Salmon

Saturday 12 May

During the time I was at the gym, around midday, Lara felt energetic enough to take a little promenade circling the dining room table four times, Baxter and all, no oxygen. She wasn't even winded by the time she was stretched out again. After lunch, cooked by Souad, one of the gardes-malades, she did another four rounds.

Lara hates the idea she has no clue what goes on in the world, so I set her up with her laptop in her, eh, lap. She is watching CNN International as I write this.

I will go out and buy a cordless baby-phone so Lara can wake-up the lady who stays overnight directly. Last night Lara got up three times but was unable to get my attention, deep asleep. Consequently, I was not waking up the night-lady as I normally would. The baby-phone will shorten the line of communication.

"Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" was announced as a 'feel-good' movie, and it was: good writing, good direction, a bit trite sometimes but palatable, not least of all by the acting of Kristin Scott Thomas ("The English Patient"), Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor. Not normally a film I would be eager to see, but it was just what the doctor ordered and at the right moment: I was softly simmering and stewing at home and needed to break out for a few hours.

I was sitting in the theater, phone in hand, waiting for any vibrations, but none came. Lara was quietly plodding away at her poetry, sitting up in bed at home. I was back again a little after nine. In order to compensate for my absence I made her miso soup with dumplings while I told her all about the movies. We tried to guess how many movies we had actually seen together over the past twenty years. Probably a little under one a week on average, adding up to close to some seven hundred films, we figured.