The Darkness

On Sunday we are again at Broadway for 'The Darkest Hour'.

The Darkest Hour here is Winston Churchill’s, with Hitler’s forces poised across the Channel ready to invade in May 1940, and his darkness lasts considerably longer than an hour.

Churchill (Gary Oldman) finds himself not only up against Hitler but also most of parliament who don’t approve of him, his vision or his motives. Many still wanted appeasement and are agitating for a deal with Germany particularly the recently deposed Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup).

Chamberlain wants fellow appeaser Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane) to be his successor but Halifax doesn’t fancy the job and they are forced to turn to Churchill as he is the only man the other political parties would support. On the bright side it is a job that comes with a cutesy young WAAF secretary (Lily James).  

Once in power, Churchill refuses to negotiate for peace while everyone thinks he is mad for thinking that he can beat the Germans particularly with all the Allied forces currently heading for defeat at Dunkirk. They think he’s even more insane when, against all advice, he orders a suicide attack from Calais as a distraction while Dunkirk is evacuated.

Meanwhile he allows Halifax to send word via the Italians that Britain might be interested in negotiating but only because Halifax and co are planing on resigning from the government, probably triggering a vote of no confidence, if they don’t get their way.

However King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn) unexpectedly visits Churchill and backs him, mainly because he doesn’t want to be exiled. Then Churchill bizarrely asks a group of passengers on the London Underground what they think. Did that really happen? Doubt it.

When he realises that the public support him, as do his back benchers, and then when his evacuation of Dunkirk is success even Chamberlain swings behind him as he emerges from the darkness.

It’s a good film but an odd one. I can’t say I learnt anything new and it really covers far too short a period, in my opinion anyway. Gary Oldman is decent as Churchill but then have so many great actors over the years. A bit of a disappointment really. 

Practice Makes Perfect

I again don’t run parkrun and again we end up in the Jukebox café afterwards. Then we head down to Daventry where we have rented an industrial unit that some bright spark has kitted out with dog agility equipment and a carpet surface just like the one they use at Crufts. So our team who are at Crufts on 8^th March all go down for a spot of practice.

It goes well, apart from the almost sub-zero temperatures and negligible heating in the unit. L joins us, mainly to keep an eye on Doggo and also the car which has now lost the tailpipe off it’s exhaust and sounds a bit like a F1 car. 

In the evening we are at Broadway for 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri'.

The action takes place in the remote community of Ebbing, Missouri and a pretty miserable downbeat community it is. Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) has plenty of cause to be miserable. She works in an bleak gift shop but that isn't why she is miserable. Her daughter Angela was raped and murdered seven months ago. Now she lives with her depressed son Robbie (Lucas Hedges) while her husband Charlie (John Hawkes), who blames her for their daughter murder, has left her to be with Penelope (Samara Weaving), a woman half his age who works at the local zoo. To cap it all the town’s dwarf (Peter Dinklage) has a crush on her.

Frustrated with the police, who have made no progress on the case, Mildred rents three unused billboards on the edge of town and puts up billboards which read ‘Raped While Dying’, ‘And Still No Arrests?’, and ‘How Come, Chief Willoughby?’. 

This has the desired effect, puts the wind up the police and attracts the attention of the local media. Yes while police chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) manages to retain his cool, his inept and racist deputy Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell) takes offence.

He takes his ire out on Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones), the businessman who rented Mildred the billboards, and arrests her friend Denise (Amanda Warren) on a trumped up charge.

The billboards also upset the townspeople and with Willoughby openly suffering from terminal cancer they too are less than happy with Mildred.

  

She is hauled before the police herself when she strikes out in frustration at her dentist. Then after interviewing her, Willoughby, another one who has a partner almost half his age, goes for a final romantic fling with his wife Anne (Abbie Cornish) and then kills himself before his cancer does the job. Although not before first paying for another month’s rental on the billboards. 

When the billboards are destroyed by arson, Mildred retaliates by chucking Molotov cocktails at the police station and from an impressive distance. Unexpectedly Dixon is inside, rethinking his attitude, career and life after being left a letter by Willoughby and fired by Willoughby's replacement. He ends up sharing a hospital room with Red who is recovering from the injuries Dixon inflicted on him.

Suddenly becoming the nice guy Dixon reckons he has a lead on who killed Angela but when it it turns out the man has an alibi, Mildred and Dixon together conclude that the man must be guilty of some other attack and set together to kill him anyway...

It is a wonderfully complex film in which there is an awful lot going on. It is full of action, (black) comedy, poignancy and rage (plenty of rage). It’s very Coen-ish and incidentally stars Coen favourite McDormand, who brilliantly plays a woman weather beaten and worn down by life. It is her best performance since Fargo.

Probably the film of the year, already.

(Saturday 13^th January)

Away With The Fairies

Doggo and I continue our morning ambles together this week and with my bad ankle we are now both walking at the roughly the same pace. My ankle doesn’t seem to getting much better, perhaps L is right and it is broken.

L states she on the diet and go to the extremes of requesting Kale from Sainsbury’s. I start researching Kale curries.

The ongoing roadworks on Pride Park, and traffic reduced to one lane, makes driving to work even more of a chore. So I hide in the gym on Monday until it has gone down a bit.

On the same day, L starts a 10-week course on Fairies at Broadway that a friend of hers is running. I think it’s actually about Fairy Tales in movies or something like that. She was intrigued when she was asked to proofread the course content. Now she’s worried, naturally, that she’ll nod off and embarrass herself. Sort of away with the fairies.

Tuesday I bike and it’s sooooooooooo good to be back.

Tuesday is also when Run For All take over the Ramathon which is sort of good news as they are excellent at the organisational side of things but unfortunately, and I’m no great fan of the race, they are changing the name to the Derby Half Marathon. Which is just plain wrong. I though the whole point of the race was resurrecting the historic Ramathon name, now someone else has got to do it all over again.

Wednesday we are thwarted at the Brunswick where my colleague and I go for a non-working lunch. They have a 90 minute wait for food despite the pub being empty because apparently the function room is full. So it’s the Waterfall for toasted sandwiches and awfully cold Doom Bar. Not much to fortify myself for dog training in the evening.

Thursday I’m in London again for work. Then when I’m back, as there’s still no squash because my opponent is still too fat (his words), L and I have a Friday night in.. Not that I would played squash anyway, what with being in London and still having a dodgy ankle but he doesn’t need to know any of that.

On the real Friday, Nottingham Train Station catches fire which gridlocks the whole of Nottingham. Thankfully I’m on the bike again.

(Friday 12^th January)

Blooming Marvelous

Tonight we are at Broadway.

Molly’s Game is a true story based on the autobiography of Molly Bloom who ran high stakes poker games in Los Angeles and New York before finding herself subject to an FBI investigation, standing accused of illegal gambling and colluding with organised crime gangs.

The film opens with Bloom (Jessica Chastain) trying to convince a lawyer, Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba), to take on her case. We then see the rest of the story through flashbacks.

Bloom was a decent freestyle mogul skier, albeit pushed by her overbearing father (Kevin Costner), who didn’t quite make the Olympic team for Salt Lake City in 2002. She ends up severely injured which terminates her skiing career. However her competitive instinct serves her well in later life.

She skips law school to becomes a waitress at a club in Los Angeles where she meets Dean Keith (Jeremy Strong), a real estate developer and she becomes his personal assistant. He has a side-job running underground poker games and he soon involves her in that.

Molly quickly learns how to appeal to the players, whom include many famous and wealthy individuals including film stars, to gain tips. This include the terribly un-PC approach of the ever lowering of the necklines and lifting of the hemlines of her dresses, until you think they’re going to meet in middle. As a career move it works and she runs rings around all of the men but she is smart too.

Her boss feels threatened by her popularity with the players and fires her but Bloom is

now well known enough to strike out on her own, which she does and steal Dean Keith’s players from him.

It all goes well until a few of her players start to run up unmanageable debts and then when she falls out with her number one player, known as Player X (Michael Cera), she is sidelined. However, instead of giving up she moves to New York to set up a new game.

Despite more success, she is again unable to cope with the players who cannot pay and she starts illegally taking a percentage of the pot to cover her losses. The mafia kindly offer to ‘help out’ with the bad payers and after she declines she is beaten up in her home. Then when one of her players is charged with running a Ponzi scheme everything begins to collapses and Molly herself becomes under investigation. 

I do love a real story and this is a good one, entertaining and well told. It cracks along at a speedy pace and boasts a marvellous performance from Chastain. She is phenomenal and she owns this film as much as Bloom herself owned the poker game. Highly recommended.

(Sunday 7^th January)

Town Street Tap

I observe parkrun at Forest Rec this morning due my on going 'broken' ankle problem. Afterwards we go to Jukebox Café on Hartley Road for coffee and bacon rolls eschewing the Homemade Café which is getting a bit up itself now they’re insisting I have my bacon on ciabatta.

In the evening we head over to Duffield to my brother’s house. They are feeding us and then we go to their local micro pub, the Town Street Tap, which is very nice. We bus over and bus back, although my brother insists on picking us up in Derby on the way there which takes far longer than getting the bus. It’s a good night out though.

(Saturday 6^th January)

Office Companions

I’m the car today, which L thinks is because I can't walk due to my allegedly broken ankle. She does have a point. I don’t think walking for the bus is helping my ankle, mainly because I’m always rushing at both ends.

However the main reason I'mon the bus is in case I was going to book the vets for MD, as he still has diarrhoea and seems a bit off colour. He is eating but only chicken, sausage, rice and Doggo’s posh food but not his own dog food. 

I read somewhere that if a dog is ill then they might develop a phobia about their current dog food, thinking that is what may have caused it. So we might have to switch him to something else to see if that works. In the end, we don’t take him to the vets.

Both L and I seem to have the same problem with our office companions. Her seventy-something one is often snoring away before 10 o'clock in the morning while the twenty-something in my office is usually doing the same. Today he went outside to his car for a smoke and fell asleep while he was there. I think there might also be a potential fire risk there.

Derby have rather unfairly had their FA Cup 3rd Round tie with Manchester United shifted to tonight because they are Manchester United and that is what they wanted. It’s not even on TV. After a 13 year run of 58 consecutive televised FA Cup matches this one hasn’t been chosen. 

The reason for the shift? They were supposed to have the League Cup Semi Final on Tuesday... only now they haven’t because Bristol City knocked them out in the Quarter Finals. Oh how we laughed, not that it helped us as it was too late to shift the game back. Derby give a good account of themselves but lose to two late goals.

 (Friday 5^th January)

Maybe Fractured, Maybe Not

Both boys are improved and MD is back on the Bonios, he's still not quite 100% though. Doggo has found a solution to his wobbly old legs and now props himself up against the kitchen cupboards while eating. He’ll be after a table and chairs next.

I hobble to the bus, last night’s gym session doesn’t appear to have helped my ankle. Which L says is almost certainly fractured. I'm sure she exaggerates.

There’s no squash as my opponent is still recovering from his Christmas break so I don’t need to tell him that I’m injured.

He’s needs to make a Resolution and join the Januarites in the gym, or perhaps not. I mean, is there any wonder that people don’t stick at it when they decide to get fit at the time of year when the weather is at it’s foulest and which inevitably means they end up with the misery that is the dreadmill.

Now if they made their Resolution to get fit in the spring then they’d have nicer weather and longer days with lighter evenings. So then they could do something outside and they'd perhaps stick at it.

Instead they do it in January and at the same time give up all the other things they enjoy doing, like drinking alcohol and eating chocolate. It’s no wonder people continually vote January as the most depressing month of the year.

Personally it’s one of my favourites along with February and\or March, as these months are when we do most of our best trips away.

(Thursday 4^th January)

A Stormy Affair

Storm Dylan and Storm Eleanor seem to be getting it on together this morning, having a riotous affair and letting the whole world know about the resulting row. So I’m on the bus as it’s far too windy to cycle.

This of course means going to the gym after work but when I get there it is to find that my Metro membership covering the gyms of both Nottingham and Derby has expired. I have to fill in a new form to kick start it off again for another six months. This is despite the fact both cities already have all my details in their computer systems. Red tape hell.

That wastes ten vital minutes of gym time. L says I’m not on a deadline but Trent Barton say different, that is if I don’t want to slip into hourly Red Arrow territory.

The gym is packed with Januarites, attempting to fulfil rashly made resolutions. There is a queue for the treadmills, the Watt Bikes and even for the weighing scales.

A lot of the Januarites who are mainly female are coming in, weighing themselves, walking on the treadmill for ten minutes, reweighing themselves, shaking their heads and then leaving. To be honest they probably burnt the most calories before they even weighed themselves the first time by coming up the stairs from the changing rooms.

And Ladies... the tried and trusted men's way of seeing how hard your workout has been is to ring your shirt out and see what comes out. You could weigh the product of that I suppose but you may need paper cup.

L and Daughter are doing their workout outdoors and they run from home.

(Wednesday 3^rd January)

Health Test

We are both back at work today and L is back in the pool, hoping to increase her swim to 50 lengths a day, which may require some serious schedule juggling.

Nottingham Camra announces a change of plan and the BeerFestival will now be at the Ice Stadium rather than on Forest Rec. Probably a wise decision, there’s less winos in the Ice Stadium.

 

Neither dog is eating much and both are under threat of a vet trip if things don’t improve. Both are improving slowly but MD is spending a lot of time sleeping, which isn’t like him. He is still looking longingly at his ball, which is a good sign, but when he turns down a Bonio you know he isn’t quite right.

Even so, I take him dog training thinking it will be a good test of his health and he comes through that ok. L comes over too and I enjoy the first dull pint of the year in the Masons.

(Tuesday 2^nd January)

New Year Round Up

I’m also at work on the Thursday and in the evening we have the annual squash club meal, which is again held at Chakh Le India on Trent Bridge. For some reason the menu doesn’t seem adventurous as it did last year. Well, I assume they’ve changed it. The food is again good but because of the unexciting menu, not spectacular.

Then on Friday we head up to the Lakes. We have a cottage booked in Staveley, somewhere we’ve always wanted to stay, on a late deal. Finding it is the first problem. It’s dark, the directions aren’t great and there’s an inch of snow on the ground. After trying to break in to several properties we finally find the right one.

We have a great first night in the Hawkshead Brewery, where we’ve never been able to manage a session before due to having to drive, with the dogs at our feet. Things start to go a bit wrong on the Saturday. First we head up to Keswick parkrun which goes ok until I badly twist my ankle on a rock and have to hobble over half the distance much to MD’s frustration. He was running with me.

Then Doggo has a funny turn and passes out on the pavement outside the cottage, I have to carry him inside thinking that this is surely the end. Then to add to our woes MD starts vomiting everywhere.

Doggo then seems to quickly recover but we don’t know whether this is just temporary and this, along with MD’s illness, somewhat ruins our Saturday night out.

We had booked a table at the Eagle & Child, which is always hard to get into and they also have Snecklifter on the bar but we are so worried about both dogs that we end up driving the very short distance there so that we can have the unwell pair close to us in the car.

The stress destroys my appetite but enhances L’s. Must be a girl thing. To be honest we also realise that the menu isn’t that great at Eagle & Child anyway, not sure we’ll be back. It does mean there are some leftovers to tempt the dogs to eat and that does work.

Sunday is New Year’s Eve and both dogs have recovered a bit more. We take them on the park in Kendal and go buy L a new walking jacket from Ambleside. I even manage to eat a full meal when we have Sunday lunch in the Watermill at Ings, then we go back to the Hawkshead Brewery for the evening.

It’s £3 to get in which is reasonable, this I assume pays for the disco which we escape from by going upstairs. We have been brave enough to leave the dogs back at the cottage, in the car parked outside, although this is still only a short stroll away.

It’s still a slightly subdued evening and we don’t stay until midnight but I’m not sure we would have done anyway. As is tradition we spend it with Jools Holland on the TV and with the dogs.

Monday we head back down the M6 as I want to be back for the New Year’s Day match but first we stop off near Wigan so that L can do a parkrun and which has a convenient 10:30 start. Sadly after my mishap in Keswick I’m unable to join her.

(Monday 1^st January)