Sunday report

Take five minutes, my friends, to see a delightful little film that packs a punch. Go to my friend Chris's blog, http://www.artistsurvivalskills.com/blog/ and scroll down to Friday January 29. The film is called Get out! I've seen it 3 times. A treat.

Deadly cold today, but not like Washington, D.C. How extraordinary that we have no snow here and they are buried in a giant storm. I just wrote anxiously to my cousin there, who emailed back that there's more snow than she has ever seen in her life, and she went to school in the midwest. The world is topsy-turvy, no doubt about it.

Spent my usual hour cooking and listening to Eleanor Wachtel - today she talked to the extremely interesting David Hare, playwright extraordinaire. Riveting - about U.S. politics, the tragedy of Tony Blair's need to be aligned with powerful people, the responsibility of playwrights, the dire lack of accountability and conscience among the world's bankers. He spoke of his own background, saying that his father was like the lead character of Mad Men - a Fifties man who would talk to his children for two or three minutes for entertainment, and then tell them to go away; the profound insecurity that has produced in his adult life. Highly recommended.

Lots of company today. I Skyped with Lynn in the south of France, she five hours ahead drinking wine and eating cheese after dinner, so I opened a bottle and had a mid-afternoon glass too, and the two of us sipped, laughed and chatted as if we were sitting at the kitchen table and not thousands of miles apart. My old friend Louise came down from Ottawa yesterday and stayed here last night, today came back after a memorial service to be joined by our mutual friend Jessica. So I Skyped Lynn again so she could talk and laugh with Louise and Jessica too. The four of us first met at Carleton University in 1967, and were reunited today through the screen of my little Mac.

All of us so very, very young.

And then my son, who has a terrible 'flu, took a cab across town for some motherly TLC. He's moaning on the sofa now, plied with tea, toast, Tylenol and consommé, but managing also to flip the remote from the Superbowl to the hockey game to the Simpson's. Even though he's so ill, his remote finger works really well, so I know he'll survive. Very reassuring.