They Call Him Lazarus

In the morning, rather bizarrely, Doggo is much better. He seems to be walking ok and I even take him for a short morning stroll. The trip to the vet is postponed but we both go to work worried about him. I’m on the bus due to the forecasted 45 mph winds.

I keep my promised pub lunch appointment with my colleague although I don’t feel much like eating. A pint is very welcome though.

L’s boss leaves work early, so she does too and heads home to Doggo at about 2pm. He seems fine as if he's risen like Lazarus. Phew. We’ve both been on edge all day. He seems his normal self again and is even scrounging L’s sandwich, bless him, I hope she slapped him. Then he’s outside playing ball, well barking at it. As we keep saying, we never have understood that dog.

Obviously he’s not getting any younger and his legs are getting worse but I’m guessing he may have spent most of yesterday with them folded under him which then meant he was unable to stand on them. So possibly just cramp.

I take them both dogging and he watches everyone train as usual. 

(Wednesday 22^nd November)

Worrying Dog Developments

As is usual now, we walk a dog each in the mornings. Then I take the car to work as there's a match tonight.

L skives off work early to go see her folks in the middle of the day. While the boss is away... and all that.

Back home later L reports several puddles and then the distressing news that Doggo seems to have lost the use of back legs, won’t eat and barely seems to know where he is. I head home straight after the match to find him in quite a bad way. Every time I try to stand him up he wobbles over sideways. I carry him up the stairs to bed but he won’t settle on his bed and I lift him onto ours. For the first time in many years he seems happy to sleep between us.

I lie with my arm around him, unable to sleep, while getting my head around this being the end and first thing in the morning we’ll be at the vet with him getting confirmation of that.

About 4am, he sits up and seems to want to get off the bed. I help him off and he wobbles, without falling over, to his bed where he curls up and goes back to sleep.

(Tuesday 21^st November)

Not Far Wrong

L seems to be getting increasingly frustrated by John Carroll pool which insists on closing one lane to save money, no matter how busy it is. I'm not sure how that works, although apparently they need less lifeguards but I can’t find any regulations that support that.

The Lion in Basford is named the most dog friendly pub in the East Midlands but that is probably only because they haven’t met MD. We will have to take him. We just need a bath chair or something similar to get the old battleaxe there. That's Doggo by the way.

L goes to her running club while I go to my committee meeting. She says she’ll be home about 7.30ish and I’ll be home about midnight. As if it would take that long… but she’s not far wrong.

(Monday 20^th November)

Rue The Day

It’s a lazy day today apart from the incessant ball chucking required by MD. It wouldn’t be so bad if he wanted one of the decent balls he’s got but he often prefers the pink one that L used to do her exercises with. It's lightweight and much more difficult to throw as well as pink. She probably rues the day she gave it to him.

It’s not a lazy evening as I’m at the Velodrome for the Sunday night SQT. This is, of course, a far from a relaxing way of spending the evening but terrific, leg shattering fun. Then recovery drinks afterwards in the Exeter.

(Sunday 19^th November)

A Time Before Twitter

We nearly did Long Eaton parkrun this morning but L proclaimed herself not quite ready to return to running yet. So we stayed in bed instead, which is always a bonus.

Then I take the dogs on the park before heading to the opticians where I get to see the head contact lens chap. It’s about time, its only took four years. Apparently the practice has been leaderless for a while and its only recently that he moved up from Cambridge to take over. Hopefully he can do something with my appalling eyesight.

Afterwards I go to meet L in Debenhams, where she is having another non-shopping trip. She really does fail womankind badly on that score. I join her in their café and steal her free coffee as she waits for her watch to be repaired.

Derby play at 5:30pm today, who knew. I was settling down to listen to the game at 3pm only to find its been moved for TV. Not that 5:30pm is much good to me as we’re at the cinema.

'Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool' is the story of the final days of Hollywood actress Gloria Grahame (Annette Bening) and also her relationship with Peter Turner (Jamie Bell), a young Liverpudlian actor half her age whom she met in the late 1970’s when they, incredibly, shared the same north London boarding house.

By this point, Oscar winner Grahame’s time in the limelight had seriously faded but she continued to work where she could and spent a lot of time performing on the stage in the UK. Turner and the hugely insecure Grahame, keen herself to feel young again, quickly became lovers. For a while at least, then she seemed to forget about him.

Until 1981 that is when, already ill, she collapsed one night and called him of the blue. She asked if she could stay over with him and his family in Liverpool. Where she hoped to spend time recuperating but, as it turns out, these were to be her final days.

Despite being exasperated that she won’t seek treatment, Turner along with his mother (Julie Walters) and father (Kenneth Cranham), looks after her. The film details his memories as he looks back on their brief transatlantic romance.

It does rather morosely becomes one long death scene but it is rather refreshing that her final decline happens outside of the public glare. This was a time when famous people could blend into every day life and not be recognised. It was a time before not only YouTube but before even DVDs. In fact VHS had only just been invented.

When the landlord of Turner's local pub does recognise his superstar girlfriend, it is a one off and nobody alerts the world via the yet to be invented Twitter. 

Finally her son, having been told about her illness, travels over to take her back home where she dies just a few hours after arriving in America aged just 57.

It's an excellent film for many reasons. Its story, its message, its time, its acting. Bening is brilliant and ably supported by Bell, with whom she shows great chemistry. There is also strong performances from his Cranham, Walters and Stephen Graham as Turner's brother.

(Saturday 18^th November)

The Girl With The Nine Jobs

I am  back in London today and would you believe it's going well? A successful day for once.

It's also a successful day for the publicity machine at Greggs who say they are sorry for portraying Jesus as a sausage roll while lapping up the huge publicity it gets them.

Meanwhile Daughter is being interviewed by the police, at College of Policing in Coventry. We’ve booked her an overnight stay so that she can be fresh for the interrogation and the tests she will face. We’ll have to cash in the favour for some more dog sitting.

And L is job hunting in Orkney and jealous of the girl with nine jobs. It does sounds like she could use some help but personally I think they’re taking advantage of her because she’s the youngest.

(Friday 17^th November)

The Best Goalkeeper We Ever Had

The only thing that got me out of another day in London is that today is my friend’s funeral but not exactly the reason you want to get out of a work’s engagement.

I drive over and pick up my other friend from school, the one that was part of our drinking threesome in the Brunswick. My brother comes to join us as he also knew him very well. We were all part of the same six-a-side football team and he was the best goalkeeper we ever had.

There is a huge turnout and standing room only in the church. He was a popular chap. In the Lawns afterwards there is even a photo of the football team up on the wall and many of the old team are there amongst a reunion of school friends. Most of whom I don’t remember and some I haven’t seen for years. It was good to talk to and get back in touch with many of them as email addresses are exchanged.

I get home to find that L has apparently been shopping in Orlando. Either that or her credit card has been cloned. The latter, I think.

(Thursday 16^th November)

Competent Person

My company’s London project, that I am heavily involved in, is already slipping and although we knew our trip down there could still be called off at any minute, my colleague and I finally head down there on Tuesday.

Apparently I am our company's designated ‘Competent Person’ on site. If only they knew. I am asked to tick a box to say I have completed the Competent Person training? Have I? Suppose it’s called life, isn’t it? I tick the box.

When L texts to ask ‘How’s it going?’ Typically with this customer, the answer is 'not great'. That is until we suddenly had some success getting everything set up at 4:50pm. Hopefully we’ll get more done on Wednesday. Then we head to the local Premier Inn for the night. Who don’t want to serve us food. Have we booked? A room? Yes. A table for food? No. Didn’t know we had to.

The hotel is right next to the Enfield Brewery but obviously they don’t sell any in the hotel. Later on I have a walk around the area and find, as I expected, it’s purely industrial. No even a dodgy backstreet boozer, let alone a pint of Enfield.

I return to my room where it’s a bit lonely without a dog on my bed, asleep with his head resting on my knee, and without a girl beside me, asleep with her head resting on her book. Although back at home, she is awake because the boys won’t let her sleep and Doggo keeps lapping the stairs. They seem to be missing me and she ends up sleeping downstairs so that they can wait by the front door for me. Bless.

The progress we made late on Tuesday isn't improved on the next day, although none of that is our fault. So we will be coming back down on Friday.

(Wednesday 15^th November)

Senior Citizens Special

Daughter stops over, probably exhausted after her weekend with the boys, and then heads home first thing as she has the whole week off. That’s some recovery time for dog sitting but probably warranted.

I walk Doggo and then leave him eating his posh Senior Citizens special dog food while I head to work, as I’m running late. Little did I know that he would abort the moment I left the house. So MD comes back from his walk and thinks all his birthdays have come at once as he finds a bowl of salmon dog food on the floor awaiting his return. 

So MD gets the posh nosh and Doggo gets a bowl of 10p tinned dog food instead but naturally wolfs the lot.

Tonight was supposed to be our dog club's committee meeting but I’d already rescheduled that for next week before I found out that the today's planned trip to London has been postponed. Even though I’m now free tonight, I daren’t ask them to move it back again.

I should be in London tomorrow... and I've asked L to steal me some latex gloves from her clinic. Which are for my work in London, honest. 

(Monday 13^th November)

Indispensable Excesses

On Saturday morning we head to Forest Rec parkrun. Such is life that I have planned the trains for our trip to Manchester around parkrun. I run with MD, badly. Daughter walks Doggo because she’s injured. L tailwalks but then gets spotted breaking into a run (several times) when she’s supposed to be walking.

Then we head off for our chilled and romantic Mancunian weekend with loads of beer, food, cycling and other indispensable excesses. Daughter has kindly offered to dog sit. After the slow train to Manchester we check in to the Holiday Inn on Oxford Road where we are on a freebie ‘rewards’ weekend which to my surprise also includes breakfast. So we will not be breakfasting at the local Subway, which we can see from our bedroom window and which, of course, is Daughter’s former workplace.

We have tickets for the Track Cycling World Cup this evening which starts at 6.30pm. So time for a beer or two. We find a place called The Knott where the Fell Milk Stout at 5.2% appeals to both of us. We wash it down (or should that be the other way around) with one of their pizzas.

After making our way out to the cycling, watching some great action, we then return to the same Castlefields area of Manchester to The Briton's Protection, a Grade II listed pub dating from 1806. It is ok but not as good as The Knott. So we return there, only to find that one Milk Stout has been replaced by another with Black Jack Milk Stout now on the bar. Clearly the Knott is the place for Milk Stout.

We are also at the Velodrome for the Sunday afternoon session from 3pm but L insists on showing me the local Waterstones first. Although this still leaves us time for a lunchtime pint in Café Beermoth. Then when the cycling finishes at 6pm we get the train home.

Great Britain finished the event in second place on the medal table with three gold medals, which was good but only as good Kristina Vogel who managed three on her own as the German team won overall with four.

(Sunday 12^th November)