Mathematicians

On Sunday we head up to Sherwood Pines for their New Year 10k, which is organised by those nice people at Nice Work. It is a nice leg stretch on a route that contains a lot of the Sherwood Pines parkrun.

They mess up on the course though. It starts near the café and the opening straight leads you on to a circular course which you do once for the 5k or twice for the 10k before finishing with the same straight section to the finish.

Mathematicians among you will have immediately noticed that the total length of the 10k therefore cannot be twice the length of the 5k. It would require another out and back of the straight\finish section to be so, therefore one of the distances is going to be inaccurate. This clearly is the 10k which ends up being only 9.5k. Which makes my time of 47:22 look even worse.

As we’re both marathon training, we then grab the dogs and do another 5k-ish lap of the course, just for fun. 

Jojo Rabbit is a comedy, yes a comedy, about a 10-year-old boy and his imaginary friend called Adolf Hitler... Not going to work is it? Well, maybe.

Firstly it’s a bit of a shock that this storyline even made it on to the big screen what with people’s sensitivities these days even though making fun of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler is nothing new. Hello Mel Brooks. That was back in the 60's when World War II was a lot fresher in the mind but the world was lot less snowflake then.

Taika Waititi wrote the film, financed it, directed it and plays Hitler himself. I hope he lands some sort of award at the Oscars. I mean what more does a guy have to do.

The film is set in the dying days of the Second World War and follows Johannes 'Jojo' Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis) who in his youthful naivety, and because he’s a big fan of swastikas, signs up for the Hitler Youth. His local camp is run by Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell), a one-eyed drunk who is clearly miffed at no longer being allowed out on the battlefield.

While Jojo clearly dreams of becoming a war hero it's not really in his makeup and he gains the nicknamed 'Jojo Rabbit' when he fails to prove himself by killing a rabbit in one of the films least endearing scenes. He then blows himself up with a hand grenade, at which point he is assigned the more sedate task of handing out leaflets.

All the time he is ‘advised’ by his imaginary friend, a rather camp caricature of Hitler, while his father is MIA on the Italian Front and his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) is busy working for the resistance.

It turns out his mother is also hiding a Jewish girl, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), in the attic. She is a former classmate of Jojo's sister Inge who has died of flu. Jojo is horrified when he discovers her and threatens to hand her in to the Gestapo until she points out that his mother would be executed for hiding her. Instead the pair start to get on which infuriates Imaginary Adolf as Elsa gradually picks away at the years of brainwashing that Jojo has received.

When Jojo writes a propaganda book on the Jews for Klenzendorf she feeds him crazy stories about the Jews having special powers. Meanwhile Jojo forges letters to her from her fiancé Nathan, telling her that Nathan wants to break up with her.

When the Gestapo discover her she pretends to be Inge and gets away with help, surprisingly, from Klenzendorf. Jojo is relieved but then later that day, finds his mother has been hanged in the street in a remarkably understated scene. Then as news breaks that the Allies are closing in, Jojo sees his school friends in the Hitler Youth being hurled into battle as a final desperate last act.

It’s certainly a different approach to Hilter and the war. Waititi’s film seems to deliberately sidestep addressing the evils that he shows you and instead lets it wash over you. Yet he still makes a point, I think, about how easily such evil thoughts and ideals can breed in a nation. Which is a very relevant point today with nationalism reappearing around the globe. Whether it’s the right approach, I’m not sure.

We find that Krubera is on again at Broadway and also that January is Vegetarian Month. I take a punt on their Vegan Thai Noodles which were nice but consisted mostly of beans with not much sign of the promised mushrooms, peppers and sweet potato but that’s often my complaint when I'm promised Chicken Thai Noodles as well.

After the film we go for drinks in Kean’s Head.

Certain Catastrophe

On Thursday, L and I have a pre-tennis tennis knock up before her class. It’s a bit wet underfoot, actually very wet underfoot, and L is worried that I'll injure myself but then, if we don’t play, I’m quite capable of injuring myself in our garden while kicking balls for the dogs.

I don’t cycle on Thursday and I also don’t cycle on Friday as for the second day running the weather forecast on Radio 5 warns cyclists that they face certain catastrophe if they venture out in the elements or words to that affect. The forecast predicts heavy rain and hail but they were wrong on Thursday and they’ll probably be wrong again. I know they’re just winding me up and I’m a fool to believe them but I get on the bus again.

In fact when I go out for a sandwich at lunch time I am more concerned about heatstroke than hail but it does start to rain later, although not that dramatically. I hope no one’s planning a dog jog tonight. Ah, L and Daughter are. Just to get the dogs out of the way while I get my massage.

On Saturday we go up to Sherwood Pines to Parkrun and then in the afternoon, well teatime obviously for bloody TV, Derby play Leeds in the 1st Leg of the Championship Play Off Semi Final.

My Leeds supporting friend leaves his darkened room long enough to watch it, likening it to a TV series you’ve long ago lost interest in but you still force yourself to watch it through to it’s grisly and disappointing conclusion. Then Leeds win 1-0 and he’s suddenly looking forward to the next episode.

I go in person, via a visit to see L’s Dad in hospital, and even bump into Son. Who kept his attendance quiet, probably because he’s always a jinx.

Meanwhile in Derby itself, L says it’s like WW2. Lots of fighting and they’ve brought in the police dogs. She questions who’d be a police officer or a police dog? Daughter and the Lad obviously. They’d sort them out.

(Saturday 11^th May)

Troll RomCom

L has been remarking how lacking her World War II knowledge is. She says that her colleague at work watches all 26 episodes of the World at War at least every other year, which is perhaps a bit excessive but we start looking for a copy. I pop into Argos who have the box set for £15. This will change the dynamic of Friday night’s somewhat. L promises to try to stay awake. 

The brief for Saturday is to Parkrun somewhere exotic. Unfortunately Warsaw is going to be a bit hard to beat and we go to Sherwood Pines. The Lad and I come 21^st in a time of 22:16. Not bad but I feel he’s disappointed with me.

On Saturday afternoon there’s a match and then in the evening we are at Broadway.

Border is the story of Tina (Eva Melander), a customs officer on the Finland-Sweden border. She suffers from deformities which she refers to as a ‘chromosome flaw’ but she has the ability to smell guilt which comes in extremely useful in her job. When she smells something amiss the suspect is pulled over and searched. Tina is always right. When she intercepts a man carrying child pornography, she is invited to join the police task force investigating a paedophile ring which has implications later in the film.

She lives with her boyfriend Roland (Jörgen Thorsson) who she is unable to have sex with because it hurts her too much but, anyway, Roland seems to care more about his pet dogs than he does her. Every so often, she visits her elderly father (Sten Ljunggren) who is in an old people’s home. It appears her father is hiding something about Tina’s past.

One day at the border, Tina encounters a character who looks a lot like herself. His name is Vore (Eero Milonoff) and he travels with a bag of maggots in his hand luggage. As you do. Unlike Tina, Vore is confident and charismatic. When Tina can’t quite decide what she smells amiss about him, he arrogantly volunteers to be searched anyway. During which her male colleague discovers that Vore doesn't have the body of a man. He also has a large scar on his back, just like she has.

She finds him intriguing and exciting, so inevitably they are drawn together. She lets him stay in her house, much to Roland's annoyance. Vore tells her that it’s perfectly ok to eat insects if she wants to because she is a troll just like him. Then they have the most bizarre sex you’ll ever see.

So it’s a Troll RomCom with a happy ending? Not quite. The next day Tina finds a baby inside Vore’s fridge. As you do. No, not a baby he protests. It’s a Hiisit, an unfertilized troll embryo, that he is going to swap with a real human baby. Of course…

Which brings us back to the paedophile ring, with whom Vore has been dealing and which brings us to the film’s very morally susceptible ending. 

It was looking to me as if the film was trying to portray Tina and Vore as more humane than the humans, through the use of the paedophile ring subplot, but now I’m not so sure.

The film is based on a story by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who wrote the almost as weird ‘Let the Right One In’. You have been warned but I liked it a lot.

(Saturday 9th March)

Vanilla Gorilla

L doubts that I’ll be up for a parkrun this morning but she is wrong. I’ve not really had that much to drink and as the curries were so benign, I don’t have any pressing lavatorial commitments.

In any case we’re off to Sherwood Pines, in search of a nice crisp woodland run, where there’s plenty of trees to hide behind if some reason their facilities aren’t open. We even manage to find the right entrance this time without getting lost.

Afterwards L heads off another, probably doomed, shopping trip and, yes, she fails to get the decorations she was looking for. While I head off to the Blue Monkey shop at Giltbrook. Yet again they have sold out of the triple packs of Chocolate Orange, Chocolate Mint and Chocolate Coffee Gorilla Stout. The only way to get hold of any of them is to buy a mini-keg and that's only available in Chocolate Mint. It’ll be a challenge getting through that.

There’s a match in the afternoon and then in the evening we’re first in the Borlase and then Blue Monkey’s Organ Grinder. Where I am informed that they had Chocolate Orange on draught but it ran out at lunchtime. They do have Chocolate Coffee in the cellar but it’s not coming on until Monday. 

So it’s just plain vanilla Gorilla tonight, not that it tastes of vanilla of course. Perhaps they could do that one for next year?

(Saturday 16^th December)

Ophthalmic Space Invaders

Apparently we've done all the nearby Parkruns apart from Braunstone, Leicester Victoria and Sherwood Pines. Sherwood Pines is probably the easiest, it has a coffee shop and it will probably be nice and soft on MD's paws.

There’s one small problem though. We follow the signs for the Sherwood Forest Visitor Centre not the Sherwood Pines Visitor Centre. Apparently there is a difference. We then get lost in the one way system around Edwinstowe trying to backtrack. We make it to the start at 9:05, five minutes after the scheduled start but luckily they haven’t started yet. So it’s a running start for us as they get going just as we arrive.

MD, having ran nicely up to the start, then decides to indulge in his usual lead biting. What is up with that dog? Is it pre-races nerves? So we stuff up another potential good start as once again we have to overtake everyone.

At least it’s a nice wide path so overtaking is at least a little easier than usual. It also means that the bushes and trees are further away so less tempting for MD and he doesn’t stop anywhere near as often as usual. So after just one wee stop and two drink stops we clock 23:27. It’s not quite his PB but it's still a good run from him.

We grab a quick coffee then head home to get L to Pilates while I head to Vision Express where I have an eye test at 1pm. As usual they are running late. At 1:40pm I am just about to walk out in disgust when I finally get seen. Briefly. It is at this point that they look at my records and see that I am also due a contact lens appointment next month, so they belatedly offer to do both at the same time. They then send me back to the waiting room where I could now remain for the rest of the day.

For some reason the staff are all dressed up as pirates today but it appears this is not a self deprecating comment on their own customer service standards but to raise money for an eye cancer charity. 

At 2pm, just as I am again about to walk out, I get seen for a second time. I am totally seething by now but they manage to placate me by bestowing upon me the most aesthetically agreeable female optician I have ever had the good fortune of sharing one of those small claustrophobic little consulting rooms with. By this I mean she was just like a slightly younger version of L.

She’s also a star. She rushes through the whole process and decides I don’t need to do all those daft tests where they squirt eighteen different substances in your eyes and then get you to play the ophthalmic version of space invaders to prove you can still see.

She also gives me some new contact lenses to try out which may be able to solve my near sight problems. These are exactly the ones I had seen on the internet and were about to demand from them... or else. I could almost have kissed her with gratitude but that probably wouldn’t have gone down well.

With my news lens in I then head home determined to chalk another item off today’s to do list which is the lawn. Unfortunately by now it’s lobbing it down, so that’ll have to wait. Instead I move onto the next item on the list and when L gets home we take coffee and wine to bed. Not in the same glass I hasten to add.

Later, as I cook tea, I catch Doggo with his head in the wash basket but I am too late. He has already eaten a hole in my treasured Thunder Run t-shirt and also in my cycling shorts. No one is speaking to him.

(Saturday 1^st October)

Somebody Else’s Problem

While L drools at the thought of the 46 park runs that are in London, which would be quite a project and no doubt would become a project if Daughter got the job down there, she also admits that Project East Midlands is also proving quite testing.

I should be encouraging her to spread her wings more but Project Bacon Sandwich is quite a draw for me and Forest Rec have the best but today we are determined to go elsewhere. So we pencil in a trip to Sherwood Pines but as often happens we end up running late and don’t get there. So it’s Forest Rec again. Which suits the boys too, as they can have their usual ball session.

L then has Pilates and I have a match, oddly a normal 3pm KO. Sky seem to have lost interest in us this season which is understandable considering how poor we’ve been.

As I leave for the match I notice a dead cat lying in the gutter just outside our house. At first I drive past it thinking that it is most definitely somebody else’s problem but then I change my mind. I just can’t leave it there, so I U-turn and head back just as L is arriving back home. Together we scrape it up and ring the vets. They will take it and scan it but it has no collar on, so it’s probably not chipped either.

Derby lose again, 2-1, but at least they scored this week.

L cooks pre-race pasta but then abandons it to head to the hospital. I head home, collect the boys and head over there as well. Before I leave I manage to move tonight’s theatre tickets to another night as the situation with L’s brother isn’t looking good. 

(Saturday 24^th September)