Jason Thompson's Blog

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.