An Unglorious Return

Today I make my running return. My first outing on the tarmac since the ill advised Christmas Pudding run at Langdale before Christmas.

We are at the Cheadle Spring 5, a mammoth five miler but needs must. I manage to up my pace a little from the levels of my training runs (all three of them) and record 39:16 and 83^rd place, half way down the field. The official photos show me battling with some school kid who I managed to fend off eventually. It wasn’t a glorious return but a return it was.

In the evening we head into town to celebrate... 

You used to have to go to dodgy little back street cinemas to see films like tonight’s offering. Nowadays it seems even good old respectable Broadway has such fodder on offer. ‘Stranger by the Lake’ (L'inconnu du lac) is basically a full-on dose of gay pornography and perhaps the perfect antidote to last night’s Lego extravaganza or maybe not. It’s so explicit that I doubt even Nymphomaniac can compete, not that we’ve been there yet.

The film takes us on location, to one location, a gay cruising spot by a pretty lake somewhere in France. Everything in the film happens by this lake. Everyday everyone arrives at the beach, park their cars in the same place, lay their towels out in the same place and then tan their equipment in the same place. Before later retiring to the woods for the main course.

By the end of the film I was so familiar with the layout of the area that I could have drawn a map of it. This repetition succeeds in building the tension because you know there’s going to be more to the film than this (surely).

The main character is Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), a man on a mission, for a shag. Well he’s come to right spot you would think but he’s initially frustrated. The object of his desire, Michel (Christophe Paou), isn’t available. That is until Franck sees Michel drown his current boyfriend. Now Franck doesn’t think oh shit I ought to report this to the authorities, he only thinks that goody, Michel is now available.

To be fair to Franck he’s not the only one who does nothing, nobody else does anything either. Even when the dead man’s car remains on the car park and his towel lies on the beach in the same place for days on end no one bats an eyelid.

Instead Franck hooks up with Michel and covers for him when the police come investigating. Franck is so blindly in love that he even goes swimming with him. FFS. Yet, despite his puppy dog devotion Michel refuses point blank to have any sort of relationship with Franck beyond the boundaries of the beach. Which is good for the director I suppose, taking the film to another location would clearly have blown his mind, and probably ours too.

What we have here is a gay twist on the old chestnut about the young girl in love with the bad lad from the wrong sides of the tracks; the one that’ll be no good for her but her love is so blinkered that she can’t see past the rippling muscles of his chest. Only with a lot more sex. If you already suspect that this isn’t going to have a happy ending, then you’d be right.

It’s educational I suppose, I learnt a lot about how cruising in the homosexual world operates (if this is typical).

 

It’s not a bad film but the endless naked flesh is a bit off putting. I’m also not really sure who the stranger on the beach was supposed to be. Michel? Franck himself? or the self-pitying non-gay Henri (Patrick d'Assumçao), who turns up on the beach everyday for no other reason that he’s on holiday and has nothing better to do.

Henri to his credit is the only clothed man in the film, apart from the police inspector (Jérôme Chappatte), and there’s not a woman in sight.

Personally I’m still waiting for the first body to wash up on the beach. 

We eat at Broadway but are again thwarted at Brewdog which has now become amazingly popular so we have a few drinks in the Major Oak instead.

(Sunday 2^nd March)

Winter Unchained

A busy schedule today, due to an inhuman kick off time of 1pm. So it’s an earlier than usual park session, which I thought would have perhaps been detrimental to Doggo’s limp but no, he copes well with the conditions.

 

 

Not that I expected the game to be on. Last year’s Derby-Forest match was called off in much the same circumstances, at much the same time of year. Perhaps the grief they got for that is the reason this year’s went ahead. One thing that is off is tomorrow’s race. I’m gutted about that but apparently the course is treacherous. 

The weather has also not put off the Military Fitness people and their poor clients.

Sadly the game is disappointing, a 1-1 draw, no fights, no sending offs and both sides seemingly happy with the result. The ‘big’ local derby attracted a capacity 33,000 crowd but it’s always a game that always leaves me a bit cold. Perhaps because I’ve lived in Nottingham for so long. 27 years now. Wow, is it really that long. Still, in all that time I’ve not developed any affection for Nottingham Forest but neither do I have any great disaffection for them either.

If anything, the disaffection is closer to home. Derby have just revealed a loss of almost £7.9m in the last financial year ending June 2012. This is slightly up on the £7.7m in the previous 12 months. When you consider that we are putting on the field a team made up mostly of teenagers, how can it be that we are still losing £8M a year?

In the evening, we head into town which shows no sign of suffering from reduced popularity due to the weather conditions. Mind you, all those who have beaten the elements tonight will presumably be snowed in when faced with making exactly the same journey into work on Monday morning.

Set in the pre-Civil War Deep South, Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’ is a Western and the story of a slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) who becomes, well, unchained. He is set free by a German dentist turned bounty hunter Dr. King Shultz (Christoph Waltz). He needs Django’s help to identify the three guys who are his next bounty and were Django’s previous owners.

Schultz quickly discovers that Django has all the right attributes for the bounty hunting game, basically he’s good at killing people. So they team up and Shultz takes him under his wing. Shultz though makes Django a promise, that once the winter is over, together they will rescue Django’s wife from slavery too.

Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), Django's missus, is owned by Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) and works on his plantation home of Candieland. Which he is assisted in the running of by his head slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), who’s somewhat of a turncoat for the anti slavery cause.

Tarantino films of course, divide opinion. If you like Tarantino, you’ll like scenes like the one with the KKK arguing for a good ten minutes about not being able to see out of the holes in their pillow case masks before one member rides off in a huff because his wife made them all and feels it’s unappreciated. Or you won’t.

You’ll like the gratuitous, over the top bloodshed. Or you won’t. 

You’ll like the prodigious use of the word nigger, which I assume he gets away with because it’s relevant to the time period but then again he’s got previous with this, having used the word in most of his films, just less often. Or you won’t.

Obviously it’s also got his other trademarks. Such as a great musical score, great acting, a character driven plot and someone losing their testicles. So you’ll like all that as well. Or you won’t.

You might even like Dicaprio, who it has to be said plays probably his best role ever and he talks Tarantino-speak like he’s done it his entire career. Or you won’t. 

It’s still good to see him shot though. You’ll like that.

So yes it’s a good film but I would say it’s not one of his cleverest and it’s a little too long. Certainly for our neighbours who had to make an awful lot of bathroom visits. The last half an hour seemed an unnecessary way of resolving things that could and should have already been resolved but perhaps Tarantino had forgotten to write himself into the script, so had to quickly fit his cameo in, as well as a bit more violence.

 

One final thought. Django is your typical deadeye movie gunman. He’s always first to the trigger and never gets shot no matter how many bullets are fired at him. He goes off on multiple killing sprees in the name of revenge, even if his victim’s association to him is tenuous. You would have thought that all this would have been on very dodgy ground considering several incidents worldwide in recent times including the most recent in Connecticut but no, apparently not. Just saying. You’ll like that. Or you won’t.

Afterwards Brewdog is so busy we only stay for one before ending up at the Old Bell, which is disappointing. The Abbot is the best option and that’s poor. Then we think we've timed our sprint for the bus to perfection but then see it disappearing into the distance as we arrive. With an hour to the next one it’s time to walk.

(Saturday 19^th January)

The Perils Of Afternoon Drinking

It’s Christmas Eve and I finish work at 12.45. L is in transit from Stoke from where she has retrieved Son who’s been celebrating his girlfriend’s birthday.

Once she’s back in Nottingham I get the bus back over and we meet in town. We head to Brewdog for an assortment of their strong ales, although even we baulk at the 18.2% Tokyo Stout. It’s pleasant in there and I could have continued to work my way along the bar, slowly e.g. a third of a pint at a time, but we are tempted across town to the Roebuck by Daughter and her friends.

It’s our round naturally but £10 for two pitchers of basically coke with a dash of vodka isn’t too financially taxing and they’re good fun to hang out with for a few hours. The fact they also have the Honey Milk Stout that we had at the Ropewalk the other week helps.

We make it home and order a festive Chinese takeaway. I also, drunkenly, make the stuffing for tomorrow and a Stilton, mushroom, brandy, garlic and chilli pate, which will be the starter. I think I only put chilli in the pate and not in the stuffing. I hope. My Mum will soon tell me tomorrow if not.

We decide to continue our tradition, usually though when the kids aren’t there, of opening our presents at midnight. This will enable Son to have his usual epic lie-in and avoid too much exposure to daylight tomorrow.

It actually becomes difficult to stay awake though, the perils of afternoon drinking, so we go to bed for an hour or so and then get up again.

(Monday 24th December)

Leaving It All Out On The Road

I’d looked at the Le Petit Grand Prix bike sportive in Lincoln today. Until I noticed it looked lacking in feed stations, entries and the general razzmatazz I like in these events. So we stayed home.

I’m sure L was gutted, as she was going to join me. Although she hides her disappointment well.

So gardening instead, lovely. Well, with Doggo banned from ball games due to his limp and a dog show tomorrow, the park wouldn’t have been much fun. MD's time is probably better spent anyway with me trying to remind his what agility equipment looks like before we go off to cock up a few courses tomorrow.

L runs to the gym and then complains of feeling faint when she gets there. I’m so proud of her, for clearly ‘leaving it all out on the road’, as they say. Even if, in her words, it was only 6 bloody k. Just like when I could have done with her assistance yesterday after my run, she could so with me there now, slapping her around the face.

A even better cure is a good night out. So to the H&H for two pints, then Brewdog for two strong halves and an even stronger shared third. Then to the Malaysian restaurant below Brewdog for a very decent meal. So the good night out is achieved and we even resisted the call of the Old Peculiar. Now there’s a first.

(Saturday 8th September)

Grass Sniffing

A typical day with MD at the dog show I help set up, sort of, but isn’t ours, that’s next weekend. For starters, not a very good team run - 15 faults but the rest of the team racked up about the same. Then an excellent first individual run but one pole down... then a terrible jumping course - another 15 faults but the judge was generous.

Then in the afternoon, two good runs but in one we missed a contact and in the other we missed a jump. Oh well. One day.

Doggo does his usual perfect clear in Veterans, perhaps I should make MD watch the old hand at work. What I would have given to have a dog like Doggo but with MD’s speed and enthusiasm. Although it must take some high level of skill to go from, grass sniffing to clear round and back to grass sniffing seamlessly as Doggo can.

I hadn’t volunteered to help out at all today but somehow a lead got placed in my hand first thing and that was the end of that. Which meant I ended up having two lunches, the one I had brought with me and the free one that is supplied to helpers.

Back home later, L and I head into town and desperately try and stay away from the Old Peculiar in the Peacock. We eat in Broadway and then have a few super strong ones in Brewdog before we succumb to the OP. The Brewdog place has some sort of odd attraction that I can't quite put my finger on and it’s good to see they’re not serving the beer as cold as they were. Now if they could just stop serving it under pressure we’d be sorted.

(Saturday 21st July)

Something Fishy

It’s all a bit of a rush job this morning as TV have, in their wisdom, moved all the final matches of the Championship season to 12.30 kicks offs when surely nobody will be watching. It makes me feel we’ve sort of been scraped under the carpet so that no one’s sees us.

That said the final weeks of this football season is a total mess. The Championship finishes today but the two divisions below do not finish until next week and the Premier League until the week after. Then the FA Final is going to be next Saturday before the Premier League ends but presumably because there’s normal League One and Two games going on it’s a 5.15 kick off. So again hardly anyone will be watching. Sprinkled randomly throughout these last few weeks will be playoff games, on any day I assume provided it’s not a weekend.

I manage a quick park session with the boys, before hurtling over to Derby for the match. At least I’m home in reasonable time and we decide to take in an early film.

L has read the book of and therefore desperately wants to see ‘Salmon Fishing In The Yemen’, I tag along, although I’m sure it’s just a RomCom in an ill-fitting disguise.

Ewan McGregor is Fred Jones, speaking for once in his native Scottish. Fred is a fisheries expert working for the government or the Environment Agency or something like that. Fred is told of an Arab sheikh who has more money than sense and wants to do that thing in the title. So I can’t complain the plot isn’t straightforward.

Once Fred has picked himself up off the floor from laughing at the prospect of taking salmon from cold rainy Scotland to the deserts of Yemen, he is told it is going to happen anyway. The government requires a feel good story to distract the gullible public from the bloodshed that is occurring in Afghanistan. Fred is sent off pronto to see the sheik’s representative, the impressively named Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt). Ah ha, at this point flashing lights and sirens go off as the ill-fitting disguise is cast aside revealing the irresistible shag interest.

Fred is so dull though, very well acted dull by McGregor as it happens, you'd think he was into fishing, oh he is. Whereas Ms Something-Somewhat can out of nowhere summon up an impressive knowledge of Mandarin Chinese. Why is she interested? Who knows, ask the fish.

So we have two ill matched people, who are thrust together by circumstance. They will naturally start off at odds but will gradually become fond of each other, then they’ll overcome some last minute crisis before living happily ever after amongst the fish. So, the usual then.

There’s a slight complication that Fred is married and Harriet has a soldier boyfriend (Tom Mison) of a mere three weeks. These though are circumstances that can easily be circumnavigated. Rest assured it's written large across the screen that Fred is not happily married and that Harriet's squeeze is going to die in action in Afghanistan.

Although he doesn't actually die, in a slight plot twist, he is the one person who not only survives an otherwise fatally unsuccessful military operation but is totally unscathed by it. The government whisk him out to Yemen immediately in a blatant PR stunt that no one seems to see through.

Yemen is but the backdrop, the back story of why the Yemenese people so want to sabotage this project is untold. Yet, despite the employment of top Chinese engineers from the Yangtze River dam, sabotage it they do.

That the film has its humorous moments is down to the deadpanning of McGregor but also to the excellent role of Kristin Scott Thomas who plays the Prime Minister’s pushy press officer, who chats with her boss on Instant Messenger. She gets practically all the best lines.

Apparently in the book practically everyone ends up dead or miserable, whereas this has a more predictable upbeat ending. Neither seems an ideal conclusion.

It’s the most undemanding film I’ve seen in some time but it’s harmless enough. A bit like fishing really.

Afterwards we retire next door to BrewDog’s new Nottingham venture, which is a pleasantly attired place. BrewDog is a craft brewer, which means they brew real ale but serve it like lager, which I think is a bit lazy. This means everything is gassy and over cold. The beers improve immensely if you give those two properties chance to wear off. It also means, as with lager, things improve markedly with strength and BrewDog have some seriously strong beers, some at 10%+. They have done real ale in the past but now they prefer to do it this way, for now, their publicity seeking approach seems to change pretty regularly.

The place serves nothing but beer, which is a bold move. Forcing some people out of their comfort zone I’m sure. Pleasant place, ok beers. I’m sure we’ll return but no rush.

Then we try somewhere else new, the Malaysian restaurant Nada Budaya that is in the same building. We get in without booking and are pleasantly impressed with the food, only the waitress who annoyingly keeps topping our wine distracts from a pleasant experience. This is something that happened a lot in Switzerland, very annoying, particularly if you’re keeping a close check on what you drink because you’re driving, which thankfully neither of us are tonight.

We break the walk home by stopping for a night cap in the Ropewalk.

(Saturday 28th April)

Ye Old Frog & Parrot

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)