Joanna Dunham

On Monday morning I worked out the chords for the third line of “Ah! Si j'avais un franc cinquante” (Oh If I Had A Dollar Fifty) by Boris Vian.

I memorized the second verse of “La petite rose" by Serge Gainsbourg.

Around midday I made one more attempt to get the big screen monitor that I’d found working but I couldn’t and so I put it outside. The guy downstairs testing the fire alarms in Popeyes and the yet to be rented restaurant space next to it came out and commented that it was an antique. I didn’t think it was more than ten years old and it’s hard for me to think of anything as an antique that wasn’t around before I was born. He warned me that I'd be hearing some loud noises over the next little while. So now I’ve cleared the space in front of the credenza. Next I want to see if I can hang the bicycle rim that got twisted so beautifully in my accident from the ceiling without causing the ceiling to come crashing down in my kitchen.

For lunch I had a lettuce, tomato and sausage salad with a dressing made from mayonnaise and honey garlic barbecue sauce.

In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story the Kingfish's mother in law Ramona has been staying out late at night. She also has money, jewellery and a new green dress that sapphire doesn’t know where she got the money to buy. Kingfish reads in the paper that there is a female jewel thief called “The Green Orchid" and he thinks that it’s Ramona. Meanwhile Ramona reveals to Sapphire that she has a wealthy boyfriend named Clarence Shepherd. That night Clarence comes and proposes to Ramona and Kingfish is just coming in the back when he overhears the couple planning their elopement. But the way they are describing him sneaking around the back with a ladder makes Kingfish think that they are planning a robbery. Kingfish decides that the only thing he can do is take Sapphire’s jewels and her green dress down to the police station. Meanwhile however the police have discovered that the Green Orchid is actually a man in drag and so all they have to do is look for a man carrying a green dress. So Kingfish is arrested but after three days in jail he is released when they arrest the real Green Orchid, who turns out to be Clarence.

I didn’t take a bike ride because there was a chance of a thunder storm although it didn't look like it. I wanted to take the time anyway to finish my grant application.

            I photographed three government letters indicating how much money I’ll be getting over the next year. One from the Toronto Housing Allowance, another from Ontario telling me I’ll get $83 a month and a third from the GIS telling me how much pension I’ll be getting a month this year. I converted each picture into a PDF but two of the PDFs made by my ABBY reader garbled some of the numbers and letters into symbols and so I uploaded them to Cloud Convert where I made them into clean PDF copies. Then I used ABBY to combine all three PDFs into one so I could upload them to my Noah Meltz grant application. Then I completes the form and submitted it, which is a load off my mind. Maybe now I can focus on making videos of my songs for what I have left of my summer.

            After getting caught up on my journal I had about half an hour left before dinner. I would have had time to synchronize the two audio recordings of my July 3 rehearsal but I was tired and so spent the time scanning some negatives, which takes a lot less brainpower.

            For dinner I had a potato with spinach and a chicken breast with gravy while watching two episodes of The Adventures of William Tell.

            The first story begins with The Bear being captured. Tell plans on ambushing the soldiers that are escorting him back to Altdorf but suddenly some Swiss strangers attack the Austrian soldiers. Their leader is Peter von Breck who says he comes from the Elkhorn (Alphorn?) Valley. He says the Austrians are rounding up all the men in his territory for slavery and so he’s come to Uri to fight for William Tell. Peter clashes with Tell from the start and thinks he’s too cautious. He's learned of a diamond star that Gessler has bought as a gift for the emperor and he wants to steal it en route but Tell says it’s too risky. They fight and Tell wins. Peter says he’ll do what he's told from now on but then he goes off on his own and captures the star. Tell is suspicious because he doesn't believe that Gessler would have such a thin guard around something so valuable. Tell decides to go to Elkhorn to investigate Peter’s background. At Peter’s home Tell is welcomed by Peter’s wife Ingrid von Breck. She pours him wine, which she drugs, but Tell only tastes it and suspects treachery. He smells the wine and when Ingrid is out of the room he dumps it out of the window. Then he pretends to be groggy. He is helped to a bedroom and later when they are sure that Tell is unconscious, Peter’s servant Rudi sneaks into the room with a knife. Tell is ready for him and after a fight, Rudi is killed. Meanwhile Peter informs Tell’s comrades that he's learned that Gessler is bringing in reinforcements through the pass from Vienna at night in three days. Peter suggests that the whole resistance get together to ambush and eliminate the troops. He organizes a meeting of the leaders of the three other biggest resistance groups for the next day. At the meeting place Austrian soldiers are waiting in ambush. But Hedda Tell sends the Bear to look for William and then goes to the location ahead of the meeting to tell Peter that she will discourage the leaders from following his plan. Suddenly a soldier grabs and restrains her. The resistance leaders arrive and are ambushed. peter orders them all, including Hedda, to be hung right there in the barn. But since Peter thinks that Tell is dead William has the element of surprise when he and the Bear sneak into the hayloft and jump the soldiers. Considering how many soldiers there were they get taken out pretty easily and it isn’t even shown how. Tell and Peter sword fight and tell wins but doesn’t kill him. He says he will be hung in public to show what happens to Swiss traitors.

            Ingrid was played by Colette Wilde.

            In the second story, Gessler is so frustrated by his soldiers’ inability to capture William Tell that he issues a proclamation that any officer of whatever rank that captures Tell will immediately be promoted to general. Word of this reaches Gertrude, the bored wife of Colonel Wentzel who is in charge of the quiet Swiss town of Ettlingen. She has had enough of her husband’s lack of ambition and has decided that Gessler’s proclamation is the key to her husband rising in the ranks and her getting out of this boring town. She happens to know that Gretel, the younger sister of Tell’s wife lives in Ettlingen and so she pays Honest Karl the travelling peddler to take a message to Hedda that her sister is very sick. He does so and Hedda leaves for Ettlingen immediately. But when she gets there Gertrude has her placed in the dungeon. Gretel goes to inform Tell of Hedda’s incarceration and to warn him that it’s a trap. When he gets to Ettlingen he learns that an old man that used to tell Gertrude and Hedda stories once lived in Ettlingen Castle. It turns out that he helped to build the castle and knows of a secret passage that the Austrians would not be aware of. The only thing is that it leads into the Wentzel bedroom through a stone door behind the fireplace. When the Wentzels walk in Tell grabs Gertrude and threatens to kill her if Hedda is not released. Gertrude knows that Tell would not harm a woman and tells him so and he releases her. Tell fights off Colonel Wentzel and a few guards and then jumps into the moat. Gertrude then declares that if Tell does not surrender by sundown Hedda will be beheaded on the castle grounds and Gessler will be coming as a witness. Gretel lures a soldier into her house and Tell knocks him out to take his armour. Now in disguise he returns to the castle the same way as before and this time when he grabs Gertrude he makes her understand that he would kill her to save Hedda. He makes her take him to the dungeon where Hedda changes clothes with Gertrude before they tie her up. They are free of the cell but still in the dungeon when Wentzel and Gessler come down to see Hedda. Gertrude is released and the Tells are discovered. Tell fights their way back to the Wentzel bedroom and bars the door. The secret door is stuck but he finally gets it open and they escape. When the soldiers break in there is no one there. Gessler demotes Wentzel to captain and sends the couple to an even worse town.

            Gertrude was played by Harriette Johns, who starred in “Meet Mr. Callaghan”, “An Ideal Husband”, “Pride and Prejudice” and “A Night to Remember”.

            Greta was played by Joanna Dunham, who studied painting at the Slade School of Art in London under Lucien Freud. She attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art with Brian Epstein, the future manager of The Beatles. She was recommended by Marilyn Monroe for the role of Mary Magdalene in “The Greatest Story Ever Told”. She became pregnant during the year long production and so the director had to use special camera angles so it wouldn’t show. She returned to painting when her acting career slowed down and opened a gallery in a converted farm building in Suffolk.