A Pleasant Morning For A Puncture

This week sees the return of Monday night dog training which the Lad thoroughly enjoys and he also does rather well. The quiet open field on a Monday suits him better than the busy indoor arena we usually train in where it’s far too easy to get overexcited. Which is something he specialises in.

I cycle on Tuesday and get a puncture but it was actually quite nice... I can’t remember the last time I’ve repaired a puncture when it hasn’t been either dark, raining, cold or a combination of all three. It was a very pleasant morning to have a puncture and I even had it close to a layby, on Coventry Lane, with a bin to dispose of my old tube. Perfect really.

L says that only I could put a positive spin on a puncture.

 

I go to a presentation in Derby about renovating the Assembly Rooms because finally, after it being closed for five years, they are going to reopen. While I was there I got interviewed by the Derby Telegraph and got my photo in the local paper along with a quote of what I said which was basically ‘stop ****ing around and get it open’.

Wednesday is the second leg of the Play Off Semi Final with Leeds. I’m not too bothered about winning, all I ask is that I get my money’s worth if I’m paying Sky to watch it. That I certainly get.

Derby win 4-2 on the night, 4-3 on aggregate, becoming the first side ever to overturn a first-leg home defeat to make it to the Play-Off Final. While Leeds became the first side in a decade to lead the league at Christmas without going up. As I said, got my money’s worth.

After the game Frank Lampard’s bar bill goes viral after he ‘got a round in’ after the game. With 65 Grey Goose on the bill, among other things, they weren’t buying any old rubbish.

I have a Derby County themed night the following evening too as I take my Dad to an event called ‘90 Minutes With The Champions’ at Quad. The Champions here are the team that won the Division 2 title in 1969 and they manage to round up five of the team from that era, some of whom have better memories than others. Well it was 50 years ago.

Daughter comes over to dog sit. She runs to our house and then goes out on a dog job with the Lad. As L left for her tennis, MD was waiting, quivering in anticipation (or trepidation) because it was his turn next.

Daughter then stays over as the girls are doing the Sunrise City 5k in morning. These runs are now at 5:25am, five minutes earlier than before which is something to do with the tram timetable I believe.

I meet up with L after work, she has been visiting her Dad, and she suggests a post-work pint in the Exeter. It’s very shallow of me to be swayed by such an offer but there you go.  

(Friday 17^th May)

Fate Intervenes

Today L, Daughter and myself run the Orston Spring Dash 10km in the Vale of Belvoir. It is a 10k in name only as it’s actually 10.2k long but , apparently, as it’s a ‘mixed terrain’ race they’re still allowed to call it a 10k. Who knew...

I’m also not sure that anyone mentioned the dreaded words ‘mixed terrain’ to me when this was put on our race calendar. There are apparently some muddy tracks which isn’t exactly what I want when trying to avoid further injury ahead of Windermere next week.

However the route isn’t too bad, not too muddy, as they take us on a loop from the village of Orston through Flawborough and Thoroton then back to Orston.

Daughter sets an impressive new PB but then we all do for 10.2k. I guess she’s referring to her time at the actual 10k point. I limp round in 50:23. L is equally disgruntled with her time but soon cheers up when she sees the impressive cake selection.

In evening we get the bus to the Horse and Jockey in Stapleford. For once we actually check the bus times and leave in plenty of time as we always miss the bus and end up waiting half an hour for the next one.

Then fate intervenes. A couple of lads come off their motorbikes on the Nottingham Ring Road while clowning around. We are just about to help them out when one of them jumps on the back of a bike of a third rider and leaves the scene abandoning one of the bikes in the middle of the road. 

Being upstanding citizens we call the police, who seem to be already on the case as one of the bike is stolen and turn up immediately.

The upshot is we miss our bus and end up waiting half an hour for the next one...

(Sunday 12^th May)

Certain Catastrophe

On Thursday, L and I have a pre-tennis tennis knock up before her class. It’s a bit wet underfoot, actually very wet underfoot, and L is worried that I'll injure myself but then, if we don’t play, I’m quite capable of injuring myself in our garden while kicking balls for the dogs.

I don’t cycle on Thursday and I also don’t cycle on Friday as for the second day running the weather forecast on Radio 5 warns cyclists that they face certain catastrophe if they venture out in the elements or words to that affect. The forecast predicts heavy rain and hail but they were wrong on Thursday and they’ll probably be wrong again. I know they’re just winding me up and I’m a fool to believe them but I get on the bus again.

In fact when I go out for a sandwich at lunch time I am more concerned about heatstroke than hail but it does start to rain later, although not that dramatically. I hope no one’s planning a dog jog tonight. Ah, L and Daughter are. Just to get the dogs out of the way while I get my massage.

On Saturday we go up to Sherwood Pines to Parkrun and then in the afternoon, well teatime obviously for bloody TV, Derby play Leeds in the 1st Leg of the Championship Play Off Semi Final.

My Leeds supporting friend leaves his darkened room long enough to watch it, likening it to a TV series you’ve long ago lost interest in but you still force yourself to watch it through to it’s grisly and disappointing conclusion. Then Leeds win 1-0 and he’s suddenly looking forward to the next episode.

I go in person, via a visit to see L’s Dad in hospital, and even bump into Son. Who kept his attendance quiet, probably because he’s always a jinx.

Meanwhile in Derby itself, L says it’s like WW2. Lots of fighting and they’ve brought in the police dogs. She questions who’d be a police officer or a police dog? Daughter and the Lad obviously. They’d sort them out.

(Saturday 11^th May)

Plausible Reasons

Today is L’s birthday but we don’t get much chance to celebrate it properly. At least not today.

Daughter stands in for me and meets L in town.

I’m at the physio after work, Performance Physio at the Tennis Centre. Things don’t get off to a good start when they send me a stupid paper form to fill in. How traditional... and I’d already sent them a long email explaining what the issue is, so I’m not writing all that out by hand.

When I get there though, they are very good and give me a thorough check over. They give me some plausible reasons why I’m having calf trouble, which is more than anyone else has done, and of course the obligatory exercises.

Another tip for injury prevention is to drink plenty of water, so I have started drinking at least a pint a day at work. Today, I even finished a second pint. L is in awe, as she says she often only gets an inch down her first one. The lightweight.

Later it’s dog training, where the Lad has a bit of a spat with another dog and I suffer collateral damage to my arm. This reopens the debate about cutting off a part of his anatomy. 

(Wednesday 8^th May)

Damage Limitation

Sunday brings the final match of the football season, naturally with an irritating 12:30 lunch time kick off, and all Derby have to do to make the Play Offs is to win. Not so easy perhaps when their opponents are fourth place West Bromwich Albion and that scenario isn’t looking likely with the score at 1-1 with only twenty minutes to go. However two late goals see Derby through to a Play Off with Leeds.

Monday is the May Day Bank Holiday and is the day of my inadvisable half marathon, the Great Northern Half in Mickleover, but if I’m doing the Windermere Marathon in two weeks time I need to do some training, however inadvisable. It is run by Huub and is possibly the dullest race you’ll ever do but it’s shockingly popular. At least it usually is when it’s run in March when there’s not a lot on. Having it in May, when there are more races on, means it hasn’t proved quite as popular.

There is a 10k option which L does. It’s the same course as mine but just the one lap!

I take it steady, in a damage limitation exercise, and run it at marathon (e.g. two hour) pace. Which goes well for ten miles, so I decide to up the pace for the last three and come in at 1:54:08 but I’ll probably regret it tomorrow.

We have a sneaky pint afterwards in the Nags Head before going out in the evening. First to the Crafty Crow then to the posh World Service for a meal. Which is very nice but probably not as nice as it should be.

(Monday 6^th May)

Absconded

L Parkruns this morning but I don’t, saving my injured calf for Monday’s inadvisable half marathon. L wants to run at Clifton but I’m worried the Lad might abscond if we go there but then again he could abscond wherever we go.

In the end he does better than that. He joins in with the run as they go around for their second lap, going toe to toe with the lead dog who is placed second overall. So embarrassing.

In the evening we eat at Broadway and catch a film.

‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’ tells the story of Ted Bundy (Zac Efron), one of America’s most notorious serial killers, from the perspective of his long-time partner Liz Kendall (Lily Collins) with the screenplay taken from her memoir 'The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy'.

The couple met in Seattle in 1969 where she was charmed by Bundy, then a law student. He helped her raise her young daughter, Molly, and things were fine until 1975 when out of the blue Ted was accused of murdering several young women.

He claims to Liz that he is being framed but the evidence appears to say otherwise. He is first found guilty of aggravated kidnapping in Utah but is then moved to Colorado where he is charged with murder.

While on trail there he escapes from the courthouse during a recess by jumping out of a second story window but he is recaptured after six days.

Liz decides to end their relationship but still doesn’t know what to believe. She starts drinking heavily as she attempts to deal with the fact that it her who possibly started all this by being the one who gave Ted's name to the Seattle authorities back in 1975.

Ted then escapes jail by sawing a hole in the ceiling of his cell. He is soon rearrested but only after two more women are murdered in Florida.

Liz is not the only one who doesn’t know what to believe. Bundy has quite a following of young women who are fascinated by him and also can’t believe that such a charming and good looking man could be a murderer. One of them is an old flame, Carole Ann Boone (Kaya Scodelario), who moves to Florida to be closer to him.

A pre-trial plea bargain is negotiated in which Bundy would plead guilty to some of the murders in exchange for begin sent to prison for life rather than receiving the death penalty but that would mean admitting he was guilty and Bundy won’t do it.

At the trial, the first to be televised, Bundy handles his own defence and turns much of the trial into a pantomime. He is found guilty, the crucial evidence being the matching of his teeth to the impressions of bite wounds on one of the girls' buttocks. The judge (John Malkovich) sentences him to the electric chair.

Ten years later, after Bundy runs out of appeals, Liz visits him hoping to finally hear the truth but he continues to protest his innocence to her. That is until she shows him a crime scene photograph of one of his decapitated victims and he finally admits that he sawed the girl’s head off.

Bundy was executed in January 1989, aged 42 years, after belatedly confessing to the murder of thirty women. Although the actual total is thought to be much higher.

As we are supposedly to seeing everything through Liz Kendall’s eyes the film wants us to play along with his many protestations of innocence which doesn’t really work as well as it would have done if we all didn’t already know who Ted Bundy was. This approach also makes the film into a bloodless affair until right near the end, which perhaps is no bad thing but that does leave it rather lacking in dramatic effect.

We also never really get to explore why he did what he did or how he got away with it all for so long.

It’s still a good film though and Efron, who is clearly trying to get into grown up film making, puts in an accomplished performance. His decision to play a notorious serial killer was an interesting gambit and one he manages to pull off.

Afterwards we have a drink in the Hockley Rebel and then check out the jaw droppingly expensive Curious Tavern. Which is ok but we probably couldn’t afford to go there very often.

(Saturday 4^th May)

Teeth Marks

L complains there are teeth marks in her orange. I’m not sure why she’s acting surprised, he doesn’t like oranges. Then she’s sorting out her credit card fraud, someone registered her with a spa and now her bank have blocked her credit card. Perhaps she could ask them if they could leave it blocked?

I haven’t been getting on with my new iphone 6s, so I take my old iphone SE into an Apple shop to see if they can fix it. They take one look at the charging port, give it quick clean and hand it back to me. Now it works again. Easy peasy when you have the knowhow. 02 wouldn’t even look at it when I took it in there.

There is a bit of stink locally because a runner from a local club was asked by the London Marathon to be an Official Pacer for 7:30. Then apparently they hassled her for being too slow, closed water stations and asked her group to move onto the pavement. Now I’m not sure they should have pacers going down that far but having decided to have an official one they really should have treated them properly.

Meanwhile L says she “can't get this bloody marathon off my mind!” Four of us doing Brighton then. Cool. There’s more running on my Facebook where a ‘memory’ pops up of MD and I doing a 10k at Catton Park, eight years ago. We made the podium but we never got the doggie buff we were promised.

The boys and I go dogging on Wednesday then L has her tennis on Thursday. I also cycle on Thursday and manage to find a route by road to the Highfield Lane bridge without getting lost.

Then on Friday I get my masseur in. It’s been a while, over a year. He seems pleased to see me and my calves.

(Friday 3^rd May)

Bridge Out

Sunday was MD’s 11^th Birthday but everybody forgot. So we celebrate it a day late. The Lad celebrates by raiding L’s bag again and taking an apple up the garden for a post-breakfast snack. She does give him the opportunities but she says she’s putting an onion in there tomorrow.

When I cycle to work on Tuesday and arrive at the Meadow Lane Bridge over the A52 Chaddesden to Pride Park, I find it closed. Apparently the whole thing is about to be demolished and there will be no bridge at all until spring next year when they open a new one. Thanks for the notice...

Of course at the original presentation for the road improvements we were told the new bridge would go up before the old bridge was demolished. The date for the installation of that bridge was January this year but that lapsed when work on the entire project was halted in September.

Now they have found another £25 million down the back of a sofa somewhere the project is back on and the bridge design seems to be completely different to what was originally planned.

I am directed further down the A52 to a bridge at Highfield Lane that I didn’t even know existed. The only problem is the footpath to it isn’t really bike friendly so I need to find out how to get to it by road.

On my way home I get completely lost when I try to find a way back to the main road from it.

(Tuesday 30^th April)