Restaurants, rehearsals and running

We’ve not heard back from Chaz yet. Both Ka and myself text him a message yesterday to ask him how he got on with his casting audition to be in the next big Brad Pitt movie being filmed in Glasgow.
Chaz and myself ordered dinner in the Crooked Lum on Thursday night, two three course meals, taking full advantage of a 25% off voucher Chaz had procured from a taxi driver. I ordered a fillet for my main but Chaz had to do better. He challenged himself by ordering the steak platter, a massive square plate of food which included a large sirloin, fillet and ribeye along with a mountain of chips, a massive mushroom and a giant half tomato that looked like it had been grown in some kind of mutant vault in a local Nuclear facility.
Over dinner Chaz informed me that he was to go along on Saturday in a suit and tie for a movie audition to be an extra in a forthcoming Brad Pitt movie production which apparently involves zombies, being zombies or being attacked by zombies. I’d always thought Glasgow was the perfect setting for a zombie movie – although I’m not sure we need more of them diving about Glasgow than there is already.
By trade, Chaz is a car salesman but I’d also always thought he’d have made a rather good actor. Chaz lamented the end of his drama days over dinner. His best part to date being the role of Lead Pharisee in the school Easter play in the late eighties. Chaz managed to turn the part of the Chief Pharisee into a sort of flamboyant Police Informant type Government spy character. His biggest scene, pivotal to the capturing of Jesus, included Chaz skidding on to the stage and informing the gathered characters that:
“It’s alright, he’ll do it, at ten o’clock tonight!”
Unfortunately his adventures in drama ended during the final rehearsals for that particular scene with the skid on to the stage not quite ending where it should have, resulting in a continuous skid off the stage and the bashing of an eye off the end of a gym bench below.
Let’s hope he gets on better with his zombie audition. I hope he’d done his homework and watched Sean of the Dead, Land of the Dead or has just simply walked up Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday night.
Or the Hamilton town centre on a weekday, for that matter, a strange, destitute place into which my work has just moved and is taking some getting used to. Ka and myself met for lunch last week, my first week in the Hamilton office, and we sat on a bench in the middle of the local shopping precinct to eat our lunch. Strange, smelly, lonely looking characters soon began to circle us like vultures, eyeing either the bench, our lunch or the very flesh which clings to our bones. I wasn’t sure which, but it was enough to put me off my ham sandwich and Irn Bru.
Thankfully, Ka and myself ate in far nicer surroundings yesterday. Once again, we found ourselves dining out, once more in a restaurant, Grace and Dougie treating us to a meal for our anniversary, which was then followed up with a few coffees and shandies at a local pub.
With all this eating in mind we woke this morning finding our usual trip to the gym a bit of a stretch, so instead opted for a run round Calderwood and St. Leonards, circling around the neighbourhood, one lap being just over 5km. It went well considering it was our first jog in months, since before Ka fell pregnant. So Ka and myself are feeling rather pleased with ourselves. Next time we’ll make it two laps. Mum, Dad and Lynsey were popping round for a cuppa though so we had an excuse today to make it a single lap. We’ve promised ourselves to go running more often, especially in the run up to Ka’s run for charity in October (details of which can be found here http://www.justgiving.com/Kelly-Ann-Reid).
There is a turn off, halfway round, where you can trim a good half a mile off the whole lap. Ka was tempted to take this route as she was knackered, struggling for breath and generally getting grumpy after fifteen minutes running and stressed that she may have to ease herself back into the running by taking a shorter route round. When I refused to go this way and told her she would be fine with various other words of encouragement she swiftly replied with a barrage of abuse, just as we passed a row of quiet houses. The occupants of these houses had probably been enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon up until that moment when they spilt their teas, woke from their naps or jumped from behind their Sunday papers to the loud, shouting couple jogging by their front window.
No pain, no gain, they say. Although I didn’t believe it was the pain of the hurling abuse from your stressed wife as she runs around the block after you. So with little argument after this I reluctantly agreed to take the shorter route only for Ka, not more than 5 minutes later, to agree to carry on with the full lap, missing the halfway point turn off. Typical Ka. She was either fiercely determined to complete the planned route, or was simply refusing to go along with anything I agreed to.
It’s all well and good running for miles on a treadmill in a gym but when it comes to real outdoor running it’s very different. Hills appear on your route spontaneously before you, inclines that you did not even realise were inclines when you usually drive along them in the car. Midges and bugs are everywhere too. On passing various clusters of bushes and foliage various sizes of insects would instantly decide to aim for you face, particularly the eyes, nostrils, or even worse, the mouth. You’ll be chatting away to your fellow jogger, or arguing, as you tackle the latest incline when all of a sudden a passing midge that had previously been buzzing about a local bush, would take a notion for a kamikaze mission with your tongue, stopping and firing itself straight into your oral cavity.
Something a little more pleasant is the nodding to and greeting of fellow joggers. You notice this when you’re out walking on the hills too. You’re all complete strangers but you follow some sort of unspoken code with which you nod or greet passing joggers, as if acknowledging each others’ athletic prowess and sportsmanship tackling the dangerous pavements and grass verges.
A greeting of a different kind I received today was a wolf whistle. I’ve never been wolf whistled before but managed not to get too excited about it as it was from a trio of giggling 12-13 year olds who passed by me giggling. A few moments later their giggling was interrupted by the jogger they’d failed to notice behind me, elbowing them off the pavement. Ka mumbled some more abuse as she caught up, running up behind me just as the rain started to fall and a jeep carrying our former neighbour Kay, passed by. The horn tooted as the neighbour waved at us, grinning smugly over her phone from behind her windscreen in her nice, warm, dry 4x4.
With the exception of the interfering insects, the threatening rain and the teenagers, the 5km was a bit of a breeze to be honest and I was pretty surprised at how easily I managed it.
Well, when I say easily we did finish the run with faces the colour of tomatoes. I was suffering with weird blurred vision after coming to a stop outside outside our front door, wiping the dead midges from my face as the old legs began to quiver a little with exertion. The walk I performed going up the stairs to our front door wouldn’t have looked out of place in Chaz’s zombie movie.