Monthly Archives: October 2010

Things of import

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Oh dear. I very much fear that we’ve just spent a large amount of money to import across the ocean a bunch of crap that will end up in the next school yard sale.

Our shipment arrived in Baltimore on Monday night. On Wednesday morning, I hightailed it up the I-95 to the customs building there, small person in tow, to get somebody to stamp a vital piece of paper (and yay, not charge us any extra money for importing our own belongings) and back in time to squeak into the nursery school car park with seconds to spare to pick up Monkey at 11.30. (I did have a backup plan in place in case we’d hit traffic, but luckily we didn’t. We also managed to avoid driving in the torrential rain of both earlier and later that day, for which I was very thankful.) Poor Mabel was so pissed off by the long car-ride (45 minutes each way, with only a boring trip on my back to a big building with lots of serious people to break it up) that she refused point blank to get into the car the next day until I swore it was only to go as far as the supermarket, and there’d be a bagel in it for her. (Then again, there always is.)

Today, B rented a truck from those sneaky people who pretend it’s really cheap until you discover they’re going to charge you for every mile you drive, went up to Baltimore again, and loaded all the boxes into it, and then out again at the other end. I came back from a busy morning out with two babies (zwei! zwei babien!) to find them all neatly piled in the front room.

So far I’ve unearthed B’s entire back catalogue of cassette tapes, his shot-glass collection, a plastic mixing bowl, a battered sieve, a very cheap bedside lamp with an Irish plug, some nicknacks I never liked, a Casio calculator (solar powered – the cutting edge of 1987 technology), and a picture of me at the Grand Canyon.

In fairness, there’ve also been some lovely pasta bowls I’d totally forgotten about, a huge serving bowl that goes with our Denby dinner service (not yet unpacked), a lot of glasses, and 8 teaspoons that almost match our cutlery. (As God is my witness, I’ll never go without teaspoons again. Cue sunset.) And a lot of paintings (my Dad does watercolours in his spare time). Our walls will also never be bare again.

And B is nerdily pleased to once again have his entire Zoid army on the same landmass.

A walk with Mabel, part II; or why fresh air is highly overrated

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If you’re one of my Facebook friends, this is the long version of today’s status update.

It was a beautiful day. Mild, breezy, washed clean by yesterday’s rain, with stunning autumn colours. I thought it was high time I got back into my routine of walking to school for Monkey-collection. I’d been sadly out of practice since the grannies’ visit, and driving is so deliciously easy… Also, on the three days a week he stays to lunch, pick-up time is 12.30, which just happens to be Mabel’s naptime. So there’s always the teeny tiny worry that she might fall asleep on the way and take most of her nap while I’m walking instead of while I’m sitting down with a nice cup of tea.

But we set off, with plenty of time in hand for the 25-minute walk. On the way, we passed a friend, with her toddler sitting up happily in the stroller and her preschooler (who had not stayed for lunch and therefore gets out an hour earlier) walking along beside her. I looked at my watch and marvelled at her patience: it had taken them almost 45 minutes to get that far. I didn’t have such time to dawdle: we’d be making the return journey at a faster pace, in order to be home quick-smart for naptime. Spit spot, as the lady says.

Despite the unseasonal warmth, Mabel was wearing a bright turquoise raincoat she’d caught sight of earlier and had to have. It’s the sort that is basically rubber outside, so she must have been well insulated. This didn’t bode well for keeping her awake. But several rounds of her current favourite, Sing a Song of Sixpence, did wonders. (I don’t quite have the tune right: I seem to sing the same melody for every line, so I probably sound like a tone-deaf plain-chant monk. Luckily, she doesn’t complain.) Despite some serious droopage halfway there, she made it to the school conscious. Win!

Grabbed the boy, located his lunchbox, said bye to the teacher, and turned around in the blink of an eye, give or take a nod to the goldfish. Then the ructions began.

[Stroller background: We have a Bob Revolution stroller. It's the best jog stroller you could ask for, and even though I've never jogged a step in my life, and hope never to have to, I love it too. It steers like a dream and has marvellous suspension. It's not a double, but there's this handy area in front of the seat that's supposed to be for the rider's feet and works very handily for a second - older, competent, unsecured - child to perch on. (I'm sure the Bob people do not endorse this use of it. It can probably lead to broken ankles if you turn the thing around too quickly. I in no way advise you to use your stroller, or anyone else's, in this manner.)


This is the best picture I can find to illustrate my point. Here Mabel is in the back (last year; her legs are significantly longer now) and Monkey is cheesing at the camera from the front.


And here you see Monkey asleep kneeling on the front with his head in the back part. On a train in Germany. Obviously.

] (closing that interpolation about the stroller here
So Mabel had ridden down in the stroller, despite some initial protests. I had the Ergo with me, but was hoping to keep her in the Bob for most of the journey home, so she wouldn’t fall asleep too quickly. Monkey hopped on the front and away we went.

The problem with this configuration (her in the back, him on the front) is that ever since she was old enough to exert her personality, she has objected to it (the configuration, not the personality) by kicking him in the back when he obscures her view – that is, all the time. When she was small it just tickled, but now her legs are long and strong enough to practically push him right off. Which means he has to teeter on the very tip of the front, dragging his feet and making it almost impossible for me to steer. So that’s just not tenable. But the boy is lay-zee. When there’s any sort of wheeled vehicle available, I just cannot get him to walk. And after a few hundred yards of Mabel yelling to be let out, and Monkey sitting on the wheel and stopping me from going anywhere much anyway, I gave in and swapped her out. So now he’s happy, ensconced in his throne, resting up after his hard morning’s play-dough pummelling, and she’s walking along merrily beside us. This will never last.

Past the football field, through the park, beside the lake. The scenery is gorgeous*. The leaves are autumnal. I feel all glowingly home-school-y as I let them drop sticks over the bridge into the water below.

(*Monkey has announced that he can’t say “beautiful” or “gorgeous” because he’s a boy. He just calls things “cool,” apparently. I can’t find out where he got this from.)

But then. Mabel starts running in the wrong direction. I decide the honeymoon is over and try to put her on my back, whereupon she pulls out her trump card: “But I have a poo !” And yes, a quick glance down the back of her nappy reveals a large gold nugget of the stuff. Darn. I really don’t want to smush that all up in her bum, and – more to the point – she really doesn’t want me to either. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to put a toddler into a back-carrier on your own, but you really do need their cooperation for that particular manoeuvre.

So on we went; Monkey quizzed me from his seat of leisure on the moral dilemmas raised by a recent tv programme, while Mabel alternately ran ahead towards the traffic (we were back out of the park now) and lagged behind to check on a leaf, a stone, or a mote of dust. The warm, sunny day became the unbearably bright and sweat-making day and my stress levels rose as Mabel’s naptime ticked past. Forty-five minutes to this very spot (where we’d passed the others earlier) started to sound eminently reasonable, and I realised that my friend didn’t necessarily have any more patience than I do; it takes as long as it takes, and you just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and pulling/encouraging the walker along, and eventually, some time, you will get home.

At the bottom of the hill, about seven minutes from home (yes, I’m being ridiculously picky – but it’s more than five, and ten sounded too long), Mabel finally ran out of steam. I had to feel sorry for her: a pooey bum and well into her naptime, and there she was gamely trying to jump off a rock in someone’s front garden instead of slogging up the horrible hill to home. I would have done much the same. At least, I would have just sat down on the rock and cried… but then, there’s the pooey bum to consider… I had no choice but to stuff her in the Ergo, and this time she must have been really exhausted because she couldn’t muster enough wriggling to prevent me. I motored up the hill, taking breath only to gripe at Monkey about how much easier this would be if he would just walk, for heaven’s sake, and made it through the door, dripping and grumpy as all get out, just as Mabel’s head started to nod on my back.

She woke up, I had to change her anyway, and by the time I tried to nurse her back down to sleep in bed, she was wide awake and chatting in her very cutest incarnation.

Wherupon Maud took a valium and checked out for an hour or five. I wish.

It’s a long way

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Mabel was “helping” me do a counties-of-Ireland puzzle given to us by a well-meaning relative a year or two ago. It’s actually quite tricky and has been fairly educational for myself and the husband. The children enjoy the loud sounds the wooden pieces make as they fall to the floor.

She had helped B with it yesterday, so was familiar with a few of the names. As I worked my way up the west coast (the easy side) she hoarded all the other pieces and I heard her muttering, “Lim’ick, there’s Lim’ick. Where’s Tipp-a- ary ?” She particularly likes Leitrim, which she pointed out is remarkably like a dachshund. (The county shapes may not be strictly geographically accurate, since in real life the country doesn’t need jigsaw bulges and inlets to keep it hanging together.)

In a little while, I had managed the whole thing, almost. “Fermanagh, goes with Monaghan. We need Fermanagh. Have you seen it? Is it on the floor?”
She peered down. “There’s Fe’managh.”
“Will you get it for me?”
“I get it for you Tuesday.”
I’m waiting for her to ask me to spot her a hamburger.

*************

It occurred to me that recent nights’ terrible bedtimes may be some sort of nighttime manifestation of separation anxiety, since Mabel has also been very unwilling to let me leave after putting her back to sleep on the first waking. This has led to annoying things like my finally getting to brush my teeth at 1.30am, or having to take out my contact lenses in the dark in her bedroom (it’s okay; they’re disposables). Not to mention the annoying thing that is my not getting more than 20 minutes a night in my own bed.

(Interpolation: Mabel has an elevated status now: her mattress went up on the futon it belonged to for the grannies’ visit, and I decided to leave it there when she went back to her room and call it her bed. As it was for her brother before her. It has the advantages of being somewhere between a single and a full in size, so there’s plenty of room for us both, and dipping somewhat in the middle so she’s unlikely to fall off. It also has no sharp corners, which I like for a child who enjoys throwing herself dramatically around. On the down side, it squeaks and creaks and clunks and ba-joinnggggs every time I move, so sneaking out after she’s fallen asleep is that much harder. I’m thinking she might get a real little bed from IKEA for her birthday.)

Anyway. I went to Ask Moxie and searched “separation anxiety 2 years” and whadaya know, there’s a great big developmental spurt just around this time that gives them separation anxiety and sleeping problems and tantrums and you name it. I have to admit that sometimes the sceptic in me thinks that whatever random number of weeks or months or years you ask Moxie about, she’s got a sleep regression for that; but all those commenters chiming in about the hellish time their just-two-year-olds are giving them still made me feel better.

So I was able to be just that bit nicer to the poor child when she woke up last night, now that I can assume that it’s not going to last forever and that after the hump things might even improve significantly. I doubt she’ll be sleeping through the night in two months’ time (as her brother was, the one I thought then was the terrible sleeper), but only waking once would be heaven. I was afraid that I’d turned her into a committed co-sleeper and I’d be stuck in her bedroom till she was seven (and that may yet be the case), but perhaps it’s not so bad.

But also: developmental spurt? The child can already climb everything there is to climb at the playground, say the whole alphabet, spell her brother’s name, and ask you why the chicken crossed the road. What’s she going to be doing next – quadratic equations? In Latin? While scaling K-2 and perfecting her standup routine? I dread to think.

A walk with Mabel

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Okay. You need to go to sleep. You keep running away when I try to nurse you down in your room, so it’s the Ergo for you, Missy. Into the stroller, Monkey, you’ll have to come too, because I can’t leave you behind.

[Five minutes later, the wrong one is asleep. I curse (inwardly, natch). Mabel is still chattering blithely.]

- What that, Mummy? What that noise? What that, Mummy? You say something, Mummy? What you say? What you saying?
- Nothing, Mabel. I didn’t say anything.
- What that, Mummy?

[I strain to hear whatever it is she's talking about. She hears all the little background noises that my ears are so used to just cancelling out, so I really have to think about it.]

- I think it’s a drill.
- Man? Man with a drill? What man doing, Mummy?
- Making holes. Go to sleep, Mabel.
- I can’t see man. Man making holes? With a drill? There’s a doggy. Look, Mummy, see the doggy? Doggy say woof woof. You sing the song about the doggy in the window woof woof woof? You sing the song, Mummy?
- No, Mabel. No more songs. Go to sleep.

[I wonder how I can bludgeon her into silence. Luckily, she's on my back so the logistics are too awkward. I slog along.]

- …The maid was in the garden, counting out her money… You sing the song for me, Mummy? You sing the blackbirds baked in a pie? ‘Winkle ‘winkle ‘ittle how I wonder what you like a diamond in the ‘ky… Can I sing a song for you, Mummy? I sing ABCDEFGLMNOP, Mummy?
- I’m not talking to you any more, Mabel. It’s nap time. Put your head down and go to sleep.
- What you say, Mummy? You not talking to me any more?
- No. [arggh]
- You not talking? I go to sleep? I run away so we have to go for a walk?

[She puts her head down. A few seconds of silence. We pass the women with the dogs and one of them says "Hi." I try to look polite and manage to muster a grimace, instead of taking out a shiv and silently stabbing her, repeatedly, for what's about to happen. Head comes up.]

- What that, Mummy? Those doggies? That the doggy behind the fence? Say woof woof woof?
- [Seethe]

Old-Hat Reviews: Nine

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This film was so unthrilling that I almost started blogging it while we were still watching. It looks great on paper: amazing cast, songs, Italy – how could it miss? And yet…it’s just not compelling at all. We stopped halfway through and I felt no compulsion to finish it tonight beyond a basic duty to the nice people at Netflix.

Daniel Day Lewis is very good – he really does disappear into the character excellently and is very believable as the charismatic Italian director who’s lost his way in both his private life and the film he’s supposed to be making. It also stars Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Marion Cotillard (of fishtail dress at the Oscars fame, or at least that’s what I always think of, not having actually seen any of her other films), Judi Dench, and Sophia Loren, for heaven’s sake. (Whom I’m afraid I thought at first was Shirley Bassey. Sorry, Sophia, but you need to lay off the fake tan. Or the carrrot juice.) It should be great, no? But the story is kind of boring, the songs are in no way memorable, and it all gets very very meta at the end.

Chicago lite perhaps, but I won’t be rushing out to buy the soundtrack for this one. Italy looks beautiful (as it should) and it’s prettily lit and shot and the ladies are lovely and sexy and whatnot; it’s all very picturesque, but there’s no soul. Italy in the 60s has classic cars and lots of sunglasses and sharp suits, but there’s a very contemporary feel to it – nothing like, for stark contrast, the amazingly gorgeous Talented Mr Ripley , where you just wanted to melt through your screen and emerge in a sun-drenched piazza to have a cafe latte and biscotti with Gwynneth Paltrow. And I’m not just saying that because of Jude, to whom I am somewhat partial. (At least, I was before he started shagging the nanny. Idiot.) It reminded us of what was possibly the best bit of all of Angel : the clip. (If you didn’t watch Angel this will seem completely pointless, but believe me, it had me falling off the sofa in giggles.)

So, in short, not worth it. Though I suppose at least it gave me something to blog about. But I think I’ll let B go back to manning the Netflix list.

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Love bombs

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I read this article the other day, and liked it. It describes “love-bombing” as a technique for re-setting a child who is particularly off kilter – giving them a whole day of mummy (or daddy) love and permissiveness. Read the article before you judge, because it’s hard to describe succinctly.

I know some people maintain that life is hard, and the sooner kids grasp that fact, the better able they’ll be to deal with it. So they let their babies cry themselves to sleep because they’ll have to fall asleep on their own for the rest of their lives, or force the shy-phase preschooler to talk to strangers because that’s how polite adults behave.

Personally, I think we would do no harm – and maybe plenty of good – by love-bombing our babies as much as we can while they’re small. I’m not talking wild and unmeasured indulgence here, but just taking the opportunity to hold them and love them up good and proper while they’ll let us. It should pay dividends now and later. Life is hard, and if we can give our kids a protective cushion they can count on at home, they’ll be better able to cope with the jagged edges of outside.

This works on the large and small scale. We all know that you can’t spoil a baby – for the first year, more or less, there’s no way that miniature person is trying to manipulate you: they’re just doing what comes naturally – looking for comfort, food, warmth, reassurance. You can’t love them too much. But even when they’re older; if I spend half an hour during the baby’s naptime watching kids’ tv with my four-year-old snuggled on my lap, I count that as money in the bank towards the rest of the day’s debits, when I might be yelling at (sorry, strongly exhorting) him to put his shoes on so we can go out, or putting his sister first because she’s smaller, again.

So go love your children while you can, before they do something really annoying and/or grow up.

Faking it

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Why is it that, when children fall asleep with you, they make sure to toss a leg or two nonchalantly over yours, and maybe an arm across your chest as well, just to ensure that you can’t creep away without their knowledge. Even in their sleep? It couldn’t be, could it, that they’re cunning little buggers? No, I’m sure it’s purely coincidental. Or innate, or something.

Mabel just now propped both legs up on me as she conked out. Monkey at this age used to fall asleep, finally, with his head resting on top of my head, for maximum imprisonment and minimum comfort.

Monkey and I have come to an agreement : I’ll cover his ears for him without complaining, if he’ll go to the bathroom when I can see he has to go, and not three hours later after a succession of increasingly teary shouting matches. So far, this is – sort of – working. It’s really picking one horn of the dilemma and landing myself on it, but at least it leads to a quieter life and a happier household, and I’m hoping he’ll grow out of the need for the sensory deprivation faster if I don’t make a big deal of it. (I’d also like him to start opening his eyes again. I’m mostly trying not to think about that.) I know he can go by himself if he has to, because he did on Monday when I was out and a friend was watching him, so I’m satisfied we don’t need to call in the shrinks just yet.

******

It dawned on me the other day that I am really, truly, a soccer mom. I bring my kid to soccer practice, so I must be. It’s a bit of an adjustment: I liked being the pregnant lady, I was delighted to be the woman with the baby, I love being the mother of the cute little ones, but soon (far too soon) I’ll just be somebody’s mum. It seems unfair, perhaps because I so vividly remember what somebody’s mum is like from the other side of the fence – the side when it’s your playground, your classroom, your teacher, and the mums are the gathering hordes outside, waiting lovingly to retrieve you from being just another one of many and bring you home to your domain, where you’re one among few, and life revolves, to some degree, around only you.

People’s mums have perms, and slacks, and cardigans, and coffee mornings and dinner parties. Times have changed, and I’ve never had a perm, but I do like my cardigans, and khakis are the slacks of the noughties. (Though three seasons of the year I live in my jeans. I’m a trendy mum.) I know, because the supermarket’s canned music tells me so, as I hum along the aisles, that I’m the one who’s supposed to be doing the grocery shopping these days. All this time I’ve been pretending to be a grown-up, doing the things grown-ups do, and now it turns out that these small people I’ve nurtured in my bosom (and their friends) think that’s just what I am. How they betray me, reeling me in to motherhood by letting me bask in their reflected cuteness, and spitting me out all too soon, all haggard and grey and looking like somebody’s mum.

Perception is everything. “Fake it till you make it” really just means fake it until everyone else thinks you look like it.

Goodnight kisses

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Bedtime with Mabel has been a bit of an ordeal lately.

I’ve taken to sitting her on the potty before bed, as she’s amenable, and she had started using it as a procrastination measure, dramatically exclaiming, “But I have a pew ” to get out of the bedroom once we’d settled in. This way at least I can pre-empt that, even though I really have no interest in having a totally potty trained baby just yet: I like being able to change her when it suits me, not whenever the mood strikes her to drag us all to the bathroom. But I know well enough not to look this particular gift horse in the mouth, so I’m trying to go with it.

For the last two evenings, after sitting down and squeezing out a couple of drops, she’s leapt up, turned around to face the potty, and announced, “I going to use my penis.”
“Mabel, you don’t have a penis.”
“Yes I do have a penis.” She peers down over her tummy.
“No, Mabel. You have lots of other good stuff, but you don’t have a penis. If you had a penis, we’d be able to see it.”
“Oh.”

Then we’re in bed. I start to nurse her. She squirms. She squiggles. She wants to lie down. She wants the other side, the “big side”.
“Mabel,” I sigh, “they’re both the same. You just had this side.”
But I shuffle over anyway.
Eventually, she straddles me, wags a finger admonishingly in my face, and says, “You stay there. Fi’ minutes.” She slowly gets off the bed, pretending to look for a dolly on the other side of the room. Then she slyly glances at me, sees her opportunity, and makes a break for freedom: out the door (ajar, for light), and slithering down the stairs like an eel, to run into the family room and climb up into the stroller, head down, “hiding” from inevitable retrieval.

I console myself, as I mount the stairs again with my wriggly, giggly, wide-awake burden (“I not wide-awake. I Mabel.”) that her brother was a terrible sleeper too, and look at him now. Hard out with a bead of sweat on his nose because he’s directly under the glare of his bedside light. Every night, when Mabel’s finally asleep, I turn it off, leaning precariously over from the top step of his loft-type bed on one tippytoe. The step creaks and my sweater might brush his face, but he doesn’t budge, even with the click and the sudden darkness. And there he’ll stay, till 6am. There’s hope for Mabel yet. I think.

Mommybrain

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At some point last night or early this morning I woke, sort of; glanced in the half-light at the head beside me (and a bit lower), and thought: “No, not you. You’re not supposed to get any. Gerroff.” And disturbed the poor innocent sleeping toddler whom I’d mistaken, in my befuddlement, for her big brother.

I used to do that a lot in the early weeks and months after she was born. I’d look down at the head in the bed and wonder whose it was – the big one or the little one? Sometimes I was half in a dream state and couldn’t tell for quite a few seconds. It didn’t really matter, I suppose, but if it was the big one, then where was the small one gone?

This is called mommybrain. When you’re pregnant it’s pregnancy brain – which almost cost us $600 in early cancellation fees of two phone contracts because I read “October” and understood “September” – and after you’ve had the baby, it’s post-partum brain. But when the dust has settled and your hormones and brain cells are supposedly back to square one, it’s just plain old mommybrain, and it’s here to stay.

Mommybrain is the reason I always know where the small pink spotted sunglasses are, and where the plastic binoculars are quite likely to be, but managed to lose my favourite jeans for a week because I put them in a different drawer.

Mommybrain makes me cut the crusts off without being asked and inspect all slices of bread for (a) seeds and (b) holes before doing anything with them.

Mommybrain is what keeps me wide awake and ready for any action that may be needed at 3am, but falling asleep drooling on the sofa at 2.30pm every afternoon.

Mommybrain must have something to do with the way I can always remember the kids’ names but never the adults’.

Mommybrain is definitely the reason the $20 cashback I got at the supermarket last week is still in the pocket of my other jacket, wrapped up in a receipt and a roll of coupons I’ll never use, while I have a grand total of three singles in my wallet.

And I would very much like to blame mommybrain on the fact that the good sofa now has some purple accents courtesy of a small girl with a marker, but I must own up to the fact that it’s really the fault of the Internet. Take that, Internet.

What have you blamed on mommybrain lately?

Old-Hat Reviews: The Time Traveler’s Wife

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The movie, not the book.

I enjoyed the book a few years ago and looked forward to reading it again, but then my mother-in-law stole it* and I haven’t yet managed to get my hands on a replacement copy. So I felt that by now I was far enough removed from the written word to watch the film without getting all annoyed about it. (Because some people did, you know.)

[*In her defence, I have to say that she didn't really steal it. She liberated it from the bonds of my bookshelf and sent it on its way in the world to be enjoyed by others. My mother-in-law views books as fluid objects, transcending ownership. I view books as mine, living on my bookshelves, to be lent out with caution and recovered zealously. But since I had appropriated her copy of Never Let Me Go in similar circumstances the same year, and she almost always leaves us whatever she's finished reading at the end of a visit, I'm in no position to take the high ground here.]

I’m blessed (from the perspective of one who enjoys re-reading books and gets great value out of a big reveal – again) with a terrible memory for details, once any length of time has passed. (I was a great exam candidate so long as I could review everything the night before, but ask me to integrate a whatsit or define a function these days and you’ll be met with a blank look and a referral to my husband.) What I remembered from the book, apart from the basic plot of the bloke cursed with sudden bouts of uncontrollable, naked, time travelling, was that for some reason I had got it into my head that he was Harrison Ford. Ford is, of course, too old for the part, but such logic had no place in my head. Transferring my affections to Eric Bana was a bit of a leap for me, but I managed to accept his Henry fairly well – it probably helped divorce the on-screen story further from the written version, which was no bad thing for me.

Claire-in-my-head was the girl from Six Feet Under ( Lauren Ambrose ) – perhaps influenced by the fact that her character in that was also called Claire, and that she’s a redhead. Rachel McAdams was a bit too dark of hair, but she’s prettily generic-looking and was okay in the part, I thought.

I don’t know what sort of experience this film would have been for someone who hadn’t read the book: I suspect they might be left in the dust as the complex logic of this particular iteration of time travel was, sort of, brought to life. Of course, there’s always an element of suspension of disbelief needed, and much as I love this sort of thing, I usually do end up at some point gesticulating wildly at the screen and going, “But, but, but…” like a broken record as my disbelief crashes to the ground and my logic circuits kick in uninvited. And this one really messes with the mind when it comes to predestination versus free will, because unlike some other time-travel scenarios, in this case there is only one future. And if you know it and you can’t change it, what’s the frigging point of anything, really? Gah.

The narrative moved very quickly, but such is always the way with films of books you’ve lived with and allowed to get under your skin. There’s no way you can ever love a film like a book. There was hardly any time for the sense of foreboding and imminent disaster that I remember, the long-drawn-out fears for Henry’s feet and legs and ability to get out of trouble fast, the repeated visits to the scene of his death, with a little more information being gleaned each time.

It was a decent enough way to pass the time, and mostly just made me resolve to get my hands on the book again. Maybe this just wasn’t the right medium for this story; it’s much, much better in words. Even Harrison Ford couldn’t have made it work.

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