The ‘To Do’ List and a Spell of Nostalgia

 

Snap shots taken in Cranworth Road, Worthing

 

There was a ‘To Do’ list on the top of the desk diary page for today but not until after the 6.30am Wednesday swim. I had taken the two new pairs of goggle that arrived yesterday to test, to see which I would wear next Sunday in Brighton. Once a couple of small adjustments were made I tried the first ones for twenty minutes and then after a word with Steve over the lane rope,  I decided not to irritate myself further and wear that pair anyway and leave the others for some other time. The only thing wrong with the goggles was that they are very pink but I can live with that and anyway it could only annoy others since could not see what I looked like. Compared to the old ones everything was very bright and clean and clear, and that must be a good thing. 

After the swim we had time for a trip to the coffee shop before my first appointment. That was with my doctor whom I had asked to refer me back to dermatology at the hospital since another little scabby thing was on my forehead that was on the exact spot that the first one was removed from. I have had a number of little things removed and they are the result of sun damage caused in long distant events, when I have been out in the sun every moment of the day. Putting sun block on doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference because when you are sweating like a pig it, doesn’t stay on, it gets wiped off or washed off by the sweat. I did have beautiful skin when I was young but now it is a mess on every part of my body that has been sun burned time and again. 

Whilst I was there my Doctor brought out the result of my recent blood test and told me that my cholesterol level was not good and that she thought maybe I could try some Statin’s! I asked if she thought that rather than do that, I could try to get my weight down and see if that made a difference before taking any further steps. She printed me out a low fat diet which I politely took. However, I do know what I should cut down on, so I will try to address my weight issue hoping to avoid taking any new medication. I have seen my race photos of late and thought that I should shed a few pounds, also my wetsuit is tight across my chest, so I will cut out the increased amounts of ice cream that crept in during the summer for a start and see how that goes. Being lighter should help my running as well no doubt about that. The other danger is that my husband is also fattening, just being near him is fattening. Being happy is fattening too. 

I rang Steve to tell him and he did admit that we had both been doing a bit of naughty eating during the summer and we would both cut down a bit. Whilst on the phone he asked me to go home to pick up some paper work that he had left behind when he left for work earlier, and could I drop it in to him at the warehouse before I went in to Worthing later. 

My next appointment was with Ursula, who every now and again tints my eyelashes for me, she also tints my eyebrows and this last thing makes Steve roar with laughter because he knows that my eyebrows are sparse to put it kindly. When ever I tell him I am going to Ursula, he tells me to take the magnifying glass so that she can even find my eyebrows! Even when I was a child I did not have any eyebrows to speak of and this is a little strange when you take into consideration that I have always had and still have, a very thick head of hair, a mop in fact. I doesn’t notice when I have it cut short but it is plain to see right now since I have been letting it grow again, so that when I go out, I have something, apart from my nails that I can make look half nice at least. 

The next detour was to home to pick up Steve’s missing papers and take them in. When I got there he has another little job for me to do since my writing is better than his God awful scrawl, that was just to mark up a large crate with a readable address before it was picked up to go to Hong Kong. 

Then I was off into Worthing to take Alice to visit her nice Uncle Martin at The Bike Store. Alice is my best bike and her Uncle Martin is the owner of The Bike Store, and the one who measured, selected and set up my new bike for me some time ago. I had rung yesterday to see if I could bring her in just for a quick check over before the event looming on the horizon this weekend. The young Stanley that I had spoken to the previous day, had not left that message, but Martin said it was an unexpected pleasure to see Alice and myself and that he would make sure she was race fit! He said that I could pick her up about the same time tomorrow. Martin has always looked after me very well I am happy to say. Stanley is also doing the triathlon on Sunday. Obviously Stanley won’t have any trouble with the bike section of the race but he told me that he had only had four or five swims since deciding to do the event. I just hope it does not include a rough sea like there was in Worthing of August 28^th! 

When I left the Bike Store, I suddenly decided upon an impulse to do a little drive around memory lane. I had not planned to do that, not for a moment until it happened.  I am a Worthing girl and The Bike Store is quite close to a lot of my old haunts. For a start I drove past Beach House Park where I often played as a child, very often on my own, I was never short of imagination. Then I drove a little way further and turned down the nice wide tree lined Farncombe Road where I used to help my brother with his paper round and sometimes took that road when on jaunts to the beach with friends or cousins.  

Having got that far I turned right, along Lyndhurst Road but did not go as far as my junior school where I was unhappy much of the time. Instead I turned off to the left down Cranworth Road, where I spent most of my childhood at number 17 and my post school working years until I married. I made several more turns, past my old doctors surgery, and back up Homefield Road that backed onto Cranworth Road. After that I turned right into Lyndhurst road again, passing the other end of Beach House Park and the hospital, then passing by the old Gas Works where my dad worked when he came home from the war, and continued and up High Street, where the other place that he had worked until he retired was, but has since been lost in redevelopment. 

I have been to Worthing thousands of times and yet on this one occasion I felt a little emotional for some reason. Once back into Warwick Street and around Steyne Gardens, I made my way home along the sea front passing the run section of Worthing Triathlon a couple of weeks ago. It was then that I thought that the nostalgia spell, could have been because during that run I had been thinking that my cousin John and I used to play Leap Frog along there in the summer when we were kids, we would go the complete length of the promenade and back doing Leap Frog; no wonder my legs are strong. Neither of us had any parental restrictions during the summer holidays because our parents were both out at work. How the world has changed, but still we survived and were never total hooligans and were brought back to heel once Mum and Dad got home from work in the evening.

 

 

 

Something for the Weekend!

 

John Lunt and I in Hawaii 

We had a nice ride this morning, it was quite warm and we spend our time just riding back and forth along Sea Road Littlehampton, along to the place where we normally turn for home and then back again to a turn spot just beyond the promenade and round toward the village at the Rustington end. This is what the bike ride will be like in Brighton this weekend; it’s eight laps up and down the coast road, the Kingsway. I am looking forward to this event so much. The weather will be what it will be but right now, at least it is not cold, though our ride ended today when a sea fret came in that was very wet and our glasses fogged up so that we could not see where we were going. Thankfully home is just two miles from the coast, so we were soon home and indoors, casting off wet clothes and making hot coffee before long. 

There have been a number of Brighton Triathlons over the years and we have taken part in a most of them. There was one that also had a bike lapped course but based to the east of the Palace Pier, going along Madeira Drive, and up onto Marine Parade and back around the Marina. Years ago Steve and I and some friends always used to go and watch another triathlon yet, that was based right down in the Marina on New Years Day. I was never quite daft enough to do that one but we went and watched those who were brave enough to get in the water at the start of the year in mid winter. It became a New Year ritual to watch the race and then run home from there. It was about twenty four miles back to our house and seemed like a way of expressing our intentions for the year before us.

Mr. Lunt at the start of a women only run in Richmond Park

Motivational pre race chat by Denise Van Outen.

 

The event this weekend is based roughly around Hove Lawns area from what I can make out on the course maps and hence, it is Brighton and Hove Triathlon, although there may be other issues involving previous organisers of the other several previous events with the name, I wouldn’t know. What I do know is that it has a master race director at the helm. John Lunt is now well known for having been in charge of the 2012 London Olympic Games Triathlon but having masterminded mountains of events in the past twenty five years and more.  

 

Awards ceremony at the Guildhall in Windsor hero Spencer Smith centre

 

 Steve and I have know John for as long as we have been in the sport and in fact my first multi discipline event was John’s pool base Damp Dash all those years ago. That was a swim/run and I recall that on that day of my very first event there was six inches of snow lay on the ground after an overnight thick snow fall, runners had to struggle through out on the 10km run that followed a route out of the pool and along the riverside path by the Thames. I had only just learned to do front crawl and I was only six months into running. I was so nervous, mostly because I thought I was too old to join in what I had expected to be a totally young person’s event. I was wrong about that. John had asked me to start early so that I would not hold the race up and make the marshal’s stay out in the snow long after the last of the competitors had got back. I was astonished when many of the faster runners, who started much later than me, all shouted out some encouragement to me as they passed, a poor old woman of fifty doing her first event! I was the oldest woman that day, as I was the oldest person last week in Worthing triathlon. Times have changed since then and there are loads of fifty plus athletes.

 

Awards at the Damp Dash,  Lunty presiding  

Over the years I have lost count of have many events we have done, that have been put on by John Lunt and his right hand person, his wife Nicola. One of the events they put on a great race called the Tuff Man, which was an Iron distance event but over two days for people to try out those distances before committing to the whole lot in one go. The bike ride was on Saturday morning and the swim in the Kingfisher pool in the evening and then the marathon was on Sunday morning, a similar run route the later Breakfast Run, along the Thames around parts of Kingston (where Steve hails from) coming back past the wonderful Hampton Court Palace and back along the other side of the Thames over Kingston Bridge and back to the finish.

 

I met young Josie Pether at the Grand Hotel in Brighton at the end of last year at the Sussex Awards dinner; she was seated right next to me and Steve and I found her to be charming, knowledgeable and great company for the evening. Josie works with John Lunt, as I suppose as a race manager and has answered any emails I have sent in during the entry process most helpfully as a small part of her duties.

 

John Lunt and I just a few years ago with Tim Don looking on 

So back to where I started, looking forward to the registration and bike racking this Saturday, also to taking a look around the expo stands selling sports goods and then a most exciting day on Sunday that will be well marshalled and controlled and will be a  shining example of how a triathlon should be run. Hopefully among the spectators will be people inspired by the spectacle, who will then take a shot at this event in future years. Maybe one of the little gems below.

 

 

 

 

Things that make us who we are

Poem of the Month some time ago 

The other day, somebody asked me why I write my ‘Daf’s Diary’ blog page and that is a fair enough question I suppose, although the message actually asked was plainer, ‘Why do you waste your time writing a load of tosh that nobody reads.’ Well I suppose there are several more questions within that question are there not. 

Q1. Is a diary a waste of time? I don’t think it is really and for me it sees my world put into writing; What I am thinking about, what may be troubling me, where I think I am going and looking at it all calmly and clearly, rather than let the jumbled thoughts and feelings whirl around in my head, unattended, unquestioned and unresolved. 

Q2. Is it a load of tosh? Ahhhh! That’s the real question isn’t it? It is not tosh to me. I realise that it is not world shattering news either, like the items that hit the headlines on the morning news but it is my news, and it is, by my writing it, recorded, with a date and a heading, there for me to look back at, if I need to in the future. A diary in fact; and it is no more tosh than much of the stuff that gets into our daily papers. I only look at a newspaper whilst I have my coffee in the Rustington branch of Costa Coffee and frankly most of it contributes nothing to my world or well my being, certainly not as books, the theatre, cinema and travel do. 

Q3. Actually this part is not a question is it, that last part is a straight insult. ‘That Nobody Reads’…. There may not be lot of people who read it that is true, and most of the few who do, do not read it every day. My own daughter asked me why I didn’t make a bigger effort to spread it around within my own groups, or wider circles, adding the question ‘You would like people to read it wouldn’t you.’ Well of course I would, but it is after all, MY diary… Daf’s Diary and although it is not a secret book hidden away under my mattress, one of my thoughts in opening my diary to anybody with enough spare time to read a page or two is to see that I am indeed an ordinary open book. Maybe even a helpful one or even a little motivational.

 

 

How some may see me 

 

Much of my life is quite ordinary; washing, ironing, hoovering etc. Yet those are things that I would like to limit in fact. When I first left my parents home at the start of my first marriage, I dusted, wiped, cleaned, cooked and all those earlier mentioned household chores and kept the house spotless, as well as working full time. My life was my home and family and I worked to help that.  

Years later, my life has changed. My life, for the last forty years has been more full than it has ever was before and with the addition of Triathlon; that slid suddenly into my life twenty six years ago, it is tightly packed with sporting activity. Yet still I try to cram in more and more.

 

 

How my artist neighbour Christine saw me in 2002 

 

I have always been a big letter writer. As a teenager I found pen pals from contact columns in The Melody Maker and the NME. Those pen pals and I wrote pages to each other. Whilst my brother was in the RAF I wrote to him all the time and then to dear friends who had moved away.  

The writing did not truly start overnight when an accident tried to keep me resting for a while. What did happen at that time, was the poetry writing, just as a form of discipline to keep my mind occupied as I sat with my leg up and my arm in a sling. I forced myself to write a poem a day until I could get back to my sport. The poems did not stop however. Then a year or so ago, I started going to the Worthing Wow, ‘Write Night’, and I started, just by chance, from a picked up brochure to read Mslexia Magazine.  

The poetry has slowed down somewhat now because I started the open Diary. It was an idea in Mslexia that try’s so hard to encourage women to write… about anything. One tiny little corner, in the depths of the magazine put forward an idea to help spur us ladies on. It suggested that we try to write six lines every day. That just grew! I started running the same way, between lamp posts, a little at first and then a step more and a step more.

 

All linked together as if by magic

 

My husband Steve is most encouraging; he listens as I read my daily work using him as a sounding board. He knows how much I enjoy bashing the keys and loading my blog. I enjoy my daily writing, even if it is a load of tosh to some people. I exercise my body for fun and sport and for my health and the company of Steve and other friends, and this, my writing, is my minds exercise. Then, to make sure that I take myself seriously, I enter the odd poetry competition and it is amazing how much fun that is, it gives me a real buzz.

 

 

 

A Sunday Session; Lacking in Energy

 

Goodness me our run was hard this morning. We were both tired, and listing which parts of our bodies were giving the most pain or grief, was taking longer than the thirty second walk section that was within the thirty second run/thirty second active walk recovery that was the plan for the morning; 30 seconds on 30 seconds off. Still, we are old hands at the discipline of trying to fit the mood, state of fitness, state of fatigue into our attempts at keeping ourselves going. We were on a 10km woods and downs route.

 

The blessed distraction was the sheer beauty surrounding us in the green glow of our much  loved regular woodland route. We train ourselves to only look around on the walk rest seconds and then to look where we are bloody well going on the run bit, we have both had enough trips and falls whilst our eyes follow the flight of green woodpecker or a scampering squirrel clambering up a fir tree trunk. Looking around at nature must only be done at walk pace. There have been some strong winds lately and there were some trees down here and there, that in turn had left twigs and leaf trails along the Monarch’s Way where the woodsmen had been clearing those as well as the normal work of cutting and stacking trees by the side of the Way.

 

 

 

It was not cold, unless you were in an exposed area, so my visi-glo lightweight coat was taken off, rolled and tied around my waist quite early. The path was not as muddy as I had expected either after the rain last night but I had still opted for my trail trainers with deep tread to avoid slipping.

 

Passing along the narrow ridge path overlooking the grassily barely disappeared medieval village of Lower Barpham, one could not help the eye being drawn to the hillsides beyond that are already starting to look autumnal, the rich green and gold of the summer months now turning to darker shades of rust and brown after the last bales have been gathered in.

 

 

 

 

My pink coat was hastily pulled back on as we climbed up to the trig point where it was so exposed and the normally lovely clear view, was starting to fade and look like approaching rain would be the order of the afternoon. There was more shelter as we started down by the side of the gallops on the way down and again it was noticeable that the wild flowers were starting to wilt. Blustery as it was, there were plenty of mountain bikers and other joggers out to enjoy the countryside. My aches and pains gradually eased as the session went on and we ran down the long path for the last couple of kilometres ignoring the peeps of Steve’s Garmin. There were only a couple of Red Kites today, calling with that mournful cry that sounds like the wheel of a barrow that could do with a drop of oil, the run would not be complete without a Kite or two, or three or four.

 

We were both tired by the time we got back to the car and decided to go for breakfast in Arundel instead of just tea and a cake at Swanbourne Lake. So Osteria, in the High Street it was, and bacon bap on Ciabatta bread with a cappuccino for Steve and a pot of Darjeeling to go with French toast with honey, berries and drizzled crème Anglais for me, oh my giddy aunt that is so tasty! There was not going to be anything too energetic on the board on returning home after that little treat.

 

 

 

Grasping the Nettle

 

Richmond Park Women Only 10km with my daughter Jakki

 

You have to remind yourself of the things that are important to your continued happiness and satisfaction with your lifestyle. So you should decide if you like sports as a little bit more than a hobby or just a necessary evil that you feel obliged to keep in your life for your health sake. You have to place it in the right place in your life programme. If you only exercise just to stay at the same dress size then it’s probably your diet that you should be watching with a couple of classes. If you just like the social life of going to the gym, then that is  up to you to be thinking about how deeply you want to go into that scene and think about the best time for you do that so that you find the group whose company you most enjoy.

 

Richmond Park again

 

If you have, by whatever set of circumstances got hooked on a particular sport that you enjoy then you had best train for it and at whatever level you find suits your own needs. In my case I find that one of the things that is most convenient, is that my husband and I are both still committed to the same sport, so much its easier with a partner. We have enjoyed more than just doing an event now and again but also as much of the training for it as we can squeeze into our lives without interfering with our small family business. The sport is a lifestyle that we don’t want to stop even though we are both getting older, surely the older you get, the more care you should take of your body not less.

 

 

A holiday run in Switzerland 

A number of sports now have age groups to compete in, for those who still like to try to do their best but are not as fast as they once were. We both still get a great deal of pleasure from the sporting routine and find that getting out and doing the training early in the morning, is more satisfying and allows you to have a normal day left to do your work or whatever else you have to do or find pleasing.

 

Yesterday we were in the pool ready to swim at 6.30 am and after that we got on our bikes for a short ride and were still home and ready to face the trials of the day. This morning when we woke there was a blue sky and so we got into our bike kit and went out for another bike ride, twenty six miles, which will do nicely, since we have the Brighton and Hove Triathlon just a week away. We have our club swim this evening at 5pm; I will be in the water training and Steve will be on poolside trying to get everybody to put their head and heart into the session.

 

I feel that you need to have an event on the horizon that you have entered or that you intend to enter; if there is nothing special that you are looking toward then it makes it a lot easier to think that it does not matter if you miss this session or that one. The downward slide is very easy to fall into and a lot harder to climb out of. In my own experience I find that I have more aches and pains when I have missed work outs than I do when training regularly. Grasp the nettle; it only stings for a little while and then gets easier.

 

First race in 2013 after a break .... Well three breaks actually.... Still hurts a bit!

 

Coming to the end of the summer season as we move into early September I have already bought a diary for 2017 and hope that the important races for next summer will soon be published so that I can start to select the events that will serve my purpose best.

 

We all have down days or times when things do not go according to plan. Those are the times when you have to look at yourself in the mirror and make sure that your can still see a brightness of spirit within yourself. Just to keep going, you sometimes have to make a little more effort, make the move to get out and push yourself in a forward direction, even when it’s the last things you feel like at the time. Onwards and upwards then to make things better than they are, rather than doing nothing but gaze into your next beer or glass of wine. 

 

 

Club Swim training holiday in Lanzarote, Club La Santa.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

 

That was an excellent book by Lionel Shriver and later transferred very well into a movie with Tilda Swinton as Kevin’s un-loved, at all, ever, mother; not a hint of bonding as she was constantly mentally tortured by her strange son. The moment when I felt for her most was when he waited for her to finish a skilful exercise in home decoration where she has used antique maps and the very disturbed Kevin squirted the room with ink. The school massacre was on the way and did eventually happen after he had taken up archery, having read Robin Hood. Weird book, weird film, and both totally absorbing.

 

My husband believes that I am irresistibly drawn to the name Kevin and there may be something in that because for a start my favourite actor is without doubt Kevin Spacey. My husband Steve is in any case never allowed to choose which movie we got to see, although he pretty much make most other choices from dinner, to work and training, but he will know for sure that we are going to the cinema if Kevin is in anything at all. That, last week, included going to a 1 pm showing in Chichester of Nine Lives.
 

 

 

I had to apologise to my man about that one afterwards. The film is about a mega rich, business man, who Christopher Walkden turns into a cat until he learns how to behave to his family. There is a lot of funny cat stuff in it but really, it is a film for nine to twelve year old girls. I can’t be more honest than that, but like me, other Spacey devotees will go and feel equally flimped, because it is mostly Kevin doing the voice of the cat. He and Walkden could have made the movie in their coffee break. It is mildly amusing but was a complete waste of my valuable time and of course my poor long suffering husbands even more precious time.
 

 

 

Steve also wonders why Kevin Spacey is so adored by women; he sees that he is a great actor but wonders about the charisma thing. I ask myself that too sometimes. He is one of the more famous wearers of an obvious and frankly awful ‘Rug’, but we forgive him for that and still find him very appealing, even though all we fans must be sure that he would not have the same feeling for any of us girls and we don’t care about that either. Yet multi talented he unquestionably is; Singer, dancer, and one of the very best impressionists and very funny in interviews and on chat shows. As a Facebook user, I admit unashamedly, that I get posts from a Kevin Spacey closed group, where fans post photos of him in their favourite films or when they are autograph and selfie hunting at a stage door after one of his masterful performances. The FB page has little if anything to do with the man himself. My own best movies of this icon of the movie world are all much, much better then the Nine Lives limp effort, the list that I recommend is in no special order: The Life of David Gale, KPAX, The Shipping News, The Usual Suspects, American Beauty, Beyond the Sea and Recount.
 

 

The next Kevin is, Egg and Bacon as my husband calls him; Kevin Bacon who is also and excellent actor as in; A Few Good Men, Mystic River, The River Wild, The Woodsman and of course the brilliant TV series, The Followers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last film star Kevin, is the one that pops up in any post dinner game of ‘Claims to Fame’, since on one of the three occasions I competed in Ironman Hawaii, the first person to come to see me after the finish line was UK race manger Nicola Lunt, who I met in the earliest years of my triathlon career, but Nicola did not say ‘Well done Daf’ as we stood in the greatest, almost midnight moments under the big Banyan tree on Ali’i Drive in Kona. No. She said, ‘Kevin Costner watched you finish!’ He was filming Waterworld, not far from there.

 

 

 

The last Kevin here today is not a movie star. He is in the close circle of friends that we train regularly with, Steve more than me actually, because they very often have already got a short bike ride in before I actually get out on the road. Kevin Pearson is also one of a three of four times a week swim training group at 6.30 am and during the winter months sharing loads of turbo training sessions. I think of Kevin as a dear friend though he would hate to hear me say that. There is nothing ‘soft’ about Kevin; he is as straight speaking as it is possible to get and if ever I wanted the truth from anybody I would ask Kevin. Last Sunday, he came down to watch Worthing Triathlon and when we were talking about the rough sea swim section afterwards, I had to smile when he told me that he had watched me in the sea and said that I was dead easy to spot with ‘That left arm of yours… spot that a mile away’! Another training friend, Steve Lardy Jones once asked me, how come I got on with Kevin when he was so blunt. My dad was a straight speaking Yorkshire man and like Kevin; if I asked him if my bum looked big in this…. He would tell me ‘Yes, it certainly does’. I know where I stand with Kev; and that is how I like my friends to be, honest. 

 


Here is a shot taken at one of our annual end of year long turbo sessions in Arundel.  its a wonder everybody is smiling since I think this session was the six hour jobbie. That is Kevin Pearson if the centre front with Andy Ward to one side. In the row behind them you find Steve and I plus Nigel Burnett and next to him, I think that is Jon Ropers ear!

 

This photo was taken at one of the many Human Race Events on the sports calendar. This is at Dorney Lake, Eton, where the three of us had been competing in the BTF National Sprint Championships that year.


As is the form that you would hear at The Oscars... Stephen is wearing his old Ironman Austria sleeveless bike shirt that doesn't match his pants, whilst Kevin is wearing his Tuff Fitty Triathlon Club kit.

Hell on Wheels: Miss You Already!

It’s always annoying when you get to the end of an excellent book or something good on Television that has been keeping you entertained. The world of the box set has a lot to answer for. Each time Steve and I get to the end of a really riveting series we groan and think that we have seen the very best and nothing is ever going to be as good again. We have all but given up on everyday TV and are ravenous for more of the stuff that we can get through in a few weeks rather than having to wait for a series that is still stuck in the old world of one episode per week. If there is a series that we do fancy on the Beeb or ITV then we will save them until they are finished with the weekly teasing nonsense. Homeland and The Night Manager are top ranking for our own tastes.

 

We have just finished watching Hell on Wheels and have to say that we lapped that up and loved every episode even though we will admit that it does not compare to bare faced, eye opening nerve of Breaking Bad or House of Cards.

 

 

Hell on Wheels ticks a lot of boxes though; it is bursting with colourful characters and has kept us seated comfortably in a recliner for a couple of hours before we fall into bed at night, well actually we climb into bed because our bed in is three foot high but we won’t go there just for the moment.

 

 

 

We had never met Anson Mount before this series, and that man certainly knows how to pose, surely he must have been a model and on this show therefore, granting eye candy to the ladies and well as a strong, gritty, scruffy railroad construction man for the blokes. Actually we have enjoyed the story very much and the cast are all excellent and varied in interest and appeal. The scenery has been wonderful too and there are a number of true-ish stories and suggestions all linked into this brutal tale of the bad old days of taking the first transcontinental railway right across America. I have always been enthralled by the great train journeys and would definitely love to have travelled on that one; I think it’s the Union Pacific they are speaking of. It is a wonder that any of those pioneers survived the cruelty, torture and plain hardship of everyday life in those times. I would like to pat the show producer John Wirth heartily on the back for giving us this sheer entertainment of a work. We are left wanting much more.

 

 

 

So many great characters turn up is this and not many of them with any redeeming features at all. Anson Mount plays the handsome, not quite hero, Cullen Bohannon and has been quite delightful as the one person with a pocketful, or at least a tiny inkling of good inside him. The fabulously wicked Christopher Heyerdahl as the Swede is utterly horrendous and as low as they go. Colm Meaney was the only actor in the series that we knew well from British made films and TV and the stage of course. He was so very cringe makingly dis-likable in Hell on Wheels and that takes talent too of course. We loved Robin McLeavy as Eva, with her previous ownership tattooed upon her lovely face and whose wretched life has treated her in the most horrible way, but not crushed, her fighting spirit, inner strength and resilience carry her through her own hell.

 

 

 

The last episode that we saw left the option of another series or more episodes at least, wide open but I am shocked and disappointed to have read recently that they do not intend to continue with the story that I for one am hungry to see and hear more of Hell on Wheels. Please change your mind Mr Wirth.

 

 

 On the left here is
 the lovely Robin McLeavy
 An Australian by birth
 who plays the very hard done
 and facially tattooed
 bar girl/madam Eva.


Then below is Christopher Heyerdahl
Looking like a nice guy
when not in the of
character of The Swede


Then a photo of Star, Anson Mount
Looking pretty cool
I think anybody would agree

 

 

 Another view of the character of Eva, it is kind of strange how quickly you get used to the tattoo.