We all like a moan, right?
Traffic. Weather. Taxes. Can’t park. No signal. No seat. Not enough whatever…
And it’s not a revelation that we are all immediately better off by being more thankful. Not wanting to sound preachy but mull on this for a moment – being more thankful for our lot is a good idea.
I have much to heed from this – as bloody lucky as I am – and why this post is important and a departure from my more usual frivolous fare.
Yesterday, the Holland family had much to be thankful for when we were able to launch a charity called The Brothers Trust.
Establishing a charity for Tom has long been something we’d planned to do and nothing so exceptional about this. It is a way of doing some good but it also serves to keep Tom in the real world with the rest of us.
We didn’t want to call it The Tom Holland foundation – preferring something a little broader and more inclusive of his family – and why The Brothers Trust made good sense.
At yesterday’s launch – a screening of Spider-Man Homecoming, Nikki and I had so much to be thankful for. Some of them obvious and too easily taken for granted. That we have four boys. That Sam got home from Peru safely just the day before, not to mention that Tom has been given this iconic role and a movie for which people travelled to see from China, Sri Lanka. the US and Australia, France, Italy and elsewhere to be a part of.
It isn’t lost on me what a lucky sod I am. That I still make people laugh for a living, that I have my health… and yet I’m always better for being reminded of my ‘fortune’ and yesterday did this perfectly.
At our launch yesterday was a young man called James Dunn. James suffers with a severe form of EB which has claimed his fingers and hands and confines him to a wheelchair. On morphine every two hours, his constant pain is best dealt with by distraction and photography is his go-to thing. When we learnt about James, Nikki had an inspired idea and yesterday, it came off brilliantly – when James came to our house and he completed a photo-shoot with Tom.
In the last year, Tom has had many photo-shoots in glamorous locations with teams of ‘people’ doing hair, people doing make-up and others to just blow smoke up his ar…
For yesterday’s photo shoot, there was no such attention to detail nor ego. It was just James with his specially adapted camera and Tom with us looking on. Tom understood that the session was special and the photo is going to be more important and powerful than any other photo of our eldest.
Our plan is to use James’ image to raise money for his campaign – and more information on this in due course at www.thebrotherstrust.org
We are all very grateful to James and his family for coming down from Liverpool – not as far perhaps as others travelled yesterday but no one present was more important than James – with the possible exception of Spider-Man himself!
And I am happy and thankful to report that the launch was a great success. It took a lot of organising and effort by Nikki and her friends from LunchBowl – and as such was all the more rewarding.
People loved the film of course – Spidey/Tom fans that they are – so no surprise here. But the film felt secondary to the day, the cause and the occasion. Seeing the smiling faces of the people after the film when Tom did a QnA was definitely a moment in my life that even my ailing memory will keep on to.
Money is still being counted and costs have yet to be met, so a total is yet to be finalised. More reporting to come…
Thank you to the people who came and to the people who supported by buying raffle tickets and bundles.
And I will end this post back where I began – in the real world where we are never thankful enough and where we find it too easy to moan about our lot…
And me too, because very shortly, I will be at the Edinburgh festival – for the first time in over a decade – and unless my room is full every day and with people laughing like drains…