Locked Out

One of those odd, rare days today. Nothing on. Also no kids because both have stopped out overnight.

This does mean that we have to do both their paper rounds. Son had offered to get Daughter some alcohol if she did his but that was before she arranged to stay over at her friend’s. This offer doen’t seem to apply to me but then WKD isn’t really my thing. In the end though, Son cancelled his round so I’m not required. Which was a bit of a shame. I was quite looking forward to it, with L doing Daughter’s there’s a good chance of persuading one of the papergirls to come home with me.

L goes off to do Daughter's round and whilst she’s out, in the cold and sober light of day, I find that the bathroom door still won’t open. I pick up a hammer and chisel to get into the bathroom to answer a pressing call of nature.

Job done. Now I’ve just got to wait for the paper girl to turn up. She takes longer than expected. In the end, faced with the paper shop not being able to find anyone else to do Son’s round, L ends up doing it as well.

I spend the rest of the day in the garden, cutting the lawn and therefore trashing the puppy’s energy levels all in one go.

After which I’m all ready to do my maths revision but by 4pm Daughter still hasn’t shown up, so I go for a ride on my new bike. Stopping off to meet L at the Tennis Centre gym for a mocha. There’s a tennis tournament, The Aegon Trophy, going on there, so I stop and watch for a while. Seems practically all the British players bar Andy Murray are in action there and until Friday, the early rounds are all free to see.

In the evening, we do manage a bit of maths, with a only half with it Daughter. We send her to bed as early as possible because the exam is first thing tomorrow. Then we finish the 13 part series of South Riding, only four years after we started it. Well it feels that long.

Oh and I’ve entered that Tour Of Britain ride, it’s only 145km, how hard can it be?

Don’t They Have Homes To Go To?

I get up at 6.30 and shower, meanwhile the party is still going on, albeit now around Daughter who is asleep in the middle of the lounge floor. As I wish the conscious ones a good morning, a lad passes me on the way to the fridge for another Stella. Someone else is flat out on the settee and everyone else seems to sitting on them, or perhaps it’s just my imagination, it was quite dark in there.

The dogs and I make our apologies and head off to our show. I've no idea how Daughter and Big D are going to manage their morning paper rounds.

Mid morning, I text L. Apparently our guests are still there. Blimey. That’s some party. Don’t they have homes to go to? Daughter and Big D have impressively managed to crawl around their paper rounds. After which they probably both rejoined the party, although Daughter has another two rounds to do later this morning.

The show goes ok, we manage three clear rounds out of four but they’re hardly scintillating runs. Doggo is running like a dog who was playing football at 2am and to be fair, it’s also very hot, too hot for Doggo. So no rosettes today. MD on the other hand is rampant and more than willing to take his place, if only I would let him.

We get home to find that both our socialite teenagers are out. Daughter, after an afternoon catching up on some sleep, has gone off to another party, although hopefully a more leisurely 50th birthday bash for one of her friend's mother. Whilst Big D has gone camping for the night. Now, let me type that again, our canvas averse son has gone camping, willingly and without the use of thumb screws. He also taken our new tent, the one with the wrong instructions and a sports bag full of Strongbow, as you do, with perhaps a clean pair of socks tucked in there somewhere. I just hope he deals with the tent before he deals with contents of the sports bag.

So with the house to ourselves and the two dogs so tired they can barely move, there’s no rush to go out, no rush at all.

Later when we do head out, we amble in the sun up to the Fox and Crown, without the dogs. When we get home and are both bursting to well, get rid of the several pints we have consumed, we can’t get into the bathroom. At all. This may be because we’ve had a few too many or perhaps it because the catch on the door has finally given up the ghost. In the end we manage to come to a remarkable conclusion, taking into account our joint inebriation, and opt to sleep on the decision to kick the bathroom door in. Toilet visits are taken in the garden much to the dog’s delight.

The Birthday Shopping List

I leave for work with Son’s birthday shopping list in my hand:- 16 cans Strongbow, 24 cans Stella, 16 cans Carling, 3 large bottles WKD, 1 bottle of Bacardi, 3 of Vodka and 2 bottles of coke. So I assume they’re getting bladdered tonight. I shall be giving him a similar, slightly more refined list for my next milestone birthday.

That lot’s probably just for the punch. Well actually, no it isn’t. L says she’s been told stories about the punch at 18th birthday parties and the advice is to keep a parent ‘in the background’ to keep tasting the punch to see how the spiking is coming along. She reckons she could handle that job. The other option is to not have punch at all and perhaps that’s the best plan. We don’t want anyone drunk in charge of an xbox or passing out before the stripper arrives.

Checking through Son’s list, I can’t actually afford, let alone carry that much alcohol, so in the end we agree on about half that quantity. I’m sure his guests will top it up.

We get home from work, and start cooking a load of pizza’s and garlic bread for his guests. I’m sure he’d do the same for us. Then, naturally we’ve been evicted from the house again, so we head off to the pub. L’s decided that returning sober might not be a good idea. Although there are some of the girl species expected at the party, so I just hope we don’t give a bad impression to any future ‘significant others’.

As we walk to the pub we pass the party entourage led by Son or, as he’ll probably now be known hereafter ‘Big D’. According to his new t-shirt, ‘Big D Approves’. The in joke, we are told later, is that ‘Big D’ doesn’t tend to approve of much. Ha, and we thought it was just us.

Daughter has been cordially invited to join the party, which she enthusiastically does and she’s also entitled to invite a friend, which she enthusiastically doesn’t. I guess if there are email addresses and mobile phones numbers of boys to hoover up, it’s best to keep them to yourself.

We set her the challenge of getting a photo of someone attempting MD’s weave poles that are still setup in the garden. Disappointingly this doesn’t prove to be much of a challenge and we’ve barely taken our seats in the Plough before we get a text saying she’s achieved this feat already and even got someone to go over the hurdles.

I must mention at this point that we’ve recently started having problems with the catch on the bathroom door, which appears to be broken and keeps sticking. No one has been trapped in yet, well not for long anyhow. Luckily they seem to be on top of this problem and have adopted the policy of not going to the toilet without a mobile phone, so that you can text for assistance if necessary.

We head home around 11.30, hoping that the party will still be going so that we can partake a little in the merriment ourselves. The dogs get home and rather than savage all the interlopers who are on their territory, they disappear into the garden to play with them. So we do a bit of circulating ourselves, finding them a pleasant bunch, with better taste in music than we expected, even if one of them does drink Stella and Coke mixed.

Doggo is still in garden, playing football with the guests at 2am, having clearly forgotten that he’s got an event tomorrow and has to be up early. So have I to be fair, so we make our apologies and head off to bed, dragging the disappointed dogs with us but not before, having clearly worked up an appetite, they help themselves to the kebab that has been abandoned on the coffee table. Doggo seems to be taking our veggie week seriously and takes the pitta bread, leaving a delighted MD to mop up the meat.

The party meanwhile goes on. I awake at 4am and it’s still going on. Daughter’s voice and I’m not implying anything here... always seems to be the most prominent. I awake again briefly at 5am, as they break for crunchy nut cornflakes before continuing...

The Guided Missile

L departs early for work, so I have the task of steadying the ship first thing in the morning. Well, I feed the dogs and do a bit of yelling to the immobile ones upstairs. Daughter seemed alive, well she was coughing manically but not actually up. She'll be spreading those germs at maths revision class later.

Oddly now that MD’s been swapped to a big boy’s bowl, which is identical to Doggo’s, they manage to keep their beaks in their own bowls. So perhaps it was bowl envy not food envy after all.

Now here’s a thought, they’re letting folk ride the complete Stoke Tour Of Britain stage of 142km on Sunday 6th September. Could I manage to stagger around that on my new bike? Hmmm, it’s probably hillier than you think around there.

We venture back into the Flowerpot today. It seems that the hopeless girl has gone or been made to go and we now have a new chef. He looks the part at least. He’s got the gear, the paunch, the chefing pj’s. Enthused, we order off the specials board and then wait with baited breath to see if the food is up to scratch. I had a bit of an unanticipated problem with going veggie. I ordered pasta in spicy tomato sauce with garlic bread, cheese and salad with good intentions because it sounded very veggie but they forgot to mention the mince in the sauce. Oops. L will kill me.

I get home and quickly start putting all the washing back on the line before L gets home. Seems like MD has accidentally pulled it off with his teeth again, at least he’s not tried to bury any of it. Well not today.

Then I drive him to training. The first thirty seconds of which go really well and then he’s off like a guided missile across the playing field. We all squint across the field into the early evening sun trying to see what could have sparked such momentous acceleration. Ah, we all say as one, a cat. It disappears through the hedge and we think that’ll be the end of that. MD will have to about turn and come back with his tail between his legs but no. His path never wavers, his pace never eases and then, accompanied by an explosion of leaves, he punches his way through the hedge and disappears from view, still in hot pursuit. I traipse across the field to try and retrieve my errant dog from whoever’s garden he has treated to his presence. Training was never quite the same after that.

L treats us to a high cholesterol tea. Multiple cheeses, namely gorgonzola and parmesan. So a glass of red wine is required to break up the cholesterol. She couldn’t get the tamagotchi, or did she say gnocchi, so we have some awesome looking pasta instead. I won’t miss the tama-gnocchi thing as I don’t know what one is. Gorgonzola, parmesan, posh pasta, red wine... not cheap this veggie lark.

The Old Adversary

It’s a bit damp this morning but it doesn’t put me off cycling. Although it turns out the drizzle was a bit more persistent than I thought.

I’m perhaps a bit slow on the uptake here but I realise today that cars not longer have mudguards like they used to, years ago. Bumpers seem to be lower instead but as I follow a few cars this morning I realise these are totally ineffectual at limiting spray.

It also wasn’t a good day to run in to my old adversary. Well actually he’s not that old but you know what I mean and OMG, I think he HAS been reading my blog. The chap on the folding bike is not on that particular machine today and he catches me up. Then he gives me ‘that glance’ over his shoulder as he goes past. It’s ‘that glance’ that Armstrong gave Ullrich in 2001, that stare straight into the eyes, that ‘Are you coming buddy or what?’ look. Like Ullrich in 2001, I attempt to try and keep up.

Apparently I’m booked in for maths revision tonight, not sure where I’ll fit it in though. First I'm due at the pool, which is packed, almost unswimable but I manage my lengths.

Then its home to take the boys to dog training. I do a short session with Doggo and then a longer and very fruitful one with the manic MD. He bombs around the arena, kind of under my control, and very fast. I could be onto a winner here or a lot of faults.

Finally its maths time, GCSE Paper 2 is on Monday and right on cue, Daughter has acquired yet another cold.

A Recipe For Disaster

A good cycle in to work, despite the strong wind and an ill fitting bike. Yes I leave my new girl at home and ride the old faithful, to whom I’ve been unfaithful.

In the evening, back at home, Daughter is getting ready to hit the town and is running late, so it’s tin hat time. In the end she leaves without her purse, lost in the maelstrom of getting ready. As the whirlwind departs, we all breathe out again and I head into the bathroom. Hey what this by the sink, looks like a purse. When I share the good news with her, she mutters, that is if you can mutter via text, the immortal words ‘ah shit you’re going to blog this aren’t you?’. As if I would.

L has informed me that we’ve narrowly missed National Veggie Week. So we’re celebrating it this week instead. We do odd things like that. Problem is I’m out with Charlie tonight, not his real name. I pick some veggie toppings for our pizza but he adds some meat ones. So my defence is that it’s not really my fault.

The pizza is not the best, although Pizza Hut thankfully are now finally doing beer, 5.2% Bombardier. Afterwards we’re chilling in the pub across the road, totally minding our own business when we spot two scantily clad schoolgirls loitering outside the Cornerhouse. Then there are two more and then some more. Obviously Halo, where Daughter has gone, has just kicked out. It’s under 18’s night there and the theme is school uniforms, which sounds like a recipe for disaster. That’s before you add in the free Coke. All that sugar and chemicals, alcohol would have been safer.

No sign of any schoolboys, no teenagers in shorts looking like a bunch of Angus Youngs. Perhaps for the best.

I’m amazed they’re allowed to do it. When I was at Trent Poly, they were forced to discontinue a similar event. Having female students dressed in school uniforms apparently increased the likelihood of them being attacked and it was banned by the police but this was 15 years ago when seeing someone dressed as a scantily clad schoolgirl in the town centre was a rare occurrence. It was also called ‘Schoolgirls and Perverts’, which perhaps didn’t help its case.

Then we see Daughter. Who seems quite freaked when I contact her and tell her I can see what she’s up to. Then she gets into a strange car, which I hope is a prearranged lift from someone she knows. She is waiting to berate me when I get home.

A Little Light Entertaiment

It’s about time we had a bank holiday, it’s time for a laze in bed.

After exercising the boys on the park we head over to Derby to meet both sides of the family for a lunch to celebrate Son’s 18th birthday, which isn’t until Friday but it’s not easy to get everyone together and this was the best we could do. So unfortunately Son isn’t actually old enough to drink at his own 18th which is a bit bizarre but, the rule is that, anyone over 16 can drink with a meal as long as it’s not spirits. So rock n roll except he doesn’t seem bothered. So we have a few on his behalf.

It’s a touch disappointing that my brother doesn’t repeat the huge numbered balloons he obtained for my mother’s 80th but he does supply a smaller version which Son takes in good spirit and smiles for the 'press' with it.

Our respective parents meet across a dinner table for the first time and for only the second time ever. It’s only been 13 years, why rush these things. Turns out they have so much in common and hip replacements become the hot topic at the dinner table. Closely followed by maths, thankfully Daughter is down the other end of the table and doesn’t hear that one.

Now I’m not saying that L spends too much time in running trousers or jeans, because I find that sort of stuff sexy, but Daughter wouldn’t be so tactful and well, hasn’t been. So, at first I almost don’t recognise the hot looking chick in the yellow dress. Who turns out to be L. Cool. She’s taken; she’s coming home with me.

The first part of the evening is spent looking at photos of Daughter’s skiing trip, that the school has given us on DVD. We planned on this taking ten minutes or so but an hour and a half later we're still ploughing through them. Good though they are, we abort and move on to something more serious.

L likes her ‘light’ reading and last year she read a book called 'The Pianist'. She loved it so much that we hired the DVD but it’s sat on the shelf, not doing very much, for about six months because we’re not very good at watching TV. Anyhow tonight the TV was free so we decided to give it a go. Daughter ran for cover and off we went.

On September 23, 1939 Polish Radio was forced off air by the German invasion of Poland. The last live broadcast was Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp Minor, played by a young Jewish pianist named Wladyslaw Szpilman. Bombs rain down on Warsaw as he plays. The other people in the studio are panicking but still he plays on. Then a bomb hits the studio and Szpilman too takes cover.



Szpilman’s account of what happened next was first published in Poland during 1946 but it was almost immediately withdrawn by Stalin’s new Communist Government. Finally it was published in Germany in 1997 after Szpilman's son found it on his father's bookcase.

The film of that book is a dark, depressing tale about a man and his fight for survival and it’s simply brilliant. Roman Polanski, himself a survivor of the Krakow and Warsaw ghettos, directs.

For Szpilman, life becomes one long struggle to keep his family together as the German’s move in and impose their anti-Jewish laws. The Germans rapidly increase the restrictions, forcing Jews to walk in the gutter, wear the star on their arm and anything else they can think of to humiliate them. When they get bored with that, they brick them up inside the Ghetto instead. Life in the Ghetto is at first tolerable but quickly gets worse as the persecution escalates.



The full horror of the atrocities that go on there is not spared us. Jews are often lined up for no apparent reason and shot. One woman asks a Nazi officer, ‘What will happen to us?’ and promptly finds out first hand as she is shot point blank in the head. A man in a wheelchair is tossed over a balcony because he failed to stand up when the soldiers walked in.

Finding food becomes difficult, Szpilman’s father has to barter for a single piece of caramel and then cuts it in six pieces to share it with his family. This is also practically his last action because it’s not long before everyone is being packed into trains bound for Treblinka, an extermination facility. Szpilman himself is fortunate that a Jewish policeman recognised him and saved him. This was just one of many lucky escapes that Szpilman manages.



Everything in the film is shown from Szpilman's point of view and we become part of his frantic plight for survival. We share his guilt at not going with his family, although he knows that to do so would have been futile. You can feel the hopelessness he feels, his loneliness, his desperation.

He is conscripted into working for the Germans but manages to escape and goes into hiding outside the Ghetto. From where he witness's, from a safe distance, the failed Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

He manages to get help from other non-Jewish Poles and with their kindness manages to survive, moving from place to place. First in safe houses and then in bombed out ruins. He is continually hiding and fleeing, gradually becoming a shadow of his former self, visibly losing weight throughout the film and suffering jaundice along the way. All the time death via a German bullet never seems far away.

In one of the `safe house' there is a piano. As he sits at it and we hear music playing, we think he’s gone mad and the sound of his playing will give him away but then we see his hands are moving above the keyboard and realize that the music is playing only in his head.

His final hiding place is the attic of a bombed out building where he discovers a large can of pickles which might just keep him alive until the Russians come. The pickles though are his undoing. He makes such a din trying to open them that he is discovered by a German officer. You expect another quick shooting but when the officer finds out he ‘was’ once a pianist he tells him to play. After so many years of being unable to play you wonder at his capacity to pull this one off but after a few tentative chords, he does. This seemed to save his life and the officer ends up helping Szpilman, bringing him food and, finally, his overcoat.



When the Russian troops finally liberate Warsaw, after all he’d been through to survive; Szpilman is almost killed by his rescuers when they see the German coat he is wearing. Their shots miss him and then when they realise that he’s a Pole, they ask

“Why the ****ing coat?"

Szpilman manages to gulp a reply,

"I'm cold"

The officer who helped him tries to contact Szpilman from the pen he is incarcerated in and although Szpilman tries to find him, he fails and the officer is taken away to a Stalingrad labour camp where he was to die seven years later.

When broadcasting resumed on Polish Radio, six long years after it was bombed off air, it was with the same piece, Chopin's Nocturne in C sharp Minor and the same pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman.

I was riveted from start to finish and although it can be hard to watch at times, it is a remarkable film. Szpilman is portrayed as a man that we can all relate to and that you care about what happens to. What would we have done in his situation? He doesn’t try to be a hero; he is just a man doing what he can to stay alive.

Also the film doesn’t try to judge anybody, although that would have been easy to do and just gives you the historical facts and what affect it had on one man's life.

The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards in 2002 and won Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay. I had to check to see what defeated it for Best Film that year. Now I haven't seen Chicago and no disrespect to it but I imagine most people who saw it back in 2002 will have forgotten it by now. Had they seen the Pianist instead, they wouldn't have forgotten it so easily. This film will stay with you for some time afterwards.

There were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland before the Nazi occupation; after it there were just 240,000.

E By Gum

It was quite an interesting day at the agility as we started our campaign to get back to Crufts in the team event. We warmed up with a clear round on the Helter Skelter course where we never get anything because Helter Skelters are always fast courses and we don’t do speed. Then we went clear in the Jumping too, it was good round but still not good enough for a rosette. All this time we were waiting for our team run to come around. The judge had set an evil looking course which was right up our street but I don’t think it appealed to the rest of our team, let alone the rest of the competitors. Anyhow after a few teams had run they decided to simply the course and start over again. Unusual but fair enough. This delayed things a little and as we were one of the last teams due to run it was almost lunchtime before we were called forward. Then just as we were getting ready to run a decision was made to restart the class again, nearly four hours after it had originally started. Some teams weren’t happy about the way it was being judged.

So it all started again with a new judge and another new course. We finally got our team run around 3.30. It had been a problem keeping Doggo cool all day as it was pretty hot but still he did well and posted a solid clear round. Unfortunately we didn’t get all the team around clear so we now try again at Rugby in around eight weeks time.

After that we still had to run the Olympia Qualifier and I didn’t have the heart to send Doggo back for yet another stint in the car to cool off so we did it straight away. He wasn’t really up for it, he was far too hot by now, and he went the wrong way down the tunnel, so that was the end of that.

Meanwhile L and Daughter are out shopping for prom dresses. We had spotted a good one last night in a shop window in town, it was after we'd had a few beers... but our judgement must still have been sound because Daughter seemed to like it too and they've now bought it. L’s also been shopping and tells me she’s been re-measured as an E cup. Wow or 'E by gum' as the say up north. I’m not sure whether to commiserate or congratulate. Which is tricky because choosing the right response could influence how well my evening goes.

I get home to find my E type girl sticking little number 18’s on cup cakes for tomorrow’s big event. As she's busy, I ask if she minds if I slope off to spend a few hours with my other girl. She didn’t seem to mind, so I took my girl for a spin up some of the hills around Stanton and Dale Abbey. As predicted she skips up the hills really well but it was her pace along the flat that impressed me the most.

Let’s spare a thought for Newcastle United, relegated today. Poor old Geordies. You have to laugh though. Hull didn’t deserve to stay up but hey, who cares.

It was a rather good weekend all round, I was also pleased to see Burnley and Scunthorpe win their play-off games.



Then to top it all I won the fantasy league with ease. The long term leader ended up third. He’ll be dreading that vote of confidence from his chairman.

If There’s Fun To Be Had...

We drive up to Monsal Head and take part in a ten mile run which has been organised by L’s running club. It’s not a race, it’s just for fun, which may be an oxymoron depending on your point of view. MD’s point of view is that if there’s fun to be had he’s going to be central to it and goes off to upset a field full of cows. Luckily there’s a fence between them and us which prevents them exacting their revenge.

Obviously pleased with this success, as an encore he upsets an old lady and her elderly golden retriever. Then after we’ve dragged him away he goes back for another go. A certain part of his anatomy is now on borrowed time and he spends most of the rest of the run tethered to me.

Our run was also disrupted by a van trying to run us down as it drove along the narrow river bank. As we squeezed ourselves into the hedge to let it pass, the driver stopped to ask us to keep our dogs under control as it was a conservation area... of course we immediately complied, whilst at the same time pondering on the amount of damage his van was causing to the area.

Despite the disruptions and L hobbling around most of it, her old war wound has flared up again; it was a good run, a bit muddy in places and very unrunnably hilly in others but still good.

We get back in enough time for L to drop me off at the bike shop. I finally get to take my new bike out for a test drive. It immediately develops an annoying creaking noise. Not good. Not to worry the chap says and fetches a hacksaw out the back of his shop. He then proceeds to lop a chuck off the end of the seat post. It’s not pleasant to hear him sawing away at my new bike but the mutilation isn’t visible and the creak has now gone.

Now the fun part, I get to ride it home. The ride of around eight miles goes well at first as I cycle along the actually rather good cycle path down Hucknall Road. Then just as I was concocting a letter of praise to our not very cycling aware City Council, I avoid the ring road by cutting across town and then run into a problem on Radford Road. I mentally ripped that letter up, as I end up marooned by the tram tracks.

At first it was ok and I cycled quite happily alongside the tracks but then the curb suddenly came out to meet thems and I had to either stop or cycle across them. Cycling across them seemed a bad very idea, I’d end up on the floor I’m sure. So I dismounted and then remounted in the middle of them. This meant I then held the traffic up because no one could get past me until I found a safe place to cross back over them.

On arriving home safely, we head into town to celebrate.

He Better Be Joking

I cycled in despite the fact that my knee is a bit dodgy. Although it only really hurts when I twist it. It’s particularly bad when I turn over in bed for some reason, probably because I usually have to twist it out from underneath one of the dogs.

It seems ok after the ride. It’ll probably hold up fine until I have to do some quick turns at the agility on Sunday, when I’ll most likely collapse in a heap in the middle of the Crufts qualifier. At least I now know, after falling over the other week, that Doggo can carry on without me. I’m just not sure how he’s going to manage the baton change.

I ring my man at the bike shop to see if my new bike will be available for collection this weekend. As L keeps pointing out, I can't cycle around on a ill-fitting bike forever.

‘What bike?’ he asks. I think he’s joking. I hope he’s joking. He better be joking. Phew, he is. He tells me she’s ready for collection. Now all we need to do is complete tomorrows run up in the Peak District in good time so I can get back to collect her.

L also been out on her bike today and has done 20K which is only 2k shy of my ride to work. She’s now battling against the temptation to break into the full tin of biscuits that some b*****d has donated to their coffee room.

No one ever puts a tin of biscuits in our coffee room. I’ve had to buy my own box of ‘energy boosters’. Naturally I’ve not opened them yet. L says that’s a man thing. Whereas feeling the need to empty the entire tin of biscuits is clearly a girl thing. I would say that she’s earned a biscuit but I daren’t tell her that.

She reckons I’ll leave my biscuits that long, they’ll go off and I will end up throwing them away. Hmmm, not sure about that, I’d eat them anyway and isn’t that what dogs are for? But I've been warned that would get be in trouble for heartlessly feeding her ‘babies’ out of date biscuits. This is the same babies who eat dung, after they’ve rolled in it.

Just for the hell of it, I open the pack and have one before I cycle home.

Later we retire down the Plough to take on some fluids before tomorrow’s run.

Talking B****

L and I have been having ‘that’ debate. The balls debate. To have them off or to not have them off that is the question. No, no, we’re talking MD here. L says he's such a sweetie and it's so brutal. Well maybe, and he is rather proud of them. I’m not wildly keen about the idea either but sometimes these things are necessary. Doggo is still in possession of his and he’s been fine, no problem but then Doggo is Doggo and well MD is...

The 'sweetie' is also rather good at his training this evening, even when someone gets a lawn mower out whilst we’re training. Which is totally taking the p***. He hates lawn mowers but oddly for him he’s quite controlled. He must know we’ve been talking about him.

I’m working my way through another John Grisham audio book, although this one is a bit dull but apparently it’s a true story, so he can’t really jazz it up. It’s about a murder trial where both the accused men are innocent, there’s no evidence against them and the police have basically stitched them up. It may be dull but I’ve still got to find out how it all turns out, suppose I could look it up on Wikipedia but that would be cheating.

Daughter’s revising German tonight, so I’ll keep well out of the way of that one. I’ll save myself for part two of the Maths GCSE which is after the half-term break. L’s convinced I'll be revising maths A level with her this time next year. That would be cool; I never got the chance with Son but hmm, somehow I think it's unlikely.

Shot

Dogs eh? Police were relieved to discover that a suspicious 999 call, that they feared could have been a murder in progress, was actually made by a Golden Retriever. The dog had run off with a cordless phone in its mouth and accidentally dialled 999 while chewing it. The police apparently heard heavy breathing and the words ‘Come out or else, I'm warning you’ as his owners tried to tempt him out from behind the garden shed. Whether this is true or not I’m not sure but it still amused me.

I’m in the car today so that I can get back in time to take the boys on the park before the gig tonight. On the way to the park I thought I might have to cancel as Doggo suddenly went lame, lifting a leg in the air and giving me a look of anguished pain. I thought he’d been shot or something. At the very least I thought it was going to put our participation in Sunday’s Crufts qualifier in doubt. However, once I’d removed the piece of sticky tape that was stuck to his paw he was fine. He’s such a wimp. MD just stood there laughing at him.

We’re at Rock City nice and early to catch the support bands but we’re still not there quite early enough to get a good enough spot for decent photos. Sorry.

Stricken City desperately want to be Florence & The Machine, which is no bad thing of course, they just need a bit more practice. They describe themselves as ‘mistakist’ and produce a slightly clumsy set with barely audible vocals by singer Rebekah Raa who also tinkles away on her Korg keyboard. That said, they do have a certain charm about them.



Raa slinks across the stage as the boys behind her dish out some decent tunes. She is a nice enough front person, attractive, dishevelled, an indie pin-up girl in the making, although she needs to acquire a more confident stage presence.

We were expecting stage presence in spades from Shingai Shoniwa of tonight’s advertised main support, the Noisettes, but the band have, to coin a Maximo Park phrase 'gone missing'. Illness in the band has prompted the Bombay Bicycle Club to step in as replacements for a few dates, which is to our good fortune. I'm not convinced about the reinvented Noisettes, who if their current hit is anything to go by have forsaken their noisy Siouxsie Sioux type sound for disco but I can’t comment because they’re not here.

The Bombay Bicycle Club on the other hand are here and are much more my thing. They are a very likeable indie band who started out when they were all just fifteen. Now at the grand old age of... well they must be pushing nineteen, they have a few EP’s and singles under their belt. They finally have an album due for release in July.



If Rebekah Raa was indie girl personified then Jack Steadman plays the indie boy role to a T. Although at first I think his band are better than he is. I was impressed by them, they could play but their excellent tunes were at first let down by his vocals but once he decided to look up from the floor a bit more often things seem to improve. They started out sounding a bit gloomy but their tunes got more upbeat and jangly as they went along. I might just get that album.

So to the Park and a touch of deja vu, as they open with 'Grafitti', just as they did two years ago. Then its sirens a whir, riffs a surge and Paul Smith, looking as dapper as ever, complete with the obligatory hat, with a megaphone in hand as he goes all Wayne Coyne in the middle of ‘Wraithlike’. God knows what he's singing at that point. Another new track, 'A Cloud Of Mystery' from their new album ‘Quicken The Heart’ follows, an album on which they further fine tune that winning Park formula.



When a band gets to the three album point you wonder what they're going to leave out and there are inevitable casualties in the set but it’s good to hear that 'I Want You To Stay', up next, is still there. To be fair to the band they’re not a band who traipse out the same set every night and whilst we may have missed out on some stuff played elsewhere on this tour nobody else has yet been treated to the excellent 'Your Urge' off 'Our Earthly Pleasures'. A welcome surprise.

Smith, as usual, leaps around the stage like a man possessed, pointing and gesturing at... well just about anyone and everything. He has his audience in the palm of his hand from the off. There’s something about his magnetic presence that pulls you in and demands you have as good as time as he is. So we do. The atmosphere at Rock City tonight is simply electric.

He’s relentlessly energetic, even during the slower songs. Lukas Wooller tries, at times, to match his energetic leader, tipping his keyboard up, down and sideways, playing it at various angles, particularly during a fast and furious ‘Now I'm All Over The Shop’. Perhaps he’s a frustrated guitarist. The rest of the band just leave them to it, preferring instead to simply dish out that Maximo sound to perfection.



One criticism of many gigs that I go to is that the vocals are not always as audible as they could be. Tonight, you can hear every word of Smith’s poetic lyrics and at no detriment to the power of the music. So full marks to the sound technicians.

'Books From Boxes' goes down a storm but 'Going Missing' was, of course, again, simply terrific with Smith perched on the front of the stage for most of it.

He then introduces what, according to him, is possibly their 'funkiest' song yet, that being ‘Lets Get Clinical’ but he then slaps an over-16 certificate on it before admittedly they’d know what he means anyway as he urges us to ‘wash ourselves in sin’.

L leans across to ask what the next great song is, as they play ‘Tanned’ from the new LP. Smith disappears briefly towards the end of it, perhaps for a brief lie down, and when he returns the band are already into ‘Calm’.

They seemed to lose momentum with those more thoughtful songs but then they have a good go at getting it back with 'Our Velocity', which lifts the pace back to breakneck. Smith once again looking so hyped up you are worried he might explode.

Then to huge delight down the front, Smith counts them in ‘One in a million, Two is a crowd...’, another old favourite ‘The Night I Lost My Head’.



'The Kids Are Sick Again' is an odd record and an even odder choice as a lead single and tonight they try to turn it into an anthem with the megaphone making another appearance but it never quite works out. Well not for me, unlike the closing 'Girls That Play Guitars' which clearly does work.

The encore begins with a new song, not even on the new album, ‘That Beating Heart’ and then it’s a slow build through ‘Questing, Not Coasting’ to the expected finale of 'Apply Some Pressure'.

Whether 'Apply Some Pressure' is a good one to finish with I'm not sure. Last time they played it mid-set and it brought the house down, this time it's the mid-set show stopper 'Going Missing' that I’ll go home with inside my head.

Maximo Park are an excellent band to see live and tonight they were on top form. All three of their albums but particularly the last two really take on a new life on stage. They could have done as a lot of bands who emerged at the same time have done and gone Arena on us but you get the impression Paul Smith and the band like it cosy like this. Full marks to them for that.

So almost as good as it gets, well, apart from, just as at their gig here two years, there’s still no 'Just, A Glimpse' on this tour but perhaps I’m just being picky.

‘We're Maximo Park and this is what we do’ so says Smith as they leave us and tells us how much he loves the Nottingham crowd, well don't leave it two years then next time mate. Awesome.

Not That Scary

Crouchy, bless him, doesn't score or seemingly get involved in anything useful. So I lead the league by a point with one to play.

Exams everywhere this week. Son had one yesterday as well. When you ask Son how an exam has gone we nearly always used to get the response ‘alright’ which meant he’d probably scrapped through at best. Last year we had the addition of the more descriptive ‘not good’, which we now know translates as that he’s almost certainly failed. Now, joy of joys, there is a third response on the table. ‘Good’, which seems to mean a pass and often a good one at that. Sociology yesterday got a ‘good’. Phew.

I run to work which goes ok but my legs are very tired now. I don’t know how I’m going to stagger around a squash court tonight.

After the semi-euphoria of yesterday, today’s English exam gets an ‘eurgh’ and the use of the ‘f’ word is quite prolific in our inboxes today. Such delicate Daughterly language. I think she's having a bad day. I hope her English essay isn’t peppered with them too.

It chucks it down as I get ready to leave work. Two of my colleagues are stood by the door waiting for the rain to stop so that they can go out for a post-work run. They’re stunned and a bit worried when they see me standing behind them in full kit. Honestly, I’m really not that scary. They needn’t worry; I’m not going to join them.

The rain stops and we depart, going our separate directions at the end of the road. Seconds later it starts to bucket down again. I drip dry on the Red Arrow, I need these shorts for squash in an hour.

My opponent texts me, he has no money, his partner is away and hasn’t left him any. You can see who holds the purse strings in that household. He'll be in trouble if he's spent all his pocket money on sweeties. So not only do I have to pay for squash but I have to buy him a drink too. Then L turns up at the pub and buys him another one. All for the privilege of getting beaten, although it’s pretty close tonight. I had him worried.

I daren’t drink too much because its Biology revision tonight and I don’t want any mess ups again like with the incident with ‘wrong equation’. Not that I’m any good at Biology, I didn’t even do O level Biology, I dropped it in the third year. L should be the one doing this, she has an A level in it, albeit what she calls a lowly grade E. Nothing wrong with E’s, it was only a year ago we were praying for E’s at A level.

We revise photosynthesis. I offer to play her the Frank Turner song but my joke falls flat.

Exam Stress

Thanks to Doggo and I dubiously being promoted to the later, more advanced group on a Monday night, this enables me to bike in today. It’s a bit blustery though and the wind was definitely against me. I also watch out for tacks as I cycle in.

The Etape Caledonia on Sunday was sabotaged by protesters scattering tacks along the route. Hundreds of cyclists suffered punctures and the race had to be halted for about ninety minutes whilst the route was made safe. The locals weren't happy because the roads are closed to other traffic whilst the race is taking place. Events like this though, bring in a fair amount of money to the local economy, last year around £417,000 and also raises around £225,000 for Macmillan Cancer Support.



Despite the setback, it is fast becoming 'the' cycling event in the UK. It’s something I’d like a crack at one day. Wouldn’t want to damage my new bike though. L kindly offers to lend me her shopper bike. Hope she’s got a good supply of spare inner tubes for it.

Tacks apart, cycling’s not dangerous. Well unless you’re in the Tour of Italy, where on Saturday, one of the cyclists fell on a ‘technically challenging’ descent and was found around 60m below his bike in a ravine. He’s fine though... a few fractures to his thigh bones, kneecap and neck, a perforated lung and concussion but he’s expected to make a full recovery, in time. In a way, he was lucky. If he'd fallen on the technically challenging descent of Derby Road in Nottingham he would have been instantly squashed by a bus.

L sends Daughter home from her papers; I think her mind is elsewhere, on maths hopefully. L and Doggo sort the rest of her round out. I hope she doesn’t freeze in the exam. I text her, telling her to ‘Keep calm, check your answers and watch out for those evil minuses’. Something we had problems with last night.

As the day wears on we’re all on tender hooks but we daren’t text her to see how it’s gone. I’ve got that many things crossed, I’ve got cramp. Perhaps it’s all over and they’re all in the pub drowning their sorrows. In the end, I text her. I just hope she's not got her phone turned on in the exam room. I would hate to get her disqualified. Then she rings me and seems elated, if a little annoyed because there were only a couple of questions on what we'd revised, so much so that it takes a couple of hours from my eardrums to recover. All the same, I think we got a result.

I’ve not really mentioned the ‘fantasy’ league this season but I will now, unless Peter Crouch scores tonight I’ll be top of the league for the first time since September.

We get to our new ‘advanced’ class to find it’s all been moved out of doors because the indoor Arena has flooded, where it’s raining, oh the irony.

Diplomatic Relations

After an LA night last night, it’s the Aston 10k this morning. LA is low alcohol of course, LF never quite seems to happen. L doesn’t seem so keen on the race but of course she can’t let me get one up on her.

They’ll be no distractions during the race because ‘the view’ is quite familiar to me, I grew up around there, so I have the advantage that I won’t be tempted to look at it. L will let me know if it’s changed. I came ninth here last year. No pressure.

Two fit looking types, one in a triathlon strip disappear out of sight almost immediately. Taking with them the lead woman, so no chance of beating all the girls today. That apart the race goes well. I’m floundering back in ninth again at one point but in the last third I manage to catch up the chap in front, hoping he’ll run with me so that we can help each other along but he just wants to follow me. So I have no choice but to try and drop him. Which I’m pleased to say I successfully do.

My father is out on the course again; unfortunately it’s the wrong course. Which is partly my fault and partly the organisers fault. I printed him off a map from the race website; unfortunately it was the map of the route three years ago... He had hoped to see the race in three places but in the end only managed to see us once.

A brief rain shower doesn’t disrupt things too much and I come in 8th, one up on last year but in exactly the same time, to the very second.

Once across the line the heavens open. I dive for cover, thinking I’m glad I’m not still out there. Ah, then I realise L still is. I try and talk the dogs out of the boot, neither are keen but eventually we all go off to cheer home their mistress. Although MD finds a rather interesting gatepost and misses it.

After a pub lunch and a few very satisfying Derby Brewery Double Mash's, its home for some maths revision. This goes well for a while until I accidently (honestly) give Daughter an unsolvable equation. Oops. She retreats upstairs where tensions and the volume of the Prodigy seem to rise with every passing second. I take shelter in the bunker, well the bedroom, with the newspaper.

Once diplomatic relations have been restored, we decide to watch a DVD of one of L’s favourite films of last year, ‘Easy Virtue’. This seems the perfect film to lighten the arithmetical mood. Yet as we watch it we are constantly reminded why we prefer the cinema. Firstly you may get annoyed by the popcorn munchers in the cinema but I have never had a collie standing with his ears and tail blocking most of the screen as he tries to get you to throw his ball for him. This is Doggo’s party trick. Not to outdone, MD comes in from the garden and thrusts his head into my lap. I assume he just wants some fuss but as I tickle his ears I realise that he has come to show me the impressive collection of dung and other assorted yucky things that are hanging from them. Gross. We have to pause the film whilst I sponge him down.

Then of course we also have to pause the film when we get to the tricky bits in the algebra revision. A necessary evil, its GCSE maths tomorrow. I’m feeling confident that I could pass the exam, unfortunately it’s not me who’s taking it.

Funnily enough tonight’s film has a few parallels with last night’s Cheri. Again it’s a case of the male lead falling in love with the ‘wrong girl’.

Easy Virtue is based on a 1920's play by Noel Coward but I assume it's a fairly liberal adaptation. The male lead is John Whittaker (Ben Barnes), who marries a thoroughly inappropriate girl, the glamorous Larita (Jessica Biel), a racing driver whom he met in France. Naturally he's thrilled to have landed himself such a delightful catch but he should have kept her to himself. His mistake is taking her home to England to meet his family.

The first words his mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) utters to her new daughter-in-law are ‘Oh, you're American’ and it's all downhill from there. She immediately resents Larita's presence as part of the family and proceeds to be as vindictive as possible towards her. This is all before she finds out that Larita has been married before, to a man who died in suspicious circumstances.



John’s mother believes in upholding the traditions of the aristocracy whilst Larita has no intention of fitting in with that sort of lifestyle. Unfortunately for Larita, she is also poor and the Whittakers desperately need their son to marry into money so that they can maintain that lifestyle. It’s post World War One Britain and the status of the gentry is fading fast. His mother had hoped that John would marry his childhood sweetheart Sarah, the daughter of a wealthy neighbour.



The polar opposite to his mother is his father, the wonderfully sardonic Jim (Colin Firth). Firth is simply fantastic as the father. A man so disengaged from the family and all it stands for that he spends most of his time in his workshop. He's a World War One survivor, dresses down, unshaven and shuns the traditional country pursuits. He approves when Larita objects to fox hunting on moral grounds and then when asked ride with the hunt, does so on a motorbike. He likes Larita and sees her as a soul mate.



Easy Virtue is a romantic comedy and then some. There’s some great visual ‘gags’ some of which are so quick they’re easy to miss which means it doesn’t work too well on the small screen and would be better at the cinema on a bigger screen. That said there's nothing subtle about the 'traditional' can-can which doesn't endear Larita to John's sister or the nasty end that became of the Chihuahua (dog lovers should look away). There’s also the subtlety of songs such as ‘Car Wash’ and ‘Sex Bomb’ redone in period style.

Ultimately though, it isn't just a comedy. The brilliance of the film is how it explores the relationships between the various family members. There are some great exchanges between John’s Mother and Larita, who can give as good as she gets. Thrown into the mix are John's sisters, who don't know what to make of Larita at all, and some interesting staff members. Larita could have been a breath of fresh air blowing away the entrenched stuffiness of the family but is seen as more of a cold wind demolishing it.



As well as Firth, there are great performances by Biel and Scott Thomas and well most of the cast.

In the end, Larita whirls out in much the same fashion as she whirled in, realising that she’s totally wasted on John, advising the daughters to run away and destroying the Venus de Milo.

The final scene is interesting too. If this was the way the original play finished, then it would have been greatly subversive for its day. ‘Easy Virtue’ is a bit off the wall, which is probably why I liked it a lot.

A Second Bite At The Chéri

I ring up about my bike but damn, it’s not ready yet. So instead, the dogs get a long walk on the park. When I get home I get our spare room ready for the new arrival, when she finally arrives that is. The old dinosaur was in there on the turbo trainer, but now it’s been banished to the shed. Sorry, but that’s the way it goes.

Then in between the rain showers I do some training in the garden with MD.

Son is out on the razz again tonight and L stocks him up with illicit hooch. We head off down to Broadway for a couple of beers and a film.

We liked the look of the pedigree of Chéri because the film was from director Steven Frears and writer Christopher Hampton both of who worked on ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ twenty plus years ago. That film featured Michelle Pfeiffer and she stars again here. There are other similarities between the two films, both being French period pieces and both involving libertine-esk behaviour or so we thought.

The synopsis for Chéri looked good. It promised the son of a courtesan being initiated in the ways of love by an older woman. Ah, a young boys dream.

The film opened with an annoying voiceover which explained about the ‘Belle Époque’ and what a ‘courtesan’ was, but thankfully the voiceover didn’t last long. A courtesan is, in this case, a woman who offers her charms to clients, usually rich folk in return for some of their money. These tend to be long-term arrangements, not brief encounters.

Michelle Pfeiffer plays one such upmarket prostitute, Léa de Lonval, who’s feeling that perhaps she’s getting too old for all this and she’s considering retirement. However she is persuaded to embark on one last assignment by a former colleague and ex-courtesan, Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates). Bates, incidentally, is as good as ever, not that I can really picture her younger self as an appealing courtesan doing the deed. It's best not to dwell on that thought too long.



Léa agrees to spend a few weeks ‘educating’ Peloux’s 19-year-old son Fred (Rupert Friend). He has known her all her life as an auntie and when he was young she christened him Chéri, while he knows her affectionately as ‘Noo Noo’ or perhaps ‘Nu Nu’, because ‘Noo Noo’ was that blue hoover thing from the Teletubbies, wasn’t it?



What they haven’t done before though, is get off with each other, obviously, and it somewhat spoils the film that this happens within seconds of Peloux giving them the green light. There’s no chase. Pfeiffer doesn’t have to be talked into her task and Chéri certainly doesn’t need asking twice. Our Fred, you see, is no shrinking violet. In fact he’s been a bit of a playboy and has been quite adept at putting it about, which is why his mother wants him with Léa and away from praying on other more impressionable young girls. Which is a shame, because had Chéri been more innocent then Rupert Friend would have been perfect as a blank canvas for Pfeiffer to work on but he’s not really believable as an object of lust for her. Surely an experienced woman such as Léa would have eaten him for breakfast and been bored to tears by lunch.

Apparently not, their few weeks’ turns into six years of living in sin, as their not terribly dangerous liaison blossoms into a full-blown romance. Quite what she saw in him I have no idea.



I’m also not sure what she educated him in. She certainly didn’t make him any more of a gentleman. He comes with very few redeeming features and he doesn’t seem to develop any under her tutorship. She even ends up paying for him rather than making money out of him.

The romance comes to an end when the Machiavellian Peloux corrals Chéri into an arranged marriage with some young crumpet that she’s found for him, the daughter of another courtesan. (Note to L: Check out the M word, you said it couldn't be done)

Married life, unsurprisingly, doesn’t suit him and he soon comes running back to Léa’s boudoir offering her a second bite at the Chéri. Sorry couldn’t resist that.

Naturally she takes him back just long enough to ruffle her chiffon before she packs him back off to his wife.



Michelle Pfeiffer is as good as ever and looked the part, Rupert Friend does ok too but it’s a pretty uninvolving film, you just don’t feel much attachment to the characters. At the end, we are told that Chéri is tortured by his love for what he can’t have, a woman who is too old for him. Unfortunately this is the first time we get any inkling of this, at least from such a dramatic angle. The story of an ultimately doomed affair between an older woman and her toy boy could have been dramatic all the way through. It’s not particularly steamy either, despite all; the ‘educating’ going on. Dangerous Liaisons it certainly wasn’t.

It’s Summer Now, Right?

I take the bus, it’s raining and I’ve been told by my ‘mechanic’ to not ride my bike in the wet because it’s slowly destroying everything. The alternative is to fit some proper mudguards and I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet. It doesn’t help that the ‘proper’ ones to fit my road bike are rather expensive and compared to all the glitzy stuff I could get for my bike, they just don’t seem so important and it’s summer now, right? So I shouldn’t need them anyway...

So I sit on bus feeling guilty about not training. I could have run I suppose.

The papers reckon pig flu has not become a threat over here because our noses are too cold for the virus to thrive. No chance of my thermostatically challenged L getting it then.

Daughter’s cramming in as much maths as possible, even to the extent of coming home to do her afternoon paper round and then going back to school for extra maths ‘like a nerd’, her words not mine. We never realised we had a maths-aholic in the house. Who knows, next she’ll be changing her A level choices so that she can continue with her maths... or perhaps not. I’m sure she’s just swotting hard because she’s determined to give it up this year.

I get home to find that my Cyclescheme bike voucher has arrived in the post. Hurrah. Perhaps I’ll be able to get my new toy tomorrow. We head off to celebrate down the local.

Bring On The Band

Car today. It’s a busy day. It's pub day, then there’s more training for MD tonight followed by the second leg of the League One play-off, which so far has disappointed in that it hasn’t descended into a blood bath.

John Grisham prevents me nodding off in the traffic but only just, my new book is a bit slow in places.

We finally make the Blessington for lunch. Which is not bad, despite the fact that all our first choices were off. At least we feel we’ve eaten something, the meals were more substantial than the kiddies meals at the Wetherspoons. They’ve actually got it quite nice in there and they had a couple of decent ales on.

It’s drizzling but dog training is still on, whereas last week’s was cancelled when it was glorious. So I drive back from Derby, collect the dogs, drive back to Derby where I do half an hours training with MD before driving back home again to drop the dogs off. Luckily L walks in the door at the same time as me, so at least we can say 'hi' before I head off to hold my mates hand through the trauma of the second leg of Leeds in the play-offs.

After we’ve found some decent seats in the sports bar, in front of the big screen, we are told that a band is going to be on at 9pm and we'll have to move. Everyone looks incredulous because they’re all here to watch the match. This is, after all, a sports bar with big screens everywhere, it’s not like our local where they insist on having the TV on in the corner despite the fact that not one person is showing any interest in and in fact people are usually trying to sit as far away from it as they can.

At half time, it’s 0-0, there’s no sign of the band, but all the same a few people, us included, take a walk in the rain to see if anywhere else is showing the match. A couple of pubs are, but it’s just like in my local. It’s on in the corner with the sound turned down, pleasing no one. So funnily enough, not that we're laughing, we end up back where we started, just a little wetter. Still no band.

Second half, Leeds score, equalising on aggregate and the place erupts. No Millwall fans here obviously. Then Millwall score, retaking the lead on aggregate. There’s one shout of ‘come on Millwall’ which is accompanied by quite a few glares. I think he’s having a laugh.

Personally I don’t really mind who wins. It’s hugely funny to see Leeds struggling to get out of League One but who would I rather Derby be playing next season? Out of the playoff contenders:- Millwall, Leeds, MK Dons or Scunthorpe... well Leeds of course.

The final whistle blows, cue collective cursing. So we're not going to be playing them next year then. Oh, and still no band.

The Primary Objective

I cycle in, as does L. Who complains it’s taken her bloody hours. There’s no pleasing some people. I thought she wanted a route that took bloody hours. She’s been complaining her route to work is far too short, so today she took an extended route. Oh well, at least she’s alive, which is always her primary objective. I won't ask her whether she enjoyed it because she'd just say that enjoying a cycle ride would be a bit of an oxymoron. 'Oxymoron' is her word of the moment.

We think we have problems when we go running with MD but what about the chap who was in the news this week with his one-eyed cat that he goes running with. I wonder if it chases the ducks as well.

The wind was with me on my cycle in, which is possibly a first but also means I’m praying to the weather Gods for the wind to turn around before I leave work. It doesn’t. So it’s a very windy cycle home which I do with my colleague who is also on his road bike today. So at least we can do a bit of sheltering behind each other. When he turns off to his place he looks in a terrible state. There’s nothing like a strong head wind to exercise those muscles.

I carry on to the pool, where it’s very quiet tonight. Unfortunately they’re all psychos and the pace is a bit too frantic. I’m glad to get my lengths over with and crawl out of the pool. Now it’s my turn to be in a terrible state.

I get home and take both dogs to training, where it’s a ‘self train’ session. I manage to get quite a long session with MD, who isn’t too freaked out tonight by other dog training around him. This means Doggo gets less time but I think he understands that his protégé needs the training time more than he does.

Then its home to do some maths revision with Daughter. Cue drum roll. The GCSE’s start next week.

Cool? Err, no I don’t think so.

Squash tonight, so I spare the legs the cycling and run in instead. It’s not a bad run but I did take it steady. The legs don’t appear to ache too badly after yesterday, although that’s perhaps because, what with all the insect bites I managed to pick up during the race, any aches have become secondary.

On the path down by the river, a chap passes me on his MTB with his trousers hanging so embarrassingly low down his thighs that when he sits down on his seat, the seat goes above the waistband of his trousers, rather than below it. Cool? Err, no I don’t think so.

I am greeted at work by the news that my colleague has filled in and sent off all three of the entry forms that I had so casually arranged on his desk on Friday. Damn. That means I best get some practice in and I suppose I ought to enter the races too.

L's been researching the real Marley, as in the dog of the film. We are surprised to see that his owner’s wife does in fact look like a bit like Jennifer Anniston, who played her in the film. Although the photos we’ve seen were taken before they got Marley... and dogs do have a habit of ageing you. L agrees. She says she used to look like Kate Winslet but now she looks like Barbara Woodhouse. Ha ha. That second bit’s not true of course but I have always had a soft spot for Babs.

Daughter’s at home on study leave but I’m not sure how much revising she's getting done. L’s threatening to surgically remove her phone from her mits because L’s not getting any work done, so presumably Daughter isn’t either.

Squash tonight is at Clifton, which isn’t our preferred option but at least we get changing rooms, so we don’t have to get changed in the corridor. What luxury. They’re really taking an awful long time renovating those changing rooms at Portland. I’m surprised all the women who use the gym there haven’t complained about having to squeeze past all the sweaty men who are stripping down to their underwear in the corridor. Squash players it seems are not a proud bunch. Or perhaps that’s why they haven’t complained. I thought some of the women were walking past more times than necessary.

L promises smiley faces for tea tonight. Not sure why I’m getting excited about that but I don’t think it’s something that even existed when I was a child. We had alphabeti spaghetti and that was about it. She’s also not said if she’s serving anything with them or not.

Safety In Numbers

I’m down in London for a meeting today, which totally stuffs up my training schedule. It could be one hell of a meeting judging by the accusing emails that have been flying around, the ‘issues’ the meeting has been called to address could well end up being resolved by a punch up.

On the way down, the five of us, we’re out in force, safety in numbers I suppose, just in case it turns rowdy, stop for coffee at the services. Unfortunately it’s a Costa (lot for a) coffee. My mocha is all chocolate, the latte is all milk and even the chap who had the Americano is left wondering where all the coffee went. Not good for keeping you awake for a trip down the motorway or through a meeting. When we arrive, we all dive straight for coffee that they have there, which is by contrast, even though it’s only the hot water and instant coffee, bliss.

Regrettably once in the meeting and unable to hide behind email, everyone is quite civilised and all the problems are ironed out amicably. That is until the next round of email tennis kicks off.

There's no hold-ups on the motorway on the way back and we manage to get back to the office for 5pm, which means I can still make dog training.

After a brief session with MD, L takes him from me and runs him down the cycle track to her parent’s place whilst I have a fruitful session with Doggo. We set up the finish to one of the grade 6 courses from Sunday, for extra practice. Again we do well on it.

Sticking With The Confectionery

Today we head over to Birmingham for a dog show and then liven it up by doing a 10k run in the middle of it.

It was L’s fault. She happened to mention that she fancied the run, which she found via the internet. After all she is marathon training now, and once mentioned, it is my job to make sure she doesn’t back out of these things.

So I do Doggo’s first run at the show, which is clear until he misses his dog walk contact. Hmmm, I’ll have words later about that but there’s no time right now as we jump in the car and drive the couple of miles to Sutton Park.

It’s a fairly low key race but it seems to have pulled a decent sized entry. I was hoping for an easy run but early on, a chap and I team up to pace each other round. Unfortunately he’s a bit too quick for me and after the half way point I drop back.

I get picked up by two runners behind. At first I think they’re going to go straight past me but I manage to hang on to them and let them drag me along for a kilometre or so. I find myself running with another chap who's doing his first 10k for four years and a lass who's a Bourneville Harrier. I assume she's leading the women’s race. I figure L would want me to keep a close eye on anything associated with confectionery and this spurs me on to stay with them.

Then I feel a bit stronger and take on a bit of the pace making myself. The chap annoyingly keeps muttering to us, ‘we can do this’, ‘come on let break 42’. He’s clearly after a good time, so why doesn’t he just get on with it and leave us to our own agony.

Breaking 42 is no easy matter; it’s a hilly course with plenty of twists and turns in it. A lot of the course is on tarmac but some of it was off road and muddy in places. I also don’t reckon we’re on pace to do it but still he insists ‘we can do it’. The girl warms us that the last stretch is uphill and she's not kidding. Still he’s still muttering ‘we can do this’. We? Hmmm. I manage to find a bit of strength and drop them both, which I think it terribly bad form in sight of the finish but he was annoying me. I think that’s the end of it but then he finds some more energy from somewhere and comes past me. Oh well. At least I got the better of the Bourneville.

Later I stumble across the Bourneville Harrier’s website looking for the results and find the lass has written a review of the race where she credits the other chap and myself for unknowingly dragging her round. Actually I thought she was dragging me along but I’m happy to take the credit. She also comments on how nice the run was, as I’ve said before, that must be a girl thing. L reckons she would have beaten me had she not been mentally taking in the view for her write up. She also didn't mention that she won her race and I'm sure she did. Surely she's just being modest, I can't believe the view was more important to her than winning.

I think I was 12th and we were well inside 42, so at least the chap was pleased. So pleased in fact that he invites me to do a race with him next week. No thanks and goodbye, I have a dog show to get back to.

Back at the show, unfortunately I’ve missed walking my next course, a very tricky European Open qualifier. There's no risk of us qualifying which is just as well because Doggo’s not vaccinated to hit Europe anyway. It’s our sort of course really and we go well until disaster strikes and I fall over. I have forgotten to change my footwear and I still have my running shoes on which don’t have as much grip. Doggo completely ignores my antics and carries on as if nothing has happened, in fact I think he’s pretending that he’s not with me. I make an impressive recovery and then have to run to catch up with him. We are clear but we incur time faults.

We also do a clear in our last run as well but sadly no rosettes today.

All in all an interesting day out!

Some Kind Of Fashion Statement

An unexpected training run this morning as I decide to run across the Embankment to meet my Leeds supporting pal to watch the Millwall v Leeds play-off game. It was a dire game, I thought Leeds were far too negative and they got their comeuppance when Millwall sneaked a goal. It should make Thursday’s second leg interesting.

Afterwards I jog back home with a couple of pints sloshing around inside me. Once there I am greeted by Daughter brandishing a pairs of Y-fronts that she’s just purchased from town. Although they’re not actually Y-fronts but she’s a girl so I’ll let her off the mistake and hopefully she’ll never have the ‘pleasure’ of getting acquainted with proper Y-fronts. The point is though, and whisper is quietly, she’s still buying men’s underwear. I assume it's some kind of fashion statement.

Things were a bit bleak in Sheffield in 1980. The steel industry was in steep decline and there wasn’t much future for the youth of Sheffield. Amongst this background, in a derelict flour mill in a rundown part of the city a mix of volunteers consisting of students, artists and the unemployed came together to set up a venue for people like themselves who had nowhere to go. The Leadmill was born.

Tonight, we are stood in that old flour mill sipping half pint bottles of Newcastle Brown and listening to London’s The Glasslights, who are very good. As seems to be the case with almost all support bands these days.

By the way, if you thought that pint bottles of Newcastle Brown were overpriced in clubs, wait until you get acquainted with these new measures. Frighteningly expensive. Anyhow back to the Glasslights. On first listen they appear to have some quality songs and I’m sure someone somewhere is touting them, along with all the other bands that are being touted, as the next big thing. It’ll be interesting to see what develops. The band release their first single this summer, entitled ‘Someone Like Me’ or as Andrew the lead singer kept telling us, you can get it now for £2 from one of their gigs.



So to local boy Anthony Genn, who together with pianist Martin Slattery are the nuclei of The Hours. Although the band have now been extended to a six piece live unit. Genn is a former member of Pulp but he gained notoriety when he streaked on stage with Elastica at Glastonbury in 1995. The band have just finished a support slot with Kasabian, now there’s an odd mix.



Genn makes for a confident and cocky front man who banters freely with the crowd, many of whom seem to know him personally. If you were not a Sheffield-ite or a football fan, you would have been well lost when the discussion turned to a certain Sheffield United striker who missed a sitter in the previous evening's play-off game.

They open with 'These Days' off the new album but the band are soon dipping into their ‘Narcissus Road’ album. ‘Narcissus Road’ was a hell of a good album and not just for its Damien Hirst artwork. The title track, third track up tonight, sounds particularly fantastic.

The new album also has artwork, as well as funding from Hirst. Can it be as good? Well, probably not. New numbers like ‘Come On’ are fairly predictable and inoffensive. Probably having too many soft-rock Coldplay or even Keane moments.

‘Car Crash’ is better. An ode to an ex-girlfriend, where Genn describes their relationship as a car crash and appears to regret starting it. He claims that he still thinks of her ‘sometimes but not that often’. Yeah right mate. You’ve been thinking about her so little you’ve written a song about it! Get over her, move on.



Slattery comes out from behind his keyboards to blow on one of those pocket organ type things for their new single ‘Big Black Hole’. A song about alcoholism. In fact there aren’t many uplifting songs in the Hours armoury; Genn seems to have had a somewhat colourful past.

So to ‘Ali In The Jungle’ which is simply brutal. Still one hell of a good record.

The place is almost jumping by now, although ‘Think Again’ slows the tone a little followed by ‘People Say’ which has been used in the opening scenes of Hollyoaks but we won’t use that against it. Then again what band hasn’t been featured in Hollyoaks.

By the time they close the set with ‘Murder Or Suicide’ there’s even dancing going on. Weird.



They encore with ‘Back When You Were Good’ and then close a near note-perfect set with last year’s single and title track of the new album ‘See The Light’.

For once it’s me, who doesn’t get their favourite played, no 'Love You More' tonight. Odd, considering it was a single.

Genn tells everyone to go home and spread the word, even if it’s only to the family pet. Well I’ll compromise. I’ll whisper it; if they got big we’d lose these intimate moments in the back room of that flour mill.

I Believe In Faeries

It’s L’s birthday today. Her diverse mix of presents for me are the gift wrapped Hathersage Triathlon entry, a maybe not quite so cool florescent cycling jacket (she needs to train) and something from Nancy Farmer’s Fornicating Faeries selection, she’s an artist by the way, who among other things paints very real looking faeries.

She’s also had a vampire book from Son, 'Let the right one in'. Vampires, faeries and triathlons; what does that say about L...

It’s Daughter’s last day of lessons at school today and she insisted on washing her school clothes for one final uniformed fling. The only problem is that our washer is kaput and the new one doesn't arrive until later today, hence we have drip drying uniform everywhere.

Talking of Daughter, I hope she’s not checking out the Nancy Farmer’s website during her final few lessons. Although I suppose it would fit in with her Graphics lesson, she might even get extra marks.

I cycle into work against another strong head wind. During the ride, an ambulance comes up behind me but there are two lanes and he’s in the outside lane, so there’s no need for me to take any evasive action. One of the cars in front of me did though; they drove up on to the pavement to get out of the way, nearly wiping out a pedestrian in the process. Almost causing them to need said ambulance.

It starts raining before I leave for the return journey and having offered L her choice of evening tonight, she slyly suggests that as a birthday treat I cycle straight to the Victoria where I would have to sit supping my beer in wet lycra all night. Hmmm. I’m not sure the rest of the pub would approve.

Thankfully there’s a change of plan because it’s all happening back at home. Daughter is getting ready to go out to celebrate her last day and Son is having his second shower of the day as he prepares to go out as well. He’s stocked up on alcohol, with L’s help, lots of Strongbow and blue WKD, which I would hope is for the ladies... Now all he’s got to do is get that lot over to Gedling on the bus without the driver seeing it as he flashes his under 18’s bus pass.

The upshot of all this is that we have the house to ourselves. So L tells me to meet her at home. Cool, perhaps she's sent the dogs out to a party too. So there’s plenty of motivation for a storming ride home. L even forgets to add her usual ‘be careful’. I’m going so fast that I even pass one of those motorised bikes. Ok perhaps that’s not terribly impressive; they don’t seem to go very fast. It actually seems much easier to pedal the things that wait for the battery to get you up the hills. The chap on it was actually on the slight downhill through Bramcote when I passed him. Blimey, I screech into our driveway, it only took me 46 minutes, a new PB.

We have a quiet house, the dogs are dozing as we decadently we sip wine and discuss the finer points of art before we exercise the dogs with a walk down the Plough.

So Frustrating

I’m in car today because of the need to get back quickly for dog class tonight. Then, five minutes before I leave but ten minutes too late to even get the bus, I get a text telling me it’s been cancelled. So frustrating.

So it’s training in the garden tonight and also some much needed head collar training for MD. The training goes really well, as for the head collar... well it goes ok. He’s not a happy puppy with it on but eventually I get him to tolerate it.

On the way back from the park, he doesn’t object as such but instead slouches along on all four paws like a sulky teenager who thinks they’ve been wronged. He so slow, that Doggo and I have to keep waiting for him. So I suppose the head collar works, he certainly isn’t pulling.

Later, L’s family come round, we’re having a curry night and L’s brother claims to be rather good at knocking them up. So we put this to the test and L does her own signature Keema dish. Her brother's curry is really good, really tasty although a bit too hot for me and I do like hot. Daughter is terribly polite about its spicy nature, she’d have hung, drawn and quartered me had I given her something that hot. L’s parents come too, although they’re not into curry, so L does pasta as well. Far too much pasta as it happens, but I know she’s craftily done extra so that the dogs can have some.

Unprofessionally Attired Athletes

On the bike again, into a head wind; hence no PB’s this morning.

After work there’s only time for quick swim. This is kind of a shame because tonight the bikini zone is overflowing almost across five lanes but I have no time to dawdle. Not that I would spare a glance anyway for such unprofessionally attired athletes.

My swim has to be quick because my chauffeuring skills are required by Daughter who is out on the lash again. Her tutor group are saying goodbye to their 'beloved' teacher of the last five years. Muahhahaha, as Daughter would say.

It’s her last week at school but for her exams. So at the weekend she’s promised the ritualistic burning of her uniform. They do get it easy, we used to have to wear uniform even for the exams, and clearly they don’t have to. Problem is if she burns it I’m not sure what she’s going to wear. Those school shirts have proved to be so multi-purpose, she likes to go clubbing in them, after she's slept in them of course. Rock n roll, as they say.

Having dropped Daughter off its back home to train MD in the garden before taking Doggo to his training session. Then home again where L's bedtime attire is reminiscent of what they're wearing in the bikini zone these days. Every outfit has its place. Early night then.

That Sort Of Behaviour

The cycle in was good, annoying drizzle all the way but not too bad. The chap on the folding bike passes me again but I had no intention of letting him get away with that sort of behaviour for a second time. I overtake him at the start of the climb up Alp D'Risley and don’t look back. I pass four other cyclists on the way up that fearsome climb. It’s a show of dominance not seen since Armstrong destroyed Ullrich on some lesser known French Alp in 2001. I can almost hear Phil Liggett’s commentary in my ears.

L isn’t impressed by my superior cycling ability and reckons the chap had obviously read my blog from the other day and simply didn't want to upset me again. Thanks for the vote of confidence. She’s just sore because she cut her swim short so that she could be in work early but then found that her computer wouldn’t let her log on. Computers eh? Always having a laugh.

Good news. Selectadisc is reopening later this month. L, ever the cynic, expected it to be re-opened as a Costa or Starbucks. They’ll probably incorporate the two and call it Costa del Selectadisc (Give Us Your Bucks) or something like that.



I’ve decided not to swim tonight; despite the fact that Tuesday is a better session. It’s just that Wednesday fits in with my routine better, what with dog class being on that night and I don’t need to take the boys out.

So tonight, I decide to exercise the boys in the garden by cutting the lawn, naturally with a puppy continually hurling himself in front of the mower.