A Pleasant Leg Stretch

L is so convinced she isn’t going to be running the Burton 10k today that she breaks her own boundaries before we even roll out of bed. Then she decides she is fit to run and then blitzes it in a good time.

Although she nearly didn’t get the chance to blitz anything as we struggle to get to the start at Shobnall Leisure Centre because most of the surrounding roads are closed due to road works. We have to abandon our car in a street somewhere and walk the rest of the way, as do a fair number of the competitors although others do seem to have cracked the secret code and found a way to the car park.

The course is undulating, or rather largely uphill in the first half and downhill in the second half. It finishes with a lap of the athletics track at Shobnall. It was a pleasant leg stretch.

In the evening we are at Broadway to see Animals. 

Laura (Holliday Grainger) and Tyler (Alia Shawkat) are two friends who share a flat in Dublin and enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle with lashings of drink, drugs and casual sex. Robin Ellacott as you've never seen her before.

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The pair simply get through their days so that they can live their nights but you have to wonder how, as they both appear to work as baristas, they can afford to do this. It is true that they do seem to have a knack of finding functions where there is free drink on offer while Tyler is shameless about decanting the dregs left in other people’s glasses into her own. There is barely a single scene in the film where wine is not being drunk or drugs being snorted. A lot of the film’s budget must have gone on ‘substances.

The girls’ friendship is a close one, at times they even share a bed and rarely leave each other's side, but as they enter their 30s Laura begins to wonder if it’s time to avert an early death and grow up. She’d also quite like to finish the book she’s been writing for the last ten years, which only stretches to ten pages at the moment.

Her sister, once their partying partner in crime, is now married, pregnant and sober. She is increasingly disapproving of her sister's lifestyle and of Tyler in particular. Whereas Laura is close to her family, Tyler never sees hers.

An opportunity for a more balanced way of life presents itself when Laura meets classical pianist Jim (Fra Fee). He is diligent, level-headed and hard working. A grown up even. Everything she isn’t. 

Jim tries to fit in with Laura’s partying but he just isn’t very good at it. While Laura starts to think more and more that settling down with Jim might be quite a nice option. She tries to bridge both of her worlds, not wanting to become as boring as her sister but equally not wanting to abandon her best friend, and mostly fails. Tyler is quick to see which way the wind is blowing and doesn’t like the prospect of losing her friend.

Laura then compounds her dilemma by meet a dodgy poet called Marty (Dermot Murphy) who she clearly has the hots for but can’t follow through, well... almost but not entirely, you assume out of loyalty to Jim. Then when she finds out that Jim is cheating on her she has the nerve to be upset about it. They separate, leaving Laura alone to perhaps finally finish that book...

It’s one of those films that just drifts along and that’s a style I really like. None of the characters in the film are particularly likeable, so it’s hard to know where your sympathies lie, but that’s the point really. Well worth a look.

A Couple Of Crocks

Practically everyone has banned L from running the Nottingham 10k today including her physio and her surgeon boss but she’s here on the start line with me, who no one has banned running but they should have done as I have a very slim chance of getting round in one piece. L claims it won't look much like a run, so she’s not going against anyone’s advice.

We have walked down and have clocked two beat boxes on the way but, as is becoming the way now, only one registers, scoring us zero.

A rare feature for Nottingham is that this race had a city centre start from the Old Market Square and hopefully it will stay that way in future years as it made for a great atmosphere.

In 2007 the much loved fountains in the square were flattened so that the space could be used for (money spinning) ‘events’ but it has taken nearly ten years for a major running race to be held here. Although I'm sure the real reason the square was changed was because they got fed up with students tipping washing up liquid in to the fountains which caused soap bubbles to go everywhere. Oh what fun we had.

So for once the square hasn’t got a giant Ferris wheel, a skating ring or the dreaded beach on it, it has us.

Then we’re off and heading to the Park which means some nice hilly bits and yes, it's quite a cheeky little course making the most of the undulations of Nottingham. I start quite well, at a fairly good pace and pain free, although so well strapped up that if I stop they may slap me in a pyramid.

From the Park it’s round the back of the Railway Station and then onto the Embankment. The water station is at 5k on the Embankment and I almost get there. The calf goes pop at about 4.8k with about 22 minutes on the clock, so I was happy with that. Oh well, race over and I decide the walk the rest of the way. Sadly this gives me far too good a view of the runner receiving CPR from fellow runners with just 500m to go.

By the time I have collected by bag from the luggage van I have already received a text message congratulating me on my time of almost 1:08. Hmmm, isn’t it about time that automated results systems allowed you to give them your target time, so rather than congratulations I would have ‘Commiserations on your appalling time of almost 1:08 ps how's the calf?’ instead. Entirely optional of course.

L comes in barely two minutes behind, also hobbling but looking far less injured that me.

The race t-shirt isn’t bad but doubt I’ll wear it much, it has far more illustrious race wear ahead of it. We get the bus home.

Later we head back into town to catch a nice romantic film called ‘Green Room’ after adding another dark beer, Grafton’s Black Abbots, to my trail in the Lord Roberts. Broadway also has dark one on in Nottingham’s Foundry Mild.

Green Room is the tale of an amateur punk band called the 'Ain’t Rights' on tour in Oregon without enough money for fuel to get back home. A problem they generally solve by syphoning it from the tanks of other vehicles. After one gig is cancelled, a journalist gets them a show at what turns out to be a neo-Nazi skinhead club in the middle of nowhere.

They make the best of it and show their bravado by opening with a cover of the Dead Kennedy's 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off' which does a pretty good job of winding up the locals. Despite that, the show goes well enough and they're just about to get the hell out of there when their bassist Pat (Anton Yelchin) accidentally stumbles upon the body of a girl has just been murdered in the club's green room.

This results in Pat and his bandmates Sam (Alia Shawkat), Tiger (Callum Turner) and Reece (Joe Coe) being locked inside them green room by the management, in the form of Darcy (Patrick Stewart), the rather aloof owner, and his lead henchman Gabe (Macon Blair). They are affectively held hostage in the green room along with a girl called Amber (Imogen Poots) who was a friend of the deceased.

Darcy’s solution to the problem is to leave no witnesses to the murder and to frame the band for everything. So from being locked in, the band now barricaded themselves in but it soon becomes clear that that is not a good long term plan and escaping, preferably alive, is the only way out. What follows is a deadly cat and mouse game between the band members and the skinheads who now have the club has now been surrounded, one which rapidly spirals out of control.

The film does then become an almost relentless bloodbath but quite a cultured one as it does at least manage to get us quite well acquainted with the main characters, which means you feel for them more, before they are slaughtered. It also makes a good job of conveying the claustrophobic sense of hopeless inescapability that they face.

In a cast that is mainly young and largely absent of big names, you can’t really second guess who will survive, which adds a rare touch of suspense. Overall, quite a tense experience.

We finish the evening on the Borlase and two more dark ones, Lincoln Green Tuck and Acorn Gorlovka.

(Sunday 15^th May)