Embarrassing T-Shirts

There’s no parkrun this morning as L is feeling too injured. I had considered doing one with MD but after last night’s tight calf I think I best give it a miss. MD doesn’t look too bothered either. He’s probably worried that I’d wear my Sheffield Half t-shirt again. On the photos from Markeaton Park last week, the expression on his face appears to indicate that he is clearly embarrassed by the day-glow greenness of his partner’s t-shirt.

So it’s win-win with a lie-in instead. L is then at Pilates and I’m at the match as Derby have an early game at 12.30. In which they draw 1-1 with Sheffield Wednesday.

The earliness of the game allows us to take in an early film at Broadway. 

‘Eye in the Sky’ is a thorough examination of modern military warfare and the complex decision making that goes on behind the scenes. The title refers to the satellite and drone technology that enables everyone involved in these types of operations to see the mission unfold in glorious detail.

The film deals us a complex scenario which sees UK based Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) in charge of an operation to capture terrorists in Kenya. The operation is almost entirely conducted via remote surveillance but for some local intelligence provided by Jama Farah (Barkhad Abdi) who is on the ground and even he has his own highly impressive mini-drone which he skilfully pilots.

The objective of the mission soon changes when things don't go as planned and the terrorists end up in a house in a highly defended suburb of Nairobi, where they appear to be planning a suicide bombing. The mission is now eliminating everyone involved with a Hellfire missile with the added political ramifications from the fact that two of the terrorists are British and one is American.

Throughout Powell in touch with her Lieutenant General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman) who is handling the politics of the operation in Whitehall. Lawyers stand by on all sides. Meanwhile in the US drone pilots Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) and Carrie Gershon (Phoebe Fox) are preparing to launch the missile from the relative comfort of their military base. 

That is until they spot a young girl (Aisha Takow) selling bread in the vicinity who will be killed if they go ahead. This reignites communications between the various parties as the consequences are once more kicked about and sent higher up for decisions to be made and/or avoided. Never has the sale of bread been so riveting.

Who knows if this is exactly how everything really works or not, and I wouldn’t really expect them to give us the full story in any case but it’s an impressive bit of film making and a superbly engaging film.

It is also a film which will be remembered as the last one to feature the great Alan Rickman who died in January.

Afterwards we eat at Broadway and then head up Mansfield Road to the Golden Fleece.

(Saturday 23^rd April)

Up The Rams

Another lie-in, this time to midday. L wanted to give her ankle a break (of the unbroken kind) and this is clearly the best way of giving it a rest, doing something not load bearing.

I tentatively suggest that this is perhaps also a good chance to stretch the wheels of her bike (puts on tin hat). So later L cycles to Harvey Hadden, does the bike track there and then the gym.

I walk the boys on the park, again and again without balls. They are seriously starting to wonder if something is up.

In the evening we head to Broadway for our second film in two days.

Now here's a quirky one. Rams is a snapshot of life in a remote Icelandic valley, an environment so harsh that seemingly only sheep and stubborn bearded old men can survive there.

The stubborn bearded old men are two brothers, Gummi (Sigurður Sigurjónsson) and Kiddi (Theodór Júlíusson). They live in neighbouring farmhouses but have not talked for forty years. Their only form of communication is the occasional written note which is delivered by border collie.

The film starts with them going head to head in the competition for the most highly-prized ram.

Kiddi wins with Gummi coming second. Kiddi’s celebrations are brief though when it turns out that the winning ram has scrapie. The outcome being that all the sheep in the valley will have to be slaughtered.

Kiddi refuses to comply with the slaughter. So he is arrested, his flock is forcibly destroyed and he goes on multiple drunken benders. Twice we see Gummi reluctantly forced to save his brother when he finds him lying motionless in the snow, drunk and about to freeze to death. On one occasion he scoops him up in his tractor's front loader and deposits him in front of the nearest hospital.

Gummi meanwhile kills his sheep himself against regulations, so that he can secrete a few ewes and his prize ram in his basement. At first he gets away with this but eventually they are discovered by the authorities.

When Kiddi learns what his brother has done, they start to become reconciled. Kiddi helps Gummi re-hide them and then when that doesn’t work, the two of them combine to drive them off into the mountains during a blizzard. A plan which doesn’t go too well due to the inclement weather, this time leaving Kiddi trying to return the lifesaving favour and attempt to save Gummi.

Quirky but excellent. Well worth seeing.


Afterwards we go for a few pints (rather appropriately maintaining the sheep theme) in the Golden Fleece on Mansfield Road, which has recently become Flipside’s second pub. Then it’s the traditional Sunday Indian.

(Sunday 28^th February)