Yoko erects peace pole and all hell breaks loose

Imagine: no sooner is Yoko’s peace column erected [as it were] than all hell breaks loose in the Reykjavík city council, in fact so drastically that the majority collapsed yesterday and before you could say allyouneedisloveloveloveisallyouneed we had a new city government and a new mayor. All in the space of half a day.

Ironically, the Big Controversy that finally broke the council was a collaboration between the City of Reykjavík and Reykjavík Energy in a new company [Reykjavík Energy Invest] – and those two just happen to be the very parties instrumental in getting Yoko’s peace column up. Which has people wondering whether all the peace this column is supposed to be facilitating is, in fact, going into the column itself, with none left over for the surroundings. It's a thought.

Anyway, the former mayor has been booted out and we have a new mayor and a new four-[count ‘em!]-party, left-wing coalition. I didn’t vote for the old guy so I’m not sorry to see him go, but on the other hand I’m not positive about the new coalition either. We shall just have to see.

But on to more important things – like the fabulous film that EPI and I went to see this evening, held over from the International Film Festival last week, a German film called The Edge of Heaven [Auf der Anderen Seite in German, which means ‘On the Other Side’ – weird translation]. It was excellent – made by a Turkish-German citizen, the first film I’ve seen that reflects the Turkish-German reality, for as many of you will know there is a very large Turkish population in Germany [Turks were brought over to rebuild the country after WWII] and a great deal of resulting conflict. It’s the second excellent German production I’ve seen this year – the first being, of course, the amazing Lives of Others, which is my favourite movie so far this year.

Anyway, The Edge of Heaven is basically made up of two separate stories that interconnect in more ways than one. It’s filled with pathos and social commentary, emotion and drama, and for fear of spoiling the plot for anyone I won’t say any more. Except that it was really moving and I highly recommend it.

Oh, and also I’m completely delighted that Doris Lessing got the Nobel Prize for literature. She's one of my favourite writers, and the introduction to the second edition of Golden Notebook had a profound impact on my life, as some of you may remember from this post.

WEATHER!
The low-pressure area we were in for arrived as promised – passing through with the accompanying storm and rain last night. It had calmed down a bit today and the sun even made a few brave attempts to shine, but never quite got through. Then around five it suddenly blew up into a torrential rainstorm with the skies opening to dispense rain by the barrelful. It’s been fairly mild, though, which sort of makes up for it. Temps right now 11°C [52F], the sun came up at 8:07 this morning and went down at 6:19 pm.