Today I do my first Gedling Parkrun. I’ve been here a few
times but I've always considered the surface too rough for a dog’s paws. Not that it's stopped others. Today I run it with the Lad and MD runs it with Daughter.
In the afternoon, while I’m at the match, L joins a new gym.
Another one. It’s a bit like notches in your bedpost I suppose. This one is
apparently amazing. So naturally I ask how the Watt Bikes were? As naturally an
amazing gym must either have Watt Bikes or something better. I don’t get a
conclusive answer, only that they’d be no use to L anyway. She also finally signs
up for a personal training session after ten years of thinking about it.
Then in the evening we’re at Broadway to see Mary Queen Of
Scots on an evening financed by Tesco. This is finance stolen by L. She says
she tried to pay at their self-service machine but not only did it spit her
tenner out onto the floor but also a further £25. So she just picked it all up, managed to pay second time around
and then left. Although I’m tempted to ask her to hang to as bail money.
Her reappearance creates alarm on both sides of the border. As
a devout Catholic, she was regarded with suspicion by her mainly Protestant subjects.
Not even her half-brother James Murray (James McArdle), who is the stand-in
monarch, trusts her. While Protestant cleric John Knox (David Tennant) can't
even abide a woman being in charge.
Then there’s Elizabeth, ravaged by the pox, who is completely
unhappy at having a younger, much better looking queen eyeing up her throne. Yet
Elizabeth sees no other viable option and the two come to an agreement of sorts
in a dramatic meeting between the two that apparently in real life never happened.
Unfortunately hardly anyone else likes this idea and the plots against her mount.
Mary seems naive, she chooses her allies and her husbands badly.
Her second husband, Lord Darnley (Jack Lowden) is a severe disappointment, who
ends up murdered but with whom she had a son. Her third, the Earl of Bothwell
(Martin Compston), is a ‘nice’ chap who is not only the suspected murderer but who
abducts her and also rapes her as a sort of marriage proposal.
None of this goes down well with people and she is forced to
abdicate the throne to her one year old son and go into hiding. This ends with
her imprisoned for eighteen years before finally being beheaded on the orders
of her cousin.
In The Favourite, we saw two women vying for the affections
of Queen Anne while here, we see two women vying against the men and for the
throne of England. It’s interesting and complex stuff but in the end probably
not that great a film.
(Saturday 19th January)
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