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)

Navigating Helsinki

We have an 8.30 flight from Manchester this morning. As it’s a work day and traffic might be bad, we leave early and get there in plenty of time for a hearty (if pricey) breakfast at somewhere called Giraffe. We leave the boy’s breakfasts in the hands of the dog sitter.

Everything at Manchester airport goes swimmingly, no sign of any Heathrow sized queues here and I even booked the multi story next to the terminal, so we can just walk in. For some odd reason it was £10 cheaper than the car park we had last time, from where we had to get a bus. Clearly booking car parks at airports is now as much of a lottery as actually booking the flights already is.

We consider doing hand luggage only but with the prospect of having security taking our toothpaste outside for a controlled explosion, we decide to go with hold baggage instead.

L has a new suitcase, on wheels. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as practically every pavement in Helsinki was cobbled. It must have been almost like cycling Paris - Roubaix.

Cobbles were actually the least of our problems. All the signs in Helsinki were in two languages - Finnish (obviously) and Swedish. Neither of any use to us. Our map of Helsingfors (to speak a bit of Swedish) seemed to be in a mix of the two, neither of which appeared to be what they put on the front of the trams.

Once we work out that the tram and the Metro are not the same thing, it gets a lot easier. Our hotel is by a Metro stop, as is the central railway station where the airport bus dropped us. Unfortunately it takes us about an hour to work this out but eventually we get to our hotel, a Holiday Inn. Which is just like every other Holiday Inn I’ve stayed in, which is to say it was perfectly fine and comfy.

Helsinki itself is less modern than I expected and very eastern European in its look. This is less surprising when you look at its history and discover that for just over a hundred years up to 1917 it was an autonomous part of the USSR and the majority of the buildings put up in that period were modelled on St. Petersburg. Apparently these neoclassical buildings were often used in Cold War era films depicting the Soviet Union because actually filming there wasn’t allowed. Before that it was a part of Sweden for eight centuries, explaining the Swedish signs I guess.

Once we get the hang of it, we discover the travel system is great. It encompasses trams, the Metro, a few ferries and the buses including the one that brought us the 18km from the airport. Everything is covered by an all day travel pass, of which we buy a three day one, not realising that three days in Helsinki is a precise 72 hour period and not as it would be in the UK, three calendar days. So we buy a day too many but never mind.

Actually, I lied, we never do actually get the hang of the travel system, and it constantly throws up something to surprise us.

We do find a very nice bar though, just one stop up the Metro from out hotel. Bruuveri is a Finnish beer house that sells around 15 beers on draught. Regrettably not hand pulled but at least we can avoid fizzy Euro Lager. Some of these beers are from their own brewery but it’s not easy to tell which ones these are. So I try as many as possible but get rather fond of the 7.5% Baltic Porter, which sounds like a local beer to me. Probably fonder than is good for me with a race tomorrow, although with the race start not until 3pm, we have a little hangover leeway if required.

The atmosphere in Bruuveri is quite lively too, due to two large screens showing the World Ice Hockey Championships which are going on simultaneously in Helsinki and Stockholm. Finland are the defending champions. The roar in the pub signifies they have won their first match. Cheers.

(Friday 4th May)

Don't Blink

Derby 3 Millwall 0. I don’t really understand this. Six wins out of eight and third in the league. It’s encouraging if nothing else and a sign that perhaps we should avoid relegation more easily this year but I’m not reading anything more into it. The more testing run of fixtures that we have coming up will be very interesting.

Now I remember the 1970’s BBC TV Series of John le Carre's 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy'. I vaguely recall it at the time but have re-watched it since, although even that would have been some time ago. I found the series fascinating but it also baffled the hell out of me and that was a seven part series that had over five hours to tame the meandering plot. The new film version however intends to do this in just over two hours...

So perhaps they’ll cut out those long pregnant pauses of unspoken dialogue and those lingering meaningful stares that didn’t convey very much... Nope.

Like the TV series the film nonchalantly tosses little bits of raw information or ‘hints’ at it’s largely unsuspecting audience and says make of that what you will. It is not big on explanations. In fact so little is made of the revelation of some vitally important points that you’re likely to miss them. So concentrate, don’t blink. Don’t even think about going to the toilet.

Essentially there is a double agent, a mole, amongst the heads of British intelligence, known here as the ‘Circus’. At the time all this was very current affairs, now it’s a 1970’s cold war history lesson. Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) is sent to Budapest by boss man ‘Control’ (John Hurt), to bring in a Hungarian General who wants to defect to the west and will reveal the mole's identity but the meeting is a set-up.

The meeting at a Budapest cafe ends with Prideaux shot and taken away to endure months of vicious interrogation, cue a particularly shocking scene, before he is eventually returned to Britain where he is ‘retired’ to live in a tatty caravan and to teach at a public school. Which is very 1970’s, these days even public schools don’t employ shady men who invite young boys into their caravans.

Back at the Circus, Control has died and his deputy George Smiley (Gary Oldman) has been forced to retire in shame at the botched operation. Yet the investigation is reopened when agent Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy), a loose cannon if ever there was one, turns up with pillow talk corroboration of the mole theory gleaned from a love affair with the wife of a Russian intelligence officer he was tracking. Smiley is subsequently drawn out retirement to track down the mole.

Tarr promises to help Smiley, if he can reunite him with his Russian blonde, a promise he cannot possibly keep. Smiley’s suspicions fall on four men:- Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), who is now head of the Circus and three other top ranking officials, Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds) and Toby Esterhase (David Dencik).

I’m giving a more linear version here, which the film does not, instead relying on the dreaded flashback. You soon lose count of how many times we end up back at that Lenin themed staff Christmas party.

Assisted by Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), Smiley investigates. Talking to the increasingly bitter Prideaux and the sacked head of research Connie Sachs (Kathy Burke) who suspects that the Soviet Cultural Attaché in London is really a spy. Smiley discovers that pages have been removed from the duty officer's log book for the night Jim Prideaux was shot. So he speaks to the duty officer himself, who tells him who was the man in charge that night...

The Circus's Russian intelligence source ‘Merlin’ is looking increasingly dodgy as indeed is the entire operation coded name ‘Witchcraft’. Now who was the man responsible for that, and could the same man simply be shagging Smiley's wife to make any accusations levelled at him by Smiley look like sour grapes.

Having gleaned enough, Smiley set a trap and catches the traitor. If you’ve not blinked the mole’s identity is no great shock and perhaps that’s part of the problem with the film. I think perhaps the film makers knew it too and jazzed up what happened next.

Some say this is a masterpiece. So you're supposed to describe it as compelling, tense, absorbing, involving etc etc and in some ways it was. Some would say dull. In reality, it's probably somewhere in between. It’s well made with strong performances all round. Gary Oldman's portrayal of Alec Guinness, sorry Smiley is excellent. Just gen up big time before you see it.

(Saturday 24th September)