A Tentative Offer

We parkrun at Gedling again this morning and then after a brief breakfast we head home. I have a fencing company coming around to give me a quote for repairing our fence after it got wrecked by next door’s ivy. The housing association that owns next door have tentatively offered to contribute to repairs.

Then it’s up to Beeston to sort out some new carpet for the back bedroom\computer room that L has just finished decorating. Then I take the boys to see my parents.

In the evening, we're at Broadway.

Green Book is based on the real life friendship between a nightclub bouncer from New York, Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), and an African-American pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali).

Vallelonga also know as Tony Lip, for his bullshitting expertise, is hired as Shirley’s driver and minder as he goes on tour through the still segregated deep south of America in the early 1960s.

They are armed with the Green Book, a guide to hotels and restaurants hospitable to black people, which means that the employee often gets better accommodation than his boss. The further south they go, the more prejudice they encounter and the more Shirley is viewed as a novelty act rather than the world class musician that he is. Shirley knows all this but he is doing this the tour out of defiance because he wants to confront the racism head on even if he isn’t allowed to use their bathroom.

Vallelonga not only has to drive Shirley, ensure that he always gets to play on his cherished Steinway piano, but he also has to protect him from himself. He is prone to act in a very erratic fashion from time to time. Vallelonga has to deal with some thugs in a bar for him and when his sexual escapades with another man land him in jail, he is the one who manages to free him.

 

As the two start to bond, you just know that the pair’s better qualities will rub off on each other and that is how it pans out. The more articulate Shirley even dictates letters for Vallelonga to send back to his wife (Linda Cardellini).

Sadly a lot of the film doesn’t ring true. At the start we see Vallelonga put two glasses in the bin because his wife has let two black workmen drink from them but this level of fanatical racism seems to immediately disappears the moment he meets Shirley. He also appears to be an expert in black culture who introduces his employer to the joys of Aretha Franklin and James Brown. Amazingly Shirley is unaware of them. Oh, and of fried chicken.

It's amiable but lightweight entertainment despite it's heavyweight subject. Generally it is a film more focussed on friendship than civil rights but for saying that we weren't sure if we wanted to see this or not it was a very pleasant surprise. Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen are both excellent and make a very engaging odd couple. 

Afterwards we again go in the Hockley Rebel but sadly, after several trips here, there’s still no Stay Puft. 

(Saturday 2^nd February)

Bail Money

Today I do my first Gedling Parkrun. I’ve been here a few times but I've always considered the surface too rough for a dog’s paws. Not that it's stopped others. Today I run it with the Lad and MD runs it with Daughter.

In the afternoon, while I’m at the match, L joins a new gym. Another one. It’s a bit like notches in your bedpost I suppose. This one is apparently amazing. So naturally I ask how the Watt Bikes were? As naturally an amazing gym must either have Watt Bikes or something better. I don’t get a conclusive answer, only that they’d be no use to L anyway. She also finally signs up for a personal training session after ten years of thinking about it.

Then in the evening we’re at Broadway to see Mary Queen Of Scots on an evening financed by Tesco. This is finance stolen by L. She says she tried to pay at their self-service machine but not only did it spit her tenner out onto the floor but also a further £25. So she just picked it all up, managed to pay second time around and then left. Although I’m tempted to ask her to hang to as bail money. 

Mary Stuart (Saoirse Ronan) became Queen of Scotland when just six days old following the death of her father James V Of Scotland. While Scotland was ruled by Regents until she became an adult, she was effectively married off at the age of five to the future King of France, who was himself only four. She subsequently moved to France for thirteen years. The last two as Queen in France to the then King Francis II, who then died on her.

So in 1561, at the age of eighteen, Mary moved back to Scotland to claim the throne in her own country. She was also next in line to the throne in England, unless her cousin Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie) produces or names an heir.

Her reappearance creates alarm on both sides of the border. As a devout Catholic, she was regarded with suspicion by her mainly Protestant subjects. Not even her half-brother James Murray (James McArdle), who is the stand-in monarch, trusts her. While Protestant cleric John Knox (David Tennant) can't even abide a woman being in charge.

Then there’s Elizabeth, ravaged by the pox, who is completely unhappy at having a younger, much better looking queen eyeing up her throne. Yet Elizabeth sees no other viable option and the two come to an agreement of sorts in a dramatic meeting between the two that apparently in real life never happened. Unfortunately hardly anyone else likes this idea and the plots against her mount.

Mary seems naive, she chooses her allies and her husbands badly. Her second husband, Lord Darnley (Jack Lowden) is a severe disappointment, who ends up murdered but with whom she had a son. Her third, the Earl of Bothwell (Martin Compston), is a ‘nice’ chap who is not only the suspected murderer but who abducts her and also rapes her as a sort of marriage proposal.

None of this goes down well with people and she is forced to abdicate the throne to her one year old son and go into hiding. This ends with her imprisoned for eighteen years before finally being beheaded on the orders of her cousin. 

In The Favourite, we saw two women vying for the affections of Queen Anne while here, we see two women vying against the men and for the throne of England. It’s interesting and complex stuff but in the end probably not that great a film. 

(Saturday 19^th January)

The Whole Nottingham Caboodle

It’s cold and slightly icy today, so I take the bus.  

It's far too early to mention the C word but my brother does so anyway. He says he’s at his in-laws on the Fourth Sunday in December, so I shall invite my Mum and Dad round to us. L reckons we should be able to sandwich them in between Parkruns. 

Apparently there is a ******mas Eve one at Beeston, a ******mas Day one at Forest Rec, a New Year's Eve one at Rushcliffe and the Gedling-Colwick double header on New Year's Day. So that's the whole Nottingham caboodle in a week. The double header consists of one run at 9am and one at 10am with a bit of 'driving like a maniac' in between.

Now all I have to do is sort out the roast haunch of Wollaton Park deer for said Fourth Sunday.

Today isn’t apparently Black Friday but I am already getting the offers. It is actually next Friday but some companies seem to be running a Black Friday week.

After work I go to the gym at the velodrome for a quick trash on the Watt Bikes. L and the boys then walk up to meet my bus.

(Friday 18^th November)