Fit For Nothing

Good News And Bad News

2012-01-26T00:00:00.000Z

There’s good news and bad news on the squash front. The good news is that they seems to be promoting squash through England Squash And Racketball.

The bad news is that the council are ‘consulting’ about selling the centre, as new owners should be able to attract new investment and run the centre at a profit, which begs the question... why can’t the council.

There’s more bad news when we see table tennis being played in the other court. I hope that was only allowed because they’d been a last minute cancellation because courts are like gold dust on a Thursday evening.

It also seems to be a bit of a vicious game, judging by the blood curdling screams coming from that court.

I employ a change of tactics at lunch time, chicken, bacon and mushroom pie rather than usual steak and whatever. Doesn’t work.

(Thursday 26th January)

Interesting Discussions

2012-01-25T00:00:00.000Z

A rare outing for the bike today and what is almost even rarer is the lack of any punctures. Then I sit at work unable to feel my legs after the combination of yesterday’s long run and today’s bike, so I guess it must have gone alright.

Daughter causes an interesting discussion by referring to something she ate as the Hitler of all foods. Which I assume means it was bad but who knows. You never can sure these days now that bad often means good etc

The 2012 Hull Marathon causes another interesting discussion but one that is perhaps best deferred until after a few pints. It's only worthy of discussion at all because there’s a relay... so L and I could do half each. She’d probably want me to do the Humber Bridge though. It’s negotiable.

It turns out it’s a four leg relay, so we’d get two t-shirts and two medals... each. Unfortunately it also says a runner cannot run more than one leg. I can’t think why this would be, so naturally I’ve emailed them to complain.

It’s Burns Night tonight, on a Wednesday. So we can’t really celebrate it.

(Wednesday 25th January)

I’d Rather Have Snow

2012-01-24T00:00:00.000Z

It’s cold, wet and miserable this morning. The worst weather possible, I’d rather have snow.

L swims, 40 lengths. Another box ticked. She plans to run tonight (tick) and paint (tick). I hope she doesn’t forget to tick her reading box as well. Tick.

You may have seen that ex-future (ex-nailed on cert for) England manager Harry Redknapp is up in court this week. Answering questions about a Monaco bank account that is held in the name of his dog, Rosie. Poor old Rosie, having her financial details sprawled all over the papers like that.

I run home from work tonight. All the way. It was tough but I got there in the end. 21.8km, just over half marathon distance. It was actually as quick as stopping after 16km and getting the bus. Just more knackering obviously.

I recover with a salad... Do we have a box for salads? Tick. It was no ordinary salad though. Why do people have salads when they’re on a diet? They’ve obviously never feasted on one of L’s mega salads. Huge.

The Oscar nominations are announced tonight and what an awful bunch, the worst selection I’ve seen for years. Last year’s selection oozed with class but this year... oh dear. Both the films from my torrid weekend, War Horse and The Artist, get nominated. So too does Puss in Boots! Say no more.

(Tuesday 24th January)

Girls Are Quieter Than Boys?

2012-01-23T00:00:00.000Z

Back to the grind today. Back to work, to the gym for L and dog class for MD. Doggo and I take the day off, exercise wise.

Someone told L that she should get a girl dog because apparently they are quieter than the boys. Clearly MD was having one of his noisier days at the time... one of the many... all of them really. There’s no evidence of girl dogs being quieter of course, certainly not at dog class tonight... but girls never have been quieter. Have they?

(Monday 23rd January)

The Sound Of Silence

2012-01-22T00:00:00.000Z

Back over towards Shropshire today, for the second time within a month for the Blymhill 10k. It’s at a civilised time of 11am but it’s also a cross country, so I opt out. I’ll leave it to the girl who’s chasing the mileage. L bought some Kanadia trail shoes, just like mine, especially. The only difference is that they’re a rather ‘pretty’ pink, mine aren’t. Still, it seems a shame to get them dirty. She should stick to boring colours for her running shoes.

Blymhill is raising funds for their new village hall, which now looks pretty much complete. Registration is in it. Does this mean there won't be a race next year?

They march the runners down to their fate, and the start, somewhere in the middle of a farmer’s field. The boys and I go along to bark encouragement. They did say on the info that the event wasn't suitable for dogs but it turns out to be one of the most dog friendly events there is. There was some great walking down public footpaths both at the start and at the finish.

Apparently some of the km markers were a bit comedic and everyone thought they’d done a PB for the first 5k but the organisers were just having a laugh and spaced the markers further apart for the second half of the run.

After battling through the wind, over a few stiles, through some woodland and probably a bit of mud they are all handed a fluffy blue buff for their troubles. Wind, stiles, woodland, mud... would I have liked it? Probably not. Still, there are nice cakes at the finish for which you didn't have to do the run to partake in.

Tonight, in the age of 3D and CGI, we watch Golden Globe winner 'The Artist' which is a silent film, made in black and white and not even widescreen. Ho hum. I must be feeling rebellious.

Hollywood 1927, George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a silent movie star of huge proportions. After another successful premiere, a pretty young fan throws herself at him (1920's style) and he poses for photos with her. The young girl is Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), who starts to audition for the movies herself and gets a role as an extra. George is even more impressed when he meets her legs. It's lust at first sight (1920's style).

Times are a changing though, movies with words are on the way... 'talkies' they call them. George scoffs at the mere thought but audiences want change he's told. It's time to move on but filled with a sense of his own importance and perhaps a little fear, he doesn't. Meaning his fall from grace is almost as swift as the rise of the new star and the pin-up of the 'talkies'. Some chick called Peppy Miller. Ouch.

George stumbles on, from one crisis to another. His self-funded film, silent of course, flops. The stock market crashes, leaving him destitute. His wife leaves him and he is forced to fire his loyal butler Clifton. Then when he runs out of alcohol in which to drown his sorrows he auctions off everything he owns. When that fails to solve his problems he sets fire to his old film reels and, with them, his apartment. This leads me nicely on to the star of the film, who rushes to his aid, Uggie the dog.

Meanwhile bizarrely, frighteningly, Peppy Miller not content with backwardly slagging George off in public, has started to stalk him. Maybe she's just taking pity on him, but come on she bought ALL his possessions. Obsessive or what. She even takes on his discarded butler. She’s one scary woman, steer clear, but he doesn't and he convalesces from his fire damage at her house where he finds out the extent of her obsessive behaviour/kindness. He puts a gun in his mouth in an attempt to kill himself. For God's sake man, think of the dog, the one that is anxiously pulling at your trouser leg.

This isn’t actually a bad plot when you write it all down but it’s all old school silent, complete with the overblown gestures and storyboards of the day. Oh, apart from a brief dream sequence where we had sound, which teased you into thinking the plot would develop in that direction. It was certainly odd for the film to continue completely silent with Miller now acting in ‘talkies’ but not being able to hear her.

Its hard work, the lack of dialogue just keeps you focused on trying to lip read what everyone is saying. This is perhaps why I’ve never made it through a silent film before and why everyone unanimously thought ‘talkies’ were such a big step forward. The chap next to us clearly agreed, he went to the loo or the bar at least three times.

At the end Valentin is back in the spotlight tap dancing, partnering Peppy Miller. So is the message of the film that unless you adapt to the times you become obsolete... and to make their point they make a silent film about the end of silent films, in black and white and not even widescreen. Ho hum. Now who's obsolete? Confused? I am.

Ok... it's not a bad film... it’s a well crafted period piece with some excellent attention to detail... but you still walk out thinking that there was a valid reason why silent movies disappeared. Well I did. However, I am clearly in the minority. There appears to a Best Picture Oscar waiting for ‘The Artist’. Which I think will be a bit of a kick in the teeth for the actors and actresses who have put in great performances this year, that is if they get beaten by two people who do not speak.

Well at least everyones favourite character has already had his recognition. In Cannes last year, Uggie was awarded the 2011 Palm Dog award for Best Canine Performance in a film. Bless.

I need a drink after that. We head to The King William IV in darkest Sneinton and then the Newshouse on Canal Street.

(Sunday 22nd January)

Horse Stew Anyone?

2012-01-21T00:00:00.000Z

A nice lie in, then a park session with the little balls to save Doggo having a limp for the rest of the weekend followed by a doze in front of the radio as Derby bore draw 0-0 with Burnley.

Then to Broadway for one of L’s choices. N.B. I chose ‘Drive’ and ‘Shame’, L chose ‘Puss In Boots’ and... ‘War Horse’. Say no more.

‘War Horse’ is a children's book by Michael Morpurgo that I wasn’t really aware of until recently. I’m assured it’s a cracking book and that there’s also a rather good stage production of it using life-sized horse puppets. That’s perhaps where it should have stayed.

It appears to be a fanciful tale that perhaps works in those formats, perhaps a cartoon would have worked also but here, where Steven Spielberg tries to tell it as a real story on film, it fails spectacularly.

Yeah it’s got great, well actually overdone, cinematography, loads of dramatic music and an able cast. Sadly they are all asked to play clichéd stereotypes and to work with a script that asks you to suspend belief at the cinema door. Welcome to the equine offspring of a one night stand between ‘Lassie Come Home’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan’.

Now I've never trained a horse, but I've trained dogs and simply whispering in their ears what you want them to do doesn’t work. I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that it doesn't work with horses either but I suppose I could be wrong.

Then the way the bone hard rock strewn field suddenly becomes ploughable to a foot depth after five minutes of rain was hilarious, almost as hilarious as the plough itself splitting a large rock in two. Again I’m no expert but surely it would be basic farming practice to remove as many of the rocks as possible before you attempt to plough the field? Therefore not making it as hard as possible for your horse, even if that horse does happen to be Joey the wonder horse? The story doesn’t get any less ridiculous from there onwards, very little of it made any sense at all.

Sorry I’m skipping the actual plot here. Farmer Narracott (Peter Mullan), a Boer war veteran (he doesn’t talk about it), buys a thoroughbred horse at a Devon cattle market rather than the usual type of nag you’d use to plough a field with and he uses the family’s rent money to do so. Oops. Commonsense bypass. His missus, Emily Watson, with her brow permanently furrowed (unlike their field) isn’t happy. Cue yet more furrowing of brow. No matter, their teenage son Albert (Jeremy Irvine), occasionally called Albie, trains him, hence the whispering. He names our hero Joey.

Well the field gets ploughed and the crops get sown but then they all destroyed by another freak storm, not unlike the one that got the field ploughed in the first place. Joey gets sold to a captain in the British cavalry (Tom Hiddleston) for use in a suicidal WWI military manoeuvre, so that the rent can be paid.

Once the cavalry have all been slaughtered, Joey ends up in the hands of the Germans where he is cared for by two young brothers, one of whom is only 14 but then presumably after having lied about his age to get in the German army, the pair of them inexplicably decide to desert using the horses to escape. They are captured and shot. Good riddance.

Joey and another horse are now in the hands of a sickly young French girl called Emilie. We only know she’s French because she calls her grandfather ‘grand père’ in a terrible French accent. Joey is only briefly in these pseudo-French hands because soon a group of soldiers with equally bad German accents snatch the horses back. A bit of real foreign language dialogue here would have added a much needed touch of reality and clarity to the proceedings because it’s anybody’s guess what language the ensuing German-French conversation takes place in.

Now Joey the wonder horse visits the Somme circa 1918, where he escapes from the retreating Germans and goes for a gallop across no man’s land, running straight through at least two barbed wire fences... er, no, terribly unlikely. Finally entangled in the wire we get the one great scene of the film as a British and German soldier team up to cut him free from the barbed wire.

Back in the hands of the Brits, Joey is about to be shot because he’s too damaged to save when Albert, himself now fighting and subsequently wounded in the war, recognises his beloved Joey. Quickly the armistice is declared, yet Albert and Joey, suddenly in perfect health again, are set to be parted once more because all the horses are to be auctioned off.

Grand père turns up out of the blue and outbids everyone for the horse, wanting Joey in memory of his granddaughter who has since died. Blimey, ten minutes ago she looked as strong as, well, a horse. Still, it’s a relief of sorts because my partner suspected that she'd resurface later as romantic interest for our Albie. Phew.

I don’t feel guilty spoiling the plot and saying that it all turns out ok in the end because you’d know that from the off. It’s all so inevitable. The more interesting back story was whether Albert's father’s Boer war pennant, which accompanied Joey the whole time, would make it home safely. Thankfully it did.

In the book Joey actually narrates the story (it probably worked better that way around) and it would have been nice for the horse to have said something like ‘That’s All Folks’ at the end to complete the charade but sadly it didn't.

It is, I think, supposed to be a tear jerker and my partner may have shed a few at some point but then she cries in most things and it’s hard not to cry for the horse for putting up with the corny script. Surprisingly the usually able Richard Curtis worked on it. He does reuse what he can from ‘Black Adder Goes Forth’ but even that doesn’t save the film.

I was originally going to say it’s an ok but not great film but the more I think about it, the more terrible it seems. Frankly it was awful, apart from the horse that is, who to be fair, was great, nay, terrific and acts everyone else off the screen. Give that stallion an Oscar and send the rest of them back to the trenches.

(Saturday 21st January)

The Wrong Socks

2012-01-20T00:00:00.000Z

L bemoans her 2.3 mile run this morning. Well it’s better than not doing a 2.3 mile run and it’s another tick on the spreadsheet. All hail the spreadsheet. I intend to do mine after work, although I think it might be a short run due to the foul weather.

In the end I run another ten miles, the second time this week, because amazingly it stays dry. Although I did the whole thing with the wrong socks on, having packed my ‘short distance’ socks rather than my ‘long distance’ ones. The blisters will be hell. Still, it’s another ten miles for the spreadsheet. Tick.

Then it’s ‘Dragon Tattoo’ night as we watch episode two of the TV series and hence complete book one. So far it's much better than both films. The rest will be interesting. Books two and three had so much cut out of them, they made little sense at all.

(Friday 20th January)

A Very Small Tea Cup

2012-01-19T00:00:00.000Z

I leave the house this morning noticing that the spare key is still in the front door and L’s keys are on the worktop. L meanwhile is out with dogs. I leave the front door unlocked correctly calculating that someone has forgotten their keys.

The traffic is horrendous again as I drive to work.

The dog club call an emergency meeting about what to me is a very small storm in a very small tea cup but some people like to decant these things into a bigger cup and stir furiously in the hope of getting a good crisis going. I refuse to attend. I have an appointment with a couple of spreadsheets and a curry tonight.

The spreadsheet appointment is with my mate to get a few ticks in his ‘squash games’ column. I suggest we ought to do what those guys in Thame did... 200 games. I bet their spreadsheet is looking healthy.

We manage four and I don’t win any of them.

After one in the Globe with him, I meet L, who has walked up with the dogs, at the now refurbished White Hart. The Thursday curry has gone down from £5.00 to £4.49 and they’ve added a free pint and poppadoms but taken away the naan bread. The free pint is Greene King IPA but they agree to pour me something more decent for an extra 50p, taking it back up to a fiver plus a £1 extra for the naan.

It wasn’t as good as it was before but it was ok and much better than the Wetherspoons one we had at Christmas.

Tonight’s ‘emergency’ meeting was cancelled. Must have ran out of cups.

(Thursday 19th January)

Subtle Pressure Fails

2012-01-18T00:00:00.000Z

The ructions from the great Loughborough Half Marathon rejection rumble on. I try and exert a bit of gentle pressure on the organisers by email. I imagine there’s a pretty high chance of a place coming up but can we afford to risk it by waiting and end up, horror of horrors, with a weekend off. The obvious way of ensuring a place is probably by entering something else on the same day, then for sure we'll be offered a place in Loughborough.

When the subtle pressure doesn’t work... stuff 'em... I ask to have our names taken off the waiting list and we enter Stafford instead.

It’s further to go but L assures me it was a good t-shirt last year. How does she know that? I don’t remember running it... but then there’s a lot things I don’t remember these days. She’s says she’s seen loads of people wearing them, that’s ok then.

It’s also not far from Leek and that was a hilly b****rd. It does say ‘incorporating two steady climbs’ on the info. I will so look forward to it.

I run from work and run a bit further than last week but I’m not sure how far as my GPS packs up. I’m guessing around 16k, 10 miles. I’m almost at Bramcote when it dawns on me that if I go much further it will become rather pointless getting the bus for only another couple of miles. So I stop there and then, at least making it worth getting the Mango card out. I’m also not sure I’ve got another three miles in me.

I get home and then, as instructed, shove L out of the door for hers.

(Wednesday 18th January)

Ye Old Frog & Parrot

2012-01-17T00:00:00.000Z

I get the bus. It’s sort of too cold to cycle... and I’m sort of too bruised to run... and we’re due in Sheffield tonight. Excuses excuses.

We’d entered a new local race, well a resurrected one from years gone by. The Loughborough Half. The bad news is, we’re not in because it’s full. We’ve been placed on a waiting list and encouraged to bid for a free place that been placed on ebay. Hmmm.

I think sending a postal entry was our downfall, we need to stick to online entries for these big races. Not that we thought this was a 'big' race. In fact I suspect it’s a very small one but as they still haven’t divulged the race limit we don’t actually know.

In the evening we head up to the M1. L is taking Daughter swimming at the hugely impressive 50m Olympic sized pool there at Ponds Forge.

I’m not tempted. I recall how bloody far it was from land to land last time I swam there, which was the only time actually and anyway I’ve got the dogs to look after. We couldn’t really leave them at home after being at work all day. Maybe next time.

So we pub crawl Sheffield, the dogs and I, with the electronic version of the Good Beer Guide in one hand and the furry twosome in the other. All without actually going in any pubs. I’m just casing the joint because L and I fancy a night out in Sheffield some time.

We’re already got our eye on the 'Sheffield Tap' by the station but the boys and I head more into the centre and find some interesting venues. ‘Henrys’ isn’t very promisingly named but looks ok. The ‘Devonshire Cat’ looks even better and the ‘Old House’ better still. Sort of a bit like our 'Ropewalk' here in Nottingham. The ‘Old House’ is on trendy Division Street which is where you’ll also find 'Bungalows and Bears', which L’s been in and, although not in the Beer Guide, probably needs to be tried. Also on Division Street is the once legendary Frog & Parrot...

Time to reminisce...

The Frog & Parrot has its own brewhouse, although this is currently mothballed. The place used to be run by a chap called Roger and was a Whitbread house that had free reign to brew their own beers. Which they did with abandon and sold nothing else, which was quite a thing in the 1980’s and 90’s, thus gaining the place quite a cult status.

Its main notoriety however came from brewing 'Roger and Out', which was at the time the world's strongest beer and was served only in thirds of a pint. You got a certificate for each third, on which the writing got more blurred on each one.

Then having drunk a full pint and acquired all three certificates you were eligible for a t-shirt, at extra cost, and an ambulance home. It was 16.9% ABV when it was certified by the Guinness Book of Records but I believe they toned it down over the years to around 11%.

'Roger and Out' was more a gimmick than a beer (see Brewdog for a modern equivalent) and was pretty much undrinkable. Some of their other beers were excellent though. Reckless at 4.5% was the beer of choice but 'Roger's Conqueror' was also worth a go at 6.7%. I also vaguely recall one called 'Roger's Rocket Fuel' as well. The house beer was called ‘Old Croak’ but that was too weak for me.

(from the 1994 Camra Good Beer Guide)

The staff in the pub were often dressed up like the serving wenches from that bar in Black Adder (the women anyway) and he had a real parrot called Toni, which allegedly used to fly around the pub and drink from people’s glasses but it was always confined to barracks in its cage when I was there. The parrot apparently got so stressed by it all, it pecked most of its feathers out, had to be retired and was replaced by a plastic one. I’ve no idea what happened to the frog...

Sadly all this is mere history now and if I mention the two words ‘Greene King’ you’ll probably nod your head in sad recognition of the reason why. The Frog & Parrot now appears to be just another run of the mill Greene King pub and is now outshone by the more promising establishments on the street, so we’ll probably, sadly, give it a wide berth when we come up.

Still it should be a full and fun night, as long as we avoid the students...

(Tuesday 17th January)

A Flaw In The Planning Stage

2012-01-16T00:00:00.000Z

I made it on time to work, somehow. The A52 was backing up into Bramcote but I managed to divert through Ilkeston.

I’m at training tonight and L is munching on Brussel sprout casserole as her mother’s. I’m well out of that one. I’ll have pate and cheese when I get home.

Training goes well even though our trainer is away and I’m asked to set the course. It is well received, despite a flaw in the planning stage that means I run out of space and one of the obstacles ends up sending the dogs straight into a wall. I have to adapt it, which means it ends up being harder than I’d planned, but no one lynches me.

I’m the only one who has problems. When I run Doggo, just for a bit of exercise and only over the low jumps, he deviates and tries to jump the bigger ones. I try to stop him and run into a horse jump that someone hadn’t put away. Now they’re a bit bigger and more substantial than our dog jumps. Ouch. Another bruise to the dodgy hip.

(Monday 16th January)

The Logical Place To Start Looking

2012-01-15T00:00:00.000Z

Today the oddly named ‘Not The Roman IX’. The name came from the original sponsors back in 1968, Roman Motors, and when the race was over nine miles. Eight years ago the host venue was changed to the Sports and Social Club of NFU Mutual in Tiddington, which is just outside Stratford upon Avon. The change to the start and finish meant a new distance of 12k. So at least we’re both guaranteed a PB as neither of us have done a 12k before. It’s also going to be a frosty one, its -3 when we leave home. Time for long sleeves I think.

The race organisation was pretty faultless, they was also chip timing and a nice cotton t-shirt at the end. I, for one, am getting a bit sick of technical ones. I have to go for a run four times a day now just to use all the ones I have acquired.

The start was a km down the road which made for a nice little workout for my father who had come to support. Route wise, it was hardly exciting but that’s fine by me. They said there was one climb just before half-way, although I’m sure the road started going upwards at about 3.5k. Then it was downhill into the only civilisation on route, the village of Loxley. It was quite a steep downhill section which they had thoughtfully gritted. Around there was the first of two water stations, not that I partook at either.

There was a final short kick upwards near the end followed by a slightly downhill run over the last km to the finish. Out of just over 600 entrants, I come in 148th or something like that. My time is nothing special but is at the right pace to break my Half Marathon PB, should I be able to maintain it for 13 miles. Which is my project at the moment.

When we drop my father off, my mother offers us Sunday lunch. Which is great and very welcome. Unfortunately this stuffs up our plans of a film and meal at Broadway this evening on the grounds (a) we’re now running late and (b) we’re stuffed, but all in a nice way and you can’t have everything.

Instead we head to the South Side of Nottingham, continuing the quest perhaps for the Midnight Owl. The Canalhouse would have been a good place to start, if it wasn’t shut. So we head to the Vat & Fiddle, which being effectively the brewery tap you would have thought might have been the logical place to start looking. We certainly could have saved ourselves some shoe leather because there it was on the bar.

A very pleasant night ensues and it’s just one of several decent ales on the bar tonight. We ought to come here more than once every couple of years.

(Sunday 15th January)

No One’s Holding Any Breath

2012-01-14T00:00:00.000Z

We stay in bed as naturally we don’t expect the gasman to turn up at 8am, if at all and I’m certainly not getting up on the off chance. Anyway it says he’ll call when he’s on his way. Only, he doesn’t and at 8.30am he’s banging on the door. ‘Hi, I’ve come to disrupt your Saturday morning’ he tells us, or something like that.

He fixes the heating, sort of. No one’s holding any breath around here.

I take the dogs on a very frosty park and have no problem with Doggo refusing to go through the gate. I have no idea what L was on about. The frost does seem to perk him up though and he overdoes it with the football, perhaps I should have rationed him, and he’s limping around by the end of the day.

At the match, Derby again bore the pants off us but again win 1-0. I’ve said this before but, yet again, this is looking uncannily and rather worrying like the Billy Davies promotion season.

Tonight’s film is Shame.

On the surface Brandon (Michael Fassbender) seems to be your typical office worker and typical red-blooded male, checking out the girls from behind, eyeing them up on the tube and if he can pull someone in the bar after work then he wouldn't turn down any action offered to him.

Only I hope she doesn’t want to talk afterwards. She’ll likely be ushered out of the door pretty quickly, that is if she got in the door in the first place and wasn’t just offered a quickie in the street.

The Buzzcocks would have said ‘he's an orgasm addict, he's always at it’. Nipping off to the toilets if he gets a spare minute in his work day, for a quick one to one with his right hand and then later, a night of virtual sex in front of his laptop.

Although he seems to have little problem picking up women, he prefers prostitutes. He finds it easier to relate to them, or with his right hand, than with a real person. No strings attached. No feelings, no emotions. We’re led to believe he’s a junkie feeding a drug habit.

He certainly struggles to relate to his younger sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) who turns up unannounced in his shower one night. Sissy has her own problems, is incredibly needy but probably just requires a bit of attention and to spend some time with her brother. They are both a bit of a mess, in different ways.

Brandon resents having her crash at his place as it interferes with his routine and he grows increasingly frustrated with her invasive presence. He also isn't too thrilled when she mimics some of his own behaviour by hooking up with a married man (James Badge Dale) who also happens to be Brandon’s boss. More than anything it’s not terribly good form to shag your brother’s boss in your brother’s own bed.

When Brandon actually tries to enjoy a date with a colleague from the office, it’s an uncomfortable night. He is much happier when he drags her out of work the next day and takes her to a hotel for, yes a quickie, but he can’t go through with it with someone he actual knows and respects.

Meanwhile the secrecy around his habit is starting to unravel. His computer at work is taken away by the IT department, to have all the porn he’s downloaded on to it removed. Luckily they don’t seem to suspect him. Then Sissy stumbles across one of his virtual friends on his laptop. Slowly his world begins to spiral out of control as he is forced to hunt outside his normal boundaries to feed his addiction.

There really is not that much to the film story wise. It’s a portrait of a man struggling with his inner sexual demons and it leaves a lot unresolved. There are no reasons offered for his addiction or for what is behind the strained relationship with his sister.

There’s plenty of explicitness, which in a film about sex addiction is understandable. However there is also quite a bit of gratuitous nudity... unless the film is hinting at something deeper. Sissy certainly isn't shy about being naked around her brother. If that had happened in our household there would have been plenty of choice words said on both sides.

At least the nudity isn’t discriminatory. A Michael Fassbender full frontal is followed by Carey Mulligan full frontal but then there’s that scene of Fassbender urinating... Was that really necessary?

The film sort of hangs around a shocking scene that comes towards the end, which I won’t divulge but again we’re left wondering, does it change anything?

Right at the close, he sees a woman on the tube, the same woman he eyed up right at the start of the film. On that occasion, as he pretty much telegraphed his intentions to her, she was happy to give him the eye back, clearly interested. Then when she got up, we saw her wedding ring and her expression change to one of shame for flirting with him before she ran out on to the platform. Despite running after her, he lost her in the crowd, leaving him gutted he would have to go elsewhere for his next ‘hit’.

Now she has glammed up and appears to have had second thoughts about having second thoughts but is Brandon still tempted after all he’s been through?

We came out of the cinema and my first thoughts were ‘is that it?’ I was a little disappointed but then we talked about it constantly for the next 24 hours, still trying to decipher it. Which is always the sign of a good film.

(Saturday 14th January)

The Curse Of Friday The 13th

2012-01-13T00:00:00.000Z

Late again. After such an awful drive in yesterday it’s got to be the bike today. It’s cold but I’ve got my new Christmas Pressie Booties, I mean overshoes, which keep my feeties very warm.

Today though, it doesn’t take fifteen minutes less by bike. Despite making sure I leave well early, I’m late again due to getting yet another puncture. No idea why. Well it is Friday the 13th but I didn’t know bad luck was supposed to last all week.

L works the morning and then goes home to await the gasman. Where she says its freezing but she daren’t put the heating on in case it burns the his fingers. I sympathise from my comfy seat in the pub over a lunch of steak pie and beer. I recommend a strategy of one collie across her feet and the other one on her lap.

Then we hear he’s gone off sick and isn’t coming. I get the feeling this doesn’t go down well at home. Instead he’ll be round at 8am in the morning to ruin our Saturday morning.

I bike home and carry my lock with me. I threaten the bike that if it gives me any trouble I'm locking it up and hopping on a bus. It behaves.

The now (almost) traditional Friday night in, where I cook and we watch the Top Of The Pops reruns. Which thankfully we only have one to watch, so we end up viewing the Millennium Trilogy that I’ve just purchases on DVD. It’s in six parts and part one, which we watch tonight, is the first half of ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’. The whole series adds a total of two hours to the film versions and already it is more like the books and makes infinitely more sense.

(Friday 13th January)

Jovial Fist Fights And Knifings In The Back

2012-01-12T00:00:00.000Z

L goes for an early swim and leaves the house before me. As I leave not long afterwards it seems odd turning the lights off and leaving the boys in the dark. It doesn’t seem to be getting any lighter in the mornings. Still they probably like it dark for their morning kip.

I arrive late for work again because it took an hour and five minutes to drive the fourteen miles to work this morning. Nightmare. It takes me fifteen minutes less than that by bike.

I consider putting in for this year’s Great North Run but not for long. £48!

We decide that neither of us are wealthy enough or stupid enough to pay that but just wait until we’ve had a few beers this weekend... then who knows.

I have a committee meeting tonight which brings the usual jovial fist fights and knifings in the back. It also seems to go on forever. Such joy.

(Thursday 12th January)

Mrs Beeton

2012-01-11T00:00:00.000Z

On the bike and I’m late for work, not that I have any reason for this, other than being sluggish getting out of bed.

L complains about one of the dog refusing to go through the park gates and wanting to go home. I assumed she meant MD, keen to get back for his breakfast but no she means the old man. I've never had that problem with him. It’ll be interesting if he refuses when I’ve got the footballs on Saturday. Neither of them are actually that much into walking... they’d both make terrible dogs.

L plans a night of running, painting, knitting, reading and hoovering as well as soup and noodle making for tea. A woman's work is never done. Her words not mine. She’s turning into Mrs Beeton. Her words not mine. That’s a much fitter and sexier Mrs Beeton obviously, I don’t recall Mrs B running many half marathons but I could be wrong.

Did you know Mrs Beeton died age 28 and allegedly couldn't cook? Me neither.

Meanwhile I’m swimming. When L swam yesterday morning there were only two folk in the pool, including herself, and she bragged about spreading herself around a bit. Tonight, even the quietest of the six lanes has at least three people in it. If I spread myself around a bit I’ll end up spread all over the five young bikini wearing ladies in lane 3. Such is life.

Then its dog class with a very fired up MD. He does fired up so well. I need to get him booked into some events soon before this fired-up-ness wears off.

(Wednesday 11th January)

New Year Spreadsheets

2012-01-10T00:00:00.000Z

L sends me her New Year spreadsheet, everyone’s got a spreadsheet for the New Year or so it seems. Squash opponent sent me his the other day.

His involves targets for badminton games, squash games, km on the treadmill, km walking, holes of golf, AF nights and meat free meals. An interesting combo.

L’s on the other hand consists of miles ran, hours in the gym, lengths swam, miles cycled, alcohol units, films watched, books read, rows knitted, hoovering... and there’s talk of a decorating column being added... fascinating.

What shall I put in mine? Or shall I just combine the three I’ve already got. Yes, I'm afraid I already have a bit of a spreadsheet thing going on.

L spots the No Pants Subway Ride. Which is an annual event on subways worldwide including London.

Check out Going Underground, the London Underground blog.

I wonder if the commuters on the Nottingham Tram took part?

While L heads to the gym and book club, to de-stress after a day when she threatened to put her boss in a straightjacket, I run home, vowing to have something simmering for her by the time she gets home.

14.7km. I got carried away again but a good run nonetheless. I jump on the bus and then hobble the rest of the way home. Somehow I need to be able to kick the dogs around the garden when I get home.

(Tuesday 10th January)

Punch Up At Sainsbury’s

2012-01-09T00:00:00.000Z

It always nice if something livens up your lunch hour and the punch up in Sainsbury’s car park certainly did that. Plenty of blood split until security broke them up. I would like to say it was two women smashing the hell out of each other with their shopping bags but it wasn’t, it was two blokes. Find it hard to believe they were scrapping over the last bag of Granny Smiths but who knows.

L threatens rabbit food tonight, she says she’s not feeling slim and suggests I might want to come home from dog class via the chippy. Wash your mouth out girl. I can’t do that, I’m now in half marathon training mode. I can cope with the green stuff, particularly as I’ve got best ham, cheese and coleslaw to defile it.

(Monday 9th January)

If No One Decent Turns Up

2012-01-08T00:00:00.000Z

L had tried to get into a race up in Rother Valley today but that was so badly advertised it was cancelled due to lack of interest. There was one in Birmingham, a five miler and it looked like we would be heading there. I didn’t really mind where we went, I intended to be on bacon butty duty no matter what but then L found something far more local. The Burton Joyce 10k. It sounded ideal. If it was on... as it wasn’t exactly being heavily advertised but it wasn’t far to go if it’s cancelled or full.

When we found some details, it confirmed the main thing, that they had bacon cobs. Although I quickly became tempted with the run. The photos on the website show people running on tarmac and not through some muddy field. It’s also the sort of race I might do well in... e.g. badly advertised and no one decent turns up, but only if I prepared properly the night before... e.g. four pints of something 5% followed by a whisky chaser. Which I haven’t done, unfortunately.

It says that if you walk the 5k you get a free bacon cob – all for £2, or you can run the 10k for £6 and buy your own. Incentive? Not. Decisions decisions. If I was a mileage slag like L I wouldn't have such a tough decision to make.

Then L expresses concerns for my street cred, not that I thought I had any. What if someone I knew saw me doing a poncy 5K walk? Could I live it down? Could I have a pint of Abbot on the back of a 5K walk? Clearly there's much more to think about than a mere bacon butty.

So here I am, on the start line. However you can scrub that doing well. There are quite a lot of entrants and they look a pretty fit bunch to me. We start and the first thing to say is I’m not sure about the km marking. 3:38 for the first km and then 4:40 for the second doesn’t sound right. I also find the ‘Fun Run’ signs all the way around unnerving, they seem to imply either I’m on the wrong course or I should be enjoying it. I’m not particularly; it hurts all the way around due to Friday's run.

They make us run back past the finish, which I assume is where you stop if you’re only doing the 5k. However we’ve only done 4.5k, which makes the £2 ‘Meal n Walk Deal’ even better.

I’ve made my choice though and now I’ve got two laps of a 1k loop around the pub, where there’s no one counting your laps and I suspect a few short cutters. Before I even get on to my first loop though the winner blasts past me in the opposite direction, in the lead by some distance. I’m not even at the 7k marker, such was his lead.

Finally loops done, I’m on the final stretch and I hear someone coming up behind me heavy-footedly, I'm knackered so I decide that he can go past, I won’t fight it. That is until I realise there's three of them. That puts a completely different complexion on the matter, I can't allow that. I try and speed up, ultimately holding them off.

I cross the line, having flogged my guts out all the way round, only to discover there’s no one taking results at the finish. Now I understand the bloody ‘Fun Run’ signs, only it wasn't.

At 43:47 I’m about a minute quicker than I have been doing and allegedly 9th but I can't confirm this. There’s a good time for L too, who’s back in the 58's.

Then after coffee and ball chucking with the dogs its home for a Full English, a hot bath and some last minute Puss in Boots persuasion.

Ok, ok, I give in, we’ll go.

It opens with Puss crawling out of the boudoir of another cat, though not only is Puss (Antonio Banderas) gaining a reputation with the kitties, he’s become an outlaw. He’s a wanted cat with a price on his head.

One night in a bar he hears that Jack and Jill, murderous outlaws obviously, are in town and in possession of the fabled magic beans that they have stolen from another Jack (he of the beanstalk) who’s in jail. You may already be spotting here that the story is not exactly faithful to the original Puss in Boots story but some hybrid collaboration of fairytales.

Puss wants those beans but is thwarted when he tries to get them by a fellow feline in a kinky mask. This is Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) - master thief, useful with a sword, on the dance floor and potential love interest.

Unfortunately Kitty is working for Humpty 'Alexander' Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis). I kid you not. I kind of lost it at this point and spent the rest of the film wondering why it had a giant egg in it. Though, I guess, once you base a film on a talking cat, it isn’t much of a stretch to include a talking egg as well... but Humpty Dumpty? Oh my.

Hump and Kit want Puss to help them get the beans but he wants nothing to do with them. Well not with Humpty anyway; the over-sized egg had betrayed him once before and clearly he doesn’t wish to end up with egg on his face again. Kitty on the other hand... flutters her eyelashes and... oh, ok then. He’ll do it to try and restore his good name. Puss was once in an orphanage before being taken in by a kind-hearted woman called Imelda. While living with her he gained the trust and respect of the whole town before it all went wrong thanks to the egg.

So they steal the beans and plant them at a ‘special’ spot from which sprouts a beanstalk to the heavens. All they now have to do is shin up to the Giant's castle which lies at the top and grab the goose that lays the golden eggs. Sound familiar? I’m not sure how Puss thinks that snatching a baby goose from its mother will restore his good name but anyway. At least they’ll all be rich, maybe. Maybe not.

I went into this film with very mild expectations, they were not exceeded. Puss himself was quite good but he was clearly working with a very amateur supporting cast and as for the scriptwriter, oh dear. Some of the cat jokes are clever but it’s not enough to save a very lazy plot. It’s a family film obviously but I think as a child it would have bored me. Years ago, this was the sort of thing that would have been a mere TV series, shown at 4pm on the BBC’s Children’s slot. Definitely not put on the big screen. It’s certainly not a classic that they’ll be dragging out to reshow year after year. Could have been a lot better.

We head to the Keans Head in search of our own fabled beans or rather the fabled Midnight Owl, Castle Rock’s winter ale that went down a storm at the Nottingham Beer festival but which has proved totally illusive ever since and winter/time is running out. No luck in the Keans either, although they have trusty Salem Porter on.

We pop in the Ropewalk on the way home, once home there’s homemade cheeseboard waiting.

(Sunday 8th January)

A Very Very Rare Feat

2012-01-07T00:00:00.007Z

The first thing to note today is that hot on the heels of three wins out of three over Christmas, a very very rare feat around these parts, Derby also win a cup game. It’s only 1-0 against a Crystal Palace reserve side with Dougie Freeman understandably resting his entire first team ahead of a League Cup Semi-Final on Tuesday but, as they say, we’re in the bag for the next round.

It was also mind-numbingly dull as Derby hung on to a ninth minute lead courtesy of a Theo Robinson goal. The highlight, apart from the scrappy goal, is the DJ playing ‘Mrs Robinson’ in his honour. They must have got that teed up ready in the hope of Theo bagging one. A rare spot of humour in what was a humourless game, that only 10,000 turned up to watch.

Totally the clubs fault though and nothing to do with the FA Cup allegedly losing its appeal. It was only £12 a ticket and no offence meant to Crystal Palace but if the club had asked Season Ticket holders to pay £12 to watch the league match again Crystal Palace they’d have got the same gate. It should have been a freebie, bring back those cup vouchers we used to have.

Tonight we’re at Broadway for the swift and pointless remake, sorry re-adaptation, by Hollywood of, yep, ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’. Luckily most pointless remakes, sorry re-adaptations, aren't directed by David Fincher and, to my immense surprise, I rather liked it.

That is once I got over the rather unexpected opening credits which involved Led Zeppelin's ‘Immigrant Song’ remade, sorry re-adapted, by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross with vocals by Karen O. Together with rather striking visuals. It was totally out of place and was more like a supporting feature. It was how you’d expect a James Bond film to open and then low and behold on walked Bond himself, Daniel Craig.

I won't go over all the plot again because you should know it and if you don't, either go read the book, see the Swedish original or if you’re American and you can’t read subtitles, then read my review of it. This review could only ever have been a comparison between the two.

Just like the Swedish original the first hour felt rushed with too much to fit in. You urged it to slow down and eventually it did. At which point it dawned in me that this version was actually more faithful to the novel and included plenty of scenes that were omitted from the original. Blomkvist's daughter is back as is his affair with Erika Berger but not his one with Cecilia but it’s also clear that Fincher has seen the Swedish version because he steals plot from that as well, using the same shortcuts in places.

Of course, the Swedish version was spliced from a TV series which, across the trilogy, left a total of two hours on the cutting room floor. I've just ordered the DVD of that, so that'll be an interesting watch to see what was cut for the cinema release. However, they still cut it, so they have to take the rap for it.

This version also seems to big up Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) role and reduce Mikael Blomkvist’s (Daniel Craig) which considering we have a rather wooden Mr Craig here, is perhaps no bad thing. Craig’s Blomkvist lacks emotion and personality, at times looks lost and forgets to wear enough clothes for the Swedish winter. Although, to be fair, Blomkvist is a bit dull in the book as well, save for his liking of trysts with his women. Don't we all.

Talking of trysts, this version seems to throw Blomkvist and Salander together on the screen a lot more, both in bed and out of it, but still the pair badly lacked chemistry. Not that a lack of chemistry has ever got in the way of a good shag. Mara certainly throws herself, totally naked, into that and into the whole role. She is good throughout although she will inevitably forever be overshadowed by Noomi Rapace from the Swedish version. She just doesn't have the same presence. Mara’s Salander is waiflike, more pouting teenager where as Rapace was simply a menacing woman who had never learnt how to pout. Loved the t-shirt though Mara, ‘F*ck you you f*cking f*ck’.

If it’s raunchier, it’s also funnier, not sure if that's a plus or not. It’s also possibly more sadistic. Whether this is because Yorick van Wageningen who plays Nils Bjurman looks like Rory McGrath, which is a scary enough thought on its own.

The slightly altered ending may actually be better but isn't correct. Sadly Harriet no longer runs a cattle ranch in Australia but the reinstatement of Salander’s gift to Blomkvist is welcome and is necessary to set up her antagonism toward him later, should the second book get filmed. Although I’m sure some scenes from the second book appeared here - e.g. Salander's confrontation with Bjurman about his tattoo removal.

As remakes go, this is actually a good one. The scriptwriter deserves praise and the cinematography is better, although I expect done on a much larger budget. They also resisted the temptation to transpose this story to America, which was a relief.

I would almost say it was better than the Swedish version but for Daniel Craig. So overall it’s still the rawer original for me, I think... maybe... I'm actually not sure.

(Saturday 7th January)

I Wasn’t Expecting That

2012-01-06T00:00:00.000Z

It’s a bit slippery underfoot, due to a sudden drop in temperature, as I head for the bus this morning. I wasn’t expecting that. The bus takes 20 minutes to get into Derby today compared with an hour yesterday. I wasn’t expecting that either.

L runs this morning despite the conditions but at least it’s dry, I’ll be running in the rain later. Then she's working from home so that she can deal with the boiler repair man who is coming to fix our boiler, which worked fine until they serviced it a couple of months ago. Predictably he can't fix it and has to come back again; they always have to come back.

L asks what she has to do to get me to take her to see ‘Puss in Boots’ this weekend... We’ll... a cosy night in tonight perhaps... then she’s got to find somewhere showing it in 2D, I'm definitely not seeing it in 3D and at a reasonable time, which is difficult because they rarely show these cartoon things at adult times. She’ll probably also have to take me to see something more intellectually challenging over the weekend., say the new Dragon Tattoo film. Oh and wear that skirt and boots combo that she wore in Derby at Christmas. Simple really.

According to the BBC this morning brain function starts to decline at 45. So we are all doomed. The thing is when does the brain function increase in the first place? Current evidence suggests this is clearly not before you’ve finished Uni...

I do my run, it stays dry and I get a bit carried away running nine miles. All good.

After some complex negotiations on the ‘Puss in Boots’ front we tee-up a night of Top Of The Pops 1977 style.

The 1976 shows have of course been terrible, in almost every respect. There's only so much Demis Roussos and Our Kid (look em up, if you dare) the human body can take. We must have been made of stronger stuff in 1976. It all made Chicago’s ‘If You Leave Me Now’ look almost cutting edge. There was a bit of Bolan of course but even Thin Lizzy looked dull on TOTP.

1977 though should be little better. 1977 heralded a bit of a watershed moment with the arrival of punk/new wave. Not all things will improve though. Although the awful Ruby Flipper were quietly axed after only six months, we now have the almost-but-not-quite-so-awful-but-at-least-they’re-all-girls-and-their-outfits-are-even-skimpier-than-before Legs & Co. Who were introduced via a competition that we didn’t get to see the result of because apparently someone wiped the 11th November show where it was announced. Still, the public clearly wanted a more traditional all female dance troupe again just like Pan's People. e.g. totty for the Dads, and they got it.

Here is the competition winner, with the girls, who are looking remarkably overdressed...

It’s amazing what you can find on the net.

(Friday 6th January)

The Golden Hour

2012-01-05T00:00:00.000Z

It's even windier this morning than it’s been all week, if that’s possible. Although obviously not as windy as it was in the Lakes. I’m on bus, which is delayed due to the A52 being down to one lane due to flooding. Yes its rained a bit too.

More tales from L at the gym. It appears that not only is Simon Bates alive and well but he's also still doing the Golden Hour, only now it's on Smooth FM. Whatever that is... According to Wiki, it was once Jazz FM, which swallowed Saga Radio and then forgot to play any jazz. Apparently this year they launched a spin off station called Smooth Christmas that played nothing but Christmas music. Which is all you need to know. Sounds ghastly.

Anyway... Simon Bates...Hmmm. Always liked the Golden Hour, always hated him. Apparently now he even gives the date of the Golden Hour away at the start. Another reason to dislike him, that’s hardly in the spirit of things even if people are going to google it.

Squash tonight with a new price tag of £7.10 a game and that’s with my Citycard discount. Happy New Year from the council then. I would actually have no objection to paying £7.10 if the courts were worth that price but they’re not. I’d pay £10 a game if they gave us decent facilities.

I win the first game of the New Year but lose the match 3-1. It was close though, two of those went right to death, losing both by two points.

It’s the FA Cup 3rd Round this weekend, now horrifically sponsored by an American lager. Just like Christmas Eve was once the best night out of the year, the first Saturday after New Year was always the best day in the football calendar. I’m still a big fan of both.

Tie of the round is obviously the big local derby. No not the Manchester derby, City play United twice a year already, so it’s not really a big thing. You could raise a case in the West Midlands for Birmingham v Wolverhampton but that happens pretty frequently too. No the big match of the day is the Fylde derby with Blackpool going to their non-league neighbours Fleetwood Town. How often does that happen?

Fleetwood’s 5,094 capacity Highbury Stadium is obviously completely sold out for the match. The only person in the area not gripped by the prospect of the game appears to be Blackpool chairman Karl Oyston, who says he isn’t attending because he says 'the game is neither exciting nor a high priority'. Clearly the whole thing terrifies him.

'It's a competition that neither club will win' he says, as if that's important. So too was the Premier League Mr Oyston, that thing you had a brief dalliance with last year, I assume you went to some of those games. This sort of match is exactly what football is about.

I imagine he is probably bricking it that his manager will rest key players. Because with Fleetwood flying at the moment, two points off the top of the Conference and with only three defeats in 26 league games this season, any weakening of the Tangerines team would probably make Fleetwood slight favourites. Be afraid Mr Oyston be very afraid.

I love the FA Cup and still will, even when our manager rests his own ‘key’ players, tells the rest to take it easy in case they get injured and we lose at home to Crystal Palace on Saturday. A result which would effectively end our season being as we are a mid-table Championship side with no real prospect of movement in either direction this season. A good cup run would revive our season.

(Thursday 5th January)

Another Record Bad Year

2012-01-04T00:00:00.000Z

On the bike today and it’s bloody hard work. I’m so unfit etc etc but there’s no wind and no rain, so it’s perfect conditions really.

It’s time to look at my end of year bike stats and they’re not good. 139 rides last year which is 4 down on 2010 which was also a record bad year. I suppose I have been running more instead. I think. A bit. A little bit.

Total distance wise, 3,266km sounds good but is again down on 2010, 355km down.

L passes on some advice someone gave her in the gym for dealing with sore knees post race. She was recommended to go along to Clarendon Sixth Form College where there's loads of students willing to give massages for a fiver. Apparently they’re really up for runners legs to practice on because they are different from the ones they normally get to lay their hands. Better I assume. I’m there.

We’ve snuck into the Liversedge Half, at least I have, not sure if L’s had her confirmation yet. I’m number 567. So much for the 500 limit.

It’s a bit wet when I cycle home but not as wet as it gets when I head to dog class for MD’s first day back at school after the Christmas hols. He is very very up for it. Which I think is a good thing.

I’m glad I’m not on the late 9pm shift and therefore have to carry the equipment across the car park in the driving rain to put it away. I will be next week though, so it better not be so foul then.

Talking of rain, L’s phone has dried out and is still dead, so she’s bought a new one. Unfortunately she’s lost her phone book on the old one. Which means she is now having deep and meaningful text conversations with people without knowing who they are. I send her an anonymous text but she guesses it’s me. At least this shows she can’t have that many admirers randomly texting her.

(Wednesday 4th January)

What's this? Fruit?

2012-01-03T00:00:00.000Z

I eat a piece of fruit today, in fact several. Well, the first fruit that hasn't been part of a Christmas pudding or a mince pie for about two weeks. Back to normality on one way at last.

I manage the stairs at work ok; my so legs can’t be too bad after yesterday’s race.

We seem to have brought the Lakeland weather home with us. L gets to work soaked and complaining that Ilkeston Road resembled Langdale’s Mickleden Beck but not of course anywhere near as pretty.

Having lost her jacket and trashed her mobile, L at least reports that her watch that stopped ages ago has now started working again. Small mercies.

We start planning our next series of races. The Liversedge Half Marathon has an entry limit of 500, yet their entries page is showing 540 people entered. I enter us both quickly online and hope they let us in. No such luck with Wilmslow, that is full but we are in Liverpool, L entered us in that before Christmas. Good old Sleaford isn’t full yet but if we delay entering hopefully it might be...

(Tuesday 3rd January)

Duller Than Ditchwater

2012-01-02T00:00:00.000Z

We get up at the unearthly hour of 6.30am and take the tent down in the dark, brushing a light covering of snow off it as we do so. We’ve often erected the tent in the dark but I cannot recall us ever taking it down in the dark.

We then have an hour or so’s drive back down the M6 to Catforth, which is a village close to the M55, not far from Preston. The race we have entered is called the Central Lancashire New Year Half Marathon and is one of many races organised by Fylde Coast Running. L did their Blackpool to Fleetwood race in October.

The weather is bleak to say the least but does appear to be improving by the minute. Although it is not improving anywhere near quickly enough to save the parking field. We are the third car to be ushered on to the paddy field that has been designated for parking but the first to refuse to budge off the gravel at the entry gate as we watch the first two cars going nowhere fast and wheel spinning themselves deeper into the mud. I reverse out of the field and a marshal quickly deduces that we wish to park elsewhere.

The race itself was right up my street, duller than ditchwater, I loved it. Fairly flat throughout on country lanes but with a long drag uphill from 3.5 to 5 miles and with no noticeable compensatory downhill to follow. To liven things up we had a strong head wind at times and a bit of hail, which is all part of the fun. The scenery was augmented with four trips across the M55, over bridges that is, we didn’t have to dash across between juggernauts. Counting is not my strong point though and I’m sure we did it five times but I may have been mistaken or delirious with exhaustion by then. At least I hope I was mistaken or else I ran extra.

Then there was a nice canal crossing over a humpback bridge to finish, which was the prettiest, or rather the only pretty bit.

I made a slow start, 7:58 for the first mile but then as I worked out that this would get me a 1:44:00 time overall I decided I was happy with that. Then I was unsure if my 7:19 second mile was good news or not. It all went very well considering I’d barely trained for it and I felt so strong that I ran a final 7:15 mile to finish, coming in at 1:43:00 exactly. Pleased with that.

As I crossed the line I was handed a medal (ugh, but a nice one), a kitkat (yum) and bottle of water. The organisation was good, two water stations both with bottled water (brownie points earned), it was well marshalled by some rather cold looking folk and they made good use of the village hall where there were plenty of refreshments on offer. An enjoyable event.

I didn't think the bleakness and the dullness would suit L but it seemed to, she said she enjoyed it too.

We get home to find that Daughter has already headed off back to Sheffield. It was disappointing to have missed her but good in that we thought we were the ones taking her back. So we’ve been saved a trip, which after already around four hours on the road today is no bad thing.

L describes the weekend as an interesting New Year’s break, as she tries to get some life out of her mobile phone which seems to have shipped some water over the weekend. I think perhaps she enjoyed it.

(Monday 2nd January)

All Is Quiet On New Year's Day

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

After a very windy and wet night. I have to stand and applaud a very impressive performance from our tent, which barely batted an eyelid in the conditions.

Talk of flooding that was abound in the pub last night seem unfounded, although lots of tents do depart today. Whether this is because they just came for New Year’s Eve or whether the weather saw them off I’m not sure.

We have a relaxing day and take the car to Grasmere. Which is a bit of a cardinal sin in such a walking area. Taking the car that is, not the going to Grasmere.

In the evening, L is eminently sensible, AF and clearly taking tomorrow’s race seriously. Even I’m restrained, well I keep off the strong dark stuff and only have a couple.

(Sunday 1st January)

Close To Nature

2011-12-31T00:01:00.000Z

After paying £3900 for the campsite, well he did knock £3861 off when pushed, the expenses continue to mount as L’s coat is pinched. I did think she was being a bit daring leaving it in the drying room but she did say it was an old one that she wasn’t too bothered about. Still we didn't think some light fingered b****** would pinch it.

We embark on a wet weather walk along the valley floor. There are hills here apparently but we can’t see them though the cloud.

Then we pub crawl our way back down the valley. First, the Britannia but only for hot tea. Then the Wainwrights before we go very left field and head to the New Dungeon Ghyll for food. Always the least impressive of the valley’s bars due to it lacking quite the same atmosphere and a decent beer range. They have a band on tonight, so that should improve the atmosphere although it will upset the dogs, so we need to be out before they kick off. The beer range still needs attention though but the food is good, as we eat there for the first time in over ten years.

It was interesting reading about the history of the place. It opened on Boxing Day in 1991. Before that it was a farmhouse that in 1832 became a hotel, that apparently wasn’t finished until 1862, 30 years later. However in the 1950s it became a shop and a petrol station, then in the 1980s an outward bound centre for underprivileged children before the current owners bought it and turned it back into a hotel. It is still run by the same family today.

I wonder about the history of the nearby Sticklebarn but can’t find anything out. It must be of a similar age. It’s full to the rafters tonight, so we don’t go in and head to the Old Dungeon Ghyll instead, where the usual peculiar people were drying out and drinking beer that was neither old nor peculiar but may have gone by that name, awaiting the New Year. We join them but would probably have been on the floor by midnight, so we retire to the tent to see the New Year in there.

One of the problems of the Lakes in the winter is that you can’t really walk much beyond 4pm due to the lack of daylight and as we’re camping we can’t really retire to our accommodation for a few hours either, so you do tend to start drinking and eating a lot earlier than you would in the summer.

So we’re back in the tent before midnight, when I promise to dig L in the ribs so that she doesn't miss the year’s end, whether she wants me to or not and the evidence supplied by her dropping eyelids is that she probably doesn’t. In the end there is no need as fireworks light the sky, MD goes off on one and Doggo quivers in the corner. We restore order, eventually, and enjoy a happy New Year close to nature... as a howling gale brews up down the valley.

(Saturday 31st December)

Fantasy Shuffle Selection: Twenty Tracks From 2011

2011-12-31T00:00:00.001Z

As the final part of my review of the year, my annual 'fantasy shuffle' selection. Again I tried really hard to whittle my ipod down to a varied selection of twenty-odd tracks that were released during 2011.

So here goes, in no particular order :-

Coming Down - Dum Dum Girls
Mongk II - British Sea Power
Roads - Chapel Club
Monday Morning - Death Cab For Cutie
A Heavy Abacus - The Joy Formidable
Aberdeen - Cage The Elephant
Sick - The Twilight Sad
Black and Blue - The Tamborines
Norgaard - The Vaccines
Face In The Crowd - Cat’s Eyes
Georgia - Yuck
Redemption - Frank Turner
Endless Blue - The Horrors
That's Where You're Wrong - Arctic Monkeys
Sunday - The View
Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People
The Great Pan Is Dead - Cold Cave
Are You Who You Think You Are? - Spook School
Cheap Gold - Frightened Rabbit
Hello Sadness - Los Campesinos!

The Cost of Camping

2011-12-30T00:01:00.000Z

This morning Son is despatched back to Leamington by coach. Far cheaper than the train and it doesn’t involve again changes. We would have taken him but we’re heading to the Lakes and Leamington would have added a 100 miles to the route, so... no. He’s working New Year’s Eve for double time and a free bar, although apparently this may not be until 5am! Unbeknown to him and us, his boss is about to cancel his shift and not even open the nightclub, where Son works, on New Year’s Eve and 24 hours later Son will be heading back to Nottingham to see in the New Year. Oh dear.

Meanwhile though we leave Daughter in charge of the house. Oh dear.

We book into our usual campsite at Great Langdale. Yes, we’re camping and we just about get the tent up in the light, despite having all day to get up here. It’s actually unseasonably warm, although very wet. There are rumours about the beck flooding... Oh dear. It looks fine to me...

It isn’t actually raining as we pitch camp but the ground is so wet I don’t reckon it’s stopped much since we were here three weeks ago. The campsite owner confirms this as he charges us £3900 for 3 nights. Excuse me? I know prices often go up for the holiday periods but even so. We could almost have got a B&B for that. The most expensive camping trip ever.

We haven’t been here for a few years at New Year. Actually when we think about it, it’s been quite a few years. We were last up here at New Year in 2001 and 2002. So nine years ago. How time flies.

In 2001 when the place was snow bound I reckoned there were around 50 tents on the campsite, it's probably down to around 40 this year. Probably due to the wet and a not very promising forecast.

We spend the night in the Sticklebarn, supping Snecklifter. What could be better?

(Friday 30th December)

Favourite Albums Of 2011

2011-12-30T00:00:00.001Z

Third part of my review of the year, the oddball selection of my favourite ten albums of the past year. Not one of the the better years I don't think and the lack of albums I bought probably reflects this.

10. Skying - The Horrors

Not for me anywhere near as good as 'Primary Colours' but it has its moments.

9. What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? - The Vaccines

A right mishmash but again it has it's moments.

8. The Big Roar - The Joy Formidable

This 'debut' album borrowed heavily from their previous 'debut', which apparently now wasn't an album at all but an 8 track EP..., without which it probably wouldn't have made this list. A band stuck in a bit of a rut.

7. England Keep My Bones - Frank Turner

Excellent as ever but not as excellent as his past efforts.

6. Thank You Happy Birthday - Cage The Elephant

Discovery of the year for me. They're trying so hard to be the Pixies. 10/10 for effort.

5. Palace - Chapel Club

Judging by what they already had in the public domain this was bound to be excellent and was.

4. Suck It And See - Arctic Monkeys

I love a good story and Alex Turner gets back to telling them. His solo 'Submarine' effort was pretty useful too.

3. Hello Sadness - Los Campesinos!

More stories and I could listen to Gareth from LC! telling them all day long. An acquired taste but I have that taste.

2. Yuck - Yuck

1990's throwback maybe but something else taht is to my taste. They're awesome live too.

1. Valhalla Dancehall - British Sea Power

Not everyone's cup of tea of course but BSP can do no wrong for me. As good as everything else they've done.

Most Of Mine Seem Very Alcoholic

2011-12-29T00:01:00.002Z

It’s wet and windy again today. I had wanted to bike again but wimped out. So I’ll just have to hope that I’ve done enough training for Monday’s half marathon, I’ve certainly done sufficient carbo loading and there’s more to come, but at least we’re running out of crème eggs here at work.

We have another family meal tonight, this time with L’s parents and some late Christmas presents. We cook the other leg from our lamb and serve a Chinese platter as a starter, a post-Christmas BOGOF from the supermarket. Then we light the anti-dog-smell candles and await our guests.

After dinner we exchange presents, Christmas really does go on and on these days... but more presents... yay! Most of mine seem very alcoholic, for some reason.

(Thursday 29th December)

Favourite Gigs Of 2011

2011-12-29T00:01:00.001Z

This is the second part of my review of the year, my favourite ten gigs of the past year.

Not one of my most prolific years for gigs. Clearly I didn't get out as much this year as I should have done. When I did get to see bands it seemed to have quite a retro tinge to it with three anniversary tours and a farewell show.

10. Hard-Fi, Bodega Social Club, Nottingham, Wednesday 20th April 2011

A low-key comeback show that was a little disappointing.

Read My Review

9. The Horrors, Rock City, Nottingham, Wednesday 26th October 2011

A very brief perfromance. It was very good in the middle though, while it lasted.

Read My Review

8. The Subways, Rescue Rooms, Wednesday 21st September

Unvaried and predictable but great fun was had by all.

Read My Review

7. The Icicle Works 30th Anniversary Tour, Academy 2, Birmingham, Saturday 7th May 2011

A great career spanning show at the first of three anniversary shows in my top 10.

Read My Review

6. Feeder, Assembly, Leamington Spa, Thursday 17th February

Feeder being as predictable as ever but as good as ever, in a great venue that was new to me.

Read My Review

5. Bluetones Farewell Tour, Sheffield Academy 2, Tuesday 13th September

"We were The Bluetones...". sob but a good way to go out.

Read My Review

4. Yuck, Rescue Rooms, Nottingham, Monday 14th November 2011

A brilliant sort of early 90s territory evening with Kim Deal-esk thudding baselines and fuzzing guitars.

Read My Review

3. The Damned 35th Anniversary, Rock City, Nottingham, Tuesday 15th November

The Damned play not one but two classic albums. First ‘Damned Damned Damned’, the band’s debut from 1977 but it's their second choice, ‘The Black Album’ from 1980 that really stole the show.

Read My Review

2. British Sea Power, Rugby Library, Friday 4th March

BSP 'get it loud in libraries' and rock the book shelves.

Read My Review

1. The Mission 25th Anniversary , Academy, Leeds, Friday 28th October 2011

An unashamed retro night. The only criticism would be that it felt just like a Mission concert from twenty years ago, rather than an anniversary one... well, perhaps that’s no criticism at all.

Read My Review

She’ll Have To Go To Starbucks Like Everyone Else

2011-12-28T00:01:00.000Z

Back to the grind today. Back at work and back on the bike. Which as its very blustery and the rain is driving into my face perhaps wasn’t the best of ideas but it was needed.

There are seven of us in work, which is more than usual. L says there’s just one of them, just herself... but her boss is due in later. She could always pop round for tea with the Nuns if she’s lonely.

L carefully plans her evening schedule of gym, dog walking, painting, knitting and reading... Then I offer to come to the gym and spoil it, totally stuffing up her schedule, forcing her to rearrange everything. All so I can do 5k on the treadmill. Which was predictably hard and boring, particularly after 30 miles on the bike today. I’m kind of inspired after reading about the training that Dave Millar put himself through in his book 'Racing Through The Dark' that I’ve started reading.

A Christmas present you know and I’m actually reading it, from a book, made of paper, not listening to it.

I also get to try out my new sport headphones, another Christmas present. Then I do 1k on the rower before I crawl to the coffee machine.

Back home our wi-fi is dipping in and out, coincidentally it appears that this only happens when Son is on his xbox, which is mysterious. Daughter is not happy, not that this is unusual. I thought this was maybe because she has to get several essays in for just after New Year but no it’s because she’s missing skyping her housemates. She’ll just have to go use the wi-fi at Starbucks like everyone else.

(Wednesday 28th December)

Favourite Films Of 2011

2011-12-28T00:00:00.006Z

This is the first part of my review of the year, my favourite films of the past year.

I saw some impressive films at the start of last year and at the end of this, with not much inbetween. Anyone would think that's the awards season...

10. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

You're supposed to describe this as compelling, tense, absorbing, involving etc etc and in some ways it was. Some would say dull. In reality, it's probably somewhere in between.

Read My Review

9. True Grit

Good film but... I'm still not sure why they made it.

Read My Review

8. Submarine

An excellent film, about the horrors of growing up and some.

Read My Review

7. 127 Hours

127 Hours is an experience that I survived. I think. Unforgettable, for several reasons.

Read My Review

6. My Week With Marilyn

Michelle Williams does an extraordinary job as Marilyn Monroe.

Read My Review

5. Drive

An absorbing piece of cinema. Some would call it slow but I’d call it tense and involving.

Read My Review

4. The Fighter

Much more than just a film about boxing.

Read My Review

3. The Social Network

‘You're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.’

Read My Review

2. The Kings Speech

Excellent casting, excellent acting. A thoroughly entertaining piece of historical cinema that gives a fascinating insight into King George VI

Read My Review

1. Black Swan

An enthralling experience from start to finish, something you would not expect from a film about a ballet.

Read My Review

Back To Basics

2011-12-27T00:00:00.010Z

Another run this morning at Wheaton Aston, which is somewhere beyond Cannock and on the way towards Shropshire. It is organised by the Newport Running Club, whose website has been down for a month and therefore there is no race info. So I’m sure we’re not the only ones wondering if it’s still on. An email sent to all online entrants would have been nice, as is the usual form. This doesn’t bode well for the on the day organisation, if it's on of course.

Via Runners’ World's Forum we find out some details, that they have apparently contracted a virus on their website and that the race is actually full but at least we’re in. So we’ve not got to drive for over an hour to find a locked HQ and a cancelled race.

We do find a lack of toilet facilities, no portaloos tut tut but a butty van with a short queue although regrettably I'm not supporting today. In fact we haven’t even got the dogs with us.

The race is all a bit old skool, which is quaint in a way, a back to basics 10k, hand timing, a small ‘start’ sign at the side of the road that everyone misses and a chap sat on a farm gate giving the briefing. I didn’t mention the mile markers did I? For a 10k, my pet hate.

The course turns out to be generally flat with just a few gentle inclines, mainly through rural farmland. When two women running near me announce in the first mile that we are all being beaten by a 60 year old lady, who is just up ahead, it causes a surge in the field that nearly tramples the poor lady to death. Such boisterous antics subside as the race goes on and I get through it, albeit slowly, with another 44 minute plus time. L chips a couple of minutes off her Bolsover time to show she’s getting to normal after her bout of whatever she had.

At the end we are all handed a very nice technical shirt, which is unfortunately predominately yellow but you can’t have everything.

We head back to Derby for another family meet up at the Royal Standard with my brothers family, my parents and even the kids get the bus over and meet us there. Quite a gathering and decent beer too. I think that’s covered everyone on my side of the family this Christmas.

(Tuesday 27th December)

Too Much Dog Power

2011-12-26T00:00:00.000Z

This morning the usual 5k run on Darley Park. I usually do this with Doggo but had intended to do it with MD this year in my attempt to reclaim our title of first dog across the line. We were unfairly beaten last year by a Smurf and his husky. When I say unfairly, I mean they were faster than us, which is very unfair.

As it turns out I run with both, as L isn’t keen to ruin her run by being attached to a dog, which is understandable. This has actually been my plan for the last two years but in both years its been too icy to have so much dog power at my fingertips. This year that’s not an issue as the weather is practically tropical.

My concerns about too much dog power appear justified when at the start Doggo’s wheels are spinning, his paws digging a channel in the soft earth, as I try to prevent us false starting. Meanwhile MD is spinning in circles trying to escape his lead. Total chaos. Which only gets worse when some idiot yells ‘go’ and the rest of the 150 or so runners head off onto the course. I try to hold the boys back for as long as I can. Impossible. So we rocket after the main field, achieving 0 to 60 in about two seconds.

Once we’re up to speed and heading in something approaching a straight line, things calm down a touch. Doggo takes control and leads us for the first 2k, then when he tires MD seamlessly takes over.

My father is waiting on the bridge, I don’t see him but Doggo does and slams his anchors on. It’s difficult to get him moving again after that, particularly as the course now takes us on a loop away from the finish but somehow MD gets us round. Then when we turn for home Doggo gets interested again and we power across the line. We come in a credible 51st but more importantly we are first dog or dogs home

After a quick pint we head to an annoyingly early kick off for the Boxing Day football match. From where I’m afraid I have to report the death of yet another Christmas tradition. Yes, the traditional Boxing Day defeat is no more as Derby beat Leeds, which is actually immensely satisfying as I text my Leeds supporting friend throughout.

After a quiet Christmas Day, Boxing Day is more manic with the kids now home and my parents coming over for a dinner of roast lamb. L cooks one of the two legs of lamb we acquired for the festive period, legs that I hope aren’t from the same animal as one is slightly shorter than the other.

(Monday 26th December)

Everything Booked

2011-12-25T00:00:00.000Z

We opened our presents at midnight last night, which is something we’ve always done when we haven’t had anyone else around who might object to us putting Santa under such pressure to get to us so early on his shift.

So I can now reveal that I have granted L’s wish to complete her 500 mile challenge in Helsinki. Everything is all booked, subject to her getting with 13 miles of her target by May we will finish with the Helsinki Half Marathon.

If she’s behind schedule I’ll just have to take someone else and she'll have to run Lichfield as a punishment.

The dogs get a good walk, three miles or so to Beeston, where we have a couple in the Crown before walking back. Thankfully the weather is springlike so that we can sit outside and we have to, the pub is full. It seems everyone has the urge to get out and into the local on Christmas Day these days.

Christmas dinner is garlic mushrooms followed by Halibut in a blue cheese sauce. We are so diverse. £25 a lb diverse, so we probably won’t be having it often. We do have Christmas pudding, some things have to be done and we do have rather a lot of them, we’ll still be munching Christmas pudding well into next year.

Another traditional is Christmas TV, which gets worse every year or is it just me but it’s difficult to avoid as nothing is open and you’re usually welded to the settee by the weight of too much Christmas pud. We torture ourselves mainly with reruns of Top Of The Pops from 1976 before going through the PVR to see what there is we’ve taped over the last year and not watched.

(Sunday 25th December)

Getting Christmassy

2011-12-24T00:00:00.000Z

Mince pies in bed this morning, the height of decadence.

Daughter is dispatched over to her father’s for Christmas where Son is already headed. At one point it looked as if one of them would be with us for Christmas Day and the other for Boxing Day but eventually they managed to get themselves grudgingly synchronised.

Then we head into town to see something Christmassy as is our festive tradition. On the way I continue my search for a Santa skirt for L. No, not for a sexual fetish, well not much, for her to run in, to go with her Santa hat and festive earrings. Unfortunately it seems the main supplier for such things is Ann Summers... so clearly it's a common fetish. In there though they have nothing smaller than a size 22, 24 or 26? Which it totally frightening. I wouldn’t want a size 22 Miss Santa coming down my chimney let alone a size 26 one. A quick wander though the market secures something similar. As it’s 4pm on Christmas Eve I think a bit of price haggling is warranted and proves extremely successful.

So to our Christmas film. In the last two years we’ve done ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and ‘White Christmas’ but this year I’m in charge. L has already taken us to 'Arthur Christmas', so I think I’m justified. So tonight it’s ‘Drive’.

‘Drive’ is the story of a ‘driver’ (Ryan Gosling), a man who is never named. He works in a garage but moonlights as a stunt driver, a budding racing driver and as a getaway driver for the local criminals. That’s a lot of driving.

He’s a bit of a loner, who doesn’t go much for words or even facial expressions. Although he does break in to a smirk of sorts when he finds out he’s got Carey Mulligan (who plays Irene) living next door.

Then Mulligan is at it too, throwing in big deafening silences and long evocative looks, in her case trembly, dewy-eyed and innocent ones. The two of them say so much by not saying anything but it works. In this way she sort of hits on him and he gets involved in her life, befriending her young son Benicio along the way.

You can only assume she’s fallen for Gosling's tough but caring persona and his silent charm, it certainly wasn’t his chat up lines, the few words he does utter are around the toothpick that hangs permanently from his lips. I’m not sure where he put that when he snogged her in the lift, which was the films only departure into passion and that was only as a diversion so that he could kill someone. This is a romance that never goes anywhere but then Mulligan does still only look about fourteen, despite having a son.

Now I’ve gone and mentioned the killing. Gosling's character bursts into violent life mid-film, embracing violence on a sort of ‘Eastern Promises’ level. It kicks off when Irene’s husband Standard (Oscar Isaac), who was in jail, is released on parole and people are keen to settle scores with him. Standard thanks our driver for looking after his wife while he was inside, seemingly oblivious to the chemistry sizzling off the pair of them, even in his presence. The two of them get on and our man offers to do a driving job for Standard to pay off his pursuers but it all goes horribly wrong.

The violence then gets ratcheted up with the driver doing a hatchet job on all the mobsters who come to get him until it’s a case of last man standing. Some of the scenes are accompanied by the sort of gallows humour that is right out of the Tarantino scrapbook.

Overall it’s an absorbing piece of cinema. Some would call it slow but I’d call it tense and involving. The soundtrack is pulsating, the cinematography great and the dialogue lean, obviously. Even the car chases, of which there are plenty, don’t irritate like they normally would.

Acting wise, Gosling is great, the man gets more impressive with each film he does. Mulligan is good too and backed by a strong supporting cast of mobsters. One of the best films of 2011 or 2012 depending on when you see it.

Broadway is very busy but imminently closing, so we decamp to the Major Oak which ambitiously tells us it’s open until 1am. One of the few places playing to the ghost of Christmas Eve past, the former best night out of the year. We stop for one, visit The Bell which is busy too before finishing off in the Borlase Warren which is quiet but cosy.

(Saturday 24th December)

Not Terribly Festive

2011-12-23T00:00:00.000Z

The roads are very quiet this morning; it seems a lot of folk have already finished for Christmas.

As requested by the people across the road the sandwich van parks right outside their office today to save them having to walk 50 metres to it, thereby increasing my already 50 metre+ walk by another 50 metres. I wouldn’t mind but they need the walk more than me and also only one of them is in the office today.

As a treat at work they are handing out Crème Eggs. Not terribly festive but equally I thought declining would be a very unfestive thing to do.

You can tell the Christmas shopping is over because L and her credit card have parted company. She says it’s over between them but I’m sure they’ll make up; they always seem to get back together. Her card always forgives her and takes her back.

After always releasing us at lunchtime on the last day of work before Christmas this year my company keep us in like naughty schoolboys. Bah Humbug. We finally get released at 4pm and I head off to meet L in Derby. Where she’s been cruising the wool shops...

Then together we cruise the Flowerpot, the Royal Standard, where we also eat, and the Silk Mill, where several people are clearly hoping to take a young elf home with them but she leaves them all disappointed. L seems to cope with the ale despite her taste buds still reeling after last night’s curry.

We get the bus home at 7.50! We’d make such crap teenagers but it’s been a cheap and productive evening. Off home to post-drink.

(Friday 23rd December)

A Druid On A Hill

2011-12-22T00:00:00.000Z

There was a druid with a drum on the hill in Wollaton Park this morning welcoming in the Winter Solstice. Today is the shortest day, the first day of the winter solstice, druids delight. I hope MD saw her off. It was a girl apparently, a druidess.

As I head off to work, L heads off for coffee and mince pies with the Nuns... Not that she claims to even like mince pies and then, of course, she’ll be claiming she’s fat and unfit...

But not as unfit as the people I’ve just had to queue behind at the sandwich van.

Typical conversation –
“Oh no, you’ve got no bacon and oh no was that the last of the sausages you’ve just sold. Oh well it’ll have to a sausage roll and a bag of crisps instead then. Hang on as its Christmas I’ll make that two bags of crisps.”

...and I get the impression this is just to keep them going until lunch. Then one of them asks if the van could park a bit nearer their office as it was too far to walk. This is three doors down, about 50 metres.

The final game of squash for the year is a close one, 3-2. Followed by the end of season curry, for which we go to the Trent Bridge Inn, which is now a Wetherspoons. We’ve done their Thursday curry nights before and always been mildy impressed. Not so tonight, everyone’s curry is very bland or in the case of L’s painfully hot as well as bland. Won’t be going back there.

We get home to a house full of teenagers pre-drinking away time that in my student days we would have put to much more productive use in various bars around town. Still it leaves such bars freer for us to enjoy so I guess we shouldn't object. It also wasn't actually a house full, it sounded like a house full but in the end turned out to only be five, just a very noisy five. Pre-drinking was allegedly born out of a cost saving measure but they go out just before 11pm for the fag end of the night and still end up spending an astronomical amount. As they say, a drunk and their money are more easily parted...

Its Sports Personality Of The Year tonight, sadly on a Thursday this year as its usual Sunday slot would have meant it being aired on Christmas Day. Sports Personality Of The Year is hardly the most riveting of shows but looking at the schedule for Christmas Day, it would certainly have been an improvement even if they’d had pre-recorded it.

I imagine Mark Cavendish would have turned up even if they’d done it live on Christmas Day. He looked absolutely thrilled with his win. A win gained with nearly half of the entire vote. Thoroughly deserved.

(Thursday 22nd December)

Everyone Loves A Cheapskate?

2011-12-21T00:00:00.000Z

It’s good to be back at work... at least it’s a short week. The traffic wasn’t too bad coming into work but I think this is because they’re probably all already in the queue for Sainsbury’s car park. Well that’s certainly where they all are come lunchtime and some of them have probably been there queuing since 8am. I decide not to bother joining the queue and park next door at Homebase instead, then I walk across.

Sainsbury's car park is actually half empty, it’s just the access roads that are rubbish. Inside the store it’s fairly quiet too and everything has 50% off or more. Which begs the question, why would anyone shop more than a week before Christmas? Huge blocks of Stilton - half price. Port - half price. Pate, a whole block - half price. Wrapping paper - half price. Something else that I best not mention as it's going in L's Christmas stocking - half price. Hope she loves a cheapskate

Daughter rings to say she’s been awarded a bursary. Bloody hell. How did that happen? It turns out it’s because her sixth form college in Nottingham is a ‘partnership’ college with Sheffield Hallam. Whatever that means. It’s all a bit bizarre but don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, as they say. I imagine she’s already on the bus on her way to River Island.

L’s at another panto toinight. She really is a serial offender. The dogs and I stay in to cook stilton and port pate.

(Wednesday 21st December)

This Apparently Is Progress

2011-12-20T00:00:00.000Z

Day two of my course and we have a break in training when the fire alarm goes off. Down six flights of stairs, ten minutes stood stamping feet in cold in the Market Square and then back up six flights of stairs. So I’ve done by workout for the day.

Another day of HTML, XHTML, XML, S, M & XL etc (I made that last bit up). All a bit of a dogs breakfast really. It appears we are going to end up using HTML, CSS, Javascript, C#, ASP.NET, MVC and SQL at work. Why use one programming language when six will do? This apparently is progress. It’s just like the old days when people used to come up with new computer languages for a laugh. Those were the days...

I was worried that by coming back to Nottingham Daughter would be missing out on some important hangovers that she would have got in Sheffield but she seems to have rehabilitated herself back in to society ok. She’s socialising at one of those gain-as-much-weight-as-you-can-in-one-sitting Chinese places this lunchtime. My colleague and I had considered it for lunch from our course, so we quickly scrub that idea. We go in Fat Cat instead. Slow service but a decent pint.

In the evening I head up to the Leisure Centre to join L in the pool, I need my tick for attending to keep my cashback prospects rolling along. Amazingly I remember how to swim. It’s been a long time.

(Tuesday 20th December)

Rooms By the Hour

2011-12-19T00:00:00.000Z

I’m on another training course for the next few days, although we’ve been shunted out of the posh surroundings of the Lace Market Hotel into the old IBM building which is now mainly a rent a room job, probably by the hour. No not that sort of place, although the people in the room across from us do seem to be rolling around on the floor manhandling each other and with their lips locked together but I think it’s just a first aid course.

Today I’m studying HTML and CSS, who I thought were a band from São Paulo. It all goes well and now I know everything there is to know about internet development. We all head home to rewrite Google. We'll show those yanks how it's done. Beware the person who has been on a one day course and is now an expert.

L is horrified at the thought of my proposed search engine revamp, as she is rather fond of Google. Can't I redesign Twitter instead to make it useful? I'm not sure that's possible. That’s like redesigning a border collie to make it useful.

It’s back. That letter to a similar address of ours in Newark drops through our post box yet again. This time I rewrite the postcode in very big letters and repost it yet again. Fourth time lucky.

It’s Christmas Party night at dog training. Well not really, although L doesn’t believe me. It’s actually a normal serious training session just with chocolate and a touch of Secret Santa for the dogs.

(Monday 19th December)

An Astonishingly Florescent Affair

2011-12-18T00:00:00.000Z

Another run this morning but just for L. The boys and I are all just supporting today. We head to Bolsover, where we park in the town centre and before walking to the newly rebuilt Bolsover School on Mooracre Lane, where the race starts. There are a few patches of ice on the ground, which I’m sure won’t cause any problems but it’s another reason I’m glad I’m not running.

The start is delayed by about ten minutes; the rumour is this is because of the length of the toilet queue. You would have thought the toilet provision, as this is a race with a long history, is something they would have got right. Also having to filter everyone one through the start only then to start in the other direction was not the brightest thing to do but not my problem, as I’m not running.

Apparently the race always used to start at the school before being moved down the road to Bolsover Castle in 2009, causing the distance to go up to 11k. So they added a 1k walk to the start last year to get it back down to 10k but then oddly ended up not finishing in the castle at all but in the field beside it. This year we’re back at the school.

There’s a bacon butty van for us supporters but unfortunately it’s inside the school grounds, where the dogs aren’t allowed. So instead we stare longingly at it through the railings but not so longingly at the queue. Seems not only do they need more portaloos, they need more butty vans as well.

So instead we walk out across the fields to the 9k point, nearly get run over on the busy road and then walk back. ‘What was the point of that?’ Doggo’s knotted ears enquire. Just a walk, you know, dogs like them, apparently.

When we return to the school, half an hour after the race start, just ahead of the winner, I’m sure the same people are still in the butty van queue. The race winner, Richard Weir of Derby AC, crosses the line in a highly impressive time of 30:43 and a new course record. So he’s £100 better off.

L, still coughing, knocks a few minutes off her Langdale time but is still clearly not back to full speed yet, plus there was those 2-for-1 beers last night... That said, it worked ok for me yesterday. She collects her race t-shirt, an astonishingly florescent affair, ideal for those dark evening winter runs or for directing traffic in. Although they did run out of her size. So organisers... loos, butties and t-shirts. The rest was great.

Then we over head to Sheffield, hoping Daughter and her friend are up, it’s only 1pm, so that we can transport them back to Nottingham for the Christmas break.

In the evening we head over to Quad in Derby but pop into the Silk Mill for refreshment first (Burton Bridge Damson Porter, nice). Unfortunately there’s no Red Arrow as it’s a Sunday, so we have to take the car.

The film we see ‘My Week With Marilyn’ is based on the memoirs of a guy called Colin Clark. Clark was a twenty-three year old who made himself so annoying hanging around the offices of Laurence Olivier’s production company that they eventually give him a job, probably just to get rid of him. It turned out to be some job. When Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) comes to England in 1956 to film ‘The Sleeping Prince’ which was to become ‘The Prince And The Showgirl’, Clark (Eddie Redmayne) is hired as the third assistant director, or general dogsbody, for the film.

This film is not particularly meant to be a biopic of Marilyn Monroe but it does give a great insight into the craziness of her world. Monroe was a total nightmare to work with. The film portrays her as not some much a great actor but as a great star. One that was an immense frustration to Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) as she repeatedly messed up her lines and was constantly late arriving on set, that is when she turned up at all.

When she did she was constantly babied by her acting coach Paula Strasberg (Zoe Wanamaker) who spoon fed her most of her lines.

Meanwhile Clark, who had spent most of his time on set drooling after the film’s star, suddenly ends up being the go-between between Monroe and the production team. She takes a bit of a liking to him and he becomes her confidant, sympathising with her troubles while trying to get her to return to the film set. He gets to spend a week with her, taking her on, among other things, a tour of Eton, which somehow ends up with Monroe skinny dipping in front of him in a river.

We’re like in fantasy land for a young lad of that era or I suppose any male of that era. Unlike everyone else Clark can see through her many flaws and see the vulnerable person she really is. Lust can do this for you.

Of course the last thing you need when you're hoping for a tumultuous one night stand with the biggest sex symbol in the world is for Emma Watson to be hanging around on set, working I think in the costume department.

Clark dates Lucy (Watson) and seems to be in with a great chance of finding the back of the net, she is more his level, which is admittedly still some level but then there’s Marilyn... Would he be able to look the lads in the eye down the pub on a Friday night if he didn’t at least give it a go... Marilyn Monroe or Hermione Grainger? Tough call. It begs the question just how a big a star is it acceptable to cheat on a potential girlfriend with... Lucy doesn’t take his pursuit of Monroe well but she’ll get over it. Perhaps.

It's not really a film that really goes anywhere but it’s the acting that makes this film, in what is an excellent cast that also includes Dominic Cooper and the acting institution that is Judi Dench, as is enshrined in law. She plays Sybil Thorndike, who was in the 1950’s appropriately enough was also a Dame and an institution herself.

The main plaudits though go to Michelle Williams, who really throws herself into the role of Marilyn Monroe and does an extraordinary job. You believe she's Monroe. A cert for an Oscar nomination you would think. Also Kenneth Branagh who’s portrayal of Laurence Olivier was also superb. Loved it.

(Sunday 18th December)

Standards To Keep Up

2011-12-17T00:00:00.000Z

Oddly no hangover this morning, just a slight queasiness. What I need to sober up is a trip to West Bromwich for the Santa Paws 5k. Partly to chalk another three miles off L’s target but also to support the folk at K9Running who are trying to get their running with dogs events off the ground. Although they don't seem to be trying very hard. Little publicity and even their website doesn’t appear in a search engine. Rather worryingly the pre-race instructions were emailed to only three addresses and two of them were L and me. So I expect nothing less than a top 3 finish from both of us. We have standards to keep up.

It’s a good job we decide to go, when we arrive at Sandwell Park Farm this morning we double the race numbers. Yes, there are only four of us. A fifth person decided it was too wet and miserable this morning and has clearly found something better to do.

I hang back at the start, well try to. Not easy when you’re attached to a dog. The early leader doesn’t look particularly fast and certainly the dog assisted pace he is currently setting looks unsustainable for both man and beast. Hurtling out of control along the footpath, he comes across an icy path and down he goes. Oh dear. I stop to help him up like the good citizen/competitor that I am. Then we overtake him.

For once, when in front, MD doesn’t look back and we build a reasonable lead before backing off and taking it steady around the rest of it, feeling sure we have at least a minutes lead on him. What we didn’t expect was to come in and then wait around ten minutes for everyone else. As the minutes clock by, I look at my watch, thinking L should be in any time soon and second place is still up for grabs. Then the chap and L with Doggo come in more or less together. The chap beats them, just, so L and Doggo come in third or first lady if you prefer (sorry mate). The goodie bag includes antlers for the boys or are they for us, I’m not sure.

So I win and L wins. Can’t get better than that can you? A small field, yes, but you can only beat the opposition that is put in front of you. So a successful day really and as L points out my second win and again after a heavy night out on the ale. Which kind of rips the rules of perceived wisdom up.

In the afternoon they are holding a Fun Dog Show, you know ugliest bitch and all that, plus a variety of junior and ‘Have-a-Go’ 2.5K races, all presumably in the rain. Good luck guys, I fear you’ll need it, we’re off home.

Later we head into town and renew our Broadway memberships, which means we can then splash the resulting 2-for-1 drinks vouchers on getting oiled before we use two of the complimentary cinema tickets on something festive. Value for money so far.

We take our seats for Arthur Christmas, an Aardman production, which turns out to be informative stuff. It appears that the title ‘Santa Claus’ is actually a sort of hereditary peerage handed down from father to son. The current incumbent of the title is Malcolm Christmas (Jim Broadbent) who was passed the title from his father, the now retired Grand Santa (Bill Nighy). Malcolm is expected to retire this year to hand over the ‘reigns’ (ha ha ha) to his eldest Steve (Hugh Laurie). Steve is the smart arse currently in charge of the North Pole Command Centre that tracks the Santa ‘project’ across the world. Meanwhile his younger son Arthur (James McAvoy) can only look on in wonder, from the post room to where he has been banished, as he's accident waiting to happen.

Christmas night is now a high-tech military operation involving thousands of elves and a giant spaceship in order to get millions of presents delivered in one night. Now it all makes sense at last.

This year’s operation at first appears to be a great success and much to Steve’s annoyance, with Mrs. Santa (Imelda Staunton) by his side, Malcolm postpones his retirement. All though is not as it appears, one child has been missed and their present, a new bike, remains undelivered.

Steve refuses to attempt to deliver the missing gift being more than happy to accept that one minor blip has occurred in his operation, one present out of millions, not a bad ratio. So it is left to Arthur and Grand Santa, assisted by Bryony (Ashley Jensen), the elf from the Wrapping Department, to go on a renegade delivery mission using the olden day methods of sleigh and reindeers (albeit ones on drugs, they snort magic fumes to power them through the sky). All to ensure that one little girl is not the child Santa forgot.

The idea behind the film is original, fun and very creative, at first. The film loses its way badly in the middle third of the film where too much mayhem ensues as our ‘heroes’ get repeatedly lost and into many sticky situations. It cheapens a great idea and feels extraneous.

Eventually, perhaps half an hour too late, we meander our way to the expected heart warming finale that eventually just about saves the film. Good stuff but should have been better.

We pop into the old ‘Hogshed’ pub now known as the ‘Major Oak’. Very impressed with the good beer selection, including Ring O Bells, a Christmas Ale from Ringwood and a very retro video jukebox that does annoy as much as these screens usually do.

(Saturday 17th December)

Girl On A Rope

2011-12-16T00:00:00.000Z

I'm on the bus for a third day in a row. I’m off to Cirque de Lumiere tonight or Derby Roundhouse college if you prefer. We’re going back to school for our Christmas Party.

L’s still asking for Christmas present ideas for me. I’ve got plenty of those but she wants something that she can go into a shop for. How quaint.

Before Cirque de Lumiere this evening, I have two hours to kill after work, so two of us end up in the Alexandra, consuming four pints along the way. Too much or not enough to get through a Christmas Party? Time will tell, I’m not a great fan of Christmas parties.

I don’t intend having much, if any, wine at the party. What I didn’t bank of them was them selling Hobgoblin straight from the barrel. Their literature did say they would be serving ‘traditional local beers’ but I didn’t believe them, with good cause as it turns out. Hobgoblin is brewed in Oxfordshire, so it’s not local by any stretch of the imagination but it's still an excellent beer. Not as excellent as it used to be when it was 5.6% but still pretty good in its current 4.5% low alcohol form.

Once inside we are ‘transported deep into a world of magical mystery, where a fusion of light and sound meet in a land which never quite exists...’ so they say. A decent light show it must be said and accompanied by some odd but impressive entertainment. Stilt walkers and nearly naked women dangling above us on ropes, Corde lisse not porn apparently. A touch sexist if you ask me but never mind.

The meal is pretty good and the wine free flowing but I largely keep off it in the interests of staying conscious. I escape fairly early as I’m quite drunk and would like to catch the 11.20 bus.

I head home to L who can tell me all about the Christmas Panto she’s been too, probably quite similar to what I’ve been to I imagine, only I bet she didn’t have a scantily clad girl on a rope dangling above her head.

(Friday 16th December)

A Double Crossing

2011-12-15T00:00:00.000Z

Apparently there’s snow in Sheffield, so Daughter will be pleased. Not.

There’s none here of course and it’s good to see that for once the schools haven’t been closed and the buses cancelled as a precaution.

L is working from home again, mixing Christmas puddings, writing Christmas cards etc etc. Presumably kicking balls too? Apparently not, as they are both asleep. Typical. I would be kicking balls if I was there. They always feel as if they have to exercise me.

But were they really both asleep? Apparently ‘my’ dog has stolen some bread off the worktop. Oh dear. MD appears to have double-crossed L by pretending to be asleep in his basket. He's smart that one. No wonder he left Doggo locked in the spare room yesterday, just in case someone had left any bread lying around. He obviously didn't want to share.

She’ll have to dock this morning's misdemeanour from his morning toast allowance.

We venture to Beechdale for squash tonight. I’ve not played there for at least ten years. What a tip, now I can see why. Obviously it affects my game.

Afterwards we go for a drink in one of our locals, one that I don’t usually go in. In fact the last time I was in here was last century. The place is your typical sort of estate pub but one that’s still looking for an estate to belong to as it’s marooned on the roundabout on Nottingham’s ring road.

It’s very local free tonight; in fact it’s almost totally people free. We go in, fully expecting to be confronted with the dreaded John Smiths smooth but instead we are faced with three real ales, one of which is Hobgoblin on top form. It also isn’t ruined by a barmaid who is pulling for the first time but is keen. We have to assist her. She also can’t work the till and for a moment it looks like we could be on for a freebie and she for the sack, until a barman turns up to show her how.

(Thursday 15th December)

Last Day At The Office

2011-12-14T00:00:00.000Z

Is it too cold, too icy and/or too windy to cycle? Maybe. I join the other wimps on the bus.

L heads off to Leamington to do a bit of shopping and to visit Son, who’ll no doubt agree that there is such a thing as a free lunch. L takes her germs on the train, which is fine. As it’s traditional to cough and splutter as much as possible on public transport. Almost as traditional as the delay, which today is due to a ‘failed’ train. Don’t they all.

I get home to find that our new chairs are just as pristine as when we left them but also to be greeted by only one dog. I had to free Doggo from the spare room, which he’d managed to break into and the door had shut behind him. I don’t know how long he’d been in there. MD, if he was feeling smart, could have helped him escape but perhaps he didn’t want to.

I don’t believe this. Last week we received a Christmas card that should have gone to a house in Newark which has almost the same address as us, only theirs is a ‘road’ whereas we’re a ‘crescent’. Plus there’s the really obvious fact this is Nottingham not Newark and the addresses have totally different post codes. Well I kindly reposted it and it’s come straight back! I scrawl NEWARK across it in big letters and post it again, surely it won’t come back a third time...

Tonight is Doggo’s last day at the office, his final Wednesday night training session as he’s now officially retired. It is simply the end of an era. Quite a sad day really.

(Wednesday 14th December)

Best Before

2011-12-13T00:00:00.000Z

L's got the whole week off, well, she’s working from home. So the boys will be thrilled. Work will unknowingly be thrilled too, judging by how full of germs L is at the moment. I’m off to work to get out of the way.

This week’s shopping challenge - Caraway seeds, which L needs for a recipe. Although, I’m sure we have some in our spice rack. We do. L brushes away the cobwebs from the jar to find a Best Before date of December 2002. Quite old then. They should add a nice hint of mould to her recipe, unless of course they’ve matured like a fine wine? Perhaps best not risk it and get some new ones but I can’t as Sainsbury’s don’t appear to have any.

My wallet is currently lying whimpering in the corner after L persuaded me to buy some new kitchen chairs. Four of them no less, which I thought was a bit extravagant, so we must be expecting guests.

They arrived today. At least I think they did because what actually arrived was a ton of cardboard, Styrofoam, plastic wrap and sellotape. I assume under all that are some chairs but it may be sometime before we find out.

They are nice wooden ones, so much less abrasive on the new puppy’s teeth than metal. I suppose they could go upstairs out of the way of such teeth but then they’d get broken by visiting teenagers... Dilemmas dilemmas. I trust the dogs but perhaps I best scrub that new puppy off the Christmas list. Anyway I’d rather have them downstairs where I can see them, stroke them, kiss them etc... considering the price.

While L is at another Book Club knees up, their second this month, they really are such a bunch of tearaways, I cook Persian Lamb. It’s amazing what you can find on the net, amongst the Russian wives and the Viagra. Then I put the Christmas tree up, well, what’s left of it. I really can't believe how much our tree is malting. This is particularly shocking as it’s made of plastic.

(Tuesday 13th December)

An Early Christmas Drink

2011-12-12T00:00:00.000Z

We get up, pack up and head back south via a trouble free M6, for once. That is after we’re found a rather nice breakfast in Ambleside. At Daisy’s Cafe I think it was. We’ll be back.

L also splashes the cash on a rather nice puffer jacket, which I am convinced she will never take off, even in the summer but we’ll see.

Once back home L heads out with the girls she usually runs with on a Monday night, although they’re not running, simply noshing and drinking in a restaurant in Derby instead.

MD has dog training or at least he was supposed to have. When we get there the arena has no lights but the owners haven’t bothered to tell anyone so we all turn up anyway. Someone suggests as we’ve all travelled some distance to be here... yeah like from Cumbria, we might as well go to the pub for an early Christmas drink. Sound idea.

(Monday 12th December)

The People’s Choice

2011-12-11T00:00:00.001Z

It’s not particularly cold, although there is snow on the hills, but the winds are not as low as they could have been and the tent does take a seriously romantic battering from the elements. Still, we’re snug and dry inside it.

By mid morning things have calmed down and the weather turns out dry with little wind, just in time for the Great Langdale Christmas Pudding 10k which kicks off at noon. This is the self styled ‘people’s choice 10K winter run’, hmm maybe. L’s only here for the mileage, I’m only here for the beer but it has become a bit of a tradition.

There are as usual two races over two days with the Saturday proving more popular than the Sunday. Race organisers who run practically everything on a Sunday take note. Just under 300 today but nearly 430 yesterday.

They encourage entrants to dress in festive costumes and as I recall I got defeated by a green elf last time, although I was just coming back from injury. That’s my excuse. There’s no repeat today, as far as I know. There are plenty of Santas and even the odd pudding but I think they’re all behind me.

L looks very fetchingly festive in her red top, Santa hat and Christmassy ear rings. Something is missing though. Those little red skirts with the fur trim have a certain something... Perhaps I’ll get her one for Bolsover next week.

The course is the usual out and back along the valley road starting and finishing at the Sticklebarn pub. It’s not the greatest of runs for me, terrible actually. I was supposed to be taking it steady but not that steady. My time of over 44 minutes is two minutes slower than on this course in April but depressingly also slightly slower than two years ago when I was injured and ‘allowed’ to take to easy. I’m a massive four minutes off what I did in 2008, when I was a youngster obviously but we won’t talk about that. Good job half marathons are where it’s now at. I hope.

Every finisher gets a Christmas pudding, this year from Mathew Walker which is a big step up from the usual Asda/Tesco ones. It’s still a bit odd though, us coming up to Cumbria to collect a pudding made in Derbyshire, near from whence we came. I’m sure they could source some Cumbrian ones if they really wanted to.

L is slower too but at least she’s got the excuse of coughing and spluttering her way around.

The queue for refreshments is a bit huge at the Sticklebarn, so we head to Chapel Stile and the Wainwrights instead to sample a new Hawkshead dark beer which is disappointing and the hot lamb cobs, which aren’t.

The problem with camping is we don’t have a hot bath to rest our weary legs in post-race and have to chill out in the tent instead.

We have tomorrow off work so that we can toast our disappointing times this evening, which we do in the Old Dungeon Ghyll, which is surprisingly busy for a Sunday night in mid December.

So which is better Snecklifter or Old Peculiar? L and I can never agree, so we have to go through the rigmarole of sampling both, again. This happens every time. It’s still inconclusive. L says OP, I say Snecklifter. So we’ll just have to do it all over again at New Year.

(Sunday 11th December)

Slaughter

2011-12-10T00:00:00.000Z

We’re on the park this morning, counting the deer, seeing how many have escaped the winter slaughter that has been going on this week. Sad but true. Well perhaps not to Doggo and MD who have never had much time for them. Come to think of it, neither have I...

Then I get the bus over to Derby to check on another kind of slaughter, that of Derby County. This one doesn’t arrive and instead we get the most boring hour of football you’ll ever not want to see. There was one shot between the two sides in that time, in the 43rd minute from Bristol City, if you’re interested but then the game sort of burst into life. They scored, probably by accident, but this at least woke the crowd up and subsequently the Derby team who went on to score two good goals and win the game. Which is a nice novelty to start off my long weekend.

I have Monday off because straight from the match we head up to the Lakes. L needs to add another six miles to her running total if she’s going to make her 500 and the Langdale Christmas Pudding 10k is an old favourite of ours. I’m happy to tag along if there’s dark stuff to be drunk.

It could be a cold one tonight, so we might need that dark stuff to keep us warm. Actually whereas it’s a mere two degrees as we head out of Derby, it’s oddly a balmy six degrees in the Lakes but we’ll have a few anyway just in case we need the insulation.

We end up in Sticklebarn until closing time, which is a first. We’re normally in a beery sleep long before then. How people manage to cause mayhem after drinking is beyond me. I’m always just too inebriated to be bothered.

(Saturday 10th December)

Scottish Proportions

2011-12-09T00:00:00.000Z

It’s a bit windy on the bike today but nothing of Scottish proportions. Although at lunch time the weather does seem to have a go at doing its worst. Thankfully things seem to have calmed down again by the time I cycle home.

Hopefully we won’t be getting those Scottish storms down here and the forecast is for low winds all weekend. Which is good news for those camping this weekend...

It’s certainly not too bad on the amble to the Victoria, where we dine in their tent, quite a chilly tent as it turns out. The dogs aren’t allowed in the food room and food isn’t allowed in the dog room, hence we're in the tent, in the garden.

We’re not the only ones under the gas heaters and it does have a certain charm, unless your girl has a faulty thermostat but then they probably all do. So after the food we head indoors.

(Friday 9th December)

They Often Blow In Twos You Know

2011-12-08T00:00:00.000Z

I’m back at Halfords for the second time this week replacing a headlight bulb. They often blow in twos you know, the assistant says. Yes I know and I’m sure you said that to me last time as well.

L has spotted this

Marmite Chocolate... You’ll love it or hate it...

No I don't so.

We have signed a pact. My squash opponent has promised to abstain from any sporting activity for 24 hours prior to tonight's game to remove the risk of cancelling again through injury. No excuses accepted tonight, he can come in a wheelchair if necessary. In return I have agreed to stay off the bike for fear of cancelling through bike breakdown.

I take the boys with me. Doggo does love a bit of boot sitting, although I’m not sure it does anything for MD.

It’s not a great game. Well, terrible actually, 0-5. Although I was very pleased with both the new racquet and new balls. The racquet packs a lot more punch than my old one, purely because it has new strings I guess. I just need to get the hang of how to use that punch... The balls had extra bounce, again I suppose purely due to being new.

The racquet it also the same as my opponent's, which is distressing as it makes us equals on the racquet front, so I can’t blame the equipment.

There are gritters everywhere tonight, ominous, or perhaps they just now have too much grit stockpiled.

(Thursday 8th December)

Hot And Bothered

2011-12-07T00:00:00.000Z

It’s quite a bit milder today, very windy though, all in the wrong direction. I arrive at work by bike a bit hot and bothered and almost dry. The rain caught me with about two miles to go.

Naturally L disagrees about the ‘mild’ bit, muttering something about her hands dropping off but then she says that in June, before reiterating that she glad she’s not a cyclist in this downpour. She's glad she's not a cyclist in any weather... Anyhow, downpour? What downpour... oh, that downpour. It’s not so much the rain, I don’t mind that, it’s the wind and it’s actually getting worse.

It is dry by the time I cycle home but still very windy but the wind’s in right direction for once. So, wa-hey, it’s a fast ride home. T’was good.

L’s also glad she’s not going to be standing in some horse shed tonight. Ah. No problem, MD will create enough hot air to keep the whole class warm.

(Wednesday 7th December)

There Is No Such Thing As Bad Weather

2011-12-06T00:00:00.000Z

The weather forecast says don’t bike, so I don’t. Initially I regret it as I walk to the bus. That is until I slip on a spot of ice. So perhaps a correct call after all and perhaps for once the forecast was right.

"There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing" so said Sir Rannulph Fiennes as he set off to Tesco on foot or somewhere.

I’m not sure if he pinched that quote but he’s wrong anyway. There are also the wrong tyres and perhaps the wrong mode of transport completely. Although there are plenty of bikes about, despite the ice. Mad people. I bet they’ll be someone wearing shorts somewhere.

There are also the wrong dogs or perhaps the wrong footwear. L is considering crampons after her slither with the dogs this morning.

It looks nice and snowy up in Scotland.

In fact they’ve probably got more than the Alps at the moment.

(Tuesday 6th December)

How Much Sleep?

2011-12-05T00:00:00.000Z

Liking a lie-in is in people's genes they reckon... and dogs too I reckon. Just exactly how much sleep do collies need? Most mornings I wake up wedged between the two dogs and L. I’m usually awake ages before all of them but that’s not to say I don’t like a lie-in too. ‘Let’s book a lie in’ are some of my favourite words.

It’s a nightmare drive in. I don’t know if the roads are only bad on the few days I drive or every day but this morning somebody tried to park their car on the armco barrier down the centre of the A52. Again. It doesn’t work, you can’t do it and you often end up in having to be rescued by emergency services but still they do it. A long queue.

No dog training tonight, so muddy football with the dogs in the garden instead.

(Monday 5th December)

All The Best Places

2011-12-04T00:00:00.000Z

L is panicking that she might struggle to clock up her 500 miles. There’s no chance of that, I’ve already ordered the commemorative t-shirts. It does mean though that we’ve got a pretty tough schedule between now and May, including a trip to Peterborough today. We go to all the best places, oh yes.

Today’s race is the Nene Valley 10 Miler, which sounds nice but, having been lured down to the area recently for the not-by-the-riverside Riverside Half, probably isn’t and there’s no t-shirt.

I’m here because anything has got be better than the Edwinstowe Christmas 10k again, off road and all for another red t-shirt with Christmas trees on it. It’s such a minefield picking a race at this time of year, they nearly all have ‘Reindeer’ or ‘Santa’ in the title and can often involve fancy dress. All to be avoided, I think.

So here we are trying to find the Rugby Club somewhere round the back of Sainsbury’s, before queuing for the temporary toilets and then finally milling about on the road outside Aldi looking for the start line. I tell you, Mo Farrah doesn’t know he’s born. It’s back there we’re told. Back up, back up, back up... then suddenly, with no evidence of a starting gun, horn, whistle or even a cry of ‘ready, steady, go’ we’re off, I think. I never did find out where the start line was.

It’s a bit of a dull one, around the local housing estates with a short stretch through a wood, which is presumably where the local muggings take place after dark.

The first few miles are livened up with a game of dodge the post. How it works is the chap in front of you suddenly yells ‘POST’ at the top of his voice and dodges violently to one side, causing you to hurdle the two foot high metal post that you are now hurtling towards. You then yell ‘POST’ yourself or sometimes perhaps ‘****ING POST’ as you pass the problem elegantly on to the next man. Great fun.

A few miles in, with everyone now more spread out, a broken leg starts to become less of a concern and I begin to concentrate on the race itself. Well, on the ponytail in front of me, which had the nerve to overtake but that I now have no intention of letting get away from me.

The course has PB potential, there's a few twisty bits but it's pretty flat apart from the underpass, oh and the bridge. It’s also devoid of all scenery but just in case you did miss something you get chance to do it all again with a second lap. The view though is no better second time around but by then I was focusing purely on getting a PB rather than debating the architectural merits of modern housing estates with the people around me.

Talking of which, I was just thinking what hairy legs the owner of the ponytail in front of me had when I realised that, although I was still following a white and blue running vest, it’s owner has suddenly turned into an grey haired chap. How did that happen? I really have not been concentrating enough. Still, it makes no odds; I can’t let him beat me either.

There’s a thimbleful of water on offer at halfway but in plastic cups, so I have to ease up to drink it. Then having been revived, a little, I go past the grey haired chap and tag on to the back of four other guys who I reckon are going at about the right pace to pull me round to the finish but they part, let me through and then fall behind me. That wasn’t supposed to happen either. This is going far too well, after doing all three of my previous ten milers in 1:13 perhaps I could possibly get a 1:12 this time?

I continue to pass people all the way around the second lap. That is until last 20 yards. Where did they all come from?

1:12:56 I reckon or maybe 1:12:57... Job done and a negative split, not done many of them. The official results say 1:12:59... They’re having me on but it still counts as sub 1:13, just. So I must have got my training (ha ha) and my pre-race routine (thanks L) right.

The goodie bag turns out to be just that, a bag, an empty one or you could have a drinks bottle. So I go for that, you can never have too many drinks bottles... or bags for that matter.

Then it’s back up to Derby, where I’m due at the Dog Club AGM before we head out on the tiles for what seems the first time in ages, taking in the Lincolnshire Poacher and a curry that is so cheap we have to tip them for fear of them going out of business.

(Sunday 4th December)

Walking Home

2011-12-03T00:00:00.000Z

I didn’t get up at 5am. I decided it wasn’t worth being on time to walk MD’s first course because it wasn’t one we’d do well on anyway as it included dogs up to G7. So an extra hour or so in bed ensued instead. In the end we got E’d but I don’t know if that down to not walking it or whether that would have happened anyway. Probably.

His second course was going to be the one we took home the first place trophy for and there’s a whole chicken leg waiting for him at home if he does, so I’m told. And for me? Probably just the leftovers.

The course turned out to be a bit trickier than what you’d expect in G3. Still, to my surprise and delight, we did the hard bit really well. So it’s all systems go until we missed out a weave pole and then for good measure took a pole down in the finish straight. We still came 20th with 10 faults. Which just goes to show we could have won that. Luckily there’s still the G3 jumping to come and we stand a good chance in that too but if he cocks that up as well, he’s walking home.

First though a G3-5 course where we’ll be beaten for sure by the G5s, though there’s no disgrace in that. The same judge who set the G3 sets a course that is oddly easier than the G3 one. I think he must have got them the wrong way around or perhaps he was spooked after only getting 8 clears from 140 dogs on the G3 one.

MD puts in a cracking run and we come 7th out of 224, beaten as expected by a load of G5s but still very very pleasing. Ah but then in the G3 Jumping, he has a shocker and we get E’d again. He really does pick the wrong classes to go well in. So he’s still walking home. It’s only 100 miles. See you later mate.

Meanwhile the old man so enjoyed his first ever Veterans run and he didn’t exactly pootle round it either, like a veteran is supposed to. In fact he comes 3rd, which is not to be sneezed at and I think he’s just secured the honour of the chicken leg.

Three rosettes in the end for the day.

My lunch time is spent in a meeting, arguing my clubs corner at a meeting to discuss one of the club competitions that we are involved in but that we may decide to withdraw from at tomorrow’s club AGM. So probably not time well spent.

(Saturday 3rd December)

Worth A Repeat

2011-12-02T00:00:00.000Z

I bike in. It’s a bit chilly but at least I don’t have any punctures today. I have a new tyre and a new tube, so I would hope that’s cured it.

The number of complaints over Jeremy Clarkson’s comments reaches 21,000. Impressive but presumably it just means the rest of the UK's 62 million population either agreed with him or got the joke.

We decide to stay in tonight again, as I may be getting up at 5am to head up to Preston. I haven’t decided on a departure time yet but last night’s unscheduled night in was so very pleasant, it was worth a repeat.

For romantic entertainment we watch the gruesome thriller the ‘Bone Collector’ which is based on the Jeffrey Deaver’s book that we have both read, well listened to. I thought the book took a lot of getting into but at least a film will usually get straight to the point. Although I can see the film is terribly miscast before we even watch it. Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie are not remotely appropriate and they have to rewrite the roles for them. In fact they rewrite nearly everybody’s roles, so it’s not a great effort.

(Friday 2nd December)

A Ploy? Me? Never.

2011-12-01T00:00:00.000Z

The BBC are in trouble after Jeremy Clarkson said he would like to see striking public sector workers taken outside and shot in front of their families. Bless him. Of course the media reported his little joke totally out of context but that’s what the media’s for I believe. What was even funnier was that the humourless Unison union clearly only saw the media’s version before going off on one. Which, at a stroke, not only made them look a bit stupid for not getting the joke but also meant they missed a golden opportunity to fire back a similar comment demanding an even worse fate for Clarkson, which not only would have been incredibly popular with the public but would have done more for their credibility than their strikes have.

Due to the ‘pay in advance, no refunds’ policy the council is now employing to squash bookings I have ended up with two bookings tonight at two different centres. I ring up and manage to persuade them to roll one over to next week. So everything is sorted, that is, until opponent cancels on me.

They’re more bolshie when I ring to move the second one and at first they won’t let me because I haven’t given the required 24 hours notice. So instead I try to talk L into a game. She's immediately wary and isn’t sure whether to be flattered or suspicious. She thinks it’s all a ploy to get her into a short skirt. A ploy? Me? Never.

As she’s clearly not that keen, I again try to reschedule and getting a different person this time, I succeed. Damn, it would have been nice to have seen the short skirt get an airing. Plus I’ve now again got two courts booked for next week.

All is not lost, far from it. We have an excellent night in instead, just the two of us, the two damp muddy dogs with their damp muddy footballs and L’s slow cooking corned beef hash in the oven. She knows all the top seduction techniques.

(Thursday 1st December)

A Valiant Attempt

2011-11-30T00:00:00.005Z

I had penciled in another run but I did do eleven miles yesterday and the calves are feeling a bit tight. So I take the bus instead, listening to another murderous book. The second of two Mark Billingham books, having listened to ‘Sleepy Head’

I’m now on to ‘Scaredy Cat’.

Gruesome but good.

It’s National Christmas Shopping Day today of course, or something like that. A lot of people are off anyway and the roads are lovely and quiet. L reports that the leisure centre and the park are both closed. Which is a bit inconvenient, although this randomly happens from time to time anyway but perhaps it’s not a coincidence this time. The leisure centre staff are a bit daft not turning in, everyone is fighting hard to stop the council closing the leisure centres for good and another day of lost income won’t help their cause. A good pension is all very well but having a job is surely more important.

My turn to break the house rule today. A Christmas celebration before the 1st of December, albeit on the last day of November. I meet up with the old school chums for a few pints in the Alexandra and the Royal Standard. We order food in the Standard and are then offered a load of leftover sandwiches and snacks from a meeting that’s been held there. We make a valiant attempt at both our meals and the leftovers.

(Wednesday 30th November)

Washout

2011-11-29T00:00:00.002Z

There’s a match tonight (whoopee doo, another defeat), so I park the car at my parents' place and run in. Five and a half miles. It was good, well ok. My legs still ache from Sunday’s unnecessary, as regards the cashback, gyming.

I avoid the rain too, L says she got drenched on the way to work but we've had no rain here. There are some very black clouds skulking around but no rain. Had I cycled, then obviously it would have rained on me, probably while I was fixing my puncture.

It does rain in the afternoon and L says she doesn’t envy me sitting at the match in it. That’s undercover, what about not envying me running back to parents’!

Somehow I again avoid getting wet and have a decent run back in the other direction. The match though is a washout. No I don’t mean rain wise but performance wise. Another defeat.

A quick pint and then I head home with a food parcel from my Mum. No not for the hard up students. Its Sunday lunch leftovers for the dogs, although it looks like two full portions to me, each in their own little plastic boxes. Spoilt?

(Tuesday 29th November)

Supermarket Wars

2011-11-28T00:00:00.006Z

Supermarket Wars. I’ve been handed several slips of paper at Sainsburys since they launched their ‘Brand Match’ a month or more ago. Usually it’s a voucher to use next time but confusingly sometimes it’s an identical slip showing how much you’ve saved instead. Although this has only happened to me once.

They say they ‘compare the price of brands against what Asda or Tesco are charging for them that day’ and then ‘work out any difference in price. If the same branded shop could have been bought for less at Asda or Tesco, we’ll give you a coupon for the difference when you checkout’.

It’s all a con of course. Rather than admitting it's a 'fair cop, you should have gone to Asda' and deducting the difference from your bill or converting it to Nectar points they give you a voucher which has to be used within two weeks. So it’s now in their interests to be the most expensive so that they can give you a whopping big voucher, in my case often a fiver or so, which makes you come back smartest to spend it. When of course you’ll be given another voucher... etc etc.

Today’s voucher is for £4.14 on a basket of goods worth £52 of which the majority of stuff was fruit, veg and meat products which are not ‘branded’ and therefore don’t count for their ‘promotion’. Baffling.

L’s Christmas list arrives by email, breaking the house rule of no mention of Christmas before the 1st December. Tut tut.

I have a quick look at it. Asics Gel DS Trainers! Those are serious running shoes and obviously what I wear. Welcome to the club. Ah, what’s this, they have to be in fuchsia. Hmmm, I’ll take back, you can’t run quick in fuchsia, surely.

I train MD tonight and even the old man gets a run around. He was whining so much, like a puppy, when I took him in to say hello to a few people that I let him have a little play. He loved it, stuffed up his weaves up though.

(Monday 28th November)

Gary Speed

2011-11-27T00:00:00.000Z

With no events, a day off to recover from two nights predominately on the wine. Which is not often a good thing. The two nights that is, not the day off.

Daughter returns from the Skegness Music Festival... or whatever it’s more glamorous name is and we dispatch her back to Sheffield via the train.

In the evening I’m tempted into the gym, which is the second time this month and as I only need to attend once a month to get my ‘cashback’, it was actually unnecessary. 15k on the bike was sort of impressive but 1k on the rower is a bit meagre. Still it all keeps my fitness ticking over.

The whole day though is sort of overshadowed by the awful death of Gary Speed. I saw it first on the BBC website and just went cold. I had watched the guy not 24 hours earlier, as he put in a polished performance on Saturday’s Football Focus, which just made the news all the more shocking. He was only 42.

I don’t mean to belittle anyone’s death but I think it’s fair to say that because a lot of people in the public eye and in particular footballers are not the most likeable of people, the initial shock of their deaths is often followed by a general collective shrug of indifference.

Not so Gary Speed. His death has rocked people because he was a genuine nice guy and a footballer who simply got on with playing football and didn’t trouble the tabloids. If you wanted a role model he was it. When he became a manager, he simply got on with managing and with Wales he was starting to have some deserved success.

Simply stunned. RIP.

(Sunday 27th November)

An Impressive Table Decoration

2011-11-26T00:00:00.000Z

An odd sort of weekend... no events. No dogs shows, no running. A bit of cycling though as I cycle the nine miles to where I abandoned the car at the wine tasting last night. I take my best bike, leaving the errant puncture prone one at home. It was actually quite a workout, more so than I intended due to how windy it was and all against me. All this after a session on the park with the boys of course.

In the evening we’re over in Derby in the time warp surroundings of the International Hotel. Nothing seems to have changed in this place since the 1970’s including the menu. This actually probably means it’s an ideal location for a 50th Wedding Anniversary, which is why we’re here tonight. No, not ours, for L’s parents.

I think the International does Christmas menus all year round, so it’s not surprise that’s what we get tonight, along with Christmas Crackers, a visit from Santa and dancing girls in little red fur trimmed outfits. So it wasn’t all bad.

It’s quite a good do actually, although mainly for the occasion rather than the location. L provides the defining moment by getting a couple of old black and white photos of her parents blown up to poster size proportions, which make an impressive table decoration.

We top and tail the evening with a visit to a couple of local pubs, that we haven’t been to for ages. In fact L says she’s never been with me to the Ye Olde Spa Inn on Abbey Street. Oops, that must have been someone else. While we’re there they treat us to live coverage of Derby’s latest defeat, so we don’t linger too long.

We’ve definitely been to the Crompton Tavern together though, which is where we kill time before the bus home.

(Saturday 26th November)

Retail Ventures Of Ill Repute

2011-11-25T00:00:00.000Z

The second day of my course and we’re ripping through the material at a rate of knots, which means the tutor starts to cover additional areas with us, which is very good of him. The sandwiches are slightly posher today, pretty much the same range but they must have heard my mutterings because they cut the crusts off and sliced the sandwiches into finger strips. Completely unnecessary of course but posher.

When I finish and head for home, L is already on her way back from work. On the way we both go in and out of retail ventures of ill repute, you know, Mr Booze, Booze Are Us, Boozerbuster, etc etc. We’re looking for Le Piat D’Or because we’re going to a wine tasting tonight and it would be nice to take something classy with us and L says it’s where her red wine habit started.

I pop into the Tales of Robin Tescos, formerly an attraction dedicated to Mr RH, now it’s... yep, what else. Surely Lidl must sell Le Piat D’Or? Nope, not even a Blue Nun. I find a multitude of dodgy wines in Londis but still no Le Piat D’Or.

Then I think I’ve possibly found the next best thing in 'The Booze Stop' when I stumble across a dusty bottle of Black Tower, hardly cheap at £7 a bottle.

Then though L trumps that by finding the genuine article, also not cheap at £6. So we’re sorted. Our hosts tonight will be so impressed.

The wine tasting consists of eight red wines, one for each guest, all disguised in brown paper to hide their dodgy (or not so dodgy) origins. We then all taste each one and give them marks out of ten.

As well as Le Piat D’Or we also take what looks to be a rather nice Malbec but isn’t. In fact the Le Piat D’Or beats it in the scoring as both wines finish sort of mid-table. Bottom is a wine someone reckons they paid £18 for. Ouch. Top are a couple of homebrew jobs, brewed by our hosts... So it could all have been a fix or it could just be a fair indication of the quality of supermarket wine.

An interesting evening though and our hosts also put on a terrific cheeseboard.

(Friday 25th November)

Something Appropriate For The 21st Century

2011-11-24T00:00:00.000Z

After years of resisting, my company has finally managed to get me on to a training course with the intention of updating my computer skills to something appropriate for the 21st century. I previously managed to look so appalled at the prospect of a five day training course in London, that they dropped the idea for a full year.

Anyhow, their latest offer of two short two day courses in my home town of Nottingham seemed a difficult proposition to find fault with. So this morning I get to walk down into Nottingham with L before meeting up with a colleague, who is also on the course, and heading to the sophisticated surroundings of the Lace Market Hotel, where the course tutor will attempt to instruct us in newfangled internet development techniques.

The course turns out to be pretty good and the new language we're being taught not that dissimilar to what we do now. So it's all fairly easy to get the hang of. The hotel lunch was a bit disappointing though, not at all posh, as was expected. The sandwiches they brought us were a mix of cheese and tomato, egg mayonnaise and salmon on white bread with crisps. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind. They did bring some poshish salad I suppose, you know those inedible salad leaves you often see used as plate decoration.

It’s every runners dream... to set a new PB with little or no effort. Well, it seems a runner who had decided not to even compete still managed to trigger the timing at the start and finish with his timing chip that was in his bag and thereby knocked eight minutes off his PB and came top 20 as well. Well, at least that’s his story.

Daughter is heading to us from Sheffield today. I’ve helped her purchase two sets of train tickets. One set for coming home and another for getting herself to Skegness for a music festival thing tomorrow. So let confusion reign or in her words ‘it’s gonna go t*** up’. Thankfully it doesn’t.

It’s good to have her home... well, it's different anyhow.

(Thursday 24th November)

Tea & Chocolate Biscuits

2011-11-23T00:00:00.000Z

It’s cold this morning, a mere one degree, which is one reason not to cycle. Another is that I don’t trust the damn bike at the moment, I take the bus.

We’ve hosted a few student parties at our place over the last few years and our ‘guests’ have never ceased to amaze us at their powers of destruction. One thing they have proven to be very adept at breaking is clothes horses, using just their bare hands and an unusually large intake of Strongbow. So it smacks of a bit of a setup that a student from the University of Derby managed to get herself trapped in one for more than an hour.

Hmmm. She's probably just got a thing about firemen.

The people across the road from us put up their Christmas lights a week ago, now they’ve added a flashing blue lights and an illumianted Santa. The effect, I assume, is supposed to be Christmassy but it just makes me feel like we’ve moved to Soho.

L’s at a leaving do tonight, for one of the council librarians, which is actually being held at the libary and will be, according to L, a night of tea and chocolate biscuits.

I walk up with the dogs to meet her. She tumbles out looking a bit sloshed. Tea and chocolate biscuits indeed.

(Wednesday 23rd November)

Totally In The Dark

2011-11-22T00:00:00.000Z

Well it wasn’t raining when I set off on the bike this morning but it certainly was by the time I arrived at work. Soaked. Still, I managed to keep the bike right way up on those slippery corners and avoided all the potholes, for a change.

I’m not so lucky on the way home. Another flat! I’m not sure whether I actually hit a hole or a nail or something or whether I just managed to get something 'sharp n deadly' between the tyre and the tube last time I changed it. It happens.

I guess perhaps I’ve been kind of lucky where I’ve had flat before... either in daylight or in well lit streets, but not tonight. Tonight I’m totally in the dark, midway between Borrowash and Risley. No street lights and not even a pavement on my side of the road.

I’ve not long crossed over to the other side and I’m sat doing the deed by the light of my own bike light when a nice young lady stops in her car and turns her headlights on me so that I can see what I'm doing. What a star. Unlike the half dozen or so fellow cyclists who don't stop to even commiserate. By the way, I do always stop to offer help. It's always declined thankfully but it's the thought that counts.

We chat a bit, as I struggle with a new tube that refuses to inflate. Then when I'm nearly done she makes her excuses and leaves. Either my small talk is boring her, she's fed up of standing in the cold or perhaps she only pulled over to check me out and has now decided, nah, not interested. Anyhow, off she goes. Still a star though.

The tube is still refusing to inflate, so I try and get a bus. Two turn me down. The first is too full, the second says it's company policy not to take bikes. Hmmm. Even though I’ve done it countless times before. Clearly he thinks I’m going to stab someone with my bike pump. The third driver I stop has an empty bus and probably feels he has to take me. Another star.

Unfortunately all this means that I’m too late to make squash, so I have to ring and cancel.

I also can’t get hold of L, who’s forgotten her mobile today. She will get a bit of a shock when she gets home and finds the car still there, when it should be at the squash courts.

I spend the evening repairing the tyre and testing all the tubes that have been failing me. They don’t appear to be puncturing; it’s more a case of the valves seem to be failing. Time for a new make of tubes I think.

(Tuesday 22nd November)

A Little Bit Fit

2011-11-21T00:00:00.000Z

Neither L nor I ache as much as we did after the Lakeland Dirty Double. So I guess we must be just a little bit fit.

MD enjoys this evening’s dog training so much that twice when I try to get him to go in the boot of the car after his training is complete; twice he turns heels to run back into the training arena for another crack at the equipment. I have to admire his dedication but it’s time for Doggo’s walk around the car park, then it’s time to barter with the cheese man for a slab of Stilton and then its home time.

Well after I’ve rescued L from the International Hotel where she’s talking champers and trying to negotiate the minefield that buying some is. She welcomes my advice but speaking as someone who has yet to find champagne that he likes that could be difficult. Do I recommend we go cheap on the assumption that I won’t like any of it or go expensive in the hope that you might get what you pay for? Looking at those prices... decision made. Hope her folks aren’t reading this, as it’s for their anniversary bash on Saturday.

(Monday 21st November)

It Wasn’t Supposed To Be Like This

2011-11-20T14:12:00.000Z

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was supposed to be stood on the sidelines, a bacon roll in one hand and a coffee in the other, watching everyone else run the St Neots Riverside Half Marathon. I have however discovered I have much less self control that I thought which has caused me to buy a race number off someone who has wimped out of competing today, I mean was unable to attend.

So we drive an hour and a half down the A1 to discover that, to my untrained eye at least, the race isn’t actually in St Neots and isn’t down the riverside. We appear to actually be in Eynesbury which is next door to St Neots, so perhaps close enough. The river though is not in evidence anywhere. No matter it’s supposed to be a scenic run anyway, river or not. Well it may have been a scenic route but it’s difficult to tell as everything is under a very heavy mist for most of the day. Still I’m sure it was very nice.

It’s also quiet cold. We leave Nottingham at a barmy 6 degrees but as we head south the temperature actually dips into the negative on occasion. Neither of us has brought any cold weather kit with us, long sleeves etc. I haven’t even got my running gloves and make do with a fleece pair I had in the car.

The 1200 places sold out long ago but despite operating a transfer window system for those who bottled it; there are still only 950 on the start line. What is it with competitors? Nice warm bed too big a pull was it? Hmmm.

Even with 950 it’s still a bit congested in the first few miles on the narrow roads around here and I tread on a few toes. We also cause chaos with the local traffic and annoy dozens of car drivers. I’m not sure how they got away with that but I’m all for a bit of traffic annoyance.

The reason for the congestion is maybe because I’m directly behind the 1:45 pacers, along with about 200 other people. What we need is a nice big hill to drop say 190 of them off the back but aside from one cheeky short incline through one of the villages it’s a relatively flat course. I could actually quite fancy a gentle 1:45 today and being wedged in with them at least stops me setting off at a suicidal pace. This pace though, 7:25 for mile one and 7:37 for mile two, isn’t exactly 1:45 pace, they should be doing 8:00s.

Overall it’s a very well organised race and an honourable mention goes to the marshals, of whom there were many and all were very encouraging, if occasionally in a ‘I’m glad it’s not me running this’ sort of way. The drinks stations (four of them) all had bottled water, which is much better than cups and they even had jelly babies. Although I had to decline because I’m trying to give them up as I can’t breathe and chew at the same time. Plus the girl who was handing them out them had a bit of a dispense problem and most of them were ending up on the floor. She needs to work on that. The only thing missing for a perfect race was the training. My training that is e.g. the lack of it.

So loosely enjoyable and the flat (apparently slightly downhill) last three miles meant that even I had a fast-ish finish as I tried to keep ahead of those 1:45 pacers.

Race HQ was at the local leisure centre, yet the start was amongst a housing estate and the finish at a nearby school. It was actually quite a long way back to the HQ, well it is if you’re crawling there. It takes me so long to get there that my name is already up on the results when I arrive. The queues for the massages are already quite long and the masseurs don’t look that gentle either, or attractive, so I head back to the car to get the boys.

L finishes before I get back to the finish, ahead of schedule again. I wish she’d slow down; she’ll be overtaking me soon if she keeps this up. She’s just outside her season’s best which she did at Birmingham last month.

The T-shirts are long sleeve, of the technical variety and predominately red but they’re not too bad. They have a bit of a supply error though and L doesn’t get the small size she ordered, or even a medium for that matter.

L offers to drive back home and I happily hand over the reins.

In the evening we refresh down the Admiral Rodney with Broadside and decent enough food. I was impressed with the size of my ‘Codfather’. There was enough for two dogs as well as for me.

(Sunday 20th November)

Voyage Of Discovery

2011-11-19T00:00:00.000Z

L’s off jet setting again. This time on a voyage of discovery by bus to Mansfield. It’ll be interesting to see if she discovers anything there.

I’m on the park, trying to teach MD to carry his ball in a straight line, preferably a sort of forwards direction, to save myself some shoe leather. I’m supposed to be exercising him, not the other way around. I’m not sure I have much success.

Then I’m off to watch the flypast and perhaps some of the match. As Derby lose 2-0 to Hull, the flypast is obviously the highlight. This is the flypast trailing the ‘We only had ten men’ banner that many fans have clubbed together to raise money for.

It refers to when we beat Forest last month 2-1 after being a goal down and a man down from the 3rd minute. It flies over the City Ground before circling Pride Park at around 3:15.

It’s good to see that the Forest fans haven’t trumped us and clubbed together for an anti-aircraft gun.

We stay in, bloody half marathon tomorrow.

(Saturday 19th November)

Big Cats

2011-11-18T00:00:00.000Z

On the bike and yet another puncture. I even fell down the very same hole again. (Sigh). It is such a dreadful stretch of road, hole after hole. I think at least half of the punctures I’ve had over the years have been on this same half a mile of road.

I think the chap whose front fence I lean my bike against while I repair it is a getting a bit sick of me. Then again, he said ‘good morning’ to me today, so perhaps not. We’ll be exchanging Christmas cards soon.

Then as I pedal into work I pass a pack of leopards, tigers, cheetahs and other assorted cats, I’m sure there was a tabby in a short skirt among them but I may have been mistaken, all heading to the Roundhouse sixth form college. So it must be Children in Need night again.

The very cosmopolitan L takes her second train journey in two days and meets Daughter for lunch in Sheffield. In Bungalows and Bears, no less. Which looks (via their website) as interesting as it sounds. I wonder if Pudsey will be popping in there later?

I take it easy on the ride home. I have to. I have no more inner tubes.

Then a little wander to the Victoria in Beeston tonight.

(Friday 18th November)

You Are In A Queue...

2011-11-17T00:00:00.000Z

Having failed to get Cycling World Cup tickets via British Cycling on Tuesday I’m online at bang on 10am this morning to snag some the moment they go on sale to the general public, unfortunately via the incredibly clunky system that is Ticketmaster. After a ‘you are in a queue - waiting time eight minutes’ message I am informed, around eight minutes later, that they’re all sold out.

So having not missed a Cycling World Cup for three years, I won’t be at this one. I'm beginning to hate the Olympics. Unlike the Olympic Stadium itself the new velodrome is supposed to be for life, not just for the Olympics, so one wonders why they didn't they build one with more seating?

After that perhaps I could have done with something stronger than my first ever 2.7% beer at lunchtime. 2.7%? Why? You ask. The government has reduced beer duty for beers of 2.8% strength and below in an attempt to persuade us to not get ratted every night on Special Brew. A worthy aim but one that will only work if the beers taste good. So what does Everards’ Southgate Bitter taste like... well, water. So I’m afraid I’m going to stick to something with at least a 4 on the front.

It does mean that I’m sober enough to give Daughter a cookery lesson by email this afternoon.

‘Shoot me now...’ It sounds like L’s having a ‘great’ time in London, where she is for work. ‘Chill some nice white wine for me and I'll be forever grateful. Just leave a straw by the bottle.’ Yep a great time. I dutiful put the wine in the fridge as requested because I like the sound of forever grateful.

Another committee meeting tonight and for once it’s a good one. A small majority group of us voted everything that moved down and despite starting half an hour late still finished at around 9pm. Which means I can get back to Nottingham in time to pick a girl up off Ilkeston Road and bring her home to devil my kidneys. I think that’s what she said they were called.

(Thursday 17th November)

The Austerity Sandwich

2011-11-16T00:00:00.000Z

I attempt to run into work. It was hard work. I just couldn't get going, then when I did I ran rather flatfooted which made my Helvellyn ankle sore, then I think my back went. So it went quite well really.

We have a new sandwich van on Pride Park which looks promising. I just hope it keeps coming and doesn’t give up after a few months like most of them seem to have done. The sandwich selection looks good too. No austerity sandwich though, like the 7.5p toast sandwich that made the news this week. Victorian apparently. News that may interest the studently challenged Sheffield and Warwick branches of our household.

My pub trip after work is off, which is a shame, as I've used it as an excuse to not do any training tonight. One mate forgot all about it and hasn’t been checking his email but isn’t on the ale anyway, as he's been ill. The other mate is ill right now, full of cold, but would have answered the call of duty anyway. So it sounds like I had a lucky escape really. Anyhow, we’re rescheduled, so now I can now reuse it as an excuse to not do any training before my next race in a fortnight.

Still tonight's cancellation is all good news for the dogs, whom I can now speed home to.

(Wednesday 16th November)