The camcorder I bought when my first child was born is now approaching its 18th birthday. I'm not sure what state its in any more as its not how I left it. How I left it a few years ago was in a bag with the charger and a few tapes- sadly not all the tapes. How I found it again when painting a bedroom recently was on its own with no charger or tapes. It worries me that it's all gone. It was the first years of both daughters lives, our first holiday up at Loch Lomand and so many other things. At some point I transferred most onto dvd but recently found one of these disks and it's unreadable. I do fear I've lost things I cannot replace.
It also is some sort of measure of me. When I got the camcorder in June 2003 I wasn't well but was not having panic attacks. All those things changed over the years of those videos including the weight loss. Not that any of that matters really. What annoys me most is a scene. Most strangely in this scene the only one missing was me because I was working when it was taken. My wife had taken our daughter to her gran's house, our daughter was months old. At the same time her younger sister, her husband and baby of the same age went to. And on top my wife's parents as well. Its a scene in a living room they all knew but is no longer in the family. It's a scene with 4 generations from my wife's gran in her nineties to our daughter in her first year. It's a scene where 3 of the people are no longer with us- the gran, her great aunt and mum. It's a happy time that I am really angry about not taking better care of. Its not definitely lost forever but its looking more likely to be lost than found. Fingers crossed that over the course of decluttering something turns up that can be saved.
Nowadays we have so much footage on our phones but that was before all that. I think there might have been footage from my gran's house too. In fact there was an even older camcorder from around 1996 somewhere too that could be there somewhere. A reminder to take better care of things.
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