Sour Grapes

MD and I run the Forest Rec parkrun this morning while L is a tail runner and Daughter makes her parkrun début. It’s quite a family affair. Naturally Daughter picks what is a fast week to do her first one but still does brilliantly.

Its also the day she get the keys to her new flat which is over in almost posh Mapperley Park. You could be pedantic and say it’s only just in Mapperley Park but in it is. We start moving some of her things in but we’ll need the man with the van again to move the big stuff.

Tonight we are at the Nottingham Playhouse for the first time in ages to see The Grapes of Wrath. This is a special request from L, who is struggling to get through the book along with the other 100+ novels on her book pile. It is a shame then that I have to keep nudging her awake throughout and her me.

The story concerns the Joad family who, in the 1930s, travel 2000 miles from poverty struck Oklahoma to hopefully find a better life in California. It is a journey that takes it toll on everyone, mentally and physically including a few deaths. So it’s quite a harrowing story or it’s supposed to be. However this production sees a bit of a rewrite of the story and is, I assume, intended to be a critique of the current migration situation.

This means that the dress code for the Great Depression era is relaxed and alongside characters in 1930s-esk dungarees we have others in tracksuits, jeans, Lycra leggings, a full superman outfit and (possibly the one good pun in the production) an ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ t-shirt.

This re-jigging of the story even included real jigs and there was a lot of unnecessary singing and dancing, including a very puzzling song about user car sales. All of which took time away from the actual story and some meaningful character development.

Those underdeveloped characters were large in number and extremely diverse. This included a multi-racial casting within the same family, which of course I understand the intent of but it really didn’t make things very easy to follow. Nor did the lack of attention to the ages of the family members who were meant to be siblings, parents and grandparents etc.

Then there was the sparse set which comprised of two large transparent containers which I think were supposed to signify their assorted means of transport and lodging but it was generally difficult to keep track of what they were supposed to be at any one time. For me it looked like the play was mostly set in a carriage on the London Underground. The real live river at the front of the stage was a nice touch though.

In the end, the production came over as neither contemporary nor true to the gritty realism of the original novel and I do like a bit of grit. I’m really not sure what John Steinbeck would have thought but he would most probably have hoped for something a little more coherent. It was just a bit of a mess that left you coming out of the theatre feeling neither entertained, educated nor inspired just confused.

I certainly needed the bottle Springhead’s Robin Hood ale they now sell there as well as the drinks afterwards in the Room With A Brew and the Blue Monkey.

(Saturday 1^st April)

Simply Awful

There's a match tonight, so I park up at my parents' and run the five miles into work. The run was quite good, although I struggled to hear my audiobook over the traffic and with the all American hero about to be interrogated by the Stasi this was far from ideal. 

The run was also nowhere near as fast as Sunday’s with L, naturally. The weather is cold and drizzly but not too bad, I don’t pull anything vital.

L says it’s freezing out there but call me pedantic but it’s raining, therefore it can’t be freezing because if it was it would be snowing. She reports that the pool is back to being empty, so presumably everyone has now binned their New Year’s Resolutions and therefore we can all get back to normal.

After work I run the five miles back the other way. Again it goes well and again I don’t pull anything but I’ll be hoping for better luck later.

Derby draw 1-1 with Reading and even the manager admits afterwards that it was ‘an awful game, an awful team performance, we were individually awful.’

I have to say it’s very refreshing to have a manager that actually seems to have watched the same game as us. I’m not sure that’s ever happened at Derby before. Normally you get managers who says week after week that ‘we played well and were unlucky’ when it was blindingly obvious that that wasn’t the case.

What he didn’t say tonight was that it was all his own fault as he tried out a new formation to incorporate one of the new players. Everyone just looked confused, except Reading that is.

Afterwards we support the Navigation and try to keep it in business during the difficult month of Dryanuary. L is at home in bed, exhausted after a night book clubbing. 

(Tuesday 12^th January)