In which the newbie blogger comes across as an anorak-wearer -- she isn't, although she owns a very cozy Mountain Equipment Co-op winter coat...

Elder daughter has been at computer all day with high school buddy creating a CD representative of life and issues in Canada post-WW2. I surrender the computer automatically for school purposes, so spent the afternoon reading Atonement by Ian McEwan, since we found an inexpensive copy while using up younger daughter's gift certificate --- on things for younger daughter, I hasten to add.

The book, as is usually the case, is clearer than the movie, which makes me wonder once more about the disparities in the dates in the film. (As I mentioned yesterday, the story begins in the summer of 1935, but events described as four years later are obviously meant to be at the time of the British Expeditionary Force's retreat from France, that is, late May of 1940.) Anachronisms in movies irritate me enormously, because they shatter my willing suspension of disbelief and catapult me back into the here-and-now which is what I go to movies to escape. It seems like a very expensive movie for such an error; could this be deliberate and why? And surely I have better things to gnaw my knuckles over?

Last night when I did have computer access, I started finding out more about this blog business, by editing, labelling, and trying to make my profile alluring (or at least witty). I learned in the process that there appear to be at least half-a-dozen "Persephones" posting out there in cyberspace, including one on "Blogger". Apparently, she's been blogging since 2002, at first with every aspect about her fertility treatments, then after the birth of twin boys, every detail of their breast-feeding. However, as this particular "Persephone" reasonably points out (possibly after repeated complaints from readers?), I don't have to read her blog. So I won't. I've also discovered that one of the Persephones is a regular participant in a Doctor Who online discussion group. Now, I don't participate in any online discussion groups, but I have been known, on occasion, to respond to other bloggers on the topic of Doctor Who. The coincidence is a bit unnerving though...

I'm gonna wash that man right out of my basket

"As the first day of the year goes, so goes the year," intoned my husband, as we trudged down through horizontal snowfall to the bus stop. I got really worried about this ten minutes later, as I stood blinking back tears, gazing into the window of one of the neighbourhood's recently bankrupted coffee shops, wondering why I persist in leaving the travel planning to him. A bus eventually showed up and we made it to Atonement on time, our choice for this year's New Year film. Therefore, I am refraining from doing the Resident Fan Boy's laundry today, as he has just told me that there is a superstition which holds that washing someone's clothes on New Year's Day will wash that person out of your life. Which means, I guess, that you should offer to do laundry for your bêtes noirs today.


This has been the sort of Christmas that Ottawans like to imagine is typical of their Christmas. Less than half of our eight (oh gawd, 8?) Christmases here have been white; the rest have been grey, kind of khaki, and usually icy. The Resident Fan Boy and I made our way through the streets from the movie, there being little bus service on this eighth day of Christmas. I cursed myself for failing to bring my camera as we waded down a deserted Sparks Street where a quartet of naked black statues gamboled in the swirling flakes, past the nearly whited-out tomb of the Unknown Soldier, by Laura Secord standing forlornly like the little match girl, only far better clad in her empire-line coat and bonnet. Story-book flakes continued to dance down on tobogganers at McDonald Gardens Park ("If we were half-decent parents," I remarked, "we'd be taking our children tobogganing instead of pissing off to movies.") and people with the countenances of pilgrims parading down Charlotte and over the St Patrick's bridge, shouldering snowshoes, cross-country-skiing paraphernalia, or snowboards.

Atonement, all in all, seems a splendid way to start the new year. I think the Resident Fan Boy found it a tad depressing, but I'm with Stephan Moffat who has Sally Sparrow in his Doctor Who episode Blink declare: "Sad is happy for deep people." Moffat may be full of it, for all I know, but sad good art doesn't depress me, while bad art invariably does, no matter how upbeat.

Anyway, Atonement: splendid cinematography; Keira Knightly acting like Helena Bonham Carter for the first half, and Winona Ryder for the second; five glorious minutes of Vanessa Redgrave; and a plot which, despite zigzagging back and forth (which would drive my mother wild), is enthralling and plausible --- except for one bit and by the end of the movie, you know why this is so. Oh yes, and I'm not sure what James McAvoy's character would be doing deep in the war and ready to be evacuated from Dunkirk four years after the initial events which are supposed to have occurred in 1935. Not-so-upbeat artistic license, perhaps?