In a Tony Place

London wasn't a particularly lonely place today (even if the day did have a very Tony theme), although the day did not start well when I was rudely awakened before eight once again, this time by Papa, who felt the need to play the radio really loudly in the living room. My head was hurting too much for me to fall back to sleep so I sulkingly finished The Player of Games before emerging at nine, making a beeline for the coffee machine. Past interactions with my family should have taught me that if I'm not feeling well or if something has irked me that might lead another family member to go on the defensive, it's really better for me to just keep quiet because then, at least, I'll only have a tiredness-induced headache rather than the aforementioned headache and a randomly irritated family member (and they wonder why I don't tell them if anything is wrong!).

I felt somewhat better after coffee, Ibuprofen and a shower, in that order, and better still when we went to Canteen for breakfast. I've been eagerly awaiting the opening of this Baker Street branch of Canteen for several months now, having enjoyed the "all-day casual eating" delights of the other two branches, although any cool restaurant that is about a 90-second walk from my flat is bound to get many thumbs up. It was quite quiet in there this morning but Baker Street is generally quiet on Sunday mornings and, besides, the place only opened on Tuesday. 

The service was excellent, though, as were the cappuccinos (sourced from my favourite Monmouth Coffee Company), although my carrot and ginger juice had a little too much va va voom for my liking so early on a Sunday morning. Maman loved her bubble and squeak and Papa enjoyed his bacon, sausage and scrambled eggs. I had the best bacon sandwich I've had in a long time (since the first one I had after ten years of vegetarianism, anyway). I asked for the bacon to be very crispy and it was but also very tasty and the (sourdough?) bread was pretty good too. All in all, I was very impressed and will definitely be returning often, especially as they do sausage and mash, a daily roast, afternoon cakes, great, creative cocktails and "bar snacks" that include a fish finger sarnie--OK, yes, said sandwich costs £5.75 and I could make my own for a fraction of the price  but that's not the point.

We walked off breakfast around Regent's Park (bumping into quartier resident neighbour, Thomas More Jeremy Northam, on the way) before heading to Selfridge's where there wasn't the slightest sign of any form of credit crunch. Amex had sent Papa a 20%-off-everything-in-store voucher and so off we went to buy everything. The guy at customer services informed us that there were seven other similar offers this week. You could tell given what a zoo the place was. 

The women's shoe department on the second floor was the worst of the lot, closely resembling Dante's fourth circle of Hell (the queues certainly seem like a modern equivalent of Dante's almost Sisyphean punishment of pointless boulder-moving), not helped by the fact that I was served (well, technically) by a guy who looked and acted as though he'd been recruited, à contre-coeur, from the men's sporting equipment department and who, when I asked him whether the shoes I was trying fitted properly, he just asked whether it felt like they fitted. Much confusion was had by the plethora of posters advertising 30% off a given brand's shoes (but didn't apply to all of the shoes in the range) and some annoying Americans were actually trying to haggle with the already stressed sales assistants. Nonetheless, I got what I came for in a pair of brown leather riding boots which are warm, comfortable and fairly stylish (plus, I saved £28). 

After this, I was keen to get the hell out but first, I had to join the parents in the basement where we had to battle the sales assistants whose sense of queueing fairness seemed to be that those who were buying expensive Mulberry luggage shouldn't have to wait as long as those just buying a couple of fold-up canvas travel tote bags. She got some serious wrath from me because by that point, I was very hot, very dehydrated and still very tired. I had started to apologise for my family's ire but then she started loudly whispering to her colleague that she was "just trying to be fair," which caused me to point out that she hadn't succeeded in the least.

Having dumped the shopping at the flat, I went to meet Dr Max at the BFI. We had a drink in the very funky film cafe/bar before crowding into the very small screen three with a load of film buffs to see In a Lonely Place. It wasn't really Dr Max's kind of film but he didn't have any better plans so agreed to accompany me. We picked up a copy of the programme notes in the hope that we might be able to keep up with the film geeks during the movie but the top warned that there were spoilers therein so we decided we'd better not. I was expecting something a little more noir and was pleasantly surprised that there were so many great and funny lines (in response to the question, "Why didn't you call for a cab? Isn't that what a gentleman usually does under the circumstances?", Dix Steele, Humphrey Bogart's protagonist (antagonist?) coolly drawls, "I didn't say I was a gentleman. I said I was tired."). Besides, I always like films that are about the movies (oh, Cinema Paradiso--how pleasantly you made periods seven and eight on a Thursday afternoon go in the upper sixth) and Bogart is effusive, jaded, funny and scary in equal measures, although there is never really any attempt to get to grips with or to explain the lonely place that his character occupies (it isn't, I suppose, really the point).

The BFI is great. However, it is an exercise in choice and comprehending that you will never watch all of the movies you want to see--each month, the programme seems to contain far more films than I can afford to see (in terms of money and time) and yet so many that I would want to see. Besides, members' tickets are only £7.60, which is only just over half the price of the horrible West End cinemas--no classy bars or mediatheques in Leicester Square, that's for sure. The whole too much choice thing probably applies to all of London--it's so nice to always have plenty of posisble things to do, of a weekend, after so many years of exile in Nowheresville. Not that I'm complaining, of course.

Easy Virtue Is Sufficient Temptation

I only went to see Easy Virtue because none of the films on my to-watch list are out in the cinema yet and because the heavens opened with great vehemence this afternoon when I was in the vicinity of Leicester Square. I baulked at paying £12 for a cinema ticket (£12? After paying a fiver (members' price at the Arts cinema in Nowheresville), forking over £12 made even my loose purse strings tremble) given the mixed reviews I had read but actually, I rather liked it.

Based on the Noel Coward play of the same name, Easy Virtue tells the tale of a glitzy, American "floozy," Larita, who meets the son and heir of a posh, English family on the Rivieira in the '20s, marries him and then finds out she got more than she bargained for when she and new husband John return to the family digs in wintry Angleterre. Except, his family also get more than they bargained for in Larita, who isn't exactly the woman they imagined John marrying (not least because she drives fast cars and is--good god--allergic to flowers).

Jessica Biel, whom I always confuse with Jessica "Sin City" Alba, is actually very good as Larita (much better than Scarlett Johansson in Match Point, who also plays the glamorous American marrying into an aristocratic English family; that's probably not much of a compliment, though), although the butler, played by the guy from My Family (Kris Marshall), stole more scenes. Kristin Scott Thomas, meanwhile, plays Veronica, the glacial mother-in-law who engages in an ever-escalating battle of the wits with the new daughter-in-law, who is doing her best to interfere with Veronica's efforts to keep the family afloat. John himself and his two dippy sisters are all a bit drippy, although John's BFF (who lives on the estate next door and whom John was supposed to marry) is slightly spunkier.

Given that John is played by Prince Caspian and his dad by Colin Firth, I wasn't really expecting this film to score very highly on the talent-o-meter--unlike pretty much all of my school chums and other female friends, I never really got off on Mr Darcy and certainly not on Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones (or his characters in Fever Pitch, Shakespeare in Love, Hope Springs or Love Actually), and yet somehow, Firth was very attractive in Easy Virtue. While John and his sisters are being drippy and failing to defend Larita against their mother, Mr Whitaker Senior is the only member of the family to stick up for her. 

He sees the free spirit in her and empathises greatly--he too spent several years after fighting in the Great War, hanging out in France, until the angry wife stormed over and dragged him back from the brothel to the family estate in England but it was very much à contre-cœur and since then, he seemed to stop caring about the social engagements, the running of the estate and his wife's petty ambitions. He plays along and fixes up a seriously buggered motorbike in his spare time--a motorbike, which Larita mounts when honouring her promise to her mother-in-law that she will "ride in the hunt." The tango danced by Larita and her father-in-law was definitely too smoking for a PG-rated film and only makes it obvious what a mistake her marriage to the sweet and well-meaning--if immature and utterly naive--John was.

This new-found interest in Mr Firth does not mean that I will be queueing up to see Dorian Gray, of course (in which Prince Caspian also stars)--I try to steer well clear of film adaptations of Oscar Wilde plays after An Ideal Husband (I was too young at the time for Jeremy Northam to make up for it). However, I could be persuaded to check out The Meat Trade if it is ever released.

As for Easy Virtue, it certainly generated easy laughter among the (overwhelmingly female) audience and as expected, the wit was suitably piquant. Some of the reviews I read argued that despite Biel's tour de force, the drama never really got going properly until the dying minutes, which meant it felt like it wasn't paced correctly; I would be inclined to agree had I not been too distracted by the tango. Not bad. Not bad at all...

Running Club Almost 2.0

I can't remember where I first read about NikeTown's free running club last week (possibly one of the free newspapers on a day when I was too tired to say non) but there was also a piece in this week's TimeOut. I got quite excited because you go to the Nike+ website, create a profile and then book into one of their organised runs on Mondays (gals only) and Tuesdays (mixed), with options to run three, four or seven miles. You can check in a coat and a bag to the Oxford Circus Niketown store and they provide you with a reflective vest (in sexy grey and silver not Philippe Starck-esque yellow) and give you designer water afterwards (Vitamin Water in my case). They also give you a chip to lace onto your trainers so that when you sign in, you just scan your shoe in one of their registration points to show that you have registered online.

There were probably about 100 runners tonight, although only four of us were running the whole seven miles. The route involves running up Great Portland Street and then doing two laps of the Outer Circle. They tell you there will be NikeTown folks around the course encouraging you and making sure you don't get lost (I know: it's a circular route, but still). I also assumed that with so many runners there would be other people around for most of the route. This was not the case as the seven mile group set off first: one girl was much faster than me, but the other three were much slower so for the majority of the course, I was flying solo. I'm not sure if this is a good thing--I'm not a big fan of running by myself in the dark and the rain but then my competitive spirit would probably insist on keeping pace with someone slightly faster than me, even if doing so meant I overdid it, especially with my cough.

I joked about the inability to get lost when running in a circle--actually, more of a very squat, slightly rotated, almost isosceles trapezium--and yet it is actually quite disorientating running around in circles when it is dark and when you aren't entirely familiar with the buildings. So, during my first lap, I thought I was already running along the "top" of the circle but actually had got onto the straight between two bends. Similarly, running down the south side of the circle, I hadn't the slightest idea when the end of the lap was or whether there was even going to be a NikeTown person there to direct me (there were two NT staff per group, although ours disappeared pretty sharpish and I only saw them at the end). In the end, the guy was waiting on the "corner" where we had to turn and run down to Portland Place, except I was so disorientated, I was confused to see the Marylebone Road and couldn't recalculate my mental map of the area between Regent's Park, Great Portland Street and NikeTown. I got there in the end, though, and picked up my VitaminWater (I don't care about the "vitamins" but it did taste good after a good run).

As Nike also sells some kit called Nike+, which is a chip for your trainers and a gadget to stick into your iPod Nano so that you can get info on the distance, time and pace of your runs, as you run, and then upload it to the Nike+ website afterwards to track your runs long term, and as this information is displayed when you sign up for the Nike+ account you need to register for the NikeTown Runners, I naively assumed that the chip they were giving me would do the same thing (even though it was attached to the laces and not placed under the heel)--my estimation of technology is obviously too optimistic. I was therefore very excited about coming home to find out how far I'd run and how fast, only to realise that to do this, I would need an expensive kit upgrade (especially as my running iPod is now a Shuffle). 

Still, I probably ran almost eight miles because at my moment of nearing-end-of-run space-out/geographical catastrophe, I had to retrace my steps to find the Nike people and get them to redirect me (even then, I'm not convinced they sent me the most direct route). I was also going faster than usual, I think, probably due to the influence of others--early on, at least. Then, of course, there was the one-mile "warm-up" jog from my flat to NikeTown (when I realised I was running late) and the one-mile walk back home afterwards. It's no wonder my thighs are feeling as though they've had a very good work-out today.

All in all, the NikeTown Runners club is definitely not bad, for free (compared to, say, the Serpentine Running Club, which I had been thinking of joining). The free drinks and the no-fuss online booking and electronic sign-in are good (if I didn't live so close to the shop, I would probably find the bag/coat check facility more useful) and the 6.30 p.m. start time on Mondays suits me pretty well. They say you get a free t-shirt after three runs, which would be nice. However, I would like to be more reassured by the staff that I am going the right way and that they will come and find me if I get mugged and/or lost. Maybe there is more of that in the three and four mile groups but for the effort it takes getting down to Oxford Circus, four miles is barely worth it. It would be nice having someone setting the pace--maybe I'll just have to find a running buddy because it's really not a good idea for me to try to keep up with the really fast girl who, for a while, was tantalisingly close.

Google's Sarcastic Weather Report

"Chance of storm," sez Google of the San Francisco forecast this afternoon. Yeah, there's a chance that I got thoroughly soaked today, although to be fair, it probably was the worst day of the whole trip to try to obtain the latest in my series of photos of myself leaping in front of famous monuments. Today, however, was the day when I had the offer of photographic assistance and so after lunch downtown, we drove out to the Golden Gate Bridge.