The Grant and Stone Marlow 5 - 2017

My fifth time running the Marlow 5 mile race. The only year I missed after starting running was in 2013 when we ran the Oxford 10K on the same day. After last years hot weather, this time it was the perfect temperature for running. A cool 10 C when we started off and cloudy but bright all the way round, apart from the odd glimpse of the sun. So no wonder I achieved a PB. My time of 43.05 was nearly a minute and a half quicker than my previous best in 2014. I was pleased with coming third out of thirteen in my age bracket and 511th out of a total of 1054 runners. My age grade of 68.51% was the second best I have achieved for any race, the best being at parkrun in October. As I said, conditions were perfect.

Alison, at 47.44, was also halfway down the times of the female 50-59 group. Very good considering she ran the MK half marathon six days before. We met up with lots of people we know from parkrun. Even Monica, the Aylesbury parkrun event director, was there near the finish cheering us home. As usual, we stopped off at John Lewis in High Wycombe for a well earned (and free with our vouchers) tea and cake.

Unforgettable, Their Finest and Lady Macbeth

Three films with strong women as the star. I cannot remember if this has ever happened before. Not only that, but the trailers when I went to see the last of these again featured women in the starring roles; My Cousin Rachel, Wonder Woman, Mrs Sloane and Atomic Blonde. Good to see.

Unforgettable comes from the same stable as Fatal Attraction, What Lies Beneath and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. An unhinged ex wife. That's all you need to know. This time it's Katherine Heigl and Rosario Dawson who square up over a forgettable man. An excellent original screenplay from British writer Christina Hudson and good work from first time director Denise Di Novi. I liked how the clothes worn by the two stars were so different, and the sets and cinematography were all fine for a limited budget. Why is it that in these movies, we always see the woman out running? Probably to show off the hills of Southern California.

It's Gemma Arterton who just about holds together Their Finest, a whimsical story with a serious background. London in the blitz is an uncomfortable place to be. So the scenes shot in Devon are a more suitable place for the light hearted nature this film tries to portray. The mixture of witty dialogue and war is a little strange, but in the hands of Bill Nighy (playing himself again) it is always fun. Lone Sherfig directs with aplomb and there is great attention to detail in the 1940's costumes, sets and design.

When a very small movie gets 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, and even Camilla Long in The Sunday Times gives it five stars, it must have something. And that is a drama which is so raw and powerful that it leaves you breathless at the end. It must have been tricky to cast twenty one year old Florence Pugh as Katherine in the title role of Lady Macbeth, but she is extraordinary. Is it too early to talk about an Oscar nomination?

I had only heard about the Russian novel Lady Macbeth of Mtensk from recently reading Julian Barnes' The Noise of Time where Shostakovitch adapts the book for his opera of the same name. This time the story is set in the nineteenth century close to a British north eastern coast. When you buy a young woman for an older man's wife, and take her far away from civilisation, you really don't know what you are getting into. With her husband and his farther absent for long periods, what is a strong lass to do?

First time director William Oldroyd has worked marvels with a tiny budget. Some TV dramas must get more. The house and the landscape are eerie places. Oldroyd has cast black and mixed race actors in some surprising roles, but these work really well and add to the disquiet this movie brings. Then there is the sound. The absence of any background music was strange and uncomfortable to begin with, but after a while it was fine. The noise of doors and shutters opening and closing and other little sounds were therefore magnified in an otherwise silent house. There was one instance when Katherine is sitting silently and all you hear is a slight rumble from outside and you have to guess what that might be.

"Problem with wireless adapter or access point"

In the end a very quick fix. But not after having tried for a couple of hours to regain a lost internet connection. Both the other laptop and the tablet were working perfectly. The troubleshooter for the network connection failed to identify the problem, only that the wireless adapter might be at fault. But although the Dell Wireless Card was said to be working, it had no wireless connection to the network.

I did find the message above, but having googled it, the varied and complicated advice was beyond me. Although among all the different ideas, I did spot one about the router, although with the other two devices working properly, it couldn't be that. Could it? A couple of seconds pressing it's reset button, a couple of minutes to reset, and there we were. All working properly. It's just the lousy Windows 10 upgrade again !!!

No More of A Fine Frenzy and Nina Gordon?

"A few years ago I put A Fine Frenzy to bed, which was a pretty big step for me. I needed to grow and the only way I knew how was to step away from it and the world that went with it. Maybe that was my own cage that I created, but I needed to let myself out of it". So said Alison Sudol in 2015. Which is such a shame as her three albums ( One Cell in the Sea, Bomb in a Birdcage and PINES)
 recorded as A Fine Frenzy are so good. But with her well received performance in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, there will be more movies and less music.

Nina Gordon is, unfortunately, back with her old band Veruca Salt. After having left in acrimonious circumstances, her two solo albums (Tonight and the Rest of My Life and Bleeding Heart Graffiti) are altogether more my taste. In fact, like A Fine Frenzy, they are among my favourite albums. What we need is another falling out.

The Noise of Time, The Stranger's Child and Black Water Lillies

After having loved Julian Barnes' prizewinning The Sense of an Ending I was so looking forward to his latest book. Again the writing is highly intelligent, but a fictionalised account of the life of Shostakovitch descends into a meditation about life under Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev. I didn't really want to read a study of Soviet communism, but this is what we got. Full of philosophical arguments about irony (the only way to treat the regime), integrity ("is like virginity, once lost never recoverable"), cowardice ("Being a hero is much easier than being a coward.......a career that lasts a lifetime"), morality ("the strong cannot help confronting, the less strong cannot help evading"). The composer's relationship with "Power" is somehow heavy handed (the word with that capital letter is used too often). His dark days when his opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtensk" is criticised by the state as "muddle instead of music" again is too repetitive. So I was bored instead of being stirred. But that may just be me who prefers a proper story.

P.S. Julian Barnes ( a lifetime Leicester City fan) shares a common passion for football with Shostakovich and perhaps we could have done with more than one paragraph on this.

P.P.S. A new movie out this week called "Lady Macbeth" is based on the same novel as used by Shostakovitch in his opera.

I should have known after struggling through Alan Hollinghurst's prizewinning The Line Of Beauty that this book would follow a similar format. Full of his trademark set pieces (dinner parties again) and very little plot. I quite enjoy a family saga, and the first half was perfectly fine. the writing is very good. "On the hall stand hung their (dead) father's billycock hat that was always left there, as if he might return, or having returned feel the need to go out again". And "her scholarly firmness of interest and her cool immunity to all aesthetic sensations".

But it was at halfway when a fast forward brought in two completely new characters (not in the family) in a literary device that I felt was amateurish and lazy. It felt in some ways like a completely different book looking at the family from the outside, as one of them says "your family is a bit complicated to work out". You can say that again. Then another jump forward and another new character towards the end. And then it just fizzled out with a very disappointing conclusion, despite what the author is trying to say.

I enjoyed the first two thirds of this crime novel, until I started to become confused about what was going on. Up until then , I loved the conversational tone of our part time narrator (whoever she is?): "does the co-incidence seem to be disturbing you?". It certainly was disturbing me. Despite reviews to the contrary, I found the translation to be superb, almost as if it been written in English instead of the original French. (All apart from when the Inspector says to his colleague's wife "you're gorgeous". Maybe a literal translation, but we would say "you're a very attractive woman" if pushed).

Then we have the last third where everything starts to collapse. If you had guessed what was going on earlier, you would have loved it. I didn't and hated it. There were just not enough clues for me, and that meant I felt horribly cheated. Were we supposed to guess, or instead love the confusion? I think the author worked out the story first, and then made a construction that kept us (me) in the dark as much as he could.

There is even a final twist that is equally pathetic. Which is all a shame as it could have been an excellent read. Like many others I did like Michel Bussi's After the Crash, but I will never read one of his books ever again.

Gravel in the Mixer Tap

A constant drip from the mixer tap in the kitchen was driving me mad. Our local plumber came to have a look, and when he dismantled the tap, what he found was a piece of gravel. On refitting the tap, it has been perfect ever since.

An email with photos to Thames Water has at last resulted in their cheque for the the plumber's charge. Hooray!

Jane Eyre at Aylesbury Waterside Theatre

The concept of squeezing what were two separate plays (as performed originally at the Bristol Old Vic) into one long performance was probably too much to ask. So contrary to the overwhelming critical acclaim, I thought there was much to enjoy but in the end the flaws made this a disappointing evening.

The main mistake, for me, was that the language was either taken straight from Charlotte Bronte's novel, or replicated the language. That must have been why the cast struggled in projecting something that was not too melodramatic. Whilst I liked the movement (this is a very physical production - the constant use of the ramp and ladders up to the timber platform (as photo above) was great to start with but became too repetitive) we only had very few quiet pieces and these lacked the emotion I expected.

I was surprised we had nearly an hour of Jane's childhood, although her transition into being an adult was the highlight of the evening. So it's difficult to be critical of the acting given the dialogue. The inexperienced Nadia Clifford as Jane was possibly not the greatest piece of casting for the lead role. Tim Delap as Rochester did his best. The roles of Bertha (and others) was taken by understudy Dami Olukoya. She was terrific, but then again her songs were modern and showed up the old fashioned text of the play.

Yes, we had music. In fact the three excellent musicians were placed at the back of the stage and were integral to the action. Again, the use of background music would have worked very well if at times it hadn't detracted from the intensity of the dialogue.

Sally Cookson, the Director, has to be congratulated for coming up with a fresh and lively take on a well known classic. There are certain similarities with how she staged Peter Pan that we saw at the National Theatre, and perhaps that style suited that play more. And in both an actor played the dog.

She says in her programme notes that on that first day of rehearsal , there was no script, just a rough structure in place with Mike Akers (dramaturg, whatever that is). Unfortunately, for me, it showed.