Crumbs

I walk the boys this morning so that L can get a good long swim. The boys and I have quite a long walk, over half an hour anyway, and they both ate a hearty breakfast afterwards. Even Doggo who we suspect may be finding his munchies a bit too hard on his old worn down teeth, so we’ve started softening them with water.

In the afternoon I receive an email from Seetickets offering me a ticket for Frank Turner’s 2000th show at Rock City next Thursday and I have two hours to claim it. So I claim it!

I was in the original ballot for tickets and if you didn’t get one you went on the waiting list in case there were any returns or extra ones made available. So my name must have come up. That never usually happens. They were about 10 times oversubscribed.

With the pantomime now in full swing and us track cyclists generally ousted for the duration we have to grab what crumbs of track time we can. Oddly one of those crumbs is tonight from 5pm to 7pm as there is no pantomime performance tonight. As it’s a Friday night this seems rather odd but then the fact they’re holding a pantomime in a velodrome is pretty odd in the first place.

I leave work a little early for what is supposed to be a gentler session than the Sunday one. Not so, particularly when the same coach as the other Sunday turns up and starts doing his six day sixes again (or whatever it is). The overall standard tonight is lower but the pace isn’t which just means there are more bodies to be resuscitated afterwards.

(Friday 9^th December)

The Barrel Drop

Tonight we visit a new bar in Nottingham, The Barrel Drop in Hurts Yard. Once famous as the home of Way Ahead records (now Seetickets), back in the day. When Way Ahead moved in it was already the home of Rob’s Record Mart. Rob is still there!

It's fair to say that these days Hurts Yard could do with a bit of attention, perhaps this new venture will help.

Barrel Drop has a couple of hand pumps but when we there all the beer is drawn straight from barrel. I have a Porter, can’t remember who from, and very nice it is too. The owner apparently also owns the Brew Cavern beer shop in Flying Horse Walk.

We then head to Broadway to see Birdman. Which is a black comedy of sorts about a man called Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), a man typecast as Birdman, a superhero type character who pulled in the punters at the multiplexes and presumably ran for several pointless (you would imagine) sequels. Thomson, now ashamed of this 'selling out', wants to reinvent himself as a ‘proper’ actor on Broadway. Keaton, twice Batman of course before quitting to avoid becoming typecast himself, appropriately plays the lead.

In an attempt to prove himself, Thomson directs and stars in his own adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story. It is a bold attempt to be taken seriously but also a doomed one. Throughout he is persecuted by the character that made him famous. His Birdman alter ego keeps appearing in his mind, telling him that he will fail.

The public too do not want him to move on from Birdman and the critics, namely Tabitha of the Times (Lindsey Duncan), will never give him a good review because of who he is.

Then when his co-lead in the play is mysteriously knocked unconscious by a falling stage light, it is thought that his replacement well known method actor, Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), could well save the show. Mike though is exceptionally unstable. He gets drunk during his first rehearsal and later attempts to have sex with the female lead (Naomi Watts) whilst they're on stage.

He fails on that score but is more successful with Thomson’s daughter (Emma Stone), an assistant on the production and straight out of drug rehab.

Thomson’s quest is further derailed by his girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough), who might or not be pregnant, his ex-wife (Amy Ryan) who can't seem to stay away from him and his pushy producer (Zach Galifanakis).

Everyone is depicted as deeply flawed as the film takes a dig at actors in general as well as taking shots at a public that will shell out good money to see action packed rubbish.

Birdman is good but not fantastic and it isn't ground breaking by any means but in what looks like being a meagre year for award contenders it may be one of the best we get.

(Sunday 11^th January)

We Are So Hip

L has recently read a book called Mr Gig by Nige Tassell. It's a tale of the author whose life was once defined by live music until he gave it all up in the name of marriage and children. The book is about him getting back on the gigging horse, albeit with the helpful assistance of being a journalist. L proclaimed it more my sort of thing than hers and she’d be right. The book really talked to me, and not just because it was on audio, particularly when he bemoaned that things aren’t like they used to be because clearly they aren't.

L did say that although she’s not really a gig person she does now want to go to Glastonbury, as well as Rewind, the Isle of Eigg Away Game Festival and she wants to see the Wicker Man film. This is almost a bucket list full.

So this is how I came to be poised with my fingers over the keyboard of our home computer at 8:50am this morning whilst L takes herself off to the Goose Fair Gallop 10k.

Glastonbury isn’t what it was back in the day of course and is now something that is on almost everyone’s bucket list particularly those like me in their 40’s who have never been.

At 9am precisely the website goes live, instantly declaring it is at capacity and I’m not in. As ever in these ticketing skirmishes I remain calm knowing others around me will losing their heads in a blur of keystrokes, mouse clicks, F5 refreshes and swear words.

At 9:20am I am calmly entering in my debit card details and at 9:26am the sold out signs are being hung up. Which despite what the papers may tell you, doesn’t necessarily mean that there are millions more people chasing tickets this year. It just tells you that Seetickets are getting better every year at processing the applications and I thought it was a pretty smooth process myself. Anyhow, we’re going. We are so hip.

I grab the dogs’ leads and we head off to chuck a celebratory ball on the park. Once there we find some folk orienteering. It’s the local NOC club that we used to be members of. I have a chat to the same people who are still organising it seven or so years on. Thankfully they don’t recognise me or Doggo who used to do it with me, usually causing mayhem. We ought to get back into it. I’ve just no idea how we’d find the time.

L has a good run but she doesn’t retain the trophy. Not that she was ever likely to as she didn’t even enter last year but that was what they put on her registration email and to not forget to bring it back with her for the presentation. The perils of cutting and pasting your emails.

In the evening we head up to Leamington and have an evening with Son in a Mexican called Chicos. It’s a very pleasant evening and we get to brag about how hip we are. 

(Sunday 5^th October)

Play Off Tickets

It’s a rather simple task buying tickets for the Play Off final this morning. Seetickets are handling the sale and it’s all rather slick. The big decision is deciding where to sit and how much to pay. Last time, in 2007, we ended up a long way from the pitch. This time I manage to get tickets five rows from the front. My Mum isn’t going, so L’s sister will be joining my Dad and I on the big day.

I’m back in training and swimming tonight. The pool is a much better temperature as well, not the overheated Sauna of last week. In fact it’s almost cold.

L asks whether I’ll continue the swimming after ‘the day’ or do we have a ‘no more swimming’ celebration. Sadly I think I need to continue swimming and if I survive this event I might even consider another one, maybe around September time. It would be shame for L to not get more use out of her WAG boots.  

(Tuesday 13^th May)

A Very Big Sofa

Apparently LOCOG or whatever they call themselves have found some spare tickets down the back of the Olympic sofa. About 900,000 of them. It’s a very big sofa. So this morning I make use of my exclusive ‘presale’ window. How this be a presale when it’s after the original ballot and after the secondary sales window earlier this year... I have no idea but never mind.

It is with a heavy heart, e.g. huge expectations of failure (again), that I log on to my exclusive window, just me and approximately one million others.

I’m after track cycling, which everybody is after of course, just because they once saw Sir Chris or Vicky P in Lyrca and thought I’ll have ticket for some of that, so naturally I am correct in assuming it will be another unsuccessful attempt.

It’s also another battle with the unfathomable Ticketmaster. I promise I’ll never ever slag off SeeTickets again. I avoid Ticketmaster like the plague for gig tickets for the same reason that it’s a disaster for Olympics tickets. First there’s their obsession with ‘captcha’ and it always takes me three attempts to solve the puzzle, which in Olympic ticket buying terms is valuable seconds lost.

Then there’s their annoying way of being incapable of updating availability in real time, sometimes you suspect with Ticketmaster even in the same week is beyond them. So you pick your event, your price range and how many you want and press the button marked ‘beg’. It tells you to go for a long slow walk around the block while it consults the tea leaves in the bottom of the Ticketmaster mug before coming and saying ‘nope, not go any of those’. It doesn’t say ‘we haven’t got 4 but you can have 2’, or ‘we haven’t got any at £20 but we have some at £40’. It doesn’t even say ‘we haven’t got any tickets at all for that event you moron, what are you even trying for?’

Well I’m trying because your website says you have availability in ALL price categories, so I sort of assumed you had availability in all price categories. No? Well perhaps you did last Friday but clearly you haven’t bothered to update it since. So I change my criteria and try again, in an attempt to unlock the perfect combination that might yield me a back row restricted view seat in the velodrome behind a bunch of Moldovans who probably got theirs for nothing because no one’s heard of the Olympics in Moldova.

Each time you have to manually empty your shopping basket because it won’t let you put a second set in there until you take out the ones they haven’t got. You’d think it would do this for you. More valuable seconds lost.

Eventually with Ticketmaster still showing full availability in all categories I give and go check the comments on the BBC website to try to find someone who’s more miserable than me. Only to come up against some smartarse saying how easy it all was. Crowing about how they bagged front rows seats and a night out with Jess Varnish, all in under 30 seconds and still had change from ten grand. We all love the London Olympics.

Plan FF is Thursday and a punt on either Triathlon or Modern Pentathlon tickets. Don’t hold your breath.

I wonder if that Nottingham lad who was trying to give away the £1,000 romantic holiday for two to Malta after his girlfriend dumped him thought about swapping it for Olympic tickets. Perhaps he’s already got Olympic tickets. Perhaps when they split she got the Olympic tickets and he got Malta. No wonder he doesn’t fancy going any more.

The afternoon’s entertainment is Daughter dashing (well sort of) around Sheffield, trying to find a Co-Op bank, trying to extract enough money from them to pay her rent and then taking it to her landlords office by 5pm, having not started until about 2.30. All the time I’m assisting her by text. It reminds me mightily of Treasure Hunt with Anneka Rice back in 80’s for some reason, only without the helicopter.

I was beginning to wonder if she’d get there before 5pm but she did, with time to spare in the end. So at least that challenge went to plan.

No dog class, I take the boys on the park instead.

(Monday 14th May)