Murky Waters

Monday is my birthday and, as a treat to myself, a little lockdown birthday present to myself arrives - a set of Sonos speakers for my ‘new office’. I receive a keg from Daughter to go with my two from L. At the same time L’s new Garmin watch arrives, that I’ve contributed to for her birthday in two weeks’ time.

Later we both go for a run, dog free, meet up with Daughter, and run through the deserted city centre which actually isn’t anywhere near as deserted as I thought it would be.

By Wednesday the Government is further muddying the already murky waters that are the Covid-19 death figures by including care homes in the number for first time and presumably back dating them but I can’t find any official figures that would confirm this.

Meanwhile the angry folk on the internet don’t know how to deal with everything that is going on. The virus seems to not only be racist but quite possibly sexist as well. Outrage. By the normal way of things the virus should have both apologised and resigned by now. Sadly, for the angry folk, it doesn’t even appear to be on Twitter.

Throughout the week I binge watch ‘Normal People’ which is the new TV series everyone is talking about. Oh how it is to be populist for once. L gives it a brief disparaging eye and leaves me to it. She’s read the book but didn’t rate it. Obviously I haven’t read the book but I watch all twelve half hour episodes over three nights.

It does start off with you wanting to club both of the main characters around the head with progressively larger and more painful objects. Of course this may be why people can relate to it. I can recall plenty of people who extracted that particular desire from me as I passed through the School to University to Post-University period that the series documents. Then it slides more into my traditional territory as it gets progressively darker and miserable in the second half.

We have a wet few days, so the Lad doesn’t get a run until Thursday. The joy of not having any plans is that I can run whenever and not just when there are gaps in my schedule. Schedules are so last year. Naturally, it starts to rain five minutes after we’ve left the house.

We’re back in time for Jay’s Quiz, which is still going strong, but The Times quiz doesn't reappear having, I think, disappeared under the weight of its own technological failures. 

(Friday 1^st May)

Yes Another One

Today it’s my birthday, yes another one.

During the brief spell when I thought I’d recovered from my post-Manchester injury worries, I foolishly asked for a race entry as a present from L. So Windermere Marathon here I come, on one leg, in just three weeks’ time.

Therefore my tight calves and I sit out parkrun as L and Daughter do Bestwood, saving the pain for tomorrow’s Longhorn.

Derby move into the final play off place by defeating nearest rivals Bristol City 2-0 in Bristol. They now just need to hold onto it through the final two games.

In the evening we go to Broadway.

Red Joan is a wartime spy drama directed by Trevor Nunn based on, but in the end baring little relation to, the story of Melita Norwood who was unmasked as a former Soviet spy in 1999.

Joan Stanley (Judi Dench) is living in quiet retirement in English suburbia and tending her garden when the police roll up to accuse her of treason. Her friends, neighbours and even her own son Nick (Ben Miles), a successful lawyer, have absolutely no idea about her dubious past. Nick thought she’d been a librarian. 

Dench plays her role admirably, as ever, but her Joan doesn't feature hugely and it is the younger version of Joan (Sophie Cookson) whose job it is to flesh out the story. This is done via flashbacks, as the older Joan digs reluctantly into her memory banks while under police interrogation.

Joan was an impressionable undergraduate at Cambridge University in the late 1930s when her conversion to the Communist cause began when an intruder appears at the window of her student flat one evening. This is Sonya (Tereza Srbova), a young lass of eastern European background who has a bus load of dodgy communist friends in tow, for whom Stalin’s reign of terror never happened.

Among these is Leo (Tom Hughes) to whom Joan is immediately attracted. He likes her too, in the sense that she’s malleable both to his point of view and to his designs on her body. Predictably Leo turns out to be a shifty, cold lover and it never really dawns on Joan that he’ll never love her as much as he loves Stalin.

After leaving University, Joan gets a job on a top secret research project developing the atom bomb. Initially she is just a secretary but her expertise in physics means her input and influence gradually increases aided by her creepy (and married) boss Max (Stephen Campbell Moore) who has the hots for her. 

Sadly the film, while well-made, lacks any real excitement or tension. Even a potentially exciting trip across the ocean to Canada under heavy military escort is underplayed but at least offers the chance for her to accede to an affair with Max, although it would appear a largely passionless one. 

The advantage of being a mere girl in 1930s\40s means that no believes she could even be involved on the atom bomb project let alone slipping nuclear secrets to the Soviets on the sly. So Max gets the blame when they suspect someone is in bed with the enemy. While Joan justifications for her behaviour ring very hollow and it is not at all clear that she believes in them herself.

Overall it is an ok film but it felt like a huge missed opportunity. It’s another of those films where the post-film googling is better than the film itself.

Fraught With Legal Difficulties

The working week opens with L’s birthday on Tuesday which she celebrates with a doctor's appointment in the morning and a GDPR training course in the afternoon. She is worried about nodding off in it but I’m sure it won’t be dull... and she can tell me all about it afterwards. Saves me doing a course.

Her conclusion after the course is that even emailing sensitive documents between herself and her boss is now fraught with legal difficulties. It appears the easiest solution may be to post everything, even if the intended recipient is sitting at the next desk.

Tuesday is also a momentous day for the Lad, he is loose in the house for the first time!

On Wednesday L is the one in London for work, not me. I’m on the bike and surprisingly I’m not too fat to swing my leg over the saddle. Impressed by that fact, my colleague and I go for lunchtime pizza at the Yard.

I’m also on the bike on Thursday but we’re not playing squash because I couldn’t get a court. In a rash moment I check the Tennis Centre’s website and they are open, now there’s a novelty. So tennis it is then. Oh the joy.

L walks the boys to me and then goes in the gym while the boys (and I) go to the pub, the Victoria. We return for L later.

(Thursday 10^th May)

As Simple As That

It’s a rare Monday on the bike as obviously I still have no car and at the moment I’m not sure how I’m going to get it sorted.

Then, surprisingly, someone who said they’d ring me back actually does. The friend of a friend of a friend from Saturday calls. So I shoot off early from work to meet him at home, pedalling as furiously as I can, thankfully it was just a 10k yesterday. At least I’ve got a good workout out of it.

He’s a nice retired old fella who diagnoses a deceased battery. As simple as that! He then gives me a lift to get another one. Having pre-warned the local motorist spares centre that we are on our way, they stay open until we arrive.

We get another battery and suddenly everything is good to go. Having already made my apologies to dog training, I take the opportunity to go visit my Mum, whose birthday I missed on Saturday. 

(Monday 4^th September)

National Spoil Your Dog Day

Supposedly today is National Spoil Your Dog Day, although I thought every day was spoil your dog day, and it is also Doggo’s birthday. How appropriate. He is sweet sixteen today.

I make a rare voyage onto Facebook and post a picture of his custom made birthday card with him in a cowboy hat. He promptly goes viral.

I bike today and then later it’s tennis, followed by a beer afterwards at the Crown in Beeston.

L runs to us from the other side of town after a pump class at Djanogly.

(Thursday 10^th August)

We Have A Plan

The man at the bathroom place is amazed when L backs me up on every decision I made about the new bathroom. I did tell him that she might go for slightly darker tiles than the ones I’ve picked, and she does waver to the dark side a touch before picking the same as me. You see, we had a plan. Now if only those Brexit folk had made one.

After that we head off to Manchester where we take Daughter, whose birthday it was yesterday, out for meal. We go to the Worsley Old Hall where we have a very nice, if pricey meal, accompanied by number 50, Titanic Stout.

So it’s taken me precisely 60 days to chalk up the 50 dark ales that I challenged myself to do in my 50^th year but I shall continue and try to see just how many I can do.

(Sunday 26^th June)

Like A Novice

It is L’s birthday today and she should have been treating herself to the second part of the White Rose Double Header with the Leeds Half Marathon but sadly she hasn’t made either of the White Rose races. I too duck out of Leeds, deciding it’s too far to go if I’m more than likely to abort it anyway.

Hopefully I’ll be fit for next week’s inaugural Nottingham 10k and I have a physio session on Wednesday to hopefully make sure I am.

I am beginning to think my stop-start training doesn’t help and my calf needs constant exercising, resting doesn’t seem to help it. It’s the resting then running that seems to upset it. Perhaps I need to run every day if only for a km.

L blames my thighs, she says they are so powerful that they probably cause some imbalance on your calves. So perhaps I need fattier thighs.

Instead of running, I do a velodrome session instead and surprisingly get in at short notice. It is hard going after a few months off and I ride like a novice but it’s an excellent work out.

L’s sister doesn’t seem to think the velodrome is a very romantic location for a night out on L's birthday but we do pop into the Exeter Arms afterwards where we grab a candlelit table and two pints of something dark to go on the list - Back Sack & Quack and Dark Drake both from Dancing Duck.

We have the traditional Sunday Indian afterwards and a Baileys night cap, which was a present from my parents. 

(Sunday 8^th May)

Beat The Street

My birthday gets off to an earlier than planned start with MD vomiting at the top of the stairs at 5:30am. It’s not all bad news though, once that’s cleaned up and with everyone now wide awake the birthday celebrations can get in to full swing earlier than planned. Then once the foreplay is out of the way it’s onto the bike for a cold but excellent ride into work.

There’s not a cake in sight for my birthday at work but then cakes aren’t really my thing. I have been to the pub though, which is a good way to start my 50^th year and my quest to drink 50 different dark beers this year. Although I’ll probably have that done by the end of the summer. It's not off to a promising start with just a standard bitter today. Null points.

Yesterday’s ride home didn’t turn out to be as wet as I feared but tonight’s makes up for it in spades, or should that be in buckets. Once home, I have to strip everything off and steam myself dry while chuck balls of course but no one here to see it and thankfully the neighbours don't seem to be in either. 

L is out doing Beat the Street. She’s got me card too, so I hope to start beeping boxes as well before the end of the week.

I spend the evening of my birthday at dog class where there is also no cake and no beer either. 

(Wednesday 27^th April)