The Boy Wonder as a Boy

Yesterday we spent the whole evening drinking Lynchburg Lemonades and going through the Boy Wonder's school books from his formative years, a process which left us both on the verge of seizures at various points of the night. For some reason, it appears that the Boy Wonder has barely changed in the last 20+ years meaning his project on 'A Treasure Hunt' featured a banjo, there was a very informative little side-bar about Leo Fender in completely unrelated story and pictures of guitars adorn the pages of most of his work books. The main difference between the young Boy Wonder and that of the present day is the fact that, as a callow youth, the Boy Wonder was convinced he could skateboard. From what I can gather from all concerned, there was no evidence to support this belief but still his stories are peppered with tales of derring do undertaken by skateboarding protagonists (who are called Keith with inexplicable frequency) and almost every character has cause to do an ollie at some point. Tragically, there was even one story about a talking roll of Flypaper Grip Tape trying to wake up a Ray Barbee Deck for a chat, which made me laugh so hard I thought I was going to swallow my tongue. As entertaining as the products of the Boy Wonder's imagination are, there is something intrinsically engaging about his writing style. He points out that he finds it hard to write about things he has seen as 'I haven't a very good memory' and describes his artistic shortcomings when it comes to pastille work as 'substantially over the top with blending colours'. His way with words was charmingly old fashioned at that age, making his reflections on his own abilities seem exceptionally insightful. Coupled with the fact that his handwriting was considerably better between the ages of 7 and 10 than it is now, we have uncovered quite the treasure trove of entertainment.

Pros and cons of digital vs old school photography

After a frustrating day of ordering prints from an online photo company I was pondering the oft bemoaned cliche and wondering whether people do actually look more at pictures they had printed and put into albums than they do digital images. I would guess that they don't actually, as the advent of Facebook, online photo sharing websites etc people do go online (and by people I'm also including friends of friends) and look at other people's photos which they probably wouldn't have seen otherwise. I particularly like the fact that the makers of digital cameras seem to have universally agreed that the noise of a traditional camera is vital to the photographer's enjoyment of the process meaning that even the crappy phone on my camera ruins every attempt at a surreptitious snap with a little clicking noise. The main (or possibly only) downside I can see to digital photography is relinquishing the excitement of getting back an envelope of photos hoping it'll be crammed with great pictures. This comes with the converse benefit of knowing beforehand that you're not about to become the proud owner of 24 shots that look like they were taken from the inside of a pocket.

Susan Boyle

I've been completely astonished by the way the media have handled Susan Boyle. The Boy Wonder and I saw her original audition on X Factor, and at the time we wondered why everyone assumed that because she wasn't physically attractive she would also be unable to sing. Despite the success of thousands of plain, odd-looking and downright unattractive people in all areas of expertise, it seems that there is now an assumption that we are all complicit in a mind-set that cannot contemplate the idea of someone who doesn't conform to the media's narrow idea of 'beauty' as being anything other than worthless, talentless and worth only pity, scorn and derision. I particularly don't like the way everyone who mentions her in the media includes the rest of us in their prejudice, acting as though a person who didn't assume the woman couldn't sing couldn't exist, and anyone who said they didn't is obviously lying. I resent being lumped in with a bunch of witless idiots who have apparently never realised that the correlation between physical attractiveness and talent has been entirely fabricated by Hollywood and advertising executives.