the beach, where Jackie and Sheila remained in the car and Flo and I walked for a while with Scooby. On this extremely blustery day there was very little activity on the beach far below.
Back home Sheila was to take us out to The Royal Oak for dinner. When we arrived we were told there would be a 45 minute wait for food. We didn’t want to wait that long so we drove on to The Crown at Everton which was closed. Next stop was therefore The Plough at Tiptoe, where Jackie and Flo enjoyed the half rack of pork ribs, Sheila the scampi, and I the mixed grill. When you’ve had the mixed grill, that’s it. You do not risk dessert. But Jackie and Flo scoffed creme brulee and Sheila ice cream. I drank Doom Bar. There was Becks for Jackie, Apple juice for Flo, and sparkling water for Sheila

The Perfect Camouflage

This morning our plants enjoyed some welcome rain; I identified, scanned, and retouched twenty black and white negatives from my unsorted collection; and Jackie shopped for and prepared our evening meal. When, on 24th October last year I visited the site of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais, I mentioned some missing prints I had made in the 1970s. In fact I was confusing them with some black and white ones from 1982. This were among the negatives I worked on today, and I reproduce one here. Anyone familiar with the work will recognise that the position in which I needed to stretch myself for this shot would probably be beyond me now.
This set of negatives can be safely dated at early summer 1982, by the same method of deduction as the colour ones featured on 20th July. A trip to Cannizaro Park alongside Wimbledon Common with the Shnaps family provides one theme. I think it must have been in the park that the unknown girl was about to turn her cartwheel.
Jessica, Becky, Maurice and Beverley, with their boys, brought up the rear as Sam delightedly raced into his brother Matthew’s arms.
There were also a number of pleasing portraits of my other offspring, Becky and Michael.
The Zebby board books were a great favourite. Never having seen them before or since, I think I bought them in one of London’s many remainder bookshops. Michael here reads to Sam, whose excited expression suggests this book was ‘Where’s Zebby?’. Sam must have spotted him before he emerges from behind the upright railings that offered him the perfect camouflage. Board books are heavy duty and can withstand a considerable amount of attempted mutilation from young fingers and teeth.
On a bright and blustery afternoon, having missed the post at Shorefield, and wishing to ensure that Alice received her birthday gift on time, I walked on along the cliff top to the Needles Eye cafe and up Sea Road to the Milford on Sea Post Office. I missed that one too. Never mind, my granddaughter will forgive me.
I returned to the path overlooking the sea via Park Lane, and thence home. Motorboats sped along the solent, and hardy holidaymakers sat watching the waves or walked along the shingle.
I know you will all be keen to learn what Jackie cooked during the day and served up this evening. Now I can reveal that it was her trademark juicy lamb jalfrezi (recipe), and it was delicious. It was accompanied by vegetable samosas, mini poratas, and boiled rice; and followed by mixed fruit crumble and custard. The proprietors of the Shaan in Newark would approve of our choice of dessert. Jackie drank Kingfisher and I drank Cobra.

Privilege Customer

No matter how thorough you try to be in pulling up and eradicating brambles, there are always some that catch your eye as you wander around. For this reason I went on a bramble hunt today. Some, by now, are announcing their presence with blossom and budding fruit; others are so long and straggly they make you wonder how you missed them. So skilled in the art of camouflage are these thorny ramblers that I was constantly amazed at how much space was opened in the shrubberies simply by removing them. No doubt if I repeat the process in a day or two, I will be equally surprised.
Jackie continued weeding, watering and planting.
Among the recent discoveries more welcome than the unwanted growth have been echinops, agapanthus, and honeysuckle whose pink blends quite well with the blue arch around which it clambers.
Not knowing what colour to expect, we have been eagerly awaiting the blooming of the hibiscus in the front garden. We were not disappointed by its interesting pink hues.
For a late lunch today we visited the Needles Eye Cafe in Milford on Sea. Jackie enjoyed a cheese omelette, chips, salad, and diet coke; whilst I, once I had jogged the waiter’s memory, relished a maxed-up breakfast with tea. This large fry-up comes with toast and marmalade. For the second time, my toast was forgotten. I assured the staff member that I did not take it personally as I was not paranoid.
We had not been to this beach in hot holiday weather before, so it was something of a shock to walk to the path at the top of the shingle and be confronted by a picture postcard scene. ‘Oh, yes. We live here’, we said.
After our meal Jackie drove us on to Stewart’s Garden Centre at Christchurch and back. Just before my last trip to France, I had signed up for a Stewart’s Privilege Customer card. One of the benefits of this is that you may buy two samples of specific plants at half price. The choice changes monthly. The July selection is agapanthus. After dropping me off at the airport on 8th July, Jackie hot wheeled it off to Stewart’s to choose her agapanthuses. She found two marvellous full-budded specimens. Taking out the coupon from the monthly magazine, she proffered her pennies. She was asked for the Privilege card. Ah. It was in my wallet in Sigoules.
The card is now safely in Jackie’s purse, so off we had gone to choose some more of the perennial blue plants. Unfortunately there were only a few, decidedly past their best for this year, left. Never mind, we could still have two of them – and we found two that will do very nicely next year – and, in compensation for their condition, a clematis also at half price. we chose Inspiration ‘Zoin’.
This evening I wandered down to the postbox. A lily has escaped into the hedgerow in Downton Lane.

Satiation

Today we took a break from packing. Off we went for lunch at The Needles Eye Cafe in Milford on Sea. This took us past our prospective new home outside which stood a furniture van into which items were being decanted from the house. This made us feel optimistic that we may be able to collect the keys fairly early on 31st.
Obtaining cash in the small town was an interesting experience. There was no bank. We thought there might be an ATM in the Co-op. There was. But it wasn’t working. The shop assistant directed me to a beauty parlour, on the outside wall of which I would find a cash machine. You see, the building used to be a bank. Quite handy if you needed cash for a make-over.

At the cafe, as I was feeling rather peckish, I treated myself to a perfectly cooked light snack while Jackie enjoyed a baked potato filled with cheese and beans. My fry-up should have been followed by toast and marmalade. By the time I realised this had been forgotten, I informed the staff that I would be quite satisfied without it. With it I would have been sated.
Jackie then admired the view whilst I wandered along the beach. A boat was visible against the pale sea and skies merging in the weak sunlight.
This was the first time the tide had been low enough here for me to walk along the strand. It wasn’t long before I realised that I could neither continue hopping over breakwaters nor reach the footpath above. My way to the bank was blocked by hundreds of yards of metal barriers erected on either side of what had once been long terracing of beach huts. A dog owner, whose pet was anxiously wandering along the barriers with that tell-tale tail wagging, told me she was ‘keen to get down to her favourite beach’.

Shingle still covered the concrete steps.

These holiday venues were much more substantial than the wooden ones we had seen at Hordle Cliff Beach. They were built of breeze block with roofs of some kind of aggregate. The storms had destroyed some, rendered others unusable, and the whole area unsafe to enter. Entire buildings were now just gaps in the rows; others had lost walls, roofs, doors, or windows. A notice announced that ‘the work’ would be finished by April 11th. Men in hard hats wandered along the devastated stretches.
Through one space where a hut should have been, I had a clear view of the now calm sea with The Needles in the background. The fortuitous notice warning of ‘the gap’ was nothing to do with that created by the so recently raging ocean. It was akin to those similar signs painted on tube station platforms where the bend in the rail cannot be fully adjusted for by the train carriages, thus leaving a wide gap to be leaped over on entering the transport. Here there is a gap between the edge of the made-up footpath and the backs of the huts. I imagine it is possible, if you are really determined, to lose your leg down it.

The early morning rain had set in again by the time I, later, walked down to the postbox and back, passing Castle Malwood Park Farm.
Having seen what I had for lunch, Jackie really should have had mercy on me this evening. But, no, she presented me with an irresistible plate of her delicious chilli con carne (recipe) and wild rice and peas. I didn’t quite manage to eat it all.

A Second Chance

Elizabeth and Danni came over for a pub meal last night. The Plough Inn at Tiptoe, our first choice, was fully booked until 8.30, so we popped down to The Trusty Servant Inn at which there was room. Unfortunately their main oven had just ceased working, so there were a number of dishes they were unable to produce. This was no real problem, as the excellent sausage and mash; liver and bacon; pasta; and fish and chips were all available. The two portions of mixed vegetables were too much for us all to share, and perfectly cooked, that is crisp and colourful. Trips to and from the bar required the use of slalom techniques. The group of somewhat inebriated young men wearing silly hats were perfectly happy to usher each other out of the gangway, but first one had to catch their attention. This wasn’t easy when they were prodding a friend’s sternum, which required all their concentration, whilst repeatedly iterating the punchline of a joke.
It was when the others came back to our home that we realised there are a number of ‘deliberate’ mistakes to this packing lark. Elizabeth and I both opted for red wine. There was only one wine glass not nestling in bubble wrap somewhere, so I had to quaff my beverage from a water tumbler. That, which must be grasped in a fist obscuring the liquid within, doesn’t quite have the same ambience as an elegant slender-stemmed bowl which can be lifted to view the ruby contents ripe for supping.
This morning we made another trip to Morrisons and returned loaded with more boxes. Packing continued this afternoon.

Early this evening we gave ourselves a break and drove off to Milford on Sea. I waited in the Smugglers Inn car park, and watched the lowering sun still picking out the rooftops whilst leaving lower levels in shadow, whilst Jackie shopped in Hollands. We then drove down to the beach where my chauffeuse sat watching the choppy seas crashing against the glistening rocks as I wandered along the shifting shingle.
The Isle of Wight and The Needles appeared beyond the Solent in sharp relief.
The Marine restaurant, the site of the St Valentine’s Day onslaught and rescue, now looks fully repaired.
Across Sturt Pond the beach huts gleamed in the dying rays against the backdrop of threatening skies.
Because Jackie had thought I had damned Zaika restaurant with faint praise on our last visit, we decided to give the establishment a second chance. This time the food, having passed the popadom test, matched the service. It will do.

Like Shovelling Water Or Coal In A Bunker

Jackie is very keen on keeping our flat clean and tidy. Glancing at the fireplace surround since 11th/12th February when Sam and Orlaith made a surprise visit, one would not think so. You see, when she came to dust this area my housekeeper couldn’t bring herself to do it. It bore a set of podgy little footprints that are still causing amused delight.
Yesterday, when explaining the frustrations of the English system for buying and selling houses, I didn’t describe the exchange of contracts and completion of sales. I can only tell you what we have to do. I cannot quite fathom the reason. Nothing is at all binding until contracts have been exchanged. Anyone can pull out at any time and leave the other party in trouble. In order to proceed to completion, contracts must first be exchanged with the payment of a 10% deposit. Reneging on the deal after this results in forfeiture of the deposit by the buyer, or, I have been told by the agent, a similar figure from the seller must be paid to the disappointed purchaser.
The solicitors want the money up front at each stage. Yesterday’s transfer was of the deposit. We had been told the exchange has been agreed and should take place today. The completion date was still to be negotiated, but in anticipation that it will soon be arrived at, we drove into Ringwood once again and transferred the balance of the money into the solicitor’s client account this morning. Exchange did not happen today. It is now to be tomorrow, with completion on 12th March.
Afterwards, although it was a very mild day, we lunched on one of Jackie’s delicious warming soups. This was bacon and lentils. A precise recipe is impossible. What she does is keep a vegetable puree base that consists of left-overs, including such as cauliflower leaves and onion skins. This, which I believe is known as compost soup, is divided and frozen in ice cream tubs. When the time comes she defrosts a portion and adds whatever takes her fancy. Today it was chopped up left over gammon steak, fresh lentils and a few extra carrots. She believes that somewhere along the line it must have had onions in it. This must suffice as a recipe. Here is a picture of the ingredients of the next compost soup base, to which brussels sprouts superfluous to this evening’s meal were later added:
This afternoon, as an excuse to drive past The Old Post House, we visited Hordle Beach near Milford on Sea. We looked down onto the heaped shingle and the foaming sea, watching walkers along the shoreline, and, buffeted by the wind, walked down a set of still stable wooden steps, onto the shifting heaps of pebbles. The woman in the red jacket above put me in mind of two women I had seen alongside Southampton Water on 14th October 2012. She was doing a fast walk. They had been running.
In the less sophisticated warfare of centuries gone by soldiers lined up for battle in serried ranks, one tier behind the other. The front line copped the brunt of the enemy fire, and the next one clambered over dead bodies to take their places. It was those beach huts here that had been in the vanguard that had caught the full force of the recent storms, with devastating effect. One section of the cliff had fallen away, rendering difficult access to huts teetering precariously on the new edge. Many holiday hideaways had been reduced to timber ripe for reclamation, and debris lay where it had been washed up. Some belongings were probably now nowhere near their former homes. Council notices warned that specific buildings and land surfaces were unsafe.
A defiant message from the owners of the pile of scrap that had once stood on plot 267 aroused our admiration.
One man had been working for two days at fixing up his hut and shovelling away the shingle. This was Richard, who explained that the pebbles hurled to the front of his and other huts had, in fact, provided a protecting wall which had saved his property from the worst of the devastation. He pointed out a gap in the line where a row of huts, as if a giant had scooped them up in the night, had simply disappeared. He described his task of shovelling shifting pebbles as trying to scoop water out of a bowl, because they kept falling back in again. His much more apt simile, later in the conversation, was of getting in the coal for his Mum when he was a boy. Anyone who is old enough to have done that will know that as you scraped your shovel along the cellar or bunker floor, lifting one load, another slid down and filled the space you had just created.
Sadly, whilst we were conversing with this man, a group of young men started chucking some of the flotsam around and making off with other pieces. When we arrived back at the car park we could see them smashing it up and abandoning shattered scraps. A woman on a bicycle reached them before I did. She must have remonstrated successfully, for they began to pick up the broken pieces. As I approached they threw the last pieces into the car and, like Starsky and Hutch, jumped in and drove off as the doors were closing.
Back home in Minstead we dined on tender heart casserole, crisp vegetables, and potato and onion mash. Jackie achieves such tenderness in this meat with a tendency towards toughness by pre-cooking it ‘for a long time in a pressure cooker’. I drank some Bergerac reserve red wine from 2012.

‘I Wanna Tell You A Story’

Following yesterday’s discovery of my blocked debit card, I had further conversations with Barclays Bank in France this morning. I was directed to an exchange of e-mails I had had with their representative in November last year. The problem was caused by my having unknowingly slipped into overdraft, for the only time in five years, by a small sum. I was told that: ‘If your debit balance was not to be covered shortly, we would have to refuse payments made out of your account which could have significant legal implication’.
I was politely asked to let the bank know when I had taken the necessary action. I replied that I would do so that afternoon, which I did.
Today I was told that this was in effect telling me my card had been blocked and I should have telephoned to get it unblocked when I had done so. I have sent another e-mail today, making my feelings about this fairly clear.
This largely pleasant afternoon with crisp sunshine sparkling in the water on roads and fields reflecting the nightlong rain, Jackie drove us to Milford on Sea, where the area behind the sea wall was quite populated with dog and children walkers. Sheltered by Hurst Spit, we walked alongside Sturt Pond, coming back atop the spit. We stood over one of the bridges spanning the stream that links the pond and the lake, and watched a pair of swans furiously paddling to prevent themselves being swept under the bridge where they didn’t want to go.
Kite surfing was in progress, and heavy plant, already having regained the path along the pond, was engaged in redistributing shingle. The weather people took the moment of our return to send dark clouds and needle sharp rain to join the strong winds and spray from the choppy sea in sending us on our way. It was not difficult to see how the ocean could have beleaguered The Marine restaurant and smashed its windows on Valentine’s Night. As we arrived at the car the sun came out again.
I had spent the morning photographing and downloading the pages of a book. On February 2nd I wrote of the apple tree in the garden of Amity Grove. Becky did attempt to scan the treasure. She then brought it over to Castle Malwood Lodge to for me to try my scanner. Neither scanner had the capacity to deal with the large format. On this, my first day back from France, I decided to photograph the work and put the pictures into iPhoto. Not having the benefit of Ken Morse and his rostrum camera, my photographs are not perfectly flatly framed, but I have done my best to present them reasonably straightforwardly. The rostrum camera is a device that enables a photographer to photograph a surface from above without getting the distortion you will see in most of my efforts.

Here is the front cover.

Max Bygraves was a very popular 20th century entertainer. As a comedian his catchphrase was: ‘I wanna tell you a story’. Tomorrow I will open the book which will tell you a story.

This evening we dined on baked smoked haddock, crisp vegetables, mashed potato and ratatouille with baked beans. Delicious. I drank some of the Lidl Bordeaux opened last week and still potable. Jackie had a glass of the Cimarosa zinfandel.