Nearly Christmas

It’s the last Bank Holiday before... err... Christmas. So expect those decorations to be up soon. Unless you live in Rochdale of course, where they went up last week. It’s ok though because the lights will be used to celebrate other festivals too, starting in three weeks time with Eid. Of course what part Santa has to play in marking the end of Ramadan I’m not sure but then what do I know.



I have a lazy day while L goes to the Gym, which was a surprise because we had no idea that Nottingham opened any of its gyms on a bank holiday but apparently the Tennis Centre has been doing so for some time. They’d just kept it quiet. Good job really, L said it was packed.

I thought the BBC might redeem themselves as they promised highlights of Reading on the interactive service for the next five nights but this turned out to be one band a day, showing around eight songs, looping endlessly. Noooo. Thank God for those internet highlights.

A Heavy Dose Of Nottingham Mist

Friday evening/Saturday morning’s party had moved on, with only a short break for sleep, to nearby Hucknall last night, where somebody else’s garden path will presumably got mural-ised. So we are afforded a long and pleasant lie-in which wasn’t really an option yesterday.

Son returned from this second bash quite early, looking relatively fresh and with both eyebrows still attached to his face.

After I acceded to the ‘demanded’ park session, L goes off running whilst I get out my new bike to put in a training ride ahead of next Sunday’s 90 miler. I was hesitant because the weather looked very dubious but L persuaded me. ‘Thanks Dear’ I mouthed under by breath, as I batted against a headwind that was loaded up with a heavy dose of Nottingham Mist. So it’s not as pleasant as it should have been but it’s still enjoyable. I have to say that. No really it was... although I do get my new bike wet and I have to lovingly towel it down later. I do forty miles although I had planned fifty but I figure the headwind and the rain made it feel like fifty, so I’m counting it as such.

Daughter is out, so the TV is up for grabs and we catch the final night of the Reading Festival. I feel I may be in the minority for thinking this but I thought the BBC’s coverage was awful, because I know a lot of people liked their Glastonbury coverage which was only marginally better.

Yes they deserve credit for showing these festivals but picking out just a handful of songs from each artist and then putting them on a repeating loop on their interactive service soon makes for boring viewing. They even put exactly the same loop on their two Freeview interactive channels but ten minutes apart. Where’s the sense in that? Whilst their BBC3 coverage is more chat that music. I don’t know what they spent on coverage but for Glastonbury they sent over 400 staff at a cost of around £1.5M. When all I want to see, at least on the interactive, is a camera trained on the main stage broadcasting it live without any interruptions, repeat this for a couple of the lesser stages on different channels and it would be almost as good as being there. Then repeat the whole thing in the week after, so that you can pick up anything you missed. Simple and cheap. Their internet service is rather good though, for content; like all the BBC sites it’s a nightmare to find what you’re looking for but it’s there somewhere.

The Party That Never Sleeps

The party that never sleeps is still bubbling along nicely and there are a multitude of early morning trips out to the local shops to produce breakfast pizza, pot noodles and sausages, good teenage acne top ups all round. No one offers me a sausage sandwich, not that I’m bitter.

I take the dogs out for a walk and by the time I get back some sort of clean-up operation has started. After the last function we ended up with some mysterious powder stuff down our toilet... which needed shifting with a brush so I’m assuming that it wasn’t that sort of substance. Rumour has it, that it may have been make-up... why would you flush make-up down the toilet... whatever. So, just the etchings on the garden path to shift this time.

It’s a lunchtime kick-off for the Forest v Derby game. I had considered going but was convinced that Forest were sure to break their appalling recent record against us, due to the obvious fact that they have a better team that us at the moment. When Derby are three down by half time it’s clear I made the right decision. However we have a much better second half and it finishes 3-2. We gave them a two goal head start in the cup last year and still beat them but seemingly giving them a three goal head start is a bit too much. Funny game though, no less than three of the goals have been accredited as own goals, it’s not often that happens, if at all.

In the evening we get the bus over to Burton where we intend to reattempt our pub crawl of a couple of months ago. On that occasion, we discovered that the first pub on our list, the Devonshire Arms on Station Street, was just so wonderful it wasn’t worth moving. We again intended to start there, so the prospect of a ‘crawl’ again seemed unlikely unless it was shut, but as we’re only over here for the beer, it’s not a problem and their Burton Bridge brews were wonderful.

Then L suggests that we have one in the little pub around the corner in Cross Street before we hit the Devonshire. Well, what a mistake, for the ‘crawl’ that is. The Cooper’s Arms was simply one of the best pubs ever and one of the coolest (and not as in cold). As you walk in it’s like being in someone’s front room and there’s no bar to be seen. So you head through to the back, through a narrow door, where it’s like being in someone’s kitchen and that’s where you’ll find the beer. The ‘bar’ consists of a row of casks on a shelf at the back of the room; most if not all of the beers are served straight from the cask, no hand pulls. This includes two traditional Ciders and two Perry’s (that’s Pear Cider to anyone who’s under 21), as well as a multitude of fruit wines. Thankfully we are early enough to get a seat in the ‘kitchen’ which is bit cramped but it means we’ve got a close eye on the beer.

The pub is simply a classic from an era that I thought had past, a real traditionalist’s establishment and the sort of thing they had on display in the ‘Museum of Nottingham Life’ that we went to the other week.



Apparently the place was once Bass’s bottle store and shop before becoming the brewery tap for the brewery. The Coopers is just across the road from the former Bass brewery which is now owned by Coors. After that it had a spell as a Hardys And Hansons pub but it seems it must have offloaded by them, either just before or after the takeover by Greene King. This is a relief because Greene King would probably have turned it into another gastro-pub. It’s now owned by Nottingham’s own Tynemill, owners of the Castle Rock brewery, and presumably the reason for Harvest Pale being the house beer. It will be safe in their hands but also credit to them for not serving too many of their own beers and having such a creative guest range, which on our visit included three dark ales, our favourite type. The strongest of which Sarah Hughes’ Dark Ruby at 6%, which had to be drunk in moderation. No matter the 4.7% dark stuff they had was excellent too. This if my memory serves me correctly was Milestone Black Imp.

We get an early-ish bus back home to save our heads and finish off with a curry.

A Lively Day Out

We’re all looking forward to a lively day out at Bramham Park for the Leeds Festival today. Talking of lively, L says the weather forecast is for ‘lively showers’ and gusty winds. This contradicts what I heard on the BBC where they predicted a fine day for Leeds, and urged ‘leave your wellies in your tent’. These weather people never can agree.

As we park the car the dulcet tones of Alan Donohoe of the Rakes can be heard somewhere in the distance. They’ve already started without us. Then the first problem presents itself, hairspray canisters are banned on site as they are used to stoke up the campsite bonfires. Daughter is distraught and has to do a quick re-spray in the car park field. Problem number two, it’s a bloody long walk to the stages.

We arrive at the NME stage knackered but are quickly reinvigorated by a lively performance from Metric. Emily Haines struts her stuff, cutting a glittering figure, all blonde hair and blinding light being reflected back off her sparkly dress. I’ve been a so-so fan for a while, now I’ve just got down off the fence. Rather good.

We have to leave before the end of their set because the girls, L and Daughter, want to treat me to some Enter Shikari. So we battle our way down to the front of the main stage where the teens are assembling in readiness. They’re certainly popular with that generation and L as well, but I still fail to see the attraction. Their experimentalism, to me, comes across as just too shambolic. They seem to write three quite good tunes but then they chuck them in a blender together, which then produces the final product. Henceforth you listen to them and think, this a good bit before it gets lost amidst something strange and not so satisfying. I also find the find the vocals of front man Roughton Reynolds a bit too much and I actually prefer it when the bass player takes over with his more subtle voice.

Daughter has no such reservations and disappears into the mosh pit. When she reappears she looks like she's in the need of lie down. As well as new Converses, new tights, a can of the banned hairspray, and ah, a new nose stud, having had the original one wrenched out mid-set.

We stay down the front for the Courteeners, who are much more my thing. ‘Cavorting’ tumbles forth and Liam Fray announces that the ‘Leeds Festival starts now.’ Perhaps a bit too sure of himself that one and perhaps feeling a little bit nesh as well, dressed as he is in a big overcoat. He’s also dishing out the advice ‘if your ex-girlfriend is here don't speak to her all weekend’, cue 'Please Don't'. A couple of new songs calm the crowd a little but it soon back to the crowd pleasers and even L looks like she's about to mosh to 'Not Nineteen Forever'.

I'm tempted to stay for Ian Brown, who I hear is very good live, but we need to circulate a bit. We catch the end of the set from Hockey on the Festival Republic stage, who impress us enough to consider checking them out again when they come to Nottingham next month. In between bands we slip across to the Alternative stage where there's an awful warm up comedian, who is filling in between acts. Thankfully he gives way to the slightly better Stuckey and Murray, who give us a rendition of their very alternate version of 'My Favourite Things'. They’re ok but we prefer to get back to the proper musicians and we return to the Festival Republic stage to catch some of Go:Audio. Whose synth driven pop sound isn’t too bad either.

Despite catching those two, I’ve not really caught half the fringe bands I would like to have seen but we have to head back to the main stage to catch Maximo Park. We've seen them several times so we could have skipped them but festivals seems to be the place that they often slip in a rendition of ‘Acrobat’ and we couldn’t let that happen and miss it.

Opener is ‘Graffiti’ as usual, ‘Apply Some Pressure’ comes mid-set and they even bring on a brass band for three of their songs. Paul Smith explaining that they’re ‘a quintessentially British band’ and that he thought the brass section would be the ‘sort of thing the people of Yorkshire would appreciate’. Although I’m sure he’ll be saying something similar in Reading.

We also learnt that ‘In Another World’ is about a night club on a boat in Newcastle and the inspiration for 'A Cloud Of Mystery' came whilst he was playing five-a-side football. Cheers for that insight Paul. Then near the end, yes we get ‘Acrobat’, with added brass section and it’s wonderful, practically worth the admission fee on its own.

We loiter down the front when they finish because Daughter wants to catch the Prodigy. I'm not at all sure about this. Although I have to admit they pulled the biggest and most fervent crowd of the day. They chuck in most of their big tracks early on which leaves me wondering what they've got left to entertain us with. Half an hour in, L and I get a big bored, over raved, crushed and a bit sick of them going all out for the award for the most prodigious use of the F-word at a festival. The much tattooed pair of Keith Flint and Maxim Reality kept asking 'Where the F we were?', as if their sat-nav’s were on the blink. So we took the hint and F-ed off back up the hill to see what was happening elsewhere. Leaving Daughter bobbling around in the crowd somewhere.

The answer to what's on elsewhere, was not at lot really. We end up at the NME stage where I had hoped to catch the end of White Lies but we missed them and ended up watching Glasvegas for the umpteenth time. As I've whinged before, once a fave of mine, they are a band desperately in need of some new material, as for that matter are White Lies. Well Glasvegas didn't give us any but they were an entertaining fill in until it was time to go back and unstick Daughter from the Yorkshire mud.

Once we’d found her again, I head back down to catch the Arctic Monkeys whilst L and Daughter, opt for the Gossip.

If the Courteeners confused the crowd with two new songs, the Arctic Monkeys well and truly trumped that with seven songs from their new album 'Humbug' and also threw in a cover of Nick Cave’s 'Red Right Hand' for good measure. I’m not sure being asked to headline a festival and then using that as a platform to promote your new record, rather than play old favourites is really going to make you that popular. Particularly when your new album is less than a week old and even your die hard fans are going to be struggling to know it off pat.

I wasn’t wrong, there were quite a few grumbles as not everyone appreciated all the new material or the new direction the band have taken and they lost a lot of the casual fans pretty early. The new direction included Alex Turner reinventing himself with his own dark look, all long hair, leather and shades. I think he was trying to come over all Johnny Ramone but to be honest Alex, it didn't work mate.

Of the new stuff, current single 'Crying Lightning' went down a storm and I felt totally out of place for not knowing the words. In fact I was quite impressed how many people did know the words to the new album tracks.

Overall I was actually impressed; it’s the first time I’ve seen them live and I’ll be looking forward to the UK tour and certainly getting ‘Humbug’. They recovered admirably from a technical hitch in the middle of 'Brianstorm' and it wasn’t as if it was all new material. As I left to catch some of the Gossip and they played 'Do Me A Favour', I reckoned that was six tracks from ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’, then as I reached the top of the hill they were into 'Flourescent Adolescent' and apparently ‘505’ came as an encore so that’s eight plus around four from the first album, including a cracking 'Still Take You Home', so a good mix really in what was a long set.

The biggest reaction was predictably for 'When The Sun Goes Down', one Turner admitted they hadn't played for a while, they didn’t need to this time either as everyone sung it for them.

The Gossip were running late and I had expected to catch up with L and Daughter only to see the last track or so but I actually see them come stage. You couldn't miss Beth Ditto of course but with her flourescent hair she seemed to be making sure. Unfortunately she then chose to hide in the ‘pit’ with the security guards for the duration of the first song causing anyone but the front row to watch her antics on the screens. Their set was far from being one of the highlights of the day, so we only stay for a few tracks before making an early start on the huge hike back to the car.

Back home, as expected, Son’s party is still in full swing even when we get home at 1.00am. We left the dogs in charge but both have now been exiled to the bedroom. Presumably so they can’t give evidence about who scrawled the ejaculating body part on our path. I hope for the person concerned that it’s not a self portrait, as it’s not terribly flattering.

We pour ourselves a drink and soak up the atmosphere for a bit. At 1.30am there’s a knock at the door but thankfully it’s not the long arm of the law but a delivery sent by fillmybelly.com, who deliver a bottle of rum. Half an hour there’s another knock and they’re back to deliver a kebab. It’s all too exciting for us and we retire to bed and miss the main entertainment of the evening, which was the eyebrow shaving.

Complete Confidence

L goes off to work, whilst I'm on exam results duty. Just as a precaution you understand, in the unlikely event that things don’t go quite go to plan... and we don't get to share in what are sure to be reported as 'best ever' results, which of course won't happen. I have complete confidence in Daughter...

L did the stint with Son and his A levels, I get Daughter and the GCSE’s. No prizes for guessing who got the easiest gig, at least on paper. Of course the easiest fixture may not necessarily be the best or most satisfying. Well that’s what I keep telling myself.

Talking of Son, he is pleased I have a day off at home... at least I think that’s what he meant when he greeted me with a ‘What you doing here?’ this morning.

Daughter is not looking confident and asks me to drive the car more slowly as we head down to the school. Then I have to sit in the car waiting for her which is a bit like waiting at the dentist’s surgery. Then I hear her coming across the school yard, I will have no need to ask her for her results when she reaches the car because I can hear her shouting them across the yard to her friends.

The upshot is she gets the six passes she needs, in fact she gets nine and the Maths, English and Science she needed. Never doubted her.

With that out of the way, Daughter disappears off upstairs presumably for a lie down after the shock of the results and I put the wine in the fridge to toast her success with L later. Phew.

The Rich And Complex Tapestry Of Life

I bus and run to work, and somehow manage to avoid a soaking by timing my bus journey (accidentally) to coincide with the main downpour of the morning.

After work I'm out in Derby with some old school friends and I would have cut through the train station but you're not allowed to do that anymore. They have now put up electronic barriers that stop you going through the station unless you have a ticket.



A lot of people are up in arms about this because it means that you can no longer meet people off the train or help your elderly relatives down to the platform with their heavy luggage. The aim is to stop fare dodgers or rather to help the rail firms save money by not having to check your ticket on the train, whether this will work or not remains to be seen. They have issued a lot of passes for people who have a valid reason to be exempt from this. Apparently I am one of them and work has issued me with a form to get myself a pass unfortunately I haven't done so yet, so I have to walk the long way round by the road tonight.

It’s also not just Derby because Nottingham has simultaneously introduced the same system.

Our night out goes well although we can’t go in the pub that we had intended to because Buzz Lightyear, Elvis and Fred Flintstone are propping up the bar, whilst Betty Boop, Marilyn Monroe and Alice In Wonderland look on. Having no wish to involved in that sort of do, we go elsewhere.



We’re not sure what the occasion was but it's a tenuous link that leads us on to talking about school reunions and what if we had one. Who would we most want to see again. Naturally, and rather juvenilely, a list of the best totty from the school is produced. This of course is a waste of time because a lot of those will have turned in to their not-so-tottyish-mothers by now and whilst some of the least desirables will probably now have transformed themselves and become most desirables. This is, of course, part of the rich and complex tapestry of life... but it would be good to find out who turned out well though wouldn’t it.

The Wellies Are In The Spare Bedroom

Got in the car this morning, opened up the latest audio book that L had got for me and got ready to slip the first disc into the CD player, only to find that there was no disc one. The absence of which would kind of make it difficult to get into the book, so I opt for music instead.

I needed a good book as a distraction as I get stuck in a queue because they've gone and shut the A52 on me again. They were still doing the resurfacing that was supposed to be done overnight. The road was due to reopen at 6am but they overran and it's now past 8am. Just as I reach the road closure, they start moving the cones and reopen it. At least something is going my way.

Daughter has a job interview today in a shoe department, which would be so her if she gets it. I ask L if she's nervous. Yes she says, Daughter said she was. I was actually asking whether L was nervous, I am, it's just like the exams all over again.

Back home, Daughter comes in pointing to her nose. Oh no, she's not been fighting again has she... no, she's had her nose pierced. I just hope she had that done AFTER the job interview.

I actually quite like nose piercing. In my younger days, I went out with a couple of girls who had such piercings and thought myself quite radical for doing so. I was easily impressed in those days; well actually I was 27 when I was seeing the last one, so I wasn't even that young. Such things of course, were a lot less common those days, now it seems you're the oddball if you abstain. Both of those girlfriends turned out to be totally barking mad, but that probably says more about me than their attitude to facial jewellery.

Our final, final crack at tennis is looking doubtful. It's drizzling with rain here. I tell my opponent to bring his squeegee and, as the drizzle starts to get a hell of a lot heavier, perhaps a snorkel. L says she'll look out for the pair of us from the nice dry gym and oh by the way, the wellies are in the spare bedroom.

Surprisingly the ensuing freak monsoon causes us to call the game off. We can't even play in the covered-over courts, the ones with the 'bubble' over them. The bubble has oddly disappeared; it was there the other week. With this being Nottingham, somebody has probably nicked it, either that or it's blown away in the barbecue summer.

On reflection, I think the game and the weather are trying to tell us something and my opponent says we are DEFINITELY sticking with squash from now on. You heard it here first.

I walk the dogs to meet L from the gym instead, keeping our paws dry by staying away from the wet park, which is of course now bizarrely bathed in beautiful sunshine. On the way MD annoys a pair of Guide dogs, who appear to be in training. They didn't apparently want to play chase. To their credit, they were very good and didn't take the bait. True professionals.

Please Take Me (Again)

Thought I best force the tired legs on to the bike this morning, the Pro Tour Ride is now less than two weeks away.

The latest 'please take me' arrives by email from L... Bananarama. Oh my. Not that they’ve actually announced anything yet, I’m just being put on standby.



The weather was ok this morning but by the afternoon it’s deteriorated. You wouldn't put a cat out in it, let alone a cyclist. Think I’ll just take the shortest route home rather than do any extra distance training.

It stops later, so that I can get on the park with boys. Though the council in their wisdom have now decided to shut our gate at 8pm. They always do that around this time of the year and it’s far too early for most people. You get the odd spectacle of the park attendant trying to find the right moment to lock the gate as people stream through the gate in both directions before he shuts off that particular artery to the park. I can’t be bothered to walk around to the main entrance to get out, so I’m one of those streaming out tonight, much to the dogs disapproval.

I Won’t Sleep Tonight

The Hermitage 10k in Whitwick is, their website says, 'not a course for the feint-hearted’. Shouldn’t that be ‘faint-hearted’? Anyhow, obviously that’s where L and I were this morning with 230 other folk who also hadn’t got anything saner to do on a Sunday morning.

The first kilometre was largely flat and fast but then started the promised 5km of uphill, which was nice... taking us up to some of the best views in the area but personally all I saw was my feet shuffling along on the tarmac. We had some local runner advising the group I was in all the way around. At least I assume he was local and not just making it up. Saying: - use the road here, cross over here, the surface is better there, sharp turn coming up etc etc. This would all have been fine had he not been so bloody cheerful about it all.

The route took us past a place selling cream teas and the lass who was in the group threw out an open invitation. Which would have been nice but we knew it was just a ruse so that she could get ahead of us. She didn't need a ruse, she beat me anyway.

Even when we weren’t going unremittingly uphill, the small sections of down and flat were just a prelude to the next up. ‘Serious undulations’ I believe they call them around here.

Thankfully what goes up must come down (eventually) and a long steep downhill section hurtled us back down into Whitwick. The race website also promised a ‘sprint finish’, I must have missed that bit.

My time was around 2-3 minutes slower than my usual time over a flat 10k, which was to be expected I suppose. However once I took my shoes off I found another reason for this, which was much more sinister. I had bought some new running socks for this race and very nice they were too but now I noticed that they were marked with an ‘L’ and a ‘R’... I hadn’t had 'left' and 'right' socks since I was... err five? Isn’t that the age you move on to ones with the days of the week on?

Anyone how, needless to say I hadn’t noticed this and I’d got them on the wrong feet. No wonder I had such a slow race. What a basic error to make, I won’t sleep tonight.

We retire to the pub for some ale and a Sunday lunch. Then I can chill out and watch other people put themselves through it at the World Athletics. We get a couple of silvers courtesy of Lisa Dobriskey in the 1500m and the men's 4x400m relay team.

Dobriskey benefitted when two of the favourites had a bit of a ‘punch up’ on the last lap. Natalia Rodriguez of Spain pushed Ethiopian Gelete Burka to the track and then sprinted away to win. Dobriskey was third across the line but Rodriguez was of course disqualified promoting Dobriskey to second.

Dobriskey was oh so close to the gold medal losing out by just one hundredth of a second to Maryam Yusuf Jamal. I hope she had her socks on the right feet or else she won’t sleep tonight.



I’m pretty annoyed about the cricket. At 5.30 Australia still had five wickets in hand and the light, certainly in Nottingham, was fading so I thought that would be about it for the day and went to do something else, looking forwarded to spending the next day at work following the action.

So what do the buggers do, they take all five wickets in the next twenty minutes. That’s not cricket... or rather it is. Well done anyway.

Am I Really Becoming A Brad Pitt Fan?

For the second home game in a row it's hardly inspiring stuff at Pride Park. In fact as I look around most people look about as enthralled as I do e.g. not very. The game limps towards an uninspiring 1-1 draw, which I suppose is better than an uninspiring 0-0 draw, but then in the final minute up pops Derby defender Miles Addison with a bullet header and a last minute winner, barely deserved but no one's complaining now.

Much more enthralling was the evening's entertainment as we took in the new Quentin Tarantino film ‘Inglorious Basterds’. I always look forward to a Tarantino, although you’re never sure which Tarantino is going to show up. As it happens, we get a pretty good one tonight.

The film is set during World War Two in Nazi occupied France and is played out sort of like a western. The opening ‘chapter’, as the film calls them, sets a pattern that the rest of the film will follow.

SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christian Waltz), the 'Jew Hunter', is at the farmhouse of Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet), a local farmer, who is suspected of sheltering a neighbouring Jewish family. The tension builds during the scene as Landa interrogates the farmer with built in German efficiency. Landa is the ‘good cop-bad cop’ all in one, polite friendly official one minute, chilling evil bastard the next.



This is one of those big Tarantino dialogue scenes and during it you're never quite sure what’s going to happen next. The masterstroke here is that we all know what happened in the war and how that turned out but we’re now in a Tarantino parallel universe where he's prepared to take liberties with history. This is a film all about revenge, where he wants to put the boot on the other foot, rewrite history, and give the Jews a chance to get their own back. So anything can happen.

On this occasion, what probably would have happened happened, and the farmer sacrifices the family for his own survival. Only one member of the family, the teenage Shosanna, survives and manages to get away.

Then we finally get to meet the eponymous Basterds. They are a kind of Jewish Dirty Dozen with Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) at their helm. They have arrived in France with revenge on their minds and are intent on brutally killing and scalping as many Nazi's as they can get their hands on. They take immense pleasure in this project, especially baseball bat wielding Eli Roth with his own trademark style of retribution, as they give the Nazi’s a taste of their own inhumanity.



The only downside to the Basterds is that we don’t see enough of them and their crazed brand of vengeance because the film quickly moves back to Shosanna (Melanie Laurents), who is also plotting revenge. She seems to have fallen on her feet and has ‘inherited’ a cinema from an ‘Aunt’ and ‘Uncle’, improbable though this may seem. I'm as suspicious as Landa on that one. When German war hero Fredrick Zoller gives her the eye she shuns him but when he persists in his attention she finds herself in the situation where her cinema is selected for the première of a film paying tribute to Zoller's heroics, also starring him. Equally improbable is that all the Third Reich's highest ranking officers, even Hitler, will be attending. For this reason, the première also catches the eye of the Basterds, who see it as an opportunity to bring about an early end to the war. Cue Mike Meyers, who pops up as the Allies send a film critic turned spy (Michael Fassbender) over to help and David Bowie’s ‘Cat People (Putting Out Fire)’ is used to dramatic effect as the two fractions prepare their different plans for destroying the cinema with all inside, and as one of many nods to other films.



'Inglourious Basterds' is a collection of long scenes, loosely connected to each other, which kind of come together but the film's two similar plots never actually meet in the middle. Which I assume is very deliberate, I think he's been learning or unlearning from the Coen Brothers, depending on your point of view.

It’s been said that some of the scenes drag on, I didn't think that at all. They all stay interesting despite their length. Occasionally deeply serious, at other times humorous and you wonder whether you're allowed to laugh or not. Overall it all has a nice pace to it and the two and half hours simply fly by.

A word about Christoph Waltz, who probably stole the show in a film that contained many impressive performances. Throughout the film Tarantino made use of English, German, French and even a bit of Italian and Waltz acted in all three, as well as playing the part of Landa brilliantly. Brad Pitt’s performance is also top draw (again), all the way from his minimalist Italian to his interesting line in forehead carving. I really think I’m becoming a Pitt fan? Another one to single out is Melanie Laurents who easily upstages Tarantino's hailed new muse Diane Kruger.



Certainly one of the best films I've seen this year and I haven't even mentioned the ending.

Too Tired For The Pub

We leave Doggo in charge of seeing the remnants of the ‘small scale party’ off the premises which apparently he does with aplomb and the party doesn’t automatically restart as Son’s ‘gatherings’ have done in the past.

My neck is still a bit sore but I bike all the same, working on the assumption that exercising it is better than resting it. I have to ride faster than I want to because I just have to overtake a chap with the most ill-fitting cycling shorts I’ve ever seen. They were supposed to be tight fitting lycra but looked about three sizes too big. He’s also pretty quick for an old guy, I say old because he had more grey in his hair than... well I have hair, but he could certainly pedal.

The media is full of the best ever ‘A’ level results with front page photos of glamorous young female students clutching their results slips. Boys take these exams too you know.

Latest research says that candle-lit rendezvous's could be harmful to your health. We’ve always know they can be the start of considerable damage to a boy’s wallet but this is a new angle. Candle fumes can cause lung cancer and asthma they say. So limit your candle use as well as everything else.



I've entered the Men's Health ‘Survival of the Fittest’ race. Oops. Work has agreed to sponsor anyone at our company who wants to do it. So couldn’t say no really.

I think L fancies it too but she has the Birmingham Half-Marathon the next day. I will have to show solidarity with her and be AF the night before that, so it’ll have to be a bloody good night out after her race. I just need to start practising my wall climbing, bog swimming and the like.

L leaves work with the intention of running the Nottingham Half-Marathon route as a training run. So I decide to add a few extra miles to my cycle home and try to find her. Which I do eventually, unfortunately they haven’t closed the roads for her like they do for the real race.

It was all a ploy from her though so that she could pinch some of my energy drink. Unfortunately I had almost emptied the bottle on the way to work this morning so my energy drink would have tasted remarkably water-like but she seemed to appreciate it.

After that, we are both pretty tired, it’s been a hard week all round and we sleepwalk down to the local pub, where we fall asleep in our beer and have to come home early. We were so tired we didn’t even hear Daughter when she came home.

Never Doubted Him

I wake up with a sore and bruised shoulder. They do says guns are dangerous don't they and that was just the kick back.

I cycle in and discover that my shoulder isn’t too bad but I think I also might have done my neck in. Swimming tonight could be interesting.

We have everything crossed today, as it’s A level results day. L meets Son at the Nottingham Arena which is where they are handing out the results and the sympathy. Son is doing cartwheels. Well, he’s smiling and grinning, which is almost the same thing. He’s done really well. L says he was stunned how good his results were. L says she was stunned how good they were. So we're all stunned. Never doubted him. He’s now retrieved the wreckage of this first attempt at A Levels and got one full A Level out that and now has a good set of AS’s to take forward to next year.

He's having a 'small scale party' at our place this evening to celebrate the results. The festivities are due to start at around 8pm but apparently they have started already. I’m just having my lunch...

L sends me the beautiful Hoppipola to relax me whilst I’m have my Oggy oggy pasty.

If I may correct her, I’m having an Oggy Oggy chicken salad brown bread sandwich not a pasty but I agree, it’s good sandwich music. Thought I'd keep off the processed meats like ham for a few days re: another health scare in the news. This is proper chicken, I think. If it’s not, then it’s very very good fake chicken. Chicken isn't bad for you at the moment.

Hoppipola is by Sigur Rós by the way. Don’t try and sing along, the words are in Icelandic. That's not a very Sigur Rós title, their tracks are usually called something like 'Við spilum endalaust' which comes from their best selling album 'Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust'. See what I mean?

I'm dreading them touring and coming to Nottingham because L will want to go and I'll have to research all their albums. We'll have to be front row because I’ll definitely need to pinch a set list, there’s no way I’m compiling that from memory.



It's the moment we've all been dreading, the deciding Ashes test, and in the office, we need something to take our minds off Ian Bell's batting. Hoppipola might have to do. There are continued shouts across the office of 'he's still there' as he makes a very tentative start. Several hours later he is out but for a useful 72, never doubted him.



I go for my swim, following L’s advice to stay out as long as I can, in view of the ‘small scale party’ going on at home. Then when we get home we retire to the bedsit with a bottle of wine, well L does. I'm collecting Daughter later who is out at a gay club, which is an odd location to hire for a 16+ post exam results party but there you go, particularly as GCSE results aren’t out until next week.

She is back in time to check out the dregs of the party with a few mates in tow. Unfortunately by then the party has moved up into Son’s room but I’m sure the A Level students weren’t trying to avoid the GCSE students.

Dog Relay

L is up at 5.30am. Wow. Then she goes out running, doing a dog relay of 20 minutes with Doggo followed by a similar distance with MD. I have to hold the whimpering paw of the distressed puppy as he is dumped by his mistress whilst she is out with Doggo. Then, after she’s done MD, she heads off to swim 56 lengths.

I bus and run to work, feeling outdone before I even start. It was also a bit of a hobble, at least at first but I think that was more to do with tired legs than my dodgy ankle, which seems ok. So I should be ok for Sunday’s race, not that I've received my race number yet. The Post Office have probably delivered it somewhere else again.

L tells me about her ‘cranky breakfast’. Which means it was something like Marmite smeared on Weetabix. I’ve probably given her ideas there because she confesses that its pitta bread with one inside spread with peanut butter and the other with jam, and chopped banana in the middle. I was close. Perhaps she’s pregnant?

‘More than likely’ L replies. Eh? Oh hang on, that was a reply to ‘the Post Office have probably mis-delivered my race number’ rant.

Whew. Oh well, we’ll just have to keep trying, unsuccessfully.

I've never been much of a Lance Armstrong fan but he seems to be a bit of a changed man since his retirement. Now back racing he appeared chatty and even humorous at this year’s Tour De France. Yesterday he turned up in Paisley and invited everyone for an impromptu bike ride via a Twitter post. How cool is that?



In the end around 300 people turned up including the Flying Scotsman, Scottish cycling legend Graeme Obree. Armstrong took them all for a 90 minute ride. I wonder at whose pace that was at? And how many managed to keep up.

In the evening we have a bit of a competition at our company’s corporate clay pigeon shoot. I was rather unfairly volunteered to go first and I thought I did rather well to hit 7 out of 10 on the first range but then I was outshone by people who got 9’s and 10’s. Not being of a competitive nature this didn’t matter a jot but then as we moved on through five different ranges I gradually got better as the uncompetitive nature of the event clearly got to the others. I took the lead by two shots after a perfect 10 on the fourth target and we moved on to the final range. The shooting order was reversed on this last one, so that the leader shot last. Just to increase the pressure. The guy in second didn’t do so well meaning I only needed to hit four out of ten to win. I missed the first two. Oh dear. But I came through in the end to claim victory... but as I’ve said, I’m not really very competitive.

The Ghost Of Sainsbury’s

Two ludicrous decisions inside the first two weeks of the new football season. So nothing new there then. Both involved Norwich City. First they bizarrely sack Bryan Gunn a few days after winning 4-0 away from home in the League Cup, citing results... 4-0 away from home, not bad that guys. Ok so they lost their first league match 7-1 at home and Gunn wasn't exactly popular last season but give the manager credit for turning things around so quickly. Norwich's new chief executive David McNally had other plans though, he didn’t appoint Gunn but if he didn't want the man in charge, perhaps he should have said something when he took over. Not now after a summer of new signings and just two weeks before the transfer window closes.



Instead he’s turned to Paul Lambert, a man he knows from his Celtic days, who started the season as manager of Colchester United, the team who put those seven goals past Norwich on the opening day. You couldn't make it up. Seems there's no loyalty or common sense from Lambert either.

Every football fan will now be hoping for another miserable season for Norwich and a prosperous one for Colchester.

I had problems again today with the ghost at Sainsbury’s. Yet another item has disappeared between being put in my trolley and being packed at the checkout. Today I lost my bananas, no witty comments please. Something always seems to go missing! but it’s probably just me.

It’s good to be back, playing squash that is. I take it steady and feel my way back in, trying to remember what shots work best against my opponent. It takes a while to get going but I feel I make a good account of myself in defeat. It’s particularly good to win the last of our series of games, as that sends him home depressed. I figure next week I’ll be in really good shape to give him an even closer match. Then he tells me its tennis next week... oh no, not again.

After a quick spot of refreshment I head home, where there’s no one in except two very excitable dogs and L leaning seductively against the hall wall. She probably wasn’t trying to look seductive, she either just effortlessly manages it or it had something to do with the testosterone fuelling effect that sport has and possibly the pint and a half of refreshment afterwards. Although tired limbs don't make for good spontaneity, you have to take your chances when you have teenagers.

We have another Gold medal at the World Championships. Phillips Idowu clinches the triple jump, producing a lifetime best when he needed it most. He doesn’t get quite as many front pages as Jess Ennis, probably because he’s not a girl, which is shame because his facial jewellery and colourful hair deserves a wider audience.

Dream On

The weather looks decidedly dodgy this morning and I’m sure I even feel spots of rain at one point but still I go for it on the bike. Unbelievably it ends up quite pleasant and the sun shines throughout my ride. Which is the opposite of what usually happens.

On the way home I again take the 42km route home, in a similar time, which hints at a Pro Tour ride of around 5 hours. Dream on. That’s assuming I keep that sort of pace up and don’t tire. It also assumes that the Pro Tour ride will be as flat as that route, which I know it isn’t.

The grass on the park is still mega long. Have the council lost their lawn mower? So the dogs have to be content to share one ball because I can’t keep my eyes on two balls at once. Not when they both take them off in opposite directions and resolutely refuse to remember where they drop them.

They’re not happy with this scenario but it’s tough basically, it’s no good complaining to me, go protest to the council, go wee up the door of the council house or something.

I Must Have The Wrong Shoes

L goes out running this morning and I take the boys out. I tell them that we’re going for a walk, no balls, just a walk. They seem bemused by the concept and horrified at the thought that I might be serious.

The grass is now so long on the park that throwing a ball for them is pointless because they just lose it in the long grass. Yesterday I took the football instead, the resulting knee damage reminded me of one of the reasons I gave up doing this. Hence no balls at all today.

In the end they forget all about the lack of spherical objects when we discover a Children’s festival on the park. Something to which they can try and cause some disruption to. Perhaps as a belated form of protest Doggo heads straight for the nearest tree, the one with the picnickers under it, to vent his frustration in the usual three legs down, one leg up fashion. After that I keep them under a very close watch.

Everyone’s been singing the praises of Jessica Ennis who put in a fantastic performance, leading all the way through the Heptathlon at the Athletics World Championships in Berlin, to win the gold medal.



A word also though for Alistair Brownlee who on Saturday won his fourth ITU World Cup Triathlon race in a row, with apparent ease, and live on BBC TV too. In a sport where it is very hard for anyone to show that sort of domination that’s some achievement. What got me though was that he ran the 10k part of the race in 28:43. That’s after a 1500m swim and a 40km bike of course. Wow. I must have the wrong running shoes of something.

Finally, A Visit To Chav Square

Son has been out at another ‘small scale event’ and is late back for his paper round this morning. No matter he has decided it’s time to quit after four years. Now he starts the search for a more ‘grown up’ job that he can fit around his new found partying habit.

L’s at work this morning and I need to go into town anyway, so I opt to have a walk around whilst I wait for her. I thought I'd have a look to see how much has changed since the last time I did this, probably a couple of years ago. I hardly go into Nottingham these days, at least not to shop. I soon decide to keep clear of the shops as well, too busy, and instead have a look at the new controversial Contemporary Arts Centre which is due to open in November. It’s been dubbed Nottingham’s ugliest building. It’s certainly, well, contemporary.



Talking of ugly, I walked through Chav Square (formerly known as the Old Market Square) and got my first look at the Nottingham Beach. On to which quite an amount detritus seemed to have been washed up, some of them were eating ice creams and tanning the gaps between their tattoos. It’s odd that they spent so much money on an allegedly better quality Market Square and then dumb it down in such spectacular style. It’s certainly an ‘attraction’ in itself but I doubt it’s doing anything for the city’s image or encouraging anybody new to contribute to the wider Nottingham economy.

Later I meet L because she wants to visit the Museum of Nottingham Life at Brewhouse Yard, which is next to the Trip to Jerusalem pub.

Yep we have become tourists for the day. It’s actually free for Nottingham residents but only during the week, so we have to cough up £3.50 to get in. The museum resides in five 17th century cottages and aims to depict the social history of Nottingham over the last 300 years or so. It contains among many things, reconstructed streets, shops, a kitchen and an air raid shelter. Some of the rooms are impressively carved out of the rock face, like they are in the pub next door.



It’s ok, good in fact but I don’t think I learn anything new and to be honest it isn’t terribly Nottingham themed but still enjoyable.

Tonight we are at the cinema to see another of L’s fav books that has been made into a film. Something about a Time Lord’s and his wife. Perhaps another Doctor Who spin off? but no, she pointed me towards a synopsis of it and it turns out it’s one of those stories that I so love... backwards... and then forwards... and then backwards again... The complexity of it means that I’d probably be lost before the end of the opening titles but I loved the general idea of it and it was going to be make such a good blog.

In the end I needn’t have worried because the studio has done a ‘Chav Square’ and done some dumbing down of their own, which meant I didn’t get lost at all but the movie clearly suffered at the hands of this tampering.

The film is actually called ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’. At the start we see Henry, the time travelling librarian, at the age of six in a car with his mother. The car gets shunted and this triggers Henry into a time jump, his first. Seconds later, he is back in the present but standing at the road side as the car driven by his mother crashes into a lorry.

His elder self appears alongside him to comfort him and to reassure him about all this time jump malarkey. Henry has a rare genetic anomaly that causes him to live his life on a shifting timeline, involuntarily jumping back and forth through time. He can’t control it and has no idea when he’s going to travel or where to, except that it often seems to be triggered by stress, and that he usually travels to places related to his life, just at a different time. This could of course all just be a great ruse and an excuse for nipping down the pub when his misses isn’t looking but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. A slight inconvenience is that he never gets to take anything with him and so arrives stark naked, meaning that his first task is always finding something to wear.

In the next scene, the grown up Henry (Eric Bana) is at work in the library when he is approached by Clare (Rachel McAdams). He’s never met her before but this babe declares undying love for him. No never happened to me either. He’s oddly reluctant about her offer of dinner. Just get in there mate, don’t worry about the detail, just nod in the right places and go along with it. To his credit, his reluctant seems to have evaporated by the time she talks herself into his apartment and takes her clothes off.

Clare claims to have known him all her life because he has been visiting during her childhood and teenage years from the future but because he isn’t in the future yet, he doesn’t know that. Now I’m not sure how it’s handled in the book but we’ve just been given 90% of the plot in the first ten minutes...

Then we get flashbacks to when Henry visited her in the past but what we don’t get to see enough of is the progression of their relationship. What caused Clare, as a young girl, to fall so madly in love with him? She just seemed to believe that they were destined to be together and it was so inevitable that she never bothered to doubt it. It’s like chunks of the story have been cut out and it doesn’t help you to relate to the characters.



It’s the same with other characters. Henry’s father drifts into the story at one stage and there’s an obviously been some history there and there’s a story to be told but it never happens and his father disappears again.

The other 10% of the plot is revealed not long later when we find out that Henry dies at a young age. So that leaves us with no suspense left at all, leaving us with basically just a rom-com.

They get married, of course, which Henry nearly misses by dematerializing just before his bride walks down the aisle. Conveniently, when he time jumps he usually seems to pop straight back, although having aged or un-aged. Several sticky situations, like the one at the wedding, were avoided which could have added to the plot but equally might have ensured we ended up with an unpalatable slapstick comedy instead.



There's only one moment where he leaves for a long period of time, which causes an argument but the rest of the time it’s just played as a bit of an inconvenience, like he was diabetic or had a lisp or something like that. You would have thought his time travelling would have caused a lot more grief for everyone but you just don’t get that impression.

In fact very few people seem to notice his disappearances and reappearances or his random ageing and un-ageing, those that do just accept it, but then the makeup department seemed to simply rely on you counting the grey hairs on his head to gauge his age. It didn’t work. This was no Benjamin Button on that front, it was almost impossible to distinguish whether he was a younger or older.

They try for a baby and Clare easily gets pregnant, time and time again, each time the baby time-travels out of the womb and Clare risks bleeding to death but I’ve made that sound more dramatic than it was. Henry decides he’s not going to put her through another pregnancy and has a vasectomy. Undeterred, Clare slopes off to meet a younger pre-vasectomy version of Henry who has time travelled forward to the present and shags him in a parking lot. She falls pregnant again and this one goes full turn. Bingo, time travelling Daughter is born.



It’s a film that seems in a rush to tell its story and consequently doesn’t, it trips over itself on occasion and unnecessarily so because at only an hour and forty minutes, they had time to spare to flesh out the full story, which I’m sure is in there somewhere.

Apparently in the book, two of the things that keep Henry in the present are running and sex, as both these activities relieve his stresses. As a big fan of both, I was sad to see these aspects overlooked. He also has to avoid alcohol but it was never really explained why. Another good stress reliever surely?

What we have in the end is another film about a couple who face adversity due to their circumstances but in the end, of course, love wins through, except this has a bit of time travel in it. Apparently the book isn't as mushy.

So a pleasant enough film but incredibly disappointing. Although I have learn some tips for relieving stress. It wasn’t a film that needed too much dissecting in the pub afterwards. Which was a shame because the pub afterwards from far from disappointing. We had some corking ale in the Keans Head, 5.3% and very dark. I had so much of it, that for life of me, I can’t remember what it was called or who brewed it. I think I need to time travel back and do that particular pub session again.

It's A Good Job We Have Two ‘Ferocious’ Guard Dogs

As I roll my bike down the drive and set off for work, MD is rolling himself in something unpalatable and delaying their morning walk. If he doesn’t watch it he’ll be in for another Head and Shoulders session with Daughter. Then again, that’s probably why he’s done it. If he’s really lucky he might get the hair dryer treatment.

According to research, which looked at insurance claims, Nottingham is a hot spot for burglary. No surprise there then. Arnold, West Bridgford, Sherwood and Bilborough are all in the national top ten. We share a post code with Bilborough so that effectively put us in the top ten too. Good job we have two ‘ferocious’ dogs guarding the house... or failing that the smell of whatever MD’s rolled in should do the trick.

Teesdale in County Durham was the least burgled place, although it’s not exactly densely populated. It was already on the list as one of our dream places to live and it just got even more attractive.

By 5pm it’s still not rained yet today. Call this summer? So I go for a longer ride home. With the Pro Tour Ride coming up on 6th September, all 145km of it, I thought I best get some extra kilometres in. I take my usual long route home via Kegworth and then extend it out from Clifton through Ruddington and Wilford. 42km in around 85 minutes, which I’m happy with, but it’s still not even a third of the event distance.

After which I’m knackered but L needs to do a run as part of her marathon training. As Friday is of course the dog’s night out, we plan to meet up at the Victoria which is a pleasant hour's dog walk away. Of course, we inevitably get side-tracked and the best laid plans of dogs and men go astray because the Victoria is annoyingly one of the few pubs around here that still closes at 11pm. So in the end we meet up at the much nearer, trusty local. The dogs don't get a long walk but the pork scratching are good.

Refuseniks

We’re a pretty fit bunch at work; almost everyone has a gym membership or a bike habit. Not everyone though, one of the refuseniks asked a colleague whether he had enjoyed his ‘jog’ last night. Ooooh, you would have needed an ice pick to cut though the resulting icy silence. How dare she use the ‘J’ word, j****** is something you do to your memory.

For some odd reason, financial I assume, golf is now going to be an Olympic sport but not squash, which was also on the short list. Now let’s see, racquets sports... badminton - yes, tennis - controversially but yes, squash - no??? Logic - no.

Another angle of logic says an Olympic gold medal should be the pinnacle of achievement for that sport, making golf, football, yes and tennis too unacceptable. Even my beloved road cycling would be excluded but I’d be ok with that, the track is where it’s at Olympics wise. Would any of the top golf players want to play in the Olympics, probably not. Tiger Woods said he would but then he’d be pushing forty by then.



It was interesting to notice what sports are recognised by the IOC as sports. For example, Darts is one that isn’t but another that isn’t is Motor Racing. So Motor Racing isn’t a sport, always suspected as much. On the other hand, they say Lifesaving is. So if you ever get rescued from the sea or your local pool, bear in mind that you could have just assisted a future Olympic champion with their training.

I’ve cycled in today and it was fairly uneventful. Riding home was a bit more ‘edgy’. Waiting at the lights at the set of crossroads in Stapleford, the lights on the other side turned red and I got ready to push off, but a car was still coming from that side at a rate of knots. Our lights go amber, I’d normally go now and the car behind me starts moving forwards but the car is still coming from the side. The lights go green, I don’t move so the car behind me goes around me. The car is still coming from the side. It runs the light and turns right around the corner towards us, the driver doing a one handed turn as he goes, his other hand keeping the phone firmly attached to the side of his face. The car alongside me brakes hard, there are millimetres between them.

I think I saved the front end of his car by delaying him and making him go around me. Useful us cyclists sometimes.

I head to the pool, to do my bit for our first life saving gold medal, and it’s surprisingly quiet in the lanes. There’s just one person in my lane, a chap, who’s incredibly slow. I swim three lengths for every two that he does. This is fine because I can swim down the wrong side when I have to pass him and I do twenty four of my planned thirty lengths with ease. Then another chap arrives and starts doing three lengths for every two of mine. So you can imagine what sort of trouble this puts the first chap in. Suddenly it’s like the Red Arrows display team as we swim under, over and around each other. I do my last six lanes and escape.

Just Looking

I’m thoroughly sick of summer. Can we please now skip the rest of it and go straight to autumn and winter. For a start, it rains less in the autumn and winter, and when it does you can put on waterproofs without feeling like you've been strapped into a microwave oven, like you do in these warmer 'summer' months. Yep you guessed it; I didn't get to bike in today. Too wet. Plus all my kit was still damp from Monday. So no, I couldn't face it.

Of course once I had decided to get the bus, the rain stopped and not a single drop of rain fell on my head all journey. The roads would still have unpleasantly wet for cycling though.

It was recently reported that the average man will spends forty-three minutes each day staring at ten different women. Who did they ask? There are at least ten women on the Red Arrow this morning and it takes me less than a minute to do a quick assessment with the conclusion that I’d be better off reading my newspaper. Ten seems very low, I’ve got the walk to Pride Park to do yet, then there’s the return journey home and I might go to the swimming pool after work. Ten? Nah.

Hope L doesn’t mind that little confession but women are no different, but as we know pickier, checking out just six men for around twenty minutes a day. Wouldn’t it be a concern if people didn’t have an active appreciation of each other?

For men, that adds up to eleven days each year, which just between the ages of 18 and 50 adds up to a whole year. The researcher puts it that ‘a year of their life is a long time to spend with their eyes fixed on the opposite sex’. Really? I would hope to spend longer than that just gazing at L before filling the gaps looking at anyone else. Good job they didn’t include stats for the under 18’s. I recall that was a very fruitful period on the ‘just looking’ front.

I opt out of swimming. Don’t want to distort the stats and the pool is too far to walk from the bus stop, particularly as I seem to have got my hobble back. It's also sunny, so I cut the lawn because I need to dig MD’s weave poles out of the long grass. I will swim tomorrow when I'm back on two wheels, hopefully.

Last Game Of Tennis, Ever

I’m in car, so naturally its sunny today, but a lunchtime shopping trip is called for. I need to get some lunch supplies for work and I also need to restock the all you can eat buffet for our resident plague of locusts at home.

The council have cut L’s swimming options to two days a week from the five it was by opting to close the pool at 8.30am on the other three days. Today, is one of the days it stays open longer, I joke to L that it’ll probably be shut and it is! Technical problems they say, so shut, full stop. Good job she’s not a future Olympian in training.

It's Tuesday, tennis night, and there’s an unidentified bright round yellow thing hovering outside my office window. Does anybody have an explanation for this please? The truth is out there. Somewhere. Perhaps I should report it to the authorities.



Half an hour later, it’s still there, I even have to close the blinds. I best book a court for tonight then, which of course will cause it to scurry away...

Booked. Looks like rain now.

The game doesn’t start terribly well but then it’s been so long since we played, both of us struggle to remember how to play the game. It’s the one where the object of the game is to keep the ball off that square thing in the middle, isn’t it? Similar to squash, where you have to hit the ball against the back of the court. Although it doesn't bounce back as well off the fencing as it does off the wall in squash.

By the time L turns up to say ‘hi’ on her way home from the gym I am 4-1 down in the first set. She must be my lucky charm because from there I win four games in a row to turn that set around, eventually winning it on a tie break. My opponent sulks his way through the second set and I take that with ease. I won’t admit it was classy tennis but I have mastered getting the ball right into the corners at the back of the court, keeping him penned back and making him run around a lot, then I just wait for him to make a mistake. It’s probably like watching paint dry but it works.

Afterwards I’m told that’s our last game of tennis, ever, he’s retiring now, it’s back to squash next week apparently. Just as I was beginning to enjoy it.

The Loudest Bands

Back at work and back on the bike. I ride in bathed in sunshine; I almost have to stop to dig my shades out of my bag. Then ten minutes from work it rains, typical.

It continues to rain for pretty much all of the day. L reckons it could be precipitation from the little black cloud that always follows her around after a holiday. Although this time she doesn’t sound as depressed as usual to be back at work, either that or she’s hiding it well.

I think MD's glad to be back on his own patch. After pretty much a cat-free week he’s got a lot of catching up to do.

While on holiday I read an interesting article about the loudest bands. Most were metal bands from the 70’s and 80’s but the article was centred around My Bloody Valentine who were certainly loud and still are apparently. They are on a comeback. Who isn't these days?



So this got me thinking what the loudest bands I’ve seen were. The current crop of bands just don’t seem to be as loud as ones from my youth or perhaps I just don’t stand so close to the front any more and I’m not really in to bands such as Korn, Slipknot, System Of A Down etc, all of which I imagine would be fairly loud.

I‘ve seen My Bloody Valentine and yes they were loud but I also recall being deafened by among others Sonic Youth, Zodiac Mindwarp, Jesus And Mary Chain and particularly by a lesser known band called the Hunters Club. I reckon though the loudest band I ever saw must have been the Ramones, who shattered my hearing on more than one occasion.



The weather is still incredibly wet by the time I cycle home and I squelch my way home. The kitchen is in the sort of state we expected it to be in when we got back from holiday, showing that it’s assumed that house will get back its self-cleaning properties now that the house fairies are back from holiday or... perhaps we had the cause of most of the day to day mess on holiday with us...

Then suddenly the rain stops and its fine for an evening’s amble on the park with the boys.

A Rare Sight At A Dog Show

Our holiday is more or less history now. Since I got back I’ve already done a 10k (Friday), been to the match (Saturday) and today done a dog show. It’s Sunny Scunny today, Scunthorpe that is and yes it is actually sunny.

We get three clear rounds out of four and graze the top ten twice without actually getting in there. On the course where we weren’t clear, Doggo had a pole down but he’d say it wasn’t his fault. I reckon he’d blame the judge because I think he was momentarily blinded by the bright sunlight glinting off the judge’s shiny black tights. I could see him thinking ‘blimey the judge is a babe’ or was that me thinking that... Seriously, the judge was a tall leggy blonde in black tights and a short skirt, and yes, female. You probably have no idea how rare a sight this is at a dog show.

Holiday report.

Well we headed down the M5 after resisting the temptation to load Son up with thirty pizzas and perhaps a whole truckle of cheese to keep him alive whilst we were away. Instead we hoped he might even cook for himself, when the pot noodles ran out obviously.

In the end we missed Devon by about five miles and ended up in Somerset at Porlock. L and I had our first holiday away together there in 1996, ah the romance of it, and revisited there five years or so ago to reminisce. On that occasion we got distracted by a beer trail that was happening in Dorset when we should have been retracing the steps of our first trip. A mistake we won’t be making again as we discovered we didn’t even really like the beer on that trail. So we return for a third time with just the two dogs and a sixteen year old to shatter the romantic ambiance.



As I mentioned yesterday training was restricted to three four-miles runs which was part of L’s proposed strict fitness regime which she wanted to keep to whilst we were away. However, she neglected to write it down so that I could keep her to the rest of it, as I would have done in strict taskmaster style.

Overall it’s a fun relaxing time, as we enjoy the ‘barbecue summer’ with only the occasional monsoon. We had considered moving south but in the end we stay put, only straying down to Woolacoombe for the day where my brother is staying. Coincidently in the same part of the country for the same week.

We consume some excellent food and a ridiculous amount of alcohol, copious amounts of the wonderful Exmoor Stag but not enough Otter Ale which ran out on day two. There are lots of firsts, MD finally gets his paws wet in the sea and joins Doggo among the waves. Daughter discovers that if you go paddling in tights they don’t exactly wear that well and we don't find any branches of Top Shop among the thatched cottages, country pubs and cheese shops. This is a relief to us, but not to Daughter. Suppose she did need some new tights.



We had a motorbike rally set up across the campsite from us and we expected to be kept awake by a succession of wild late night parties or at least get an invite to one but they seemed to be a very sedate bunch. The wild late night parties were clearly happening closer to home, according to Facebook that is, where Daughter found some of her friends discussing going to a ‘gathering’ at... err... our house. L rings Son to find out just exactly what’s going on, with visions of police raids as they shut down yet another illegal rave advertised on Facebook. Son assures us that if a group of sixteen year old girls turn up at the house he will turn them away. Yep that’s what I would have told my parents as well.

The next day, Daughter, again on Facebook, finds photos of one such ‘gathering’ of folks in what looks uncannily like our kitchen... but then we realise that they’re from a previous occasion. Party central our place you know.

Far too soon the week is over and we ring Son to tell him we’re on our way home, which panics him a bit as he informs us he needs to shift two of his mates off the sofa before he gets into tidying up mode. They can’t actually be sleeping on our sofa, our sofa is not really comfortable enough to sit on let alone sleep on, unless you’ve consumed a ridiculous amount of Strongbow... ah.

Doggo looks absolutely gutted that we’re leaving so soon and wants just one more dip in the sea but ‘one more dip’ is never enough is it Doggo? I imagine he’ll refuse to get out of the car when we get home, again.



We arrive home and the house is actually tidy-ish, with plates washed and put away. So Son can do it when he wants to. There’s collateral damage naturally. A few broken dog trophies, sob sob but nothing too heartbreaking, and lots of signs of people having been where they shouldn’t have been but generally not as bad as I feared. Although L doesn’t look quite so convinced.

Damn, work tomorrow.

The Better Offer

In typical fashion my holiday started with a running race and then ended with one as well. The night before we headed 'south' I ran Erewash Valley Running club’s four mile race, known simple as 'The Run' and all for a mug. That’s the kind you drink out of. This years was a stylish black, last years was white, next year... who knows.

I was going to bike to work and then bike straight to the race as I did last year but in the end didn’t. It was a tough call because when I got up it looked like nice cycling weather but ten minutes after I’d decided against the idea, it decided to rain. You see, I only have to think about cycling to get the heavens to open. Suddenly I’m glad I’m in the car. At work they think it’s because I’m taking the race seriously. Well... I always take these things seriously. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that protégée is in the race too and I’m two-nil down in our head-to-head’s, nothing at all.

It actually bucketed it down all day and L opts out of spectating. To be fair, she wanted to go for a longer training run and standing at the race wet through, although sexy, wouldn’t be a wise thing to do. Instead she says she’ll wait for me at home in a hot bath with a glass of wine in her hand. I start hoping my father doesn’t show up either, as although a post-race pint with him appeals, L’s is by far the better offer. Further rainfall makes sure it turns out to be a spectator-less run and in many ways it’s a surprise it doesn’t turn out to be a runner-less one too. We’re a hardy bunch us runners. Would I have taken a win in a reduced field? Of course.

Protégée actually cycles to the race from home, less than a mile, but nonetheless an irrational sort of thing to do (even by my high standards) and he got what he deserved for it, a soaking. Pre-race everyone is huddled together in the registration tent, which is very cosy at close quarters, as the rain beats down outside. Funnily enough it actually stops in time for the race, stayed dry throughout and then reverted to buckets again afterwards.

So as we all lined up on the start line, in the relative dry, the talk was of the improved conditions and of ‘quick drying sports bras’ and that's just from the women. Probably just trying to distract the men from their carefully thought out race plans. Race wise it went well, I started slow but I didn’t have any choice because I got boxed in when they fired the starting gun before anyone was ready. When I was finally out of my box, so to speak, the lead nutters had already gone and there seemed little point in chasing them. I settled in and ran my own race. Well actually I ran the race of a guy from the organising club, shadowing him and letting him drag me round. Occasionally I got ahead of him and tried to return the favour by pacing him for a bit but he was, well, basically better than me. So I couldn't. We were together until the last few metres when I thought it would be unjust to not let him cross the line ahead of me, so I was about to chivalrously let him go in ahead of me across the line when he lengthened his stride and left me for dead anyway. Oh well.

It was only four miles but it was a very pleasing time, eleven seconds better than last year and 3.53 per km, rather good for me. Protégée was a minute back, so I’m kind of smug about that but he had only been back from Egypt for a week, where he contracted Egyptian Flu and had hardly trained. Unlucky mate but no matter I'll take the victory.

As regards the second run, we actually came back from holiday deliberately so that both of us, L and I, could do last Friday’s Jagermeister 10k at Nottingham University. Yep, that’s how far around the bend we are.

It was a disappointing run for me but I did make a few tactical errors. Firstly because I was off work we had a huge pasta lunch, rather than the sandwich I would normally have had a work. This made me feel full and well, ill. If that was preventable, the second error was unavoidable and that was the week long debauchery of good food and far too much beer down in Somerset. Nope there’s no way I could have prevented that sort of indulgence. This was balanced by a few training runs whilst we were down there, three four-milers at L’s pace. Not that there’s anything wrong with L’s pace you understand, in fact it’s ideal holiday pace but it’s just not my usual 10k pace.

The race started well enough, in fact I was up on last year’s time after 3k but I effectively died somewhere around the 4k point. They'll be a roadside memorial there soon I'm sure. A girl I usually beat, who was lying second in the women’s race, was dragging me around, that’s how bad it was.

Then at half way I had a bit of a sponge problem. They had diddy people, under-10s that is, handing out sponges. As it was hot everyone was going for one and as I reached desperately for mine the diddy person let go before I got hold of it, so I had to stop, go back, scrabble on the floor a bit before I finally retrieved it, which cost me ten seconds or so, by which point girlie was long gone.

I could have skipped the sponge I suppose but I was already starting to hallucinate and was sure I was about to be overtaken by the Exmoor Stag, which is actually the beer we were drinking gallons of on holiday. 5.2% it was, very moorish and deadly, even two days after my last fix so it seems.

I finish just the wrong side of 42 minutes, which is slow for me but under the circumstances, ok I suppose.

The usual post-race festivities had been moved from the usual Stick and Pitcher Pub because they didn’t want four hundred sweaty runners disrupting the wedding that’s been booked there and we’re at the University Employees Sports And Social Club instead. It’s ok but the one beer that's on looks like it will soon be drunk dry so we opt for the Johnsons Arms instead, which means we miss out on the dishing out of spot prizes but I only got a glorified face cloth, or was it a towel, last time. So perhaps no loss.

Today, Saturday, is the traditional holiday spoiler when Derby lose the first game of the football season but this year, for the first time in seven years I think, they actually win. Hurrah. I think we confused Peterborough by going into our game with six midfielders and no strikers, all ours are injured already! Whatever, it seemed to work.