A Pleasant Leg Stretch

L is so convinced she isn’t going to be running the Burton 10k today that she breaks her own boundaries before we even roll out of bed. Then she decides she is fit to run and then blitzes it in a good time.

Although she nearly didn’t get the chance to blitz anything as we struggle to get to the start at Shobnall Leisure Centre because most of the surrounding roads are closed due to road works. We have to abandon our car in a street somewhere and walk the rest of the way, as do a fair number of the competitors although others do seem to have cracked the secret code and found a way to the car park.

The course is undulating, or rather largely uphill in the first half and downhill in the second half. It finishes with a lap of the athletics track at Shobnall. It was a pleasant leg stretch.

In the evening we are at Broadway to see Animals. 

Laura (Holliday Grainger) and Tyler (Alia Shawkat) are two friends who share a flat in Dublin and enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle with lashings of drink, drugs and casual sex. Robin Ellacott as you've never seen her before.

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The pair simply get through their days so that they can live their nights but you have to wonder how, as they both appear to work as baristas, they can afford to do this. It is true that they do seem to have a knack of finding functions where there is free drink on offer while Tyler is shameless about decanting the dregs left in other people’s glasses into her own. There is barely a single scene in the film where wine is not being drunk or drugs being snorted. A lot of the film’s budget must have gone on ‘substances.

The girls’ friendship is a close one, at times they even share a bed and rarely leave each other's side, but as they enter their 30s Laura begins to wonder if it’s time to avert an early death and grow up. She’d also quite like to finish the book she’s been writing for the last ten years, which only stretches to ten pages at the moment.

Her sister, once their partying partner in crime, is now married, pregnant and sober. She is increasingly disapproving of her sister's lifestyle and of Tyler in particular. Whereas Laura is close to her family, Tyler never sees hers.

An opportunity for a more balanced way of life presents itself when Laura meets classical pianist Jim (Fra Fee). He is diligent, level-headed and hard working. A grown up even. Everything she isn’t. 

Jim tries to fit in with Laura’s partying but he just isn’t very good at it. While Laura starts to think more and more that settling down with Jim might be quite a nice option. She tries to bridge both of her worlds, not wanting to become as boring as her sister but equally not wanting to abandon her best friend, and mostly fails. Tyler is quick to see which way the wind is blowing and doesn’t like the prospect of losing her friend.

Laura then compounds her dilemma by meet a dodgy poet called Marty (Dermot Murphy) who she clearly has the hots for but can’t follow through, well... almost but not entirely, you assume out of loyalty to Jim. Then when she finds out that Jim is cheating on her she has the nerve to be upset about it. They separate, leaving Laura alone to perhaps finally finish that book...

It’s one of those films that just drifts along and that’s a style I really like. None of the characters in the film are particularly likeable, so it’s hard to know where your sympathies lie, but that’s the point really. Well worth a look.

Mr Unreasonable

L goes to her osteopath and gets thoroughly manipulated. The chap gives her permission to run 2k on the flat on the grass with two days between runs. Then every couple of weeks she can another km. Hmmm. I’m sure she badgered him into that but she could go round the garden, MD would love it. she could chuck balls at the same time.

Today my Mum finally goes in to hospital to get her new knee and my Dad rings to say it’s all gone to plan. It appears they sent him home to stop him getting in the way...

I visit after work and she is recovering well although seems very confused, probably due to the drugs they've dosed her up on, and keeps trying to escape. My Dad stays overnight to prevent her organising the other inmates into a mass break out.

I get the bus home where L is being Ms Angry and Daughter is trying to calm her down. It’s all role play apparently for Daughter's interview and I join in. While L hates confrontation, I revel in the chance to be Mr Unreasonable.

(Wednesday 1^st November)

Say Something Nice

I come to work on the bus because I was supposed to be heading down to London this evening for work, so that I can make an early start on a project we’re doing in Islington on Friday. I’m also supposed to be there Tuesday and Wednesday next week.

However, this week’s trip has been cancelled as they are behind with the installation of the equipment. I’m waiting to hear when we are rescheduling for.

At least its got me out of tennis... although I suppose I could try to arrange a game a short notice. Nah, I’ll skip it. I shall head home to cook, dodge bees (we have lodgers) and chuck balls.

L meanwhile drugs herself up and heads to gym and aquarobics.

Apparently today is ‘Say Something Nice Day’. Which is nice, obviously, but L never believes me when I say something nice...

(Thursday 1^st June)

Easy Come, Easy Go

L has now been to her GP about her ongoing injury problems. She has now been told to exercise as much as possible and she's been given some extra strong drugs so that she can do so. They’re also sending her for physio, the free NHS variety.

It’s a rather nice surprise when Wimbledon tickets arrive through the post this morning but then just as I’m getting all excited and planning my outfit, L tells me they’re not for us. Apparently she has applied on behalf of her sister. Easy come, easy go.

Tonight we do actually get a flat viewing in, in fact two in the same block. Both seem promising, one more so than the other.

Then we head over to visit L’s parents. I actually get to join her for a change as I’m not dog training this week. However, this also means that there isn’t really any excuse for a pint. 

(Wednesday 15^th March)

Amy

We’re back at our usual Parkrun this week at Forest Fields. L runs it, I get the bacon butties in.

The afternoon sees a spot of hedge cutting and then a drive over to Derby. L drops me at the Derby Beer Festival and joins me for a pre-race curry there. She has a race tomorrow, I don’t but I do have a Crufts Team qualifier.

Then she heads off to meet Daughter at the train station. She gives Daughter a lift over to her father’s, where she (and Son) have been summoned for his birthday party, a significant one we believe.

I loiter at the beer festival awaiting her return and have a few beers to pass the time. Sadly the festival is a shadow of its former self. With Derby’s Assembly Rooms shut, one feels more as a political statement that anything else, the festival now takes place beside it, in a tent on the Market Square itself. It is more like a refugee camp than a beer festival. Hopefully they will find it a new home for next year.

When L returns we head off to see ‘Amy’ at Quad.

‘Amy’ is a documentary about Amy Winehouse made by Asif Kapadia, the man who also made one about Ayrton Senna. To do so, he had the full cooperation of the Winehouse family and this, if nothing else, results in an amazing collection of archive footage. These clips, many clearly made only for personal viewing, are extremely revealing and at times uncomfortable to watch. Added to the footage are the recollections of many of the people who shaped her life and career.

Her father has openly disowned the film, after he saw the final cut, saying it wasn’t a good portrayal of his daughter. I would disagree totally, if anything it paints Amy Winehouse in too good a light.

It’s everyone else who gets butchered, her father included. For being a rotten influence on her from the start. From his infidelity during her youth to his conversion to dotting dad when she gains success and wealth. I can see why he didn’t like it.

Winehouse is no saint of course but it seems that hardly anybody is prepared to guide her away from bad influences. Those that try fail when they come up against the major influence that is Blake Fieldler, the inexplicable love of her life. It is his relationship with the insecure Winehouse which seems to be the deadly tipping point in this story.

This is a man who leaves his current girlfriend to be with Winehouse, then leaves Winehouse to go back to her. Then he switches women again when Winehouse gains success and wealth. Are you spotting a pattern here?

Unlike her father, this particular hanger-on led her into hard drugs. Then there’s the press, of course, who relentlessly pursued her.

The contrast between the Amy of the early years up to the time of her début album ‘Frank’ in 2003 and what comes afterwards, when she hit the big time with ‘Back to Black’ in 2006, is very pronounced. At that time, even I was enchanted by the attractive young talent but I quickly lost interest as her appearance (and life) became more bizarre and she disappeared under the weight of her tattoos. 

This film however restores my original admiration. It shows how incredibly talented she was and how she made music on her own terms but what comes over most is how clever and personal her songs were. Many of her songs were of a highly personal nature with lyrics sourced from her own, often unpleasant, experiences.

Watching the film is, at times, a macabre experience. The footage of her final, ill advised, concert in Serbia in 2011 is not easy to watch. Winehouse is too drunk to be on stage let alone to sing. When she died just a month later of alcohol poisoning, aged just 27, it had a sad certain inevitability about it.

 

Her dreadful but popular cover of The Zutons’ ‘Valerie’, unmentioned in the film itself, accompanies the end credits. Sadly this, rather than her own stunning compositions, is what she will be remember for by many.

 

Whether this film tells the real truth or not it has lifted Amy Winehouse up several levels in my eyes, which can be no bad thing.

Well recommended.

(Saturday 11^th July)

Swimming Upstream

As is usually the case Derby County follow up successive 3-0 and 5-0 wins with a 3-0 defeat at home to Burnley. I didn’t see that coming but I really should have done. We’ve been here before, numerous times, but you keep hoping your team has turned a corner. Sadly not.

When you go see your first film for ages, you've got to make it a good one or if not a weird one. So Upstream Colour, which falls mainly into the latter category.

A lass called Kris (Amy Seimetz) is accosted by a man known as the Thief (Thiago Martins) in a night club and gets a worm forced down her throat. Once in her body this worm grows inside her, seems to brainwash her and allows him to control her. He then assigns her a series of odd tasks including making her write out each page of Henry David Thoreau's book Walden, a book which pops up frequently throughout the film. Then he sends her off to the bank, where she signs over all her money to him.

Once she's penniless, he leaves. A nice sort of twist on the woman emptying her bloke’s bank account via his credit card I suppose. He leaves her in a bit of a mess, in more ways than one. She can feel the growing worm travelling under her skin and takes a carving knife to her legs.

At this point, another man, The Sampler (Andrew Sensenig), draws her to him by broadcasting the sounds of natural, that he has recorded, back through some big speakers. He takes her to his pig farm where he surgically removes the worm from her body and transplants it into a pig. It appears that he has a group of pigs that are all connected to different people who have suffered the same fate.

Now no longer physically infected, Kris tries to return to normal life and her job but as she's been missing for some time, she loses it. Then she meets Jeff (Shane Carruth) on a train. At first she tries to ignore him but they already seem to have a connection. It turns out he has also been a victim of the same ordeal. Together they attempt to rebuild their lives and make sense of what has happened to them, as do we, the viewer.

It’s the sort of film where the viewer is supposed to fill in all the gaps. It needs your full attention to attempt to do so and there's not a lot of dialogue to help you out. The film is clearly meant to be puzzling and on that basis it succeeds greatly.

The Sampler, as well as being her rescuer, also seems to be the source of the worm drug. So maybe this is a film about drugs and drug dealers? After all drugs do make people do mindless things, bankrupts them, leaves them under the control of their dealers and even if they recover, they are never the same people again. Possibly.

There are countless theories you could come up with and there are countless theories already out there on the internet.

It’s engrossing but it's not a film that the majority of film goers will appreciate due to its lack of car chases, explosions and general absence of straightforward-ness plus the buzzing of the constant ambient soundtrack will give some folk a headache. Yet, in a year where everyone is making sequels or remakes it's good to see something refreshingly different and outlandish like this.

(Saturday 31^st August)