Still Limping Along

L gives me my birthday present early. Some new cycling shorts which I can now wear in today’s sportive. L doesn't make the start line but comes to support with the boys. Who weren’t going to get to come but now do. Again it’s bloody windy. What is it with the weather and my bike at the moment?

This is the Rutland CiCLE Tour Sportive and I’m doing 57 miles, there are two longer and one shorter options. We start from Normanton on the South Shore of Rutland Water, which is the other side to where the duathlon starts. We still end up parking at Sykes Lane though and I have to bike round. This turns out to be 2.4 miles and I’m knackered before I even start. L points out that this is a good warm up, that I skipped sex for. Not that I recall being offered any.

It takes me 1 hour 33 minutes to reach the one and only feed station at Owston. Shoot me now, as some folk would say. At least they have some decent snacks and real tea, L would approve. I stash some cheesy biscuits in my pocket for later, for the boys.

It’s a tough ride. As well as being windy, the course is hilly. Full of silly little hills that they appear to have gone out of their way to find. At least my new shorts are nice and snug.

I reach the finish, having done 57.58 miles in 3:44. Not exactly quick.

After we get back in the afternoon L heads over to Derby to visit her brother in hospital whilst I listen to the match. After a 4-4 draw with Huddersfield last week, this week’s game finishes 3-3 as free scoring and free conceding Derby draw again, this time at Millwall. Somehow they continue to limp towards the play offs.

I then head into Nottingham and meet L at Peacock for another night on the OP and the Northern Stout.

(Saturday 25^th April)

The Girl Has Problems

I meet L in Derby after the match. The Rams have played out a lifeless 0-0 draw against an obdurate Millwall. L has a race tomorrow, so as a gentle pre-race night we are having an evening at Quad watching Nicole. In ‘Before I Go To Sleep’ that is. Unfortunately they have Tuck on in the Silk Mill which makes it less gentle than it might have been, and then afterwards we head to the Flowerpot for a few more. First though, the film.

Christine Lucas (Nicole Kidman) not only wakes up every day with no memory of the events of the previous day but she also wakes up alongside Colin Firth. Yes the girl has problems. Just when she’d thought she’s got over the Railway Man, here he is again.

Every morning she looks across at Firth, looks confused and maybe a bit pissed off before heading off to the bathroom where she is confronted with a wall of photographs. These are of herself and of herself with Ben (Firth) including several of their wedding.

Back in the bedroom, Ben confirms the whole horrible truth. Yes, she is married to Firth, again, and what’s worse is she can’t even remember doing it.

Well actually it’s worse than that, she has no recollection of the last twenty years. Which might appeal to some people but does seem a bit inconvenient.

Ben goes on to explain that she’d had an accident and can now no longer retain memories, then he buggers off to work and her doctor (Mark Strong) rings her. He tells her that she has been recording herself on a video camera to help remember things. Each day she’ll start to piece things together until it's time for bed again... and they’ll all be gone again.

Problem is he has to tell her where she’s hidden it. This incident, hiding the camera from her husband, sort of gives the plot twist away in the first ten minutes and undermines what is to come.

Her doctor gradually helps her unravel the mental mist and she also meets up with an old college friend Claire (Anne-Marie Duff) who disappeared from her life under somewhat dubious circumstances as the films builds to a somewhat grisly finale.

It's an odd but quite good film with a lot of ‘hang on but...’ moments. The overall premise is intriguing but ultimately once you’ve grasped that the film on the whole disappoints and peters out at the end. Kidman is again excellent though, Strong is good and Firth is, well, Firth. Probably a bit out of his comfort zone to be honest but he copes well enough.

(Saturday 4^th October)

The King of Soho

L skips Parkrun but its still a fairly early morning because Sky TV are forcing all the league games to kick off at 12:45 today. AM I assume, although I haven't doubled checked.

It turns out to be a typical drab end of season game and you get the distinct impression that both sides would have happily shook hands on a 0-0 draw. Especially Millwall, who need a point to guarantee survival and at one stage with the three teams just below them all winning they are in dire straits if they don’t hang on to it. Derby are not in the relegation dog fight but only by one point, such is the crazy closeness of the league.

By the time much maligned striker Conor Sammon comes off the bench to score an unexpected winner for Derby, the Londoners no longer need that point as results elsewhere go their way.

In the evening we head to Broadway, have a few drinks, a meal and watch the Look Of Love.

This is a biopic by Michael Winterbottom about Geoffrey Quinn aka Paul Raymond. Raymond was of course a famous entrepreneur... ok, so perhaps he was a porn baron, the self proclaimed King of Soho.

The film opens with Raymond (Steve Coogan) mourning the loss of his beloved daughter, watching old video recordings and reflecting back on his life, as in flashback we get the Paul Raymond story.

Raymond went from humble beginnings in Liverpool to being a success in London where he put on a show featuring nude models as statues, the law prevented nudes moving around on stage at that time. Then he moved on to greater success with his Gentlemen’s Clubs, the sex comedy Pyjama Tops and Men Only magazine. With each new project he pushed further against the boundaries of public decency.

He was though a shrewd businessman, who ignored the countless bad reviews and criticisms. He simply got on with making money, lots of it, and was smart enough to reinvest it in property; most notably in Soho and he became Britain's richest man.

Initially helping him run his business was his wife Jean (Anna Friel) but he wasn't a man who was good at relationships. Whether that was with his own children or with the women in his life and there were plenty of them. 

At first Jean tolerated his countless affairs with the women who worked for him. That is until he meets Amber (Tamsin Egerton), who later becomes Fiona Richmond and the editor of Men Only, his relationship with her results in the largest divorce settlement in British history.

Amber’s advantage over Jean was that she had no problem with three in the bed romps, as long as she was part of them. Well at first she didn’t, eventually she leaves him too.

Meanwhile he is mostly ambivalent to the existence of his children, save for his Daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots) and it is his relationship with her that is central to most of the story. He dotes on her but even there he condones the drug habit that ultimately kills her.

Although Raymond was fascinating figure, he wasn't a terribly likeable one and despite the money, the women on tap and the power, he never seemed genuinely happy. Except that is when he was with his daughter and he gives her a leg up to her death. After which he became a virtual recluse until his own death.

The film is an interesting watch but a bit lifeless. Surprisingly it lacks drama and even plot, possibly the process of condensing his colourful life down to first be book sized and then further to be film sized didn’t leave much, other than a long list of bullet points. The film ended up being more informative than entertaining.

 

(Saturday 4^th May)

Rethink Time

The floor man finally comes to measure up and informs us that we can't have a wooden floor at all. Oh dear. Rethink time.

L runs, gets her bike and then cycles to pick up the car from where we abandoned it last night in Bunny. I do the park, as usual, then keep one ear on the football as Derby’s brief good run ends at Millwall. In between this we visit B&Q, just like an old married couple...

L had ideas of a film to see this weekend but I fancied something a bit more gritty, so we head over to Quad for ‘Ginger and Rosa’, although it was probably in the end more bitty than gritty.

This is the story of two girls who were born on the same day in the same hospital in 1945 as WWII ended. The film implies that this was possibly even the very day the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The pair grow up as inseparable friends until we get to 1962 when, now 17, teenage hormones have to via for attention with the Cuban missile crisis, as once again the smell of nuclear warfare hangs in the air.

Ginger (Elle Fanning) is the daughter of a conscientious objector, Roland (Alessandro Nivola). Typically he’s now a lecturer, a part-time author writing books about ‘Freedom’ and rather smugly left wing. Ginger takes this all on board, follows the politics of the Cold War and spends a lot of time worrying about how many days they all have left to live.

Meanwhile Roland’s marriage to Natalie (Christina Hendricks) is on the rocks, so it’s easy for Ginger to take sides if she wants to. She chooses her father’s more ‘bohemian’ side, she adores him but has little time for her more straightforward mother.

He’s not a great role model and nor are the other adults in the film. Oliver Platt and Annette Bening appear as an American couple who influence Ginger into joining CND, going protesting and then consequently getting arrested. At least I think they’re supposed to be American as they don’t attempt to hide their accents. Timothy Spall meanwhile, has no accent problems.

Her bestest friend though, Rosa (Alice Englert), is the complete opposite and her home is already broken. She turns to religion and boys rather than politics but adores Ginger’s father as much as Ginger herself does.

Seemingly equally charmed by Ginger’s dad, Rosa starts sleeping with him, which understandably shatters the close friendship of the girls a touch. Whether Ginger agrees with her self-indulged Father’s belief in the 60’s mantra of free love or not, perhaps even Ginger realises that practising this idealism so close to home is a tad selfish and maybe perhaps his other mantra, saving the world, could have waited until after he’d saved his family? Or it may have gone over her head.

Ginger and Rosa are basically two teenage girls that you want to slap, nothing unusual there then, and then of course there’s a husband you probably want to slap as well. Well slap might be a bit too kind.

It’s an interesting film but more of a film about growing up in turbulent times than an enlightening piece about the changes taking place in the world at that time, about which it says little.

The acting is generally pretty good though, if you ignore the annoying fact they’ve imported so many American actors and their accents into a British film. Elle Fanning, a 13 year old playing a 17 year old, is impressive.

(Saturday 10th November)