#39

Peace on Earth and good will to all Earthlings.

Apologies to those who know me, since the Christmas card in the preceding blog entry will probably be repeat material for you (I wondered how long it would be before I started doing repeats). I considered doing another Sumpy the Cat Christmas card but for some reason it just seemed like it'd be cat exploitation...even though Sumpy probably quite enjoyed playing about with tinsel for the photographs of the last card, I didn't think he'd enjoy the enforced adornment of a cat sized Santa hat which was my idea for this Christmas's card. Although getting Sumpy to wear a cute red Father Christmas hat would have been quite difficult, the task of actually getting the photos onto the computer, choosing a good shot and editing it would certainly have been so much easier than last time, because last time I took the photos of Sumpy with a, now considered 'old-fashioned', non-digital film camera, it being about three years ago -- because on a non-digital camera you can't review the photos you've just taken and see if you have at least a couple of clear crisp well-framed shots (obviously because there is no handy screen on the back of the camera). I had to take a whole role of film (36 photos of tensely Sumpy frolics) to make sure I would have at least a few good shots to choose from. Now... you may begin to start to get an inkling of the extra mental stresses you have to endure when you are a creative type of person, if you imagine going down to the local chemist to get a film developed containing 36 consecutive specially lit cat-frolicking photos. What on earth does the person developing the photos think? 'Cat worrier' perhaps? Upon my return to pick-up the developed photos I was greeted by that strange look from the person behind the counter, one that resumed, once my ticket had been handed-over and my photos located, as the person behind the counter slowly handed me the package of photos from: it is the look that says in that unspoken way that: they know that you know that they know. It is a look from film developers that I had well gotten used to in the era of pre-digital amateur photography, since I often tried photographing unusual things or trying experiments with photography -- things which would certainly make my roll of film stand-out a mile from all the other far more typical films in the developing-room of family holidays snaps etc, etc... for example once I experimented with taking long exposure night-time photos featuring laser trials

and when you go and collect photos like that you expect the look..... but one time I got the look totally unexpectedly when I was going to collect what I thought was an ordinary film of photos of me an my mates out and about. It was at Frosts the chemist in Sutton Coldfield town centre, in the late Eighties I think... I had left the a roll of film there for developing on a 'one hour' service. I was not particularly surprised when I returned one hour later and was told that the photos would not be ready until the next day, since I had long-ago come to learn that the cheerful: 'one hour developing', or: 'your photo ready in 1 hour' signs displayed in chemist shops actually mean: 'come back in an hour to be told when your photos will actually be ready'... but what did surprise me was that, as I say: I got that look... not only that, but two other shop assistants were conducting some sort of clandestine hushed conversation at the back of the shop with each other inbetween paying me frequent and guarded glances. But at the time I shrugged-off this behaviour from the three young gap-year doofi behind the counter, and I just put it down to paranoia, assuming I had imagined it somehow or that they were just 'admiring' my mad hair -- my mad mad hair that would occasionally compel people in passing cars to yell things like 'get a hair cut' out of the window. Even polite people who said nothing upon seeing me would suddenly feel the need to look at their reflection in a shop window and flatten down their own hair to make sure they weren't also suffering a bad hair catastrophe. I think my mad hair was probably what got me the nick name of Moose. Now-a-days though being as I'm half bald my hair is only half as mad, and as such does not exceed the threshold of madness which compels people to comment on it suddenly and loudly. I do my best with what hair I have left however, to purvey at least a token appearance of mad-hair-ness... one does what one can. Oh yeah, I've diverged from the main theme somewhat haven't I? (Sorry -- reading my blog must be as infuriating as listening to the 'Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show!' but without being as amusing). Yeah well right, back to the main subject:- I went back to the photo developer's shop the next day during my lunch hour and got the same kind of response and the same strange looks and secretive conversations between the three furtive assistants on one configuration or other (one doofus serving me and the other two doofi secretly conversing). Again I was fobbed-off and told to come back the next day (I was given some excuse about the processing equipment having broken down). This happened three days running... but on the fourth day I went there in the lunch hour and was finally, at last, handed my photos. I went down there with my mate RussH and we had a good flick though the pics on the way back to the office, having the customary chuckle at the expense of whoever had been captured on this or that photo at a point in time where they had some weird expression or when they had their eyes shut or whatever. Well, all seemed normal enough, just ordinary snaps of friends, family, cat, car, etc. so I just forgot about the strange looks I received in the shop. Some days later however I remembered that I had taken some pictures of planes during one foggy night... I live under a main flight path to Birmingham international airport which is about 20 miles away so planes come quite low over our house. I thought pictures of the planes' landing-lights through the fog might make some quite nice moody pics, and at the time I was quite interested in UFOs and remember thinking, like many others, how conveniently crap some pictures of UFOs were that you get in UFO mags etc, especially those taken at night... so I thought I'd see how pictures of aircraft turned-out and see if perhaps if it's more difficult than I thought taking pictures of craft moving across the sky (and actually it was a bit more difficult than I expected and I had the advantage of having a camera all set-up ready and the knowledge of the general direction, speed and path that the planes would take). That's funny, I thought, I don't remember seeing the prints of those plane shots in the envelope of photos I collected from the developers a few days back. So I had a look through and sure enough they were missing. So then I went to check the negatives, because sometimes if you have very dark exposures on your film the developer just thinks they are un-exposed frames when scanning through them quickly on the machine and does not print them (so in that case you would have to goback and get those frames specially printed). So I looked through the negatives (which were also in the envelope collected from the developers) and to my amazement I found that the negative frames for my plane photos had been nicked!!! Audaciously the individual frames in question had been actually cut-out of the strips of negatives. Bastards! Those gap-year-idiots must have stolen them thinking they were ground breaking pictures of alien UFOs and they probably envisaged being able to sell them for a fortune to the papers or whoever. What a bunch of idiots. I was slightly upset about having those negatives bastard-well stolen but I decided not to involve the police because the feeling of indignation was far far out-weighed by the great amusement it gave me, and continues to give me, when I think of them trying to do shady deals with the press, trying to peddle those bogus UFO negatives when they are actually just pictures of Bowing 707 planes, and so on, through a city fog. WHAT A BUCH OF PLONKERS!