My namesake got married today, not sure if any of you heard about his wedding in London, but it went well so no worries. I celebrated with a pot of tea and scones followed by some crustless cucumber sandwiches and a Pimm’s Cup. I wish them well.
I took a ninety-minute walk today and thought that everyone would be happy since it is a beautiful day, but alas, there were no smiles to be had. I read an article that confirms that Russians don’t smile. I suppose if you came in 167th out of 178 countries on the World Map of Happiness, you wouldn’t smile either.
My walk took me past the train station where the AeroExpress to one of the major airports departs every half hour. The place was filled with people waiting for the next train, which suggests to me that lots of folks are taking off prior to the two big holidays this week. I’m imagining the airports are a mess today and I’m ever so pleased that we are sticking around for the festivities here. Those that are staying will be participating in lots of different marches and demonstrations depending upon what party you belong to. Some governments are warning their citizens to stay away from these demonstrations since they fear they might devolve into riots.
We started to watch Gorky Park last night and it was strange to see it again after having recently reread the book. First of all, we kept looking at the background scenery and there aren’t even any establishing shots of Moscow. Stockholm, where it was filmed, really doesn’t look like Moscow did in 1983 when it was filmed. The other rather jarring thing, that I never noticed when I first saw the movie, is that they have all the Russians speaking with various British accents. William Hurt has made up his own, and being an American he sounds very funny. Then they have the rest of them with Scottish, Irish and something that sounds like Welsh. It is all very funny, but I suppose any accent makes you think it is a movie about a foreign country. The good part is that so far, the movie is holding true to the book, which makes it rather exciting.
From CC: I guess my namesake got married today too, given that my middle name is Catherine. I didn’t have any scones or cucumber sandwiches, however. The school went ga-ga over the whole affair – more people were dressed up than not, including the little kids. Many tiaras and many hats, some of them very cool. Wedding cake was served outside the cafeteria during the entire lunch period and it was actually quite tasty. The middle school principal, a lovely woman from England who looks like Diana Rigg (but is much younger) wore a frothy white wedding gown and veil with a sign on her back that said, “SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME.” All in good fun but I can’t say a lot of work got done! I sat and watched the actual wedding with my tech support guys – because they have a big television in their office area – but that wasn’t all that much fun because somehow Russian guys don’t have the same interest or questions or comments that women of any nationality might have. So we sat there mostly in silence until one of them wanted to know what “holy ghost” meant after a prayer (holy spirit is the closer translation; ghost didn’t make sense to him). In case you’re wondering, I dressed in my normal blazer and slacks – although if I’d had access to my whole wardrobe in WV I probably would have put together something reasonably elegant with a hat to match.
Have a lovely weekend, Cindy and Wm
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