That Extra Touch Of Luxury

On the bike today, after I've walked Doggo. L walks MD, and while our walk is tranquil theirs is disrupted by two cats and two imaginary dogs. Although, if they were imaginary, then I’m not sure how L knew they were dogs?

Doggo then eats most of his breakfast despite having cheese and pate last night. He now also gets his duvet laid out in the hall for him for that extra touch of luxury while we’re at work.

Despite, as always, telling me not to get her anything L sends through her Christmas  wishlist. Previously, just myself under the tree had been fine. Not that we have a tree. Now it turns out that I am allowed to get her some more of what she already has plenty of, e.g. books and boots. As it’s Christmas, I will oblige and the boots are just as much a present for me anyway.

Dog training tonight and L is at her folks'. Afterwards in the Masons it’s the same old beer, so no Christmas cheer there then.

(Tuesday 5^th December)

Black Friday

Tonight is Black Friday and after the near hysteria last year nobody seems to give a fig this year. I’ve been studying Macbook prices for the last fortnight and if anything they are slightly higher on Black Friday than they were last week which is a cunning marketing ploy. I think I’ll hang on for the post-Black Friday sales.

Of course the real reason today is known as Black Friday is because it’s a Thai-Free Friday as I’m attending my company’s Autumn Do tonight. It was supposed to be our Christmas Do but because it’s only November we have renamed it.

It’s also ‘Wear Your Old Band T-Shirt To Work Day’ which I’ve missed again. If they could please advertise this better ahead of the day next year. Please. I look jealously at all the photos sent into the website while I sit here with a Notts 5 Miler t-shirt under my civvies. Not really the same thing.

When a group of us leave work looking for a pre-Autumn Do tipple an immediate downpour forces us into the Beefeater rather than a real ale pub. Not a good start to the evening. We are marooned there (and soaked) but at least not far from the Roundhouse where the ‘party’ is. The meal is ok, at least it's hot this year, but it is outclassed by the pre-meal munchies of mini-beef burgers etc which are really quite good. The event itself is not all Christmassy, thankfully. In fact the only nod to Christmas seems to be the crackers on the table. Not even Slade gets an airing, at least not while I’m there.

L turns down a work’s sponsored night at the Casino to pick me up. I offer to get the bus home so that she can spin the wheel of chance but she opts to collect me instead.

I get a text with the rendezvous point, go to the pull in by the back of the station. It’s all so very cold war. I look forward to the honey trap. She did mention turning up in a raincoat, boots and nothing else but she doesn't have a raincoat...

(Friday 27^th November)

You Can Never Have Too Many Boots

You can never have too many boots. Apparently. That is as in 'pairs of' and not as in chemists. Christmas must be on its way.

L's curiosity convinces herself to bite the bullet and go for a This Girl Can swim. She reports back that the pool was packed with women on woggles. Which are strange floaty things, not boy scout things. So it doesn’t sound like she spotted any future Olympic champions in there, not unless woggles are the new sport?

I thought the whole point of the This Girl Can thing was to point out that women can do what the men do e.g. without any gimmicks. Yet they end up with a session that sounds like a child's playgroup.

I’m at the velodrome tonight doing what is likely to be the last session of the year with the pantomime, which is being held there, curtailing most sporting activities until the New Year.

L and boys pick me up later. 

(Friday 20^th November)

Double Vision

There’s no park for the boys this morning. The aim is to keep Doggo from over stretching himself so that he won’t limp into kennels next weekend.

Instead L spoils me by letting me take her boot shopping. We head over to Calverton to a couple of horsey type places that sell boots suitable for a WAG with a busy schedule of supporting to do. We find a suitably exotic pair but the shop owner seems a little put out when I try to haggle her down to the price they are on the internet. I succeed but only because we failed to find a really good internet price on her ipad.

Then back home, lo and behold, L goes out for a bike ride. She keeps saying cycling is the way to go and asking when our next sportive is. It’s all very odd and not the sort of thing she’s used to saying but I certainly don’t want to quell this new two wheeled enthusiasm.

In the evening we are back at Broadway.

The Double is loosely based on the Dostoevsky novel.

We meet Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) on a train; deep in his own thoughts. Thoughts which are interrupted when someone tells him he's in his seat. The rest of the carriage is empty but Simon decides to move anyway. Then instead of taking another seat he chooses to stand in the empty carriage, this you realise later is important.

You see Simon is insignificant and he knows it. At work, nobody knows him or even remembers him from one day to the next despite him working there for seven years. He has ideas but nobody, least of all his boss, wants to listen to them and he lacks the courage to speak up for himself. As for the cute girl who does the photocopying (Mia Wasikowska), he knows he’s never going to have the confidence to declare his interest in her.

If Simon lacks balls, then James must have extra. James Simon is a new work colleague and is everything Simon wants to be. He is confident and adored by everyone. He is also Simon’s double, an exact physical double. Although this fact goes unnoticed by everyone apart from Simon himself.

At first Simon makes friends with him and helps him with his work only to see James lauded by his boss using Simon’s own ideas. Not only is James an instant hit with his boss, he proves irresistible to the girls as well. Whilst Hannah of photocopying room has never given Simon a second glance, she is immediately enthralled by James and asks Simon to fix them up.

The big question throughout is, is James real? and how much of what we see actually is real? Is James merely an alter-ego? There are hints in many directions but we never get to really find out.

Of course I could be reading too much into this and it’s simply meant to show how ridiculous it could be if someone double did really appear in to their life.

The film is a real curiosity piece, which needed a few pints to debrief it afterwards. Sadly we have a race tomorrow. Pretty much like ‘Under the Skin’ last week, this is a film that will divide opinion.

After filming this together Eisenberg and Wasikowska became an item, so I wonder which one she preferred. 

(Saturday 5^th April)

Pandering To My Ego

The watch says ‘new record’ but I know it’s just pandering to my ego. I don’t even know what it means by a new record. Does it mean a record distance or a record time? It just didn’t say. The raw facts are 5.59km in 26:59.

The run was sandwiched in between riding to and from work, so I guess any record is the sign of improvement.

At dog training, I suspect that somebody is wearing L’s new boots (the one’s she hasn’t got yet) but I didn’t feel I knew the young lady well enough to start discussing her feet.

L sends me a photo to compare them with. It seems having a dog at your side when you wear these boots is compulsory. So it’s a good job we’re sorted on that front then.

Dog training is a bit slow and MD only gets two runs. He needs quantity as well as quality. L will be complaining tomorrow that he hasn't left it all in the agility ring when she takes him for his morning walk.

(Wednesday 2^nd April)

I Guess This Is What You Call Moral Boosting

It’s an early start today for the Dambuster Duathlon which is held at Rutland Water. The event doubles up (or should that be triples up) as a 2014 ITU Worlds Qualifier and a 2015 ETU European Qualifier meaning that I’m seriously out of my depth here.

L and the dogs are dragged out of bed early as well to come, support, administer last rights etc. Which is much appreciated although L spends a fair amount of time eyeing up all the other WAGS outfits. Having already requested a new WAG dress for the Outlaw Half she’s now added a new pair of boots to the required kit. At this rate the supporters’ kit is going to cost me more than the actual competing kit. The boots are considerably more expensive than the aero-bars I’ve been looking at.

There are 700 entrants arranged in three starts. The male elite at 8.20, the aging male veterans (including myself) at 8.30, the fully aged oak smoked and matured in whisky casks male veterans at 8.40 and all the ladies at 8.50. This means I’m going to have two seriously focused groups chasing me down.

I manage to hold them all off during the initial 10k run and more importantly also hold my calves together. Although that took some concentration as I try to keep my foot flat and not run on my toes. I run 47 minutes for the 10k whilst looking for something under 50, although I didn’t actually have much choice about my pacing. The path is so narrow and the field so tightly packed that you simply have to go with the flow as overtaking or being overtaken isn’t really an option.

The run is an out and back along the edge of the dam and the water itself has huge waves on it. So everybody is relieved that it’s not a full triathlon but I doubt anyone is quite as relieved as I am. The water still has quite an effect on the event though with quite a fierce wind always present coming off the water for the run.

The aged veterans do come past me en bloc on the bike leg, the first 15k of which is a painful blur on tired legs and mainly into a strong headwind. Once the oldies had disappeared into the distance, a few of the women start to come past me although not in great numbers. Each one seemed to be sporting pigtails, which is clearly the way to go for a faster time this year, blow the training. Not sure they'd suit me though.

By now I’d got the use of my legs back and I start to enjoy trying to chase the girlies down the road, naturally failing miserably each time and anyway it would have counted as illegal drafting had I actually caught one of them.

Surprisingly enough I’m also overtaking some of the young whippersnappers from the first group, the not-so-elite of the elite group. So all very satisfying and I’m disappointed when the bike section ends.

Back in transition and into the final 5k run, where I develop a short of shuffling routine around the course. All that was needed was the zimmer frame to complete the look. Oddly once I complete the event in an inspiring 2:45 having been aiming for anything less than 3 hours I found out that the pace of my second run was faster than the first one. Would you credit it. I guess this is what you call moral boosting.

My WAG is kind enough to drive me home and then I’m quickly out again as Derby have unhelpfully scheduled a match for this afternoon, which they helpfully lose. Thanks for that, worth rushing back for.

Then L comes across to Derby and after a drink in the Old Bell we got to Quad for a film.

As the Book Thief is a film that is narrated by Death himself (Roger Allam) you’d expect this to be a depressing sort of affair, particularly as it looks at the Second World War, genocide and all, from the German peoples own angle and specifically one young girl but oddly it isn’t. If that was its target, it missed it by a mile.

That young girl is Liesel Meminger (Sophie Nélisse) who is abandoned by her communist mother and subsequently adopted by the Hubermanns, Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and Rosa (Emily Watson). Her brother was supposed to join her but died before he got the chance.

Liesel cannot read and Hans starts to teach her, using the basement walls as a blackboard. Hans has refused to join the Nazi Party and his business suffers because of his stance, so he has plenty of time on his hands. From this Liesel develops a love of books, which is sort of difficult with the Nazis burning so many of them.

The only book she has, The Grave Digger's Handbook, came from her brother's funeral. She steals another from a Nazi book-burning ceremony and a woman who Rosa does the laundry for, Ilsa Hermann (Barbara Auer), invites her to see the vast library she has at home where she nicks another. This lasts until her visits are terminated by Ilsa's husband .

As well as exploring her relationship with books and her new parents, the film delves into her friendship with a schoolmate Rudy Steiner (Nico Liersch). Rudy thinks he's in love with her, almost as much as he is in love with the black US athlete Jesse Owens, a devotion for which he is roundly mocked at school.

Then there is Max (Ben Schnetzer), a Jewish friend of the family who is allowed to hide out in their basement, to whom Liesel reads to while he lies ill.

The story is all over the place, totally unfocused and deftly sidesteps around any topic that might have proved harrowing or exciting even. As a consequence the film lacks any real sense of tension or danger. People even die as nicely as possible and without a mark on their bodies, even if their house has collapsed on top of them.

Then there's the way the whole cast speaks in English but with pseudo German accents, throwing in the odd actual German word to hilarious effect. Make your mind up, either do it fully in English or in German with subtitles.

It is a good film ja? Nein. Sadly average.

 

Post film we visit Mr Gundys, the Greyhound and the Golden Eagle. The Golden Eagle is the pick of the bunch for me, almost empty but now owned by the Titan Brewey, a new one on me.

(Saturday 8^th March)