Locke

I always post my film reviews in threes. So it takes something special to deserve it's own listing. And Locke was indeed very special. Not only is it an excellent movie in it's own right, but I cannot remember a film that portrays so well it's theme of construction. And I cannot recall a movie that has the industry that was my career as a dominant part of the story.

We only see one actor on screen, and it reminded me of Ryan Reynolds in Buried. But this time the lead is in the confines of a car instead of a coffin underground. Tom Hardy as Ivan (the Slavic equivalent of John will mean something to a few people) Locke is absolutely brilliant. On his journey south, he communicates by phone to a number of characters. But it is his conversations with Donal, his assistant very well played by Andrew Scott, that had me enthralled. Locke is the Construction Director on a huge 55 story building where the next day there is the biggest concrete pour in Europe (apart from nuclear or military projects) involving 218 truck loads of concrete from a number of plants.

So what is he doing driving away? Donal is in a panic, Locke's boss is apoplectic and his family cannot understand why he is missing a big football game on TV. The development of the story makes for an intriguing drama. All the other actors are superb even though we only hear their voices. I'm sure Ruth Wilson was doing an impression of Olivia Coleman and vice versa.

The critics cannot make up their mind what is Locke's job. Site Manager, Site Foreman, Construction Foreman, Construction Manager, Construction Engineer the list goes on. If they had listened, he is the Construction Director which would be quite normal running a project of this size. Locke is the Construction Director from heaven. Softly spoken and calm but highly authoritative and knowledgeable, he would be a dream to work for. This is the good modern face of construction and what credit he does the industry. Every budding foreman, engineer or manager should watch, learn and copy.

SPOILER ALERT. Locke tells Donal (and his boss) he can manage everything by phone. Poor Donal has to cope with checking concrete mixes at the plants, confirming road closures and checking rebar and shuttering. All have their complications (no different to most jobs). The boss has to cope with head office in Chicago and his family have to cope with his not coming home.

Yes, this movie had a big effect on me. I want to tell everyone in construction to go a watch it now.

Football Teams I Have Supported

I have always envied those people (like my wife) who in their whole life have supported just one football team. My experience is totally different. As a boy, living in Dore, I supported Sheffield United (my father's team). But the first club I went to watch was Rotherham United (when they played Charlton Athletic), my mother's home town and where I was born. But that was a one off.

When we lived in London, and when I was about ten years old, my friend Robert invited me to join him and his father to go to watch Fulham. Many a time we took the long walk from home to the stadium at Craven Cottage. They had great team in those days: Johnny Haynes, Jimmy Hill etc.In my middle teens, we lived in Braintree in Essex. I used to cycle to the local ground to watch Crittall Athletic, now Braintree Town.

Back in London in 1963, I started going to watch Chelsea every week. This was an exciting time for the club, especially the breakthrough of the young Peter Osgood. I was a regular there for the three seasons I lived in London. At the same time, I used to go and watch Brighton and Hove Albion for the first three or four years I was at college there. Their promotion season of 1965 when they were champions of the old Division 4 was very exciting. I still have a huge collection of match programmes from those days.

Then in 1966 I moved to Leeds and watched almost every game United played at home that season. A few years later I joined two colleagues from work to go to watch them in the European Cup Final in Paris. That was the end of my regular football watching days. On occasions I would go with my father (and sometimes one of my brothers) to watch his local team Coventry City. He used to live next door to their Assistant Manager he might have been given the odd ticket.

It was only when I met Alison that I started to go to games again. She had supported Manchester City since she was a girl and I guess it was in the late eighties we started to go to some of their away games when they were nearby, as well as the odd visit to their home ground of Maine Road. When they were relegated to the second and third tiers of English football, we visited some strange grounds. We stood behind the goal with all the uncouth City supporters at Oxford United's old London Road ground and saw them go two goals behind at half time. Only to come back to win in the second.

So there we are. Many teams over many years. And who would have thought I would end up married to a City fan and end up supporting a Lancashire club. And me a Yorkshire-man.

Tring Book Club - Life After Life and Harvest

It's hard to be objective about my favourite author, but this Life After Life transcends anything she has written before. On the one hand it is a bold experiment about someone living multiple lives with jumps in time that leave you dizzy. On the other, a dramatic family saga that would have been great in it's own right. It is packed with Atkinson's trademark wit and the best of modern prose:

"Ursula craved solitude but hated loneliness. A conundrum she couldn't even begin to solve."
"The ostrich feather (on her hat) trembled in sympathy".
"Expediency generally trumps ethics".
"Well, we all get on" Sylvie said "one way or another. And in the end we all arrive at the same place. I hardly see how it matters how we get there". It seemed to Ursula that how you got there was the whole point......

Certainly complex and dazzling, but at all times structurally cohesive and satisfying. Often it repeats a scene, sometimes the same, sometimes slightly different, occasionally so different it can change a life. That concept is at the heart of the story. I loved the repeats. I think that's enough to say how I loved this novel. In her note at the end KA says people always ask what her book is about. She finds this difficult to answer, "but if pressed, I think I would say "Life After Life" is about being English. Not just the reality of being English but also what we are in our imagination". I think we have to go back to the author's first book in 1995, the prize winning "Behind The Scenes At The Museum" to see how she has now developed a time chasing English family story into something extraordinary. Book Club agreed.

Harvest was a pretty intense but beautifully written novel (my first by the author Jim Crace). It certainly could have done with some light relief or at least some wit, and I found it hard to concentrate for the first third of the book. I found the tone to be a little wearisome. But suddenly it takes a turn into thriller territory and picked up as a result. Given this is the middle ages, things promised to get nasty, but we are saved by some delicate passages. The story is set in a village miles from anywhere, and the lives of the landowner and the "peasants" come under threat from more than one direction. In the end they only have themselves to blame. Crace has pitched his narrator, Walter Thirsk, as someone on the fringes. Once the landowners assistant, now an agricultural labourer like his neighbours. His language is meant to be medieval, so there are occasional words not in use today. He has to be intelligent with lines like "the village has been freckled with chaff" and "dissent is never counted, it is weighed". There is a mystery woman whose appearance, presence and absence is always in the background, and I found this a clever and pleasing facet of the book. And the ending is very good.

Maidenhead Easter 10

It's nearly a week ago that I ran the Maidenhead Easter 10 Mile race. Last year I ran it with Alison who proved to be an excellent pacer, running every mile at the same speed. This year I was on my own but the training had gone well so I was confident of a (for me) reasonable time. The weather was sunny, starting off cool but very warm for the last few miles.

Although, despite that early confidence, I actually felt quite ill while warming up on my own just before the start. But once we were under way, I settled down and kept to around a 9 minute 35 second pace. It was all going well until miles 8 to 9 when I slowed down to over 10 minutes. But I guess everyone did as it was mainly a gradual slope uphill.

However, as soon as I passed the nine mile marker and turned back onto the estate road into the business park, I felt really good. Actually too good as I sped up and ran the last mile well under 9 minutes, far to fast for my age. I enjoyed the sprint at the end but not afterwards. My time was just over 1 hour 35 minutes, over 3 minutes faster than last year. Alison met me at the finish with a very welcome piece of fruit cake from the cafe.

As last year, we made our way to John Lewis in High Wycombe. The department store was packed with Good Friday shoppers but all we needed was a cup of tea and something to eat in the cafe. And that was perfect. No medal this year, but a USB stick on a ribbon. What's that all about?

YouTube and Bike Maintenance

I might be good in the garden and OK with some DIY but when it comes to anything mechanical, I'm pretty much lost. So when Alison's bike had a puncture on the back tyre, I was not looking forward to taking off the wheel. But YouTube was a great help in not only using the levers to take off the tyre (I wondered what those hooks were on the end of the levers - connecting to a spoke eases the whole process).

And then disconnecting the wheel from the chain and gears was surprisingly straightforward in the end. The inner tube was so old it needed replacing, but the new one from Halfords had a Presto valve and my foot pump only connects to a Schrader valve. A new pump was only £5 but even then, once I had the wheel back on (how I managed that I do not know), could I get the tyre pumped up? YouTube came into it's own again, the Presto valve has a little brass bit at the top and this needs to be unscrewed first. Hey Presto (get it?) and the tyre inflated in no time. All the bike needs now is a really good clean. But I will leave that to it's owner.

And a hint on YouTube "Lefty Loosy - Righty Tighty". When the nuts wont go back on the axle of a 24 year old bike, this really helps.

A Long Way Down, Captain America - Winter Soldier and Her

I loved the Nick Hornby novel A Long Way Down so despite the, at best, moderate reviews I had to see the movie. I found that it captured the tone of the book, undemanding, humorous, poignant and silly. Hornby has adapted his own book for the screen along with collaborator Jack Thorne and they have produced something rare in the cinema these days. The acting could have done with better direction, but Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collete and Imogen Poots do a reasonable job. I'm glad I went.

The same cannot be said for Captain America - Winter Soldier. The script does not seem to interest anyone when it comes to an action filled blockbuster. I keep trying to avoid these kind of movies with no luck. When the highlight is Jenny Agutter morphing into Scarlett Johansson, that says it all.

It was another visit to The Rex Cinema in Berkhampstead, this time to see Her which has so far avoided Aylesbury. I had to see the movie that won for Spike Jonze the Oscar for best original screenplay. Not in the same league as Nat Faxon and Jim Rash's  The Way Way Back, it is still an interesting story with lots of hip dialogue.  Unlike my favourite movie in this category, there is only one main character, if you can exclude the sultry voice of Scarlett Johansson. This makes for a slightly one dimensional story centered on Joaquin Pheonix's Theodore. He is excellent but in a morose kind of way. I prefered the direction to the script, the setting in the future was realistically imagined. Although enjoyable, it just seemed too restrained and small for the big screen. But that may have had something to do with being in the back row of an old fashioned cinema.