A Bit Of Lashing

On Tuesday I am dispatched by work to what turns out to be a torturous project meeting in Birmingham bookended by two torturous slow crawls through the traffic at either end. Which, of course, is always the way these days.

I am home in time to dogging however, our second batch in two days. Monday's ended with us meeting L from Derby where she’d been out on the lash. Well, on the lash-lite anyway.

Wednesday is my turn for a bit of lashing in Derby, as I head to the Alexandra and then the Brunswick after work. Again it’s a lite-ish session, L and I can do the heavy stuff together at the weekend.

L and Daughter meanwhile go for a zigzag with the boys. Strapping a dog to Daughter is fast becoming the only way to slow Daughter down on a run. She is getting quicker all the time and has now even enlisted a personal trainer.

I manage to bike on Thursday and L has her tennis in the evening. After which we hot foot it to the Beer Festival. As her tennis doesn’t finish until 9pm I pre-booked a taxi to get us there as quickly as possible. Naturally we didn’t expect a pre-booked taxi to turn up fifteen minutes late.

The beer festival this year is at the Ice Stadium while the Castle is renovated. They have received a lot of grief for this mainly because it’s indoors. Personally an outdoor festival in a drafty marquee in the middle of October was never a pulling point for me but each to their own.

This year I’m warm, there’s plenty of seating and lots of space. They have created a few outdoor areas to keep the doubters happy but there really was no need. Indoors is fine. I felt that the festival had almost come home, the old festivals used to be indoors at the Victoria Leisure Centre in Sneinton and I haven’t had such a good time at the beer festival since the last one of those. Long may it continue.

We have some great, and largely local, beer from Thornbridge, Lincoln Green, Lenton Lane, Lines, Navigation and Blue Monkey. Ah yes, Blue Monkey. They supply the beers of the night in Chimperial Stout at 8.5% and their birthday celebration beer Woody Bourbon at 6.7%

Shock news. On Friday I go to the gym after work.

(Friday 19^th October)

A Meticulously Planned Weekend

We are back at home for the weekend because we were looking forward to a fairly eclectic weekend in Birmingham. Tears For Fears had scheduled a gig at the conveniently central NIA so that we could both revisit our youth (or earlier youth, as obviously we’re still in our youth) but then they cancelled. This had ruined our meticulously planned weekend which included Birmingham by train, a hotel and the next day, for L, the Birmingham 10k.

What’s worse the rescheduled date is in midweek next year and at the hopelessly located NEC, not helpful. I did try to swap the tickets to another gig but they are all as good as sold out and we had really good seats at the NIA.

Anyhow we still go ahead with the rest of the weekend and have a great time. We even get to walk the 10k course ahead of the race by strolling out to the MAC (Midlands Art Centre) to see a film.

Funny Cow is about a stand-up comedienne (Maxine Peake) taking on the men at their own game in the dingy working men’s clubs of the 1970s. It is in one such place in the north of England where she sees the depressive Lenny (Alun Armstrong) up on stage, going through the motions with his dire material, and effectively dying, that inspires her in the first place.

When she talks to him about his act, he assures her that ‘women aren’t funny’, and suggests she tries singing or stripping instead but it is comedy that she wants to do. Comedy is a release for her from her miserable life. 

From a childhood living with an abusive father (Stephen Graham) through to a dysfunctional marriage to the violent and controlling Bob (Tony Pitts) via a mother (Lindsey Coulson) driven to drink by life.

Finally leaving her husband and taking up with bookshop owner Angus (Paddy Considine), who takes her to see foreign films which fall way outside her comfort zone, turns out to be not that much of a trade up.

Meanwhile she struggles to gain a foothold in the world of the gungy pub carpet. She suffers from terrible nerves when she attends an audition where she is up against a singer (Richard Hawley), a ventriloquist (Vic Reeves) and an Elvis impersonator (John Bishop) with his dog (Bilko).

Eventually she blags her way on to stage when the promoter has little choice when faced with an empty stage. There she finally gains acceptance, and later success, but only by winning round the hostile audience by embracing the 1970's reality of doing racist and homophobic gags, while dealing with the inevitable hecklers.

In the film we see her after her success, then before, then after again in series of Dave Allen like scenes in front of the camera. Scenes that for me distract from the narrative of the film and therefore drag down what was a generally strong film. 

The later scenes seem to show her just as cynical and disillusioned with everything as she was before she became a comedienne. Even being a success doesn’t appear to have brought her any happiness but then she probably never expected it to.

(Saturday 5^th May)

We Are Both Rejects

Well they have finally arrived and we both get them on the same day - our London Marathon commiserations emails. We are both rejects. L is relieved, I am gutted but its hardly unexpected.

I have now ordered some new trainers for my Birmingham adventure and they should be here tomorrow. In time for me to injure myself in them at Peterborough this weekend.

Unless I do it tonight of course. I finally do the training run that I had planned to do a month or more ago and I run all the way home. I am then gutted for the second time today when I realise that it is only 21.7km e.g. only a smidge over half marathon distance. I thought it would be further. So I still haven’t run any further than a half marathon.

Daughter (and MD) come to the rescue and we do an extra 5k around the local streets.

L's osteopath told her yesterday that she could swim, so L swims and hopefully doesn’t over do it.

(Wednesday 4^th October)

Sheltered Life

Regime change has some unexpected side effects at 5am but what can you do other than go with it. Then I walk Doggo with a limp. Him, not me.

I’m on the bus today as I’m heading off to Birmingham straight from work. This is for the 50^th birthday of someone I was at Trent Polytechnic with back in the late 1980s. We have communicated regularly on email but somehow it’s been around 12 years since we last physically met up. Oops.

I am getting the 5:30 train over and another of our old group from Poly is joining me. It’s not been quite so long since I last saw him e.g. last month and regularly before then. We get a message that they have started without us in Birmingham, at about 2pm to be precise. So it could almost be all over by the time we get there.

We arrive in Brum and are directed to the delightfully named Hen and Chickens on Constitution Hill. It looks a right dump but has beer and serves a decent curry, so it certainly ticks a few boxes. Apart from seeing my friend for the first time in many years it’s also good to meet some of his work colleagues with whom I play the online football game Xpert Eleven. It’s good to put faces to names.

Then we head into the centre and to the Mailbox. Where we end up somewhere near the finish of the Black Country Half Marathon, which runs along the canal from Wolverhampton to Birmingham.

We go in a couple of bars that I normally wouldn’t be seen dead in. The first is ok but the second one is a cocktail bar where the drinks menu is lost on me but they do serve something as boring as a lager, so that will have to do. The bar did have an upside clothes but it really must be a sign that you’re getting old when you are wondering what is holding some of the skimpy outfits in place.

By now my travel partner has gone home after not feeling well and the birthday boy isn’t looking at his finest either. Our next stop is Broad Street where I have my first ever Jager Bomb, clearly I’ve lead a sheltered life.

Eventually I leave them to head to the strip club without me, apparently birthday boy doesn’t make it either, and head for the last train. L is on hand to pick me up from Derby. It’s a good night but obviously not as good as a normal Friday night.

(Friday 2^nd September)