Jessie Casson

I got some great news last week, Random House Publishing have agreed to publish the “Winners” project. I woke my Dad up at midnight, in England, to tell him and then sat and smiled for a while. In fact I am still smiling, although at times I feel the magnitude of the mission ahead. We leave in two weeks. The caravan arrived back from the spray painters today with a fresh coat and a 1970’s orange stripe around its middle, it looks like its just stepped out of a very funky show room.

Two weeks ago I bought a semi-pro video camera to document the trip. I have had two lessons from the lovely Alan who is patiently showing me the ropes, but I am still firmly in the all-the-gear-no-idea camp. Moving pictures unfortunately do not translate perfectly from stills, in fact there seems to be few rules of thumb that apply to both. But I am on a learning curve that is almost perpendicular.

Two things have happened in the last week. Firstly the project ‘Outside the City’ has taken a little turn in its subject matter and the focus is now on winners of competitions. The competitions will range from sports to jam making and I am having a great time researching unusual competitions. Near Greymouth there is a coal shoveling competition that has a heat for women. They compete to see who can shift half a tonn of coal in the fastest time. (see website www.jessiecasson.com “Winners” for more details about the project)

Secondly, the wallpaper has been hung in the caravan and looks fantastic. It took Matt and myself a whole weekend to do the job. A ‘domestic’ broke out when we cut the first piece of wallpaper too small. Matt said he wasn’t going to do the job as it was a waste of time. The toys flew out of my cot and I made it clear that I needed wallpaper in my caravan. An hour later we had cut the second piece the correct size and glued it into place, the sun was shining, “Shine on you crazy diamond” playing and life felt good.