NUCLEAR WALKING

 I recently watched the movie Can You Ever Forgive Me?(2018).

 

 

It stars Melissa McCarthy and Richard E Grant, and it’s about Lee Israel who forged  literary letters and manuscripts in New York in the 1990s.  And the answer to the question in the title is of course we can forgive you.  It’s Melissa McCarthy and Richard E Grant.  If it had been Nicole Kidman and Steven Segal, then probably not.

 

There’s not a whole lot of walking in the movie though there is a little

 

and at one point Paul Simon pops up on the soundtrack performing ‘Can’t Run But’

 

It’s from the era when Simon thought he was a great wordsmith, but the ‘poetry’ is interspersed with a catchy chorus which runs ‘I can’t run but I can walk much faster than this’ which is OK – I don’t ask for profundity in the popular song.

 

But of course the ear pricks up at the verse

 

A cooling system 
Burns out in the Ukraine
Trees and umbrellas
Protect us from the new rain
Armies of engineers
To analyze the soil
The food we contemplate
The water that we boil

 

Here’s a picture of Paul Simon walking:

 

This is certainly not the only song to mention ‘the’ Ukraine – Giant Sand’s ‘Solomon’s Ride’ also gives it a mention – 

 

Solomon fell in love by letter. 
A brain surgeon he never met out
In the Ukraine
Gave it all up here and went out to go get her
Last time I saw him he was making
A run for the plane.

 

So I suppose Solomon wasn’t actually walking at that point.

 

Here’s a picture of Howe Gelb walking, more or less.

And here are some people walking in Chernobyl a few years back – nuclear tourists.  Ah, the good old days.