Anna Karenina

Different iterations of Moiya, Janet, Bonnie, Kelvin and I went off to see the movies over the Christmas holidays at the Salamar Classic in Salmon Arm.  The theatre is old style – like the Plaza.  Yes, the  Salama roof may leak, but that is only a problem when it is thawing outside.  The price is right.  $5 for a matinee.  The popcorn is large and the pop even bigger.  I know that when half a cup of milk spills on a table, it seems like a quart has spilled, it spreads so far.  So you can imagine what happened when I brushed by Janet’s  litre of soda and it went pouring all over the floor. Driven by gravity.  Flooding the floor in front of us and down who knows how far.  The theatre gave Janet a refill, but they didn’t do a mop up, so the people in front of us had the added pleasure of sticky to the floor when they tried to move all night.

If that wasn’t enough, Moiya was taking off her rings and one of them fell to the floor.  I dropped as well, running my hands wherever I could, remembering that the last time she dropped a ring she didn’t find it.  I found the ring.  But when I went down, I hadn’t thought of how hard it would be to get up between the narrow rows of seats and the backs of the seats in front of me.  A nice challenge like that before settling into a good movie never hurts.

I was blown away by a couple dressed as Russians in the lobby.  Just regular theatre patrons.  She had on a fur scarf, a ballroom gown with lovely flounces, long gloves that went above the elbows and rings over the fingers of the gloves.  He was dressed as a Cossack Army Office.  Now that was the fun of being at a small local theatre.

And it goes without saying ... we all enjoyed the show.  The book would have taken hours, maybe days to read.  The movie gave us a nice taste of what would be coming should we bury ourselves in that project.

Arta