Coombe Hill and Dunsmore Walk

 

For my walk on Sunday, I found the last space in the Wendover car park (free on Sundays) and at 10.50am headed for the climb up to Coombe Hill. In passing the road down to the railway station, I saw a large group of walkers approaching who had obviously just disembarked from the train. So I put on a spurt to take me well ahead for the walk up the hill. As this was the first time I had been on this route for ages, I had good views of the HS2 works in the vale below. 

At the top I had a rest at the monument. The walking group caught up and I had a nice chat with one of the ladies who had come on the train from central London. I headed for the car park that was not as full as I had imagined on a Sunday. As I was going through the gap into the woods, a couple stopped me to ask about whether there was a circular walk. That would be difficult without a map or instructions, so I suggested a there and back the route down to Ellesborough and across to Chequers.

I ploughed on through the woods of  Low Crubs and ended up at the village of Dunsmore. On the way I had seen a poster for Sunday teas at the church, but when I arrived I found they only start at 2.30pm. I tried a different and far nicer route back along the outskirts of the wood. I didn't stop at the monument on the way back down Bacombe Hill and was glad of my walking pole for the steep bits.

Reaching Ellesborough Road, the cottages have now all been vacated for HS2. The photo below shows the route of the new line, now much further away from Wendover than all the indicative routes I spent too long searching. I went left down the right of way to have a good look at the works in progress. If I am right, the green tunnel will mitigate the noise from the outskirts of Wendover. I will take my camera next time I'm there.

 

Northern Ballet - The Great Gatsby at Milton Keynes Theatre

 

Having loved the book and the film, I had no hesitation in going to see a ballet version of the story. The review in The Guardian suggested that the first half was far better than a disappointing second. However I felt the opposite was true. The earlier switches in time didn't work for me, even knowing the plot. Gatsby's gangster roots (where he made his money) were well portrayed but having two dancers playing Gatsby (one as a soldier) felt strange. 

But then the second act burst into something magical. The Pas de Deaux was accompanied by a beautiful theme from Richard Rodney Bennett, whose music is used for the entire score. The orchestra is at it's best as the sound sweeps quieter then louder to match the dancer's movements. This is followed by a group tango that was well choreographed. 

The twenties costumes looked good, and the sets, lighting and sound were spot on. Just listening to the live orchestra was a treat. I had a perfect seat, all the more so as the three rows in front of me had gaps for the three technicians with their tech stuff on the front row. I actually prefer classical ballet to this more modern stuff, but the book by F. Scott Fitzgerald was destined for the stage.

Operation Mincemeat, Everything Everywhere All At Once and Benediction

 

An all star British cast in Operation Mincemeat made the best of a less than great script, all except Colin Firth who seemed to melt under the main role. Or was that director John Madden trying for pathos and failing. It seemed more like a TV movie with a very limited budget. The story was just not gripping and the sentimental ending was out of place. The story was bolstered by a poor romance between the sixty something Firth and Kelly McDonald doing her best. I wasn't sure about having a narrator in the shape of Ian Fleming. 

But for the remaining cast, it was spot the star. Penelope Wilton was terrific as ever, as were Alex Jennings, Mathew Macfadyen, James Fleet, Paul Ritter, Jason Issacs,  Simon Russell Beal, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Bonner, Mark Gattis and Hattie Morahan. And Johnny Flynn in a strange supercilious performance as Ian Fleming. So whether it was Michelle Ashford's adaptation of the book or John Madden's ponderous direction, they did not make the best of the amazing talent at their disposal. Which was a shame.

There was great family story in Everything Everywhere All at Once struggling to surface in an ocean of multiverse type fights. Which I try to avoid. The flashing editing was OK once or twice, but the repetition made my brain hurt. Michelle Yeo was great in the lead, and Jamie Lee Curtis at her surly best. Otherwise I should have ignored the positive reviews.

Benediction (a strange title) was a high class piece of filmmaking, almost theatrical in it's presentation. Terence Davies has written and directed a bleak, sombre yet gripping biopic of Siegfried Sassoon, the World War 1 poet. The scenes are mainly made up of two characters talking, and it could have been equally good on the stage. However, that would never have attracted the acting talent in this movie. And you may miss the close ups of the characters expressions that are never less than outstanding. 

Jack Lowden is fine in the lead role of the younger Sassoon, but for me, the supporting cast have given the performance of their lives. Ben Daniels is quite brilliant in the small role of Dr Rivers. Peter Capaldi, Anton Lesser, Simon Russell Beal, Kate Phillips, Jeremy Irvine (highly obnoxious as Ivor Novello), Geraldine James and Kate Phillips are equally great. The screenplay is full of the gay characters' sharp and clever wit. For the ending, I preferred the one cinematic ploy as characters faces morph from one to another. But we have to endure the heart rending face of Sassoon instead.

Snow, Ever After and Still Life

 

For a detective murder investigation, this is very well written as befits a Booker prizewinning author. There is some great dialogue which is fortunate as this is mainly a series of interviews by Detective Inspector St John Strafford. The best of these was with Lettie (short for Lettuce), an awful teenager expelled from some expensive boarding school. Nearly as good was when Strafford has to go to see the Archbishop.

The dead man is father Tom and we are given a huge clue early on as to the motive. However, this is strangely never really mentioned until much later. About three quarters through, the book goes back ten years, with a change of tense from third to first person. This individual takes us into their confidence, an amazing nearly twenty pages with sentences such as one from an old priest "that's what God is there for, to forgive us our sins".

However I felt the ending was predictable and the story turned out to be highly unsavoury. I have never read anything like it before and have no wish to do so again. That is despite the literary merit.

Our 52 year old narrator is in a mess. In such a mess that he messes up his own suicide. Why, when he has inherited great wealth from his stepfather that gave him a fellowship at one of the best universities. Graham Swift has made his narrator fiercely erudite (I'm beginning to sound like him) as he joins those elderly (if not ancient) dons: "A few dubiously nimble brains, in a few desiccated, enfeebled bodies". Swift's introduction in the first few pages is one of the best I have ever read.

So here he sits in the college garden, ruminating on what brought him here. "The gardeners giving him a wide, respectful birth". He has emerged from hospital "a fully reconditioned if fragile specimen". He is "a refugee from show-business and grief". I do think that the story of his marriage to his actress wife Ruth is the bast part of the book. Less so, the study of the notebooks of Mathew Pearce from 1854. Much less so.

Can I just sling in some of the vocabulary that is new to me? "my paradisaical surroundings" - "the auguries of happy-ever-afters" - "my stepfathers maledictions" - "Sam's annunciatory visit" - "purlieus of knowledge". And a note about Darwin: "I have dipped into Darwin. It's heavy going. The prose thick, grey and formidable, like porridge".

Our narrator (we don't learn his name until page 173) tells us about his childhood and his exotic mother. "But the past they say is a foreign country, and I fictionalise (perhaps) these memories". Then "It was my mother who first warned me ..... against the ruinous desire to outwit mortality". So this is quite a philosophical book, punctuated by events with those close to him. I preferred the latter. And we are left with the question from my first sentences ... why?

This is such an emotional book, full of witty brilliant dialogue. All the characters are wonderful, I especially loved Pete, the pub's piano player. "He could have gone to the Royal Academy, everyone knew that. He moved seamlessly onto Wagner, a sure sign the evening was turning bitter". Ulysses Temper is the main character and the elderly duo Cress and Evelyn Skinner are magical.

But it was Alys (or kid as she is called at first) that I found irresistible as she was born only a few months younger than me in 1944, the year the book starts. Alys grows up, well so does everyone else, as the location alternates between London and Florence. When the poet Constance Everly appears I really thought she was a real person. A great story, written with style and panache. I could not stop reading to make notes, it was that good.

Ashridge Walk

 

It was beautiful sunny weather when we chose a walk at Ashridge for one of the days when Michael and Sara were visiting. It was the route I had walked many times before I started running, so I knew the way. All except when we approached Stocks Golf Club where we should not have adjusted our route and ended up going all the way round the course. There were the remains of the bluebells in the woods, but not as nice as these.

Aldbury is close to the end of the walk, and we found a table at The Greyhound pub, actually where the people on the right are sitting in the photo below.

We enjoyed our beers and lunch and the service was exemplary. Possibly because a large funeral party arrived shortly after we were served. We were pretty tired after the long haul up the hill at the end that called for a stop at the National Trust café

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Continuous Flight Auger Piling at Tesco / McCarthy and Stone in Aylesbury

 

Having in the past negotiated and prepared contract documents for many piling companies, I was very interested in the works next to Tesco in Aylesbury. They have sold part of the car park for McCarthy and Stone to build retirement apartments. The piling rig was in full swing when I last visited the store. I recognised the works as continuous flight auger piling and found this explanation from P J Edwards and Co on their website.

CFA piles are formed by drilling a continuous flight auger into the ground. The sides of the hole are supported at all times by the soil filled auger, eliminating the need for temporary casing or support fluids.

Upon reaching the required depth, concrete is pumped down the hollow stem as the auger is steadily withdrawn. Reinforcement is placed immediately after withdrawal of the auger and into the fluid concrete.

CFA piles are drilled in diameters up to 1200mm and to depths of up to 41.0 metres.

The CFA pile is essentially a non-displacement bored pile. Hence, there is little risk of damage to adjacent foundations or underground utilities from ground displacement or densification of loose sands, as can occur with displacement piles.

Another advantage is that CFA piles are installed with little vibration or noise. Should problems occur during pile construction, it is relatively simple to re-drill and install the pile at the same location, thereby eliminating the need to redesign the pile group or the pile caps.

The use of on-board computers provides the piling contractor and the client with excellent information on the strength of the soil bored and the pile construction in the form of a computer generated log.

Most importantly CFA piling is very fast and therefore the most economic way to install piles today.

Aston Hill and Pavis Wood Walk

 

Taking a break from running, Thursday found me on one of my favourite walks. Starting at the car park in Wendover Woods I realised I was going in a completely wrong direction. I had walked this route so many times in the past, but not since the major upgrade of the car park and surrounding areas. It was only after five minutes or so I had to turn back and onto the right path out of the woods. Then into a field where there were views over to Pavis Wood, my eventual destination.

Over the main road at Aston Hill, I found that the Aston Hill Bike Park (where many years ago was public parking and the start of Nick Moon's route - see below) had been closed since lockdown. Apparently many of the trees were suffering from ash dieback and it has taken all this time to clear. It was a complete mess.

So coming down the hill was not the pleasant experience it used to be. Until I was reaching the bottom of the descent for those nice views over the Vale.

Across the lane and a path bordering the fields has better views of Pavis Wood in the distance.

Then a path near Drayton Manor before the long haul up Fox Lane.

Pavis Wood is only a narrow band of woodland along the ridge of the Chiltern Hills, but is very pretty. Especially this time of year with the large areas of bluebells. As usual, there have been narrow paths created through the bluebells so walkers get a great picture.

Out of Pavis Wood, crossing another lane next to the radio mast, in the next field I found a herd of cows settled in the May sunshine.

And then some interested horses.

Back into Wendover Woods after a walk of well over two hours. But there were stops for photos and talks with people on the way. A very pleasant start to revisiting my old walks. This one in number 3 in my copy of  Nick Moon's 1991 book Chiltern Walks - Buckinghamshire, now out of print and not totally accurate after over thirty years. My notes in the book show I started these routes in 1993. Long before I started running.

Hidden Assets, The Promise and Funeral for a Dog

 

I thought this was one of the best detective dramas I have seen. We are in Shannon in Ireland where Detective Sergeant Emmer Berry( played by the luminous Angeline Ball) from the Criminal Assets Bureau, is leading an investigation into a stupidly rich drug dealer. She finds more than she bargained for. On the trail in Antwerp she meets Inspector Christian de Yong of the Belgium Counter Terrorism Unit. Their paths converge and the plot gets complicated. Partly in English and partly in Flemish with subtitles this is an original take on two police forces working in tandem. 

I didn't realise until later that the creator and writer of The Promise was Anne Landois who also wrote  Spiral (see earlier reviews). It stars Sofia Essaidi as a police officer leading a team searching for a missing girl. She is haunted by the case that starts the first episode where her dead father Pierre, twenty years ago, failed to solve the mystery of another missing girl. He appears in  the flashbacks which punctuate Sofia's case. The series was a huge hit in France and I could see why. 

Funeral for a Dog was a strange and surreal series ( the title is the name of the book written by one the characters, Mark Svensson). It is the journalist  Daniel Mandelkern who travels to the Italian side of Lake Lugarno ( wonderful setting if nothing else) in search of a story and it is there he meets Tuuli and Mark who are reluctant to spill the beans on the death of Felix, the other member of these "close" friends. We see, in extensive flashbacks (probably more than those in real time) how those three met and their developing relationships. 

The series is adapted from the book by Thomas Pletzinger and is just as exasperating. The constant flash backs are all over the place, occasionally we are told when, but not very often. Eight episodes was far too many, I'm not quite sure how I stuck it. In the last episode, for example, there is a short flash forward that seems crazily out of place. Fortunately the Swedish detective series Beck is just starting so looking forward to that.

Tring Book Club - The Book of Lost Names

 

Although I liked the two alternating time zones, 1942 and modern day, there was far too little of the latter. I really wanted to know much more abut Eva's life in the intervening years, but we got hardly anything. Instead we have huge repetitious descriptions of forging documents for people fleeing Nazi occupation. I did like the technical aspects of the forgery, but these soon became tedious. This was a book that was too long and would have been much better for some judicious editing.

Again, we have too much repetitive dialogue between Eva and her overbearing and critical mother, whose constant bickering exerts so much pressure on her daughter. This is obviously Eva's story, and well constructed though it is, we cannot escape some of the romantic episodes. There is some excitement towards the end as the Germans close in. But I preferred the modern day emotional conclusion that made me glad I stuck with the story. Or was it that it was a choice for my book club.

Marlow 5

 

I was in two minds whether to run this years Marlow 5 mile. I had been out for a run twice in the last two weeks. No real injury, just my legs and glutes objecting and a rise in temperature outside. But if this was to be my last race for a while, and the weather forecast was not too bad, I decided I could jog round if necessary. And this is such great event, particularly for slower runners. 

In the end I managed to run a consistent ten minutes per mile all the way round with a finish time of 50 minutes and nine seconds. My watch said I would be under 50 minutes as the pace was 9.55 (slower than this year's MK 10K), but the course turned out to be 5.03 miles. I was pleased with my heart rate of 154. It was lower in the first half until the sun came out later on. So the conditions were pretty perfect, mainly cloudy and a cool 13 degrees. I came in at 573 out of 807 runners and 11th out of 23 men over 70. I might have been the oldest there. We saw lots of people we knew, and then had a stop at John Lewis on the way home for free tea and cake with a voucher. Beautiful weather for the rest of the day, and very pleased we went.

Just a note about attendances. Marlow this year was down to 807 runners out of a maximum allowed of 1600. This compares with 1,075 runners in 2018, 1054 in 2017 and  993 in 2016. This is better than the Milton Keynes 10K which this year showed an attendance of only 575 runners compared with 919 in 2020 (but that was the week before lockdown) and 1,321 in 2018. 

The last daffodil

 

The first daffodils flowered in the middle of February and here we are in early May, nearly three months later and the last one in the garden is still in bloom. I now have to wait for a few weeks until I can cut back all the leaves that are now gradually falling over.

Benedetta, The Northman and Happening

 

It's Judith C Brown we have to thank for her research into a convent in 17th century Pescia in Tuscany where things are happening to a young nun called Benedetta. Brown's book Immodest Acts etc has been adapted and filmed by Paul Verhoeven, a director at the height of his powers. Everything about this film looks gorgeous. The Guardian called it "tame and tasteful" and "mostly good clean wholesome fun". That is so not true. This has UK 18 Certificate and I guess that it only just passed the censor. I don't mind the subtitles (the movie is in French) as my hearing is not perfect these days, although the cinema sound is normally quite loud enough for me. Anne Dudley's soundtrack was called "deafeningly loud, but I found it perfect. Belgium actress Virginie Efira is great in the title role. I remember her playing Isabelle Huppert's neighbour in Elle, another fine Verhoeven film. And Charlotte Rampling is at her best as the Mother Superior. Unforgettable.

Another well respected writer and director is Robert Eggers. I missed his The Lighthouse and The Witch, so will look out for these. A Viking drama rather than an epic, and so much better for that. Much of the movie is located at a village in Iceland. The story is pretty straightforward, almost predictable, but there is plenty of detail on the screen to enjoy. The "hero" is Amleth, well played by Alexander Skarsgard. There are similarities to Hamlet, even his name. His uncle kills his father and marries his wife. A seething Nicole Kidman. But Eggers has ignored Shakespeare and gone back to the source of the medieval legend. Here is another director who likes to work with the same actors, this time Anya Taylor-Joy and Willem Dafoe. And late on I spotted the world's worst actor Ralph Ineson, famous in this house as a highly unlikely police commander in Trigger Point, among other TV dramas.

This is not a movie for the faint hearted, three on the spin. I thought it was ponderously gripping, harrowing, uncompromising and intense. Not sure what made me go to see it, except again it is French and won at Cannes. The most incredible thing about the film is that the camera stays up close and personal to Annie (brilliantly played by Anamaria Vartolomei) all the way through. It's as if we are actually experiencing those weeks of her life in early pregnancy. We are in 1963 and abortion is illegal in France and anyone connected with such an act is destined for prison.

But Annie is desperate, she is a highly talented student who wants a life. But on the other hand she stupidly did not take care. Not sure about that combination. Throughout the film she is so serious, almost haunted, she only ever smiles once, at home watching a silly comedy on TV. It's what is left out of the movie that is so clever. we never see the act where she gets pregnant, there is very little said at home with her dominating mother. Director Audrey Diwan has made something extraordinary from Annie Ernaut's autobiographical novel. No, not for the faint hearted. I would have switched off if watching on TV. I just couldn't in the cinema. 

SPOILER ALERT. One thing that resonated after seeing the film was a comparison between the three doctors. The first was just unhelpful and warned Annie that although a miscarriage is treated with leniency, there is the certainty of prison for her any anyone involved if she went through with an abortion. The second giving Annie some medication to strengthen the mucus (and prevent an abortion) when she thought he had agreed to give her something to terminate the pregnancy. The third doctor , much later, sympathetically recording it as a miscarriage rather than the  alternative abortion that would have destroyed her life. 

Discovering Science Fiction on Film on Sky Arts

 

The countdown of the best 25 science fiction movies was presented, as usual, by Ian Nathan, Neil Norman and Steven Armstrong. What amazed me was that their top three were in exactly the same order as I would have chosen. How often does that happen. Third came 2001: A Space Odyssey, second was Blade Runner and top was Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The Sky Arts website, and at least one other, ignore 2001. Not sure why?