Marple 10k trail run 2012

Saturday 8^th September 2012

It was the day of the Marple 10k trail run which I have participated in for the previous three years.  It’s my favourite of all the routes but I wasn't in the best of spirits.  My chauffeur had been grumpy while driving me here and I didn’t have high hopes for my recorded time.  Since peaking at 51 minutes on the first attempt, my times had become steadily longer.  This year I’d not run for months at a time while struggling with heel issues and an injured toe.  I registered my entry with the organisers and listed my predicted time as just under an hour for which I was put in the last but one batch of runners for the staggered starting times.

Factoring in the start time plus the period that will lapse before I was given the green light to run, I figured I had enough time to walk to the centre of Marple and buy a bottle of water. Going against the tide of runners arriving for the event, my spirits lifted.  It was a bright day and there were lots of smiles.  Then, after buying some water, I was asked by an elderly lady if I could help her walk to a hairdresser’s where she had an appointment. ‘I must start walking some more’, she said.  I was happy to help.  I took her arm and relayed the places we were passing: Cherry Tree café and the tattoo parlour (‘No, I’m not going there’).  Doing this dressed in runner’s yellow material gave me a virtuous feeling which felt in tune with the Olympic spirit.  At the hairdresser’s entrance, she and a member of staff waved me off and I thought ‘Yep, that’s the right send off’.

As I stood in my group prepared to run, the organisers gave us a run down on matters relating to the run. ‘Have you heard about the horses?’ we were asked.  No, this hadn’t been revamped as triathlon type event where we were to consequently also alight on and ride a horse then part swim through the Macclesfield canal; we needed to be mindful of our equine friends on the first part of the trail.  During the run, I would let at least one of these pass first through one of the rails when it’s rider explained ‘Charlie’  was quite headstrong and committed to going first.

The first part of the run was on a trail path. Sometimes this was exposed to the hot sun depending on the tree cover.  A drinks station heralded the half-way point where we were then directed onto a transitional route to the canal path. Much of this was across the field around churned up, half dried mud. A ‘V’ turn heralds the fine canal side path with an occasional rise and droop over cobbled path bridges.  We would pass the odd dog walker or cyclist.  Looking to the other side of the water were some gardens which, on a day like this, made living in a canal side house here look rather lovely.  The gardens were all well-tended and spruced up with water facing patio boards or ornamental features.  Some had their own anchored boats

The finish is just before a bridge.  Up and over this it led round to the adjacent ‘Bell O Roses’pub whose beer garden contained a concentration of completed runners and their friends.  There was some applause for me and the cheers rose over time in proportion to the length of time later people took to finish the run.  It was now lunchtime and runners got a goodie bag, a drink and sandwich and hung out around the beer garden.  The sun was shining and all felt good.  Someone, a walker, who I overtook around 2 kilometres into the run eventually strolled past the finishing line and got the biggest applause although with no visible number I’m not wholly sure he was an entrant. In this spirit, other walkers subsequently got loud applause.

The perfect end would have been family waiting by the finishing line at which point my boys would have come running towards me where I would somehow have carried them aloft.  But in other ways this had all I could hope for.  I was happy with my time of 55 minutes and 12 seconds which arrested the decline of my finishing times.  And there were a lot of things to make it a good day: sun, scenery, good deeds, (firefighters) charity, atmosphere and winding down with a cold beer.

http://www.manchesterfire.gov.uk/updates/news/11september2012_marple_10k.aspx

Gig Review: Colorama, TG Elias & O Chapman

Manchester Castle Hotel   September 1st 2012

 

Opening in a solo capacity was the young O Chapman.  During the set, the door regularly opened to allow a few gig comers in (no one would surely have been leaving) and the sound of animated voices from the outside bar seemed to blare in. The set had an intimate feel, recalling an earlier Paul Simon (or Kings of Convenience for younger folk), but was strong enough to overcome these blasts from outside.  I bought his EP as I liked O’s set and he was polite in promoting it .  On the EP, lightly and pleasingly embellished with a further four members there’s a breathy hint of dark clouds.

T G Elias is the name of the singer songwriter who tonight led a talented set of musicians and a co singer.  I peered over the heads of the people in the crowd to see a keyboardist sat low who wouldn’t look out of place adding musical ambience to an upmarket cocktail bar.  T G talks prosaically and  freely about bowel movement problems although this didn’t bring any notable worried backtracking from those at the front. The first song was getting into its stride when there was an impromptu blast of guitar based raucousness.  From the band’s reaction we guessed that this was not some abrasive sample add on and heads turned round to the mixing desk. TG and the band took this in good humour but sometime later in the same song, he decreed that he wasn’t hearing what he wanted, and a more stripped down sound followed.  When on song, it’s very accomplished Americana with harmonies and double bass and an act to watch.  I wonder if the Badly Drawn Boy style stream of consciousness narrative is a feature every time they play?

It was a warm first September evening and the room was full.  The place was getting hotter and I went out the front of the pub to get some fresh air.  Some drinkers did the same but they were ushered back in by the Pub’s security man. Back in the room, I found a place by some locked French Doors where I thought I may catch a draught.

With a prolific work rate, Colorama last played in the area nine months ago trailing their   previous work.  At the end of that set they introduced a riff led song called Good Music which showcased the skills of their guitarist.  Carwyn seemed to indicate that he wasn’t wholly convinced by the song. In the time that has passed, he’s nailed his colours – or Colorama- to the mast and delivered this adventurous offering taking the song as its title track.  It’s a confident enough work to be played in its entirety tonight.

Good Music may seem a presumptuous title to those non acquainted with the band but I wonder if in the title there is a suggestion that what’s contained here – with its regular groove and a smattering of upbeat, danceable music can also produce the goods.   In this hot room room tonight, numbers like Do the Pump don’t win any awards for lyrical profoundness but they initiate some limb loosening movement from the audience.  Elsewhere, the mood is taken down a notch with the Indie Why is She and My Predicament which may be about the missed David Fletcher.  More than one person in the bands on stage was dressed modishly smart tonight so when Carwyn concedes that the ‘(mind!) it’s hot in here’ a front rower points out that he is very buttoned up.  To his resultant course of actions, one thinks ‘just the one button?’ but the more I got absorbed into this set, the less stifling the environment felt. 

(The above picture was taken at a previous gig at Salford Kings Arms on Nov '11; there were five members on stage tonight)

Gig Review: June Brides, Factory Star & The Distractions Kings Arms, Salford August 31st 2012

Looking back to the eighties,  Indie music had a different kind of follower: students of a more mixed and open minded base from a time when higher education was free, the now forgotten bedsitter – creatively aspirational but skint, and school age kids marginalised for not fitting in with the orthodoxies of the times. 

 From Young Marble Giants rejecting the grandiose approach, the decade’s musical landscape can be positively straddled in a way that bypasses the era's stylisms.  Around ’86, I went to watch a few of the June Brides’ peers at Cardiff Neros: Shop Assistants, Mighty Lemon Drops and We’ve got a Fuzzbox.  We were viewed suspiciously by the staff and frisked at the doorway.  A Facebook group dedicated to this venue from this time has stories of bouncer heavy handedness and the victims wouldn't have relished being taken to the club's exit leading to an alleyway. At bigger venues, the level of security was even more disproportionate with the view that there can never be enough ticket checkers.

In the Manchester area, they have long known that the Indie kid isn’t the enemy within.  I had heard the stories before moving up and was subsequently surprised at how relaxed things turned out to be.  Here in the Kings Arms there doesn’t appear to be anyone checking my details against the names of the people who have made this a sold out gig; no-one doing anything as officious as putting a mark on the back of my hard. I ask the nearest person by the desk, Frank of the June Brides, who tells me the person with the clipboard hasn’t been around recently. But there is no free for all at this gig.  People are friendly and easy going.  The desk man doesn’t appear to have been required.

 

The June Brides flame burned brightly and briefly around the mid eighties. They picked up and ran with the early decade’s great cross fusion of sounds pioneered by the likes of Orange Juice (of which one song tonight is a homage). A few years ago, Phil Wilson started performing music again, and gradually, unlike say Dave Gedge’s Wedding Present, counted in three more ex band members before adapting their old name again.  ‘Hello’ says Phil to an initially reticent audience ‘We use to be the June Brides’.

While rightly eschewing their period production, it could be said many of their old songs weren’t done complete justice on record.  I was looking forward to the live set given their back catalogue its sheen. It duly did but it's also revealing just how powerful and kicking the performance is from this six piece. It is a pleasure to hear songs like ‘This Town’ again but what makes the reformation seem so right is the deployment of wind and string instruments in what may be the new songs. Less jaunty, they take on a worldly air in a good way and it all bodes well.

 

Three members of Factory Star start playing and don’t look surprised at the non-appearance of their main man. They have a loaded bass sound. A seventies looking keyboardist also adds to what will be an interesting concoction. It associates itself on my mind with early Stranglers and they share the experimentation of this band’s era:  eschewing verse/chorus, taking a sound and running with it. Martin Bramah, having helped pioneer the Fall’s sound shares that self contained demeanour of his former band’s old singer and comes and goes when he is needed for vocal and guitar duties.

I have come late to the Distractions and, from the run-up to this gig, it’s obvious that they have a much cherished past.  Mainly inactive in the 32 years since their first LP, guitarist and song writer Steve Perrin has flown in from the Sothern hemisphere for some recordings and gigs.  It’s an intriguing sound.  There seems to be early sixties influences in the tunes and vocal style, shot through with the stamp of late seventies post punk Manchester.

Amongst the fine group onstage, there is 65 year old Mike Kellie of the Only Ones on drumming duties.  One of the few people to make the transition from classic rock to new wave (he is credited with playing on the Rock Opera Tommy) I’ve wondered how he adapted to playing a more frenetic sound.  And 34 years on from Another Girl, Another Planet, he’s again playing with a band that are lithe and lean. All reports from the new CD indicate that they are still coming up with the tunes.  Time goes so Slow, a classic single, is thankfully fitted in before a message appears to be sent that the band have to wrap things up.  Some boos that greeted this news was the only negative murmurs of the night.

 

Thanks to Maurice for photos.