Jason Thompson's Blog

I didn't mean to publish that quite then

I was saying. I never usually talk to people on trains but today coming to London I got talking to a French woman who was very friendly and interesting. She's a music producer and wanted to know about the comedy DVD I was watching - which was Absolutely. She had learned English by watching Are You Being Served and Open All Hours in the late seventies. She was remarkably fluent considering, with no stammering or lewd innuendo. Surprising.

I'm in London to work with some young men who have Muscular Dystrophy on a photography project called Life Thru a Lens. More about that later. I just thought I'd mention that I'm here and will be blogging updates over the next couple of days. But right now I'm going to have a cup of tea and some shortbread and catch up on some DVD watching. Good night.

Back in London

I never talk to people on trains. I just don't do it. It's not because oqq not friendly.

Why don't I blog more?

I don't do much here these days and I'm trying to think why that is. Perhaps compared to FaceBook updates, blogging seems longwinded and time consuming. But there is something about the blog that is lost in facebook. The opportunity to explore a subject and present several ideas. Facebook is a great instant update but it lacks depth. And I miss that. But like going back to making real coffee after the convenience if instant, it seems to tale up a lot of time.

In reality it doesn't of course. I can just spend a few moments waiting for a bath to run or a train to come and blog - and it's therapeutic for me and if anyone enjoys Reading it all the better.

I suppose I was struck by this again this morning as I was listening to the radio. Someone said something I wanted to share and Facebook didn't offer me the right way of sharing it. It was this:

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

I wish you all happiness. And if you're successful too - all the better.

Life begins, then

Well it happened - I turned 40 on Friday. There. Do I feel different? No of course not. Will people see me differently dealing with a fortysomething rather than a thirtysomething? Probably not. Forty is the new 30 apparently. The thirties is the Groundhog decade then.  I wonder if by the time I reach 50 that will be the new 30 and so on, and I just have to act out this last decade for the rest of my life, never having the guts to get the cardigan, pipe and slippers because I'm not playing along.

I haven't time right now to write about the things I want to - lots going on and I'm dealing with some tough stuff, mainly stress and several causes. But I will make time to do so properly soon. This decade, anyway.

A short anti-disappointment blog

I know that when I click through my list of blog bookmarks that if none of them have changed for a while I feel disappointed. I know people have very busy lives, and the popularity of Facebook has in some ways replaced the short microblog posting. But not everyone is on Facebook, and so I do this today for those of you who check this regularly and see that it hasn't changed for days.

Having said that, I don't know what to say today. I've got a full day of meetings, including a swimmin g club web site first meeting, a Royal Visit from the Lord of Tiree Himself, my dads photography group this afternoon, then a quick catch up with Business Guru Jan Grieveson over a pint at The Coble to round the Working day off.

I'm in the middle of loads of things at the moment. The Arts Forum is going well, ad the Arts Centre in Newbiggin is up and running - starting to be used by a range of community groups, and we have our first tenant - a portrait photographer. I've just got involved in a group called SENTA that is a Tourism Association for South East Northumberland. I'm their press and publicity officer - so here I am telling you about it. SENTA - remember that name. Also wading through the usual web site projects - must get a couple started and one finished within the week. And the photography is coming along nicely. Last week I did about half and half photography to web sites.

I am beginning to wonder if I should find hand over more of the web site work, and concenrate on finding that work and managing the development, and also on doing photography. We'll see how the year develops.

Plans for the 40th Birthday Party are coming along. There's a sort of cabaret / showbiz / circus theme developing, and I'll be speaking to a couple of folks this week who do circus skills and tattoos / facepainting etc. who I'm trying to get along to cause a bit of a stir.

Also last night I found a box of photos from my entire lifetime - includng all the key birthday and family stuff. I just need to find the rest of our photos now.

Oh well, must get ready for the day now. Ta ta for now x

Show me a garden that's bursting into life

I have never been that keen on gardening, but it was always one of my dad's favourite things. The kids like it too, so maybe it's one of those things that skips a generation.

I could write lots of things about dad's allotment, but that's for another blog.

This blog is about my regret at not having a garden. When I was growing up, we lived at 8 Smallholdings, Woodhorn Demesne, Newbiggin by the Sea. I lived there until I was about 15. It had a large back garden, a cottage style front garden with a path down the middle and a tree for each of me, my brother and sister - plus one I planted from an apple seed when I was six, and which grew to be about 12 feet tall before being cut down by the ne owners a few years ago. The house also had a side drive long enough to ride a bike - or in my brother's case a motorbike - up and down.

I loved the garden and played in it a lot. There were two sheds and a garage, and at one time a large greenhouse too. And a shrubbery! But as lovely as it all was, I spent far more time over at the Poultrt Farm, where my friends Darren and Stephen had acres and acres of wonderful fields, long grass good for hiding and mazes, and large bushes in which to make camps. Fantastic. Looking back on it now, it was perfect - again another blog in that one. The point is at the time as a kid you just think that your own childhood is pretty typical - so as much as I enjoyed it I just assumed that most kids did this sort of thing.

When I got married, our first house had a long front garden, and to be honest with you it was a nuisance. We had no kids, and untamed growing plants and grass that we didn't hive the time or energy to deal with. We actually longed for a house without a garden.

Then we moved back to Newbiggin just before the kids started being born. And our present house, where we've been for 14 years now, has no front garden to speak of. There's a yard to the rear, but there isn't the private space that I wish my kids had. I love the house, but have for as long as we have been here wished for a garden.

Now the kids are growing up - 7, 10 and 12. They're starting to be more indepenent, and playing a bit further afield. And a garden doesn't seem the necessity it did when they were toddlers. But I'd still like one. When I'm on holiday at a cottage somewhere, one of my pleasures is to relax on a comfy chair in the garden and read. I wish I could do that at home.

But a garden requires gardening, and I'm probably not ready for that yet. I can't imagine living somewhere esle, but I hope that if we do move, the next house has a garden. Ready for my retirement, and the grandchildren.

Healing scars with a laptop.

For the past few months I've run a photography group for single dads on a Monday afternoon. It's part of Barnardos, and the deal is I spend a couple of hours with a group of blokes, and we learn how to take better photographs, and use Photoshop, and build up a portfolio of images with themes like Family and Play etc. It's very informal, and is an opportunity for the dads to learn skills they can share with their kids.

I don't know anything about the background of the dads apart from what they choose to tell me, and it has been fascinating over the months to learn about them and their lives. And it has been inspiring to see them develop and talke photographs that they're proud of. The Photoshop side of things is somewthing they have really got into, and they are now fairly competent at tidying up and improving digital photographs.

A few weeks ago, we all came down to the Arts Cenre in Newbiggin and did some portrait photography using my lights and backdrops. Then last week, we were working on improving the raw shots, and making them as good as they could possibly be on the computers. I was showing them how to tidy up the background, adjust the exposure, crop to get the best composition, and use the clone tool to remove blemishes and little imperfections from the shot.

One of the dads asked me to help him with his portrait. He has a small scar on his upper lip which  had noticed but assumed to be as the result of an injury. He told me he was born with a hare lip, and although they'd been able to do something about it, he was still left with a scar and slightly raised section of lip which he really disliked. Could we use the clone tool in Photoshop to get rid of it in his portrat?

We worked together o it for a few minutes, after which we had a reasonably good photograph minus the scar. I can't tell you how this affected him. He said for the first time in his life he was looking at a pictue of him that he liked and actually wanted to print out and hang on a wall. He had never seen his own face without the scar, and whenever he sees himself it's the first thing he looks at. That session really made a difference to the way he sees himself, and was an an unexpected boost to my morale too. I hadn't predicted that such a simple thing would have brought so much joy. I'll remember that for a long time.

Slumdog Hole in the Wall

Just one of the many film concepts Danny Boyle considered and rejected. Others include Slumdog Catchphrase, Slumdog 321 and the ill-fated Slumdog Bob's Full House, which was a month into filming before the Indian Bob Monkhouse was killed in a cattle stampede.

Slumdog is a good flm, and I would recommend the opportunity to goo and experience it if you can. It works on many levels - love story, thriller, social comment on the urbanisation of the slums, the rise of gangster and drug culture, commentry on the abuse of orphans, and quiz show. And t's got a nice approach to subtitles that makes you forget around 20% of it is in foreign.

One of the things that engages me in a film, far more than plot or tension, is character. I have found that if I want to spend time with the people in a film, I'll enjoy the film. I'm a social person, and I think I just engage on this level more than others. That doesn't mean that the people in films  like have to be 'nice' - but they have to be three dimensional beliveable, fun, quirky, fascinating, intriguing or just plain interesting.

I think that's part of the reason I fail to engage with some fantasy films, like Lord of the Rings. I find the characters too dramatic and actorly - I can't believe in these people or feel bothered about them or their fates.

Other films I've seen recently and liked include Burn After Reading (I love Frances Mcdormand) and I Am Legend. I also thought Hancock was great, and it was Jason Bateman's performance in that and also the exquisite Junebug that got me into Arrested Development. I'm currently addicted to AD and it's largely due to it's characters - and it's off the wall, fast paced comedy. Great stuff, and unlike most other sitcoms, with a regular cast of 10.

I've got a pile of films that I still have to watch, including Roma by Fellini, Munich, 28 Days Later, several Hitchcocks, and a handful of Black and Whites starring Bette Davis.

Can anyone suggest a great character led film to add to the list of stuff I'll never get round to seeing anytime soon?

Birdbox in your soul

I have been photographing birdboxes this week. Strange thing. On Wednesday I was asked to photograph a presentation at a school in Morpeth. Some kids had won a Northern Gas environmental award for making birdboxes and I trooped along in the snow and snapped away at a bunch of shivering kids in a winter wonderland before fighting my aT home through the blizzard. Surreal. At one point ducks were involved. Now today I'm in a community centre in Gateshead photographing an arts project that at this point anyway involves kids making birdboxes. These ones are very nice and bright and colourful but a theme is beginning to emerge in my photo work and I'm expecting more birdbox jobs to come flooding in. What better way to spend Valentines Day? Maybe some of the birds will be lovey doveys? Oh some kids have turned up - I had better photograph them painting birdboxes. Cute or what?

 

Stoatally Amazing

I was moved to tears by this story about a mad stoat in someone's back garden, from the FRONT PAGE of the BBC web site. Could this possibly be a slow news day?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7875271.stm