Peter and Gordon

            On Monday morning I sang through “On n'est pas là pour se faire engueuler" (We Didn't Come Here to Be Shouted At) by Boris Vian to make sure I have all the chords right. I still have to go through my translation to find out if everything fits the music and the meaning.

            I memorized the first two verses of “Marilou Reggae” by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I finished cleaning all of the storage containers on the big upper shelf of my bedroom and took from one of them all of the collages that used to be on my walls.

            I had sunflower seeds and coconut water for lunch.

            In the early afternoon I did my exercises and tried to open up my Amos and Andy files from Winzip so I could listen to one of them while exercising. It took at least twenty minutes to open and so I’d had enough with that Winzip file. Once all the files were open I just copied them into a folder and deleted the Winzip file.

            I didn’t take a bike ride because it had been raining and it looked like it might rain some more. It didn't but I wanted to get some writing done anyway.

            For dinner I had a potato and a chicken leg with gravy. I also sautéed a yellow pepper and an onion and added about half of one of the cartons of liquid egg that I’d gotten from the food bank and ate half of the scrambled eggs with my meal.

            I watched two episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood.

            The first story begins with a member of the resistance against Prince John leaving Robin's camp on his way to the Holy Land with dispatches for King Richard. But shortly after his departure he is captured by the deputy sheriff who tries to use him to trap Friar Tuck into exposing himself as a colleague of Robin Hood. The deputy asks Tuck to give absolution to his prisoner who will hang at dawn. He tells him that the prisoner is not in the dungeon but rather at a secret location which he will only tell the friar if he swears to tell no one. The deputy reasons that if Robin Hood does try to rescue the prisoner only Friar Tuck could possibly have told him where he was. Tuck goes to a small cottage that serves as the man’s prison and grants him absolution. Later Tuck announces to the people of Sherwood that he will be giving a special sermon at the church. When the deputy hears of this he attends because he is sure that Tuck plans to use his sermon to convey the prisoner’s location. Robin also attends the sermon. Tuck begins by mentioning the prisoner that is condemned to die and telling everyone that he does not need their prayers. The deputy immediately stands and tells his men to arrest the friar because if the prisoner does not need their prayers he must have been rescued. The archbishop is also there and the deputy tells him that he will prove that Tuck is a criminal by taking him to the place where the prisoner had been held. When the archbishop asks where they are going the deputy tells him and of course Robin overhears. The deputy is surprised to find that the prisoner is still in the cottage. He asks Tuck why he said that the prisoner did not need prayer and Tuck answers that after receiving absolution prayers are unnecessary. Robin and his men break in and free the prisoner. The deputy says this proves that Tuck told Robin where the prisoner was but Robin tells the deputy that it was he that revealed the location of the prisoner.

            In the second story Robin and Marian are hunting when Marian’s dog falls into a river. A boy of eleven jumps in to save the dog. Robin and Marian learn that the boy has been living in Sherwood Forest for two days. He says his name is Edmund and that he has escaped from the life of a page in a castle where he is beaten and he has come to join Robin Hood’s outlaws. Robin takes him back to camp. Marian is sure from the boy’s manner that he is more than a page. She notices that the boy’s ring carries the family seal of the Griffin Rampant. The next day the boy tells Little John that a Norman knight could handle life in the woods better than a Saxon. Little John asks the boy if he can beat a Saxon boy in a test of strength and endurance and he assures him he could. Little John tells him how much wood a Saxon boy can chop with an axe and thereby puts the boy willingly to work. The owner of the Blue Boar comes to tell Robin that a nobleman is waiting to talk with him at the inn. The man is Lord Torrence and he says that the boy ran away from Walden Castle. He was a political prisoner there under the care of Count DeWalden. The boy is Arthur, Duke of Brittany, King Richard’s nephew and heir. He was a prisoner because he stands between Prince John and the throne. Torrence says that Prince John has ordered the boy killed. He says he represents the boy's mother, Duchess Constance. Robin agrees to bring Arthur to his mother at The Blue Boar the next evening. Meanwhile Marian and Tuck find out from a book of heraldry who the boy’s mother is and Marian goes to see the Duchess Constance at the palace in Stoke. After Arthur has finished chopping wood the men make him a gift of a bow and arrows and a Lincoln green outlaw's habit. Robin takes Arthur to the woods outside the Blue Boar and Robin goes in to make sure everything is safe. Torrence arrives with a lady who goes to wait for Arthur in her room. Robin says goodbye to Arthur and leaves him with Torrence. When Robin returns to camp he finds Marian is there with the real Duchess Constance and he realizes he’s been tricked. He knows that they would not kill the boy at the inn or the open road. He figures they would take him to Walden Castle and so he rides to head them off. On the way to Walden Castle Arthur escapes from his horse and runs towards the woods with Torrence after him. Robin catches up and he crosses swords with Torrence. Robin forces Torrence to drop his sword but has Robin is sheathing his own sword Torrence picks his up again. He is about to strike when Arthur shoots him in the hand.

            Constance and Arthur were real people and King Richard did declare Arthur to be his heir as part of a treaty with Philip II of France. Richard died when Arthur was twelve and too young to take the throne and so on his deathbed Richard proclaimed John to be his heir. Arthur was imprisoned at Rouen Castle in 1203 at the age of sixteen by King John and probably killed.

            Arthur was played by an eleven year old  Peter Asher who would grow up to be half of the duo Peter and Gordon, who had a hit with the Lennon and McCartney song World Without Love. He later became a record producer and his name became familiar to me because he produced the first few James Taylor records. Paul McCartney wrote Yesterday while he was engaged to Peter’s sister, Jane. It's fairly obvious from looking, but Mike Myers has admitted that he modelled the appearance of Austin Powers after Peter Asher.