When local Woodgreen resident Ann Blake called and asked for some help making an informative film to raise awareness and funds for the Muscular Dystrophy charity, a condition she suffers from herself, we were pleased to help. Having been in great health and living a normal life like us all, Ann was diagnosed in 2018 with this muscle-wasting disease, reeling from that diagnosis, she then found out her son also had the condition. Determined to make the most of her new situation and to help others, Ann, along with her disability assistance dog Snoopy, is raising awareness for both the MD charity and ‘Dog A.I.D’ (Dog Assistance in Disability) charity.
Ann wrote a short film in which she is caught at a set of roadworks (enter Earlcoate) and made to stop. As a fast and furious Porsche driver pulls up intimidatedly beside her, the road works turn to green and she is waved on through, before the Porsche. A metaphor for an attitude towards life—don’t let things hold you back.
Andy Goudge (aka Five-Bar) and Fred Pearce got themselves into some clean hi-viz, took a freshly washed transit and van, Stop/Go boards and some traffic cones and took themselves up to Stony Cross near Cadnam, as the chosen ‘set’ for filming. With a local Emmy award-winning cameraman directing the show, they did a great job—and there is a particular layby in the New Forest that has never been swept so clean, thanks to Fred!!