Running to the Beat

My Mum and I ran in aid of Cancer Research UK

On Sunday 26th September, my Mother and I took part in the London Run to the Beat Half Marathon in aid of Cancer Research UK.

From when we first discussed entering RTTB it was always clear that preparation and the race itself was going to be harder for me than my Mum. My Mum is the archetypal whippet-thin natural runner who is regularly seen, dog lead in hand, dashing around our local village. I, on the other hand, was built for speed and competing. I can get to the ball (be it Net or Hockey ball) quicker than you every time, but if that ball is 13 miles away, eesh! Combine this with a horrid car accident, which left me a little sore for quite some time, as well as enrolling in a gruelling masters degree one week prior to the race, it was never going to be a comfortable experience!

As with every experience there were high’s and low’s. I’m going to write a list and let you decide:

– Bumping into my school Netball and Hockey coach

– The 45 minute delay of the race start

– Crossing the start line knowing it was going to be quite some time before I stopped running again

– Nudging my Mum at mile 3 when I spotted a girl running in a Grazia T-shirt.

– At mile 6 when the man running behind us stated “Now that’s an amazing sight”, to which my Mother asked “You mean my arse?”

– The man behind replying “Absolutely!”

– Running the race with said Mother!

– The mountainous hill at mile 7

– The spectators encouraging us that we were nearly at the top!

– The realisation that NO WE’RE NOT!

– The steward at the water point telling me to “Get it all up love” when my water went down the wrong hole.

– The spectators at mile 11 shouting that we only had “1 mile to go”-If you don’t understand the irony of that please go read elsewhere!

– Passing the 12 mile mark

– Passing the 750m mark

– Passing the 500m mark

– Passing the 200m mark

– Crossing the finish line

It is interesting how the human brain works, and specifically our competitive instinct. It is an instinct which can be sourced back to our primitive caveman days, a charactersitic shared also by the animal kingdom. Yet others also see it as a sign of our intelligence as a race. We all recognise the need to compete with the people on your course, or in your workplace, or even with your friends. But competition is not always against another person. It is possible to compete with oneself, as the pain you are in and your desire to just stop and walk the rest of the way, has a full-scale war with the fear of failure, and the pain of having to start running all over again.

This is what happened at the aforementioned mountain that was mile 7. In my head this moment is the cinematic equivalent of Bruce Banner’s transformation into the Incredible Hulk! Head down, arms pumping, legs striding and slowly the mountain became a molehill.

In that moment it became a competition against myself.

And I won.

In 2 hours and 19 seconds.

If you wish to sponsor me for this event please click here

The pursuit of Happily-Ever-After

It’s that awkward silence after you leave the cinema-the self-conscious phone checking; peering earnestly into nearby shop windows; throwing your scarf over your shoulder with just a little too much gusto, as you figure out who’s going to say it first.

“I don’t think I liked it…”

The film in question was Tamara Drewe. Having bonded with my new flat/course/soul mate over a mutual lust for Gemma Arterton, two hours of cinematic escapism (and those shorts!) seemed sure to leave me smiling in that smug way that only British cinema can.

And it did…for the first hour.

The idyllic countryside, the hot-knife-through-butter chemistry between Tamara (Gemma Arterton) and gardener Andy Cobb (Luke Evans), between Tamara and drumming rock star Ben Sergeant (Dominic Cooper), ok between Tamara and pretty much everyone! There were characters we loved, characters we hated and characters we were rooting for. Oh and a heroine that men want to have sex with and women…yes ok us too!

But in an act which symbolises the destruction of human integrity, our heroine pursues an affair with the more-than-middle-aged, philandering, self-righteous, portentous author and husband of Beth (Tasmin Greig), Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam). To make things worse, he wears a red scarf in that way only “academics” and “intellectuals” do-flung over one shoulder like a Booker prize calling card. Even Rupert the bear possesses the grandiose to avoid red.

Drewe’s affair with a man who spurned her advances as a teenager is the first in a series of events which cause the audience to call into question her role as heroine. Whilst we are given loose references to an unhappy childhood, we are given no sense of the films namesake as a person. She therefore becomes defined by her actions. The lack of attachment to her recently deceased Mother’s home; an affair with a married man; a narcissistic attitude towards her own appearance. Drewe is the aggressor, not the victim. Yet she still achieves the fairytale dénouement with teenage sweetheart Andy. The feminist notion that women can have it all is used against the audience as Drewe’s actions attack the ethical equation of the romance genre.

Instead, Beth emerges as our heroine. Her unwavering devotion to her home, its inhabitants, her livestock, and her cheating husband endear her not only to the audience but also to bumbling writer-in-residence Glen McCreavy (Bill Camp). Glen’s character is the personification of “good guy.” Throughout the film he is the voice of reason, friendship, and honesty, and ultimately gets the girl. But it costs him not only his integrity, but also the audience’s empathy.

Nicholas is established as the film’s “baddie” early on. His womanizing becomes apparent in the initial scenes and his abuse of Beth’s love causes the audience to not only predict but also demand his demise. Yet the grotesque nature of Nicholas’s death (trampled by cows after being knocked out by Glen) is both morbid and superfluous. Affair ended, banished from his marital home, all that is required is the failure of Nicholas’s next book and the audience would leave sated. Instead Glen’s morality is destroyed as he chooses to deceive Beth about his role in Nicholas’s death. The beginnings of this relationship should leave the audience feeling warm and fuzzy, but instead we feel cheated and uncomfortable that our newly appointed heroine is once again falling for the wrong man.

But whatever’s wrong with a bit of happily ever after?

In his discussion The Refuge of Art, John Fletcher alludes to ‘self-conscious narration’ . This idea denotes the narrator’s awareness and treatment of the reader’s expectations of the text. A modernist idea, this technique was initially used to ‘[anticipate] and often [cheat] his [the readers] expectations for comic effect’ . One can see the parallelism between this theory and the events of Tamara Drewe. In the fight which ultimately leads to Nicholas’s death, Glen announces that ‘At least with me she [Beth] will have integrity.’ Yet in choosing not to tell Beth about his act of manslaughter, and dragging Beth into his deceit, Glen has in fact destroyed the integrity of both characters.

This.Is.Not.What.We.Want.

We want the happily-ever-after; the fairytale dénouement; the bit that makes us go ‘Ahh’. We want these characters to realise a relationship that we can only hope to attain in our own lives. Whilst this notion is idealistic and even clichéd, it taps into what film and literature are all about: Escapism. The audience’s expectations are borne out of a rejection of adult experience. With divorce statistics continuing to soar and the never-ending recession restricting our chances of meeting that rich banker/lawyer/doctor who’s going to sweep us off our home-pedi’d feet, who can really blame us?

I guess that old adage “the customer is always right” doesn’t work in cinema?