The Dogcar

L has a freebie personal training session with a new chap at her gym who she describes as a muscle bound powerhouse but who turns out to be ‘quite a sweet chappie’. After he’s destroyed her to a pile of jelly he propositions her with an offer of six sessions for the price of four. She’s thinking about it.

The Astra or the Dogcar as it is now known is in for it’s MOT and Service. It failed on the windscreen wipers, a bulb, a track road end and bizarrely the handbrake needed adjusting. There’s never been anything wrong with that handbrake... All in all that’s pretty good for 215,000 miles. They fix everything and then decide it needs a new windscreen washer jet which they can't do until Monday.

It’s in the news that the long term landlord of the Victoria in Beeston and before that the Lincolnshire Poacher in Nottingham itself, Neil Kelso, has died at the age of 62. We are shocked.

(Friday 28^th June)

Bit Of A Waste Of A Freebie

I walk the Lad again this morning and then cycle. 

At lunchtime my colleague and I walk up to the Brunswick, only to be told yet again that it'll be at least an hours wait for food. so we walk all the back to Pride Park and decide to try The Yard. Which isn't too bad. The sandwiches are decent, quite large too. The beer isn't real ale but the keg Shipyard is quite drinkable.

In the evening it’s dog training and I am ready for the Lad’s over excitement when he realises he’s not got to be picked up any more. He doesn’t disappoint. He just loves it and over excitement doesn’t really cover it. He was desperate to join in and was rather shocked to find himself restrained by a lead.

Meanwhile L and Daughter go for a good old singalong (if that’s your thing) at the Greatest Showman on the last of our freebie tickets at Cineworld. Bit of a waste of a freebie if you ask me...

(Wednesday 14^th March)

Inclement Conditions

Today I needed a 10k purely as training for next week’s Retford Half Marathon. Yes, it may be a bit late to start training for a half marathon but I always get injured training so perhaps not training is the best way...

The day dawns damp and gets damper as we join an impressively long queue to get into the car park at Holme Pierrepoint. I don’t recall anyone ever having charged for car parking at Holme Pierrepoint before and we have been here dozens of times but they are charging £5 to park, which has manufactured the queue.

As start time approaches I jump out of the car and leave L to park up, just in case they don’t delay the start but sensibly, they do. Now I have the problem of having excess clothes to dump which I hide behind one of the porta cabins in front of the main buildings.

As I said I needed a 10k and any 10k would do...

Question: What’s worse than one laps of the rowing strip at Holme Pierrepoint?

Answer: Two laps.

Question: What’s worse than two laps of the rowing strip at Holme Pierrepoint?

Answer: Two laps in driving wind and heavy rain.

Yes, it’s not pleasant but then the omens have never been good for this race right from the moment they sent me my race number ‘666’.

My time is unsurprisingly unimpressive but it’s only training. Isn't it? The bonus is that despite the inclement conditions nothing snaps.

Afterwards we head to Wetherspoons in Beeston for a bacon roll and a hot coffee to warm up. My dedicated supporters are as wet and cold as I am. Then L’s at Puregym where she doesn’t relish having to put wet clothes back on afterwards. She best get herself home as quickly as possible and get them off again.

In the evening we’re back at Broadway. 

It is 1947 and Lord Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville) has been sent to Delhi as the last Viceroy of India with the task of handing India back to its people within twelve months. After 300 years, British rule is coming to a close.

The story takes place mainly inside the walls of the Viceroy's House where ‘Dickie’ Mountbatten resides with his wife Edwina (Gillian Anderson) and daughter Lady Pamela (Lily Travers) along with their many many Hindu, Muslim and Sikh servants.

The political elite, namely Nehru (Tanveer Ghani) of the Indian Congress, Jinnah (Denzil Smith) of the Muslim League, Mahatma Gandhi (Neeraj Kabi) the revered leader of the independence movement and others, all visit the House for meetings as they wrangle over the terms of independence whilst in the country as a whole riots erupt.

Gandhi, Nehru and Mountbatten (initially) all wanted a single nation of two faiths but the London Government, for its own political reasons, preferred to partition the country along religious lines. Namely to create a new Muslim nation of Pakistan with a downsized India populated mostly by Hindus. It was this ‘Mountbatten Plan’ that was eventually agreed and with the British army too war weary to cope with the continued rioting, Mountbatten advanced the date for the transfer of power by six months.

The actual border for partition was decided by a London barrister called Cyril Radcliffe (Simon Callow) but what Mountbatten didn't know, was that he had been well and truly stitched up by London. The whole partition plan had already been put together years ago by Winston Churchill and he was simply sent there as the fall guy to deliver it.

Partition led to the uprooting of 14 million people and millions more were killed in the resulting turmoil. Real newspaper headlines and archive footage give weight to the story creating an educating docu-drama. 

The Mountbattens to their credit stay on in India to try to help in any way they could while the consequences of partition still reverberate to this day, seven decades later.

Sadly, to give the film a bit more general appeal, there is also a love story between a Hindu servant Jeet (Manish Dayal) and his intended Muslim bride Aalia (Huma Qureshi). They quickly find themselves in conflict with their own communities. This diversion is a shame, as it takes screen time away from the main story and leaves the film perhaps not as punchy as it could have been.

That said, the film is still a fascinating watch about an important piece of post-war history albeit mainly from the British perspective.

The film is directed by Gurinder Chadha whose own family were caught up in the events that unfolded.

We eat in Broadway after the film, that is when they remember us. It takes the consumption of three Leffe Brunes until they finally serve us despite the place being almost empty. At least one of them is a freebie for the delay. This doesn’t leave us enough time to get to the pubs on Canning Circus so we nip into the new Six Barrel Drafthouse for the second time but again we don’t stay, not being impressed by the offering and we end up in Major Oak for a Titanic Stout instead.

(Sunday 5^th March)

A Double Crossing

Apparently there’s snow in Sheffield, so Daughter will be pleased. Not.

There’s none here of course and it’s good to see that for once the schools haven’t been closed and the buses cancelled as a precaution.

L is working from home again, mixing Christmas puddings, writing Christmas cards etc etc. Presumably kicking balls too? Apparently not, as they are both asleep. Typical. I would be kicking balls if I was there. They always feel as if they have to exercise me.

But were they really both asleep? Apparently ‘my’ dog has stolen some bread off the worktop. Oh dear. MD appears to have double-crossed L by pretending to be asleep in his basket. He's smart that one. No wonder he left Doggo locked in the spare room yesterday, just in case someone had left any bread lying around. He obviously didn't want to share.

She’ll have to dock this morning's misdemeanour from his morning toast allowance.

We venture to Beechdale for squash tonight. I’ve not played there for at least ten years. What a tip, now I can see why. Obviously it affects my game.

Afterwards we go for a drink in one of our locals, one that I don’t usually go in. In fact the last time I was in here was last century. The place is your typical sort of estate pub but one that’s still looking for an estate to belong to as it’s marooned on the roundabout on Nottingham’s ring road.

It’s very local free tonight; in fact it’s almost totally people free. We go in, fully expecting to be confronted with the dreaded John Smiths smooth but instead we are faced with three real ales, one of which is Hobgoblin on top form. It also isn’t ruined by a barmaid who is pulling for the first time but is keen. We have to assist her. She also can’t work the till and for a moment it looks like we could be on for a freebie and she for the sack, until a barman turns up to show her how.

(Thursday 15th December)