Runaway, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep and Lucky Jim

Although I don't read crime fiction very often, Runaway by Peter May is more of a mystery thriller. I found the swapping between 1965 and 2015 worked really well as five teenage friends and their elderly selves leave Glasgow for London. I liked the contrasts of the urban and rural landscape as they had changed over the decades. Egg rolls and mugs of tea are replaced by specialist coffees and croissants. In the east end of London, Victoria Hall stands out. And then there is Dr Robert with whom the boys find accommodation, work and other less savory events. He reminded me of the Beatles song, and found the author had too.

Twenty pages in and I knew I was in for a treat. How can Joanna Cannon's first novel The Trouble with Goats and Sheep be so good? One reviewer says "Every sentence is an utter joy and every character is perfectly drawn". I loved the way our part time ten year narrator Grace alternates with the third person chapters of her neighbours. Grace is great fun, as is most of the book, even though an underlying dark shadow reveals itself at the end. Although just occasionally trying to liven a sentence for the sake of it doesn't always work. ".... we walked towards home. Past matched lawns and carbon papered lives.... and I tried to make it enough". The hot summer of 1976 gets everyone down, and no wonder.

My first Kingsley Amis and probably my last. Lucky Jim is not as funny or laugh out loud as most of the reviews made out, I only smiled a coupe of times. I found the writing to be very dated, maybe just the language of the fifties no longer appeals. Jim Dixon, the main character, was not at all amusing; I found him just pathetic. All the other main characters were quite splendid, to quote the era. What a difference when I opened a Helen Dunmore novel, the writing sparkled from the first page.

Manchester-by-the-Sea, T2 Trainspotting and Jackie

The reviews had said it all, but even knowing the basics of the plot, I was completely surprised at how the story unfolded. The contrast (in the early part of the movie) between the morose, withdrawn and angry handyman and the flashbacks to the garrulous family man was the epitome of "show don't tell". Casey Affleck (a shoe in for the Oscar) was perfect as the two faces of Lee Chandler. Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan has created a masterpiece in the portrayal of grief. All around Lee, people tiptoe on eggshells. That is except for his selfish nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges) who, I guess, he only tolerates as in him he can see something of his younger self.

Then there is the one scene above with Lee's ex wife played by Michelle Williams. Although theatrical in it's static setting, it was devastating on a big screen in a dark cinema. Unforgettable and it deserves the Oscar for best film.

Danny Boyle's update on the characters from the original Trainspotting employs the same visual and musical techniques as the original, i.e. frenetic. The guys are older but have not changed, still the same old anarchic selves dressed up in a semblance of a maturer person. It seems that only Spud is not in disguise and Ewen Bremner is superb and almost sympathetic. Not like the others. There is one small cameo that I need to mention. Pauline Turner is fantastic as Begbie's wife June. Hardly a word to say, but her face says it all. How does this country produce such great acting talent.

Inside director Pablo Larrain's movie, there is a much better film struggling to get out. I will always remember it for the succession of confusing multiple flashbacks that spoil what otherwise would have been great. I'm not against flashbacks, and the device of Jackie Kennedy telling her story to a journalist is fine. But there was too much jumping around in the back story that made the whole thing messy. That said, the screenplay by Noah Oppenheim was fine, the cinematography, costumes sets all good. It was interesting to see Richard E Grant and David Caves (a favourite of ours from the BBC series Silent Witness) but most of all John Hurt was fabulous as the priest. The lack of an Oscar nomination could only have been due to the shortness of his role, he was far and away better than many of the contenders. Then there is Natalie Portman. She is still remembered by me for her first youthful role in Leon. It bode well for the future and her starring role as Jackie fulfilled all that early promise. At least she should win best actress.

Matthew Bourne's The Red Shoes at Milton Keynes Theatre

When someone puts their name before the title of a show, it better be good. Unfortunately The Red Shoes was a big disappointment. According to every review I have read and the reaction of the audience last night, I must be in a minority of one. Whilst I love classical ballet, this combination of third tier ballet (I'm being generous) and better modern dance was not my thing. It was also let down by the quality of the cast.

But the biggest mistake of all was that there was no live orchestra, as there had been on the pre London tour and at Sadlers Wells. To, me, this was a complete rip off. The ticket was £10 more than I paid for English National Ballet complete with a much larger set of dancers and a huge orchestra. So the canned music immediately put me in a bad mood.

Yes, I got how the story was presented and I guess that the choreography was pretty good if you like that sort of thing. I realise now I just don't. If Alison had arrived at the theatre by the time of the interval, I might have called it a day. And then I would have missed the shorter second half, which did have it's moments.

Five Years Running

It was five years ago today that I did my first run. I had back then mentioned to Alison that on my last couple of walks I had broken into a jog to see how that felt. She encouraged me to join her for a short, very slow run along the canal towpath and we managed about 2 miles with a couple of breaks. And that was the start.

Two half marathons, 142 parkruns and numerous other races later and looking forward to Milton Keynes Half in just over two weeks time. Then on Tuesday, I ran my longest ever training run: 12.5 miles. At two hours and fifteen  minutes, this was the longest time I have ever run. A bit different to my previous running history as I posted some time ago.

Apart from running around a football or cricket pitch, my first memory of running was when I started at Braintree County High School at the age of fourteen. At one of the early games lessons, we had to run around the school grounds. I was one of those who walked after a hundred yards. I was no runner. But when I went into the sixth form, we had a new games master. His background (in 1962) was in basketball. I really liked the game, but if I wanted to join the team, I had to do the dreaded circuit training. Sit ups with a medicine ball behind your neck, bench presses from them hanging from the top of the wallbars, etc etc. By the time I went into my last year in sixth form, I think I had got fitter.
The school always had a cross country race, and everyone had to do it. In my penultimate year, I must have walked a lot. But in my final year, something very strange happened. After a normally sluggish start, I found I kept running. And even towards the end, overtaking two of my fellow classmates who had done really well the year before. It's amazing what some training can do. But even this achievement had it's downside. The school entered me for the Mid Essex Cross Country Championships. I was unprepared for the distance, conditions and pace of proper runners, and came in at the back. I thought that was it. But no. Come the summer, I was bullied into representing the school again, this time in the Mid Essex Athletics Championships. There was nobody to run the 100m high hurdles, so that was me. And high does not start to describe how I felt about these enormous barriers. In training, I could hardly clear one, never mind all ten. On the day there were only three in the senior race, and the adrenaline must have carried me through to at least finish and get my certificate for third place, and points for the school. Never again.
I cannot remember why, in 1985, I started running again. Living in High Wycombe, I would take myself down to The Rye on a nice summer evening and jog around the park. The problem was I had no advice or trainer, and found after a while that I could run for a couple of miles and go no further. Probably just out of breath. This barrier seemed to put me off, and I gave up. I had my swimming and thought that was enough. So when I started running again last year, having been swimming and hill walking for the intervening twenty five years, the breathing was never a problem. And with wife Alison, I had a great coach. So now I run three times a week and looking forward to my first ten mile race on Good Friday. At my age, I still find this quite surreal. 

P.S. 22nd April 2017: My 150th parkrun of which 122 have been at Aylesbury with the remainder at nine different locations. I doubt I shall ever beat my PB of 25:46, but my age grades seem to be getting better. One day I will beat 70%.

Set Sail by Frances

It was only a very short clip of a song that I heard on the BBC programme "Countryfile Winter Special". It turned out to be a wonderful track called "Set Sail" by a singer called Frances. Available on YouTube and the EP "Let It Out". Found more of her recordings on Spotify and loved them all. Her album is out on 17th March and I will be first in the queue.

Tring Book Club - This Boy by Alan Johnson

Thanks to Linda whose choice it was for Book Club. Very rarely do we read a memoir or biography. This book brought back so many memories of my childhood in London in the 1950's. Alan Johnson lived not far away in another part of Kensington, so our paths may have crossed at some point. Although we lived in a cold and draughty flat above a shop on the border with Hammersmith, our life was not as nearly as hard as Alan's. His mother Lily actually came from a good family, she was an intelligent woman and her genes had filtered down to Alan and his elder sister Linda. It was his father who let them down. There is one person who shines through this memoir. As the dedication at the beginning says "For Linda, who kept me safe".

His Bloody Project, Innocence and When We Were Orphans

At the beginning, I wondered if I would give up on this book. It starts with young Roderick Macrae's account of the three murders in the Scottish Highlands in 1869. These early descriptions of his life were nothing to do with the awful crimes. But I'm glad I persevered. There is a section when he is visited in prison by his lawyer and a psychologist that is brilliant. And I raced through the last half of this original novel. I was never sure about the reliability of Roderick's narration and this is questioned near the end. The descriptions of the remote village of Culduie and it's surroundings are excellent. Well worth sticking with. 

My seventh Penelope Fitzgerald. I loved "Offshore", "The Gate of Angels" and "The Bookshop", less so "The Beginning of Spring", "The Blue Flower", "at Freddies" and now "Innocence". What I now realise is that there are times when I just wished for more plot and this latest read was such a story. The writing is always wittily contradictory, almost intellectual with twists of the language. Try these:
"she was an alert and reckless driver, but suffered from attacks of conscience, of no use at all on the streets of Florence"
"Curious that advice is just as irritating when it's wrong as when it's right"
"The wash of tourists and visitors was beginning to recede, leaving behind it the rich fertilizing silt of currency"
And then more elusive: "Hard work and opportunism are the secrets of biological success".
Again a short novel, so it did not outstay it's welcome. 

It was all going so well, typically brilliant Ishiguro, on it's way to a rare five stars. I loved the formal conversational first person narrative. (Although some readers hated that). "The sight of Sarah Hemmings did of course rather surprise me, but I'm sure nothing unusual showed on my face. I had set my features to convey annoyance, and I suppose that is what she saw." But then the last part was straight out of a thriller, at complete odds at what went before.