Yvonne Romaine

            On Sunday morning I woke up at 4:00 to the sound of a loud rainstorm. It was still coming down hard when I got up at 5:00 and on top of that a guy was walking around screaming.

I uploaded “Bourrée de complexes” (Buried in Complexes) by Boris Vian to Christian’s Translations and started fixing the HTML so the text is all the same font size.

            I memorized the fourth verse of “Lunatic Asylum” by Serge Gainsbourg.

            During song practice I continued to struggle with playing the A chord without dulling some of the strings. I think that I can do it because sometimes I almost get it right. So if I can almost do it properly once then I should be able to get it once. If I can get it once then I can get it twice and so on. The problem is that I played for years thinking that I was doing it right and so the bad playing has become habitual. It’s going to take a while to break what’s become automatic.

            Later in the morning I was sitting at my computer and I heard another downpour behind me. After a few minutes I turned around to see that the rain was coming in my window and it had already soaked a quarter of my living room floor. I closed the windows and mopped it up.

Around midday I washed and scrubbed another section of my kitchen floor about halfway between the bathroom door and the window. This was easier than the last two times because there was a lot less glue to scrape up. I think that the next few times as I make my way to the filing cabinet beside the radiator there won’t be any glue at all, but when I get back to the north side again there might be lots.

For lunch I made a small cheese and lettuce sandwich with two slices off the end of a loaf of Portuguese corn bread.

In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. This was a rehashed story about Kingfish needing money to buy a present for Sapphire’s birthday. Kingfish says to himself, “It looks like I’m gonna have to go to work, and I know just the guy to go to work on!” He tries to convince Andy that he has cholera and that he needs $100 for a choleraectamy operation. Andy doesn’t buy it and so Kingfish levels withy him and so he lends him $100. While Kingfish is out shopping for a present a shady guy calls him into an alley to buy a beaver coat. The label says “Lennox Fur Company” and the guy says it’s his company but they are liquidating and it saves on the overhead to sell the coats in alleyways. Kingfish buys the coat and of course Sapphire is very happy. But then Kingfish learns the coat is stolen. He decides to try to hire someone to pretend to be a burglar and to make a show of coming to his place and stealing the coat in front of Sapphire and to make it look good by conking him on the head. But Kingfish asks six friends to try to find one pretend thief but they each end up finding someone. And so on the given night, one after another burglars keep coming to steal coats and to hit Kingfish on the head. In the end Kingfish goes to deliver the stolen coat to the woman that owns the department store. But Sapphire and her mother follow him and when they see him giving Sapphire’s coat to another woman they begin breaking things over his head.

            I loaded the MOV file of my July 4^th song practice and the voice recording of the same session into Movie Maker and started synchronizing the audio from both recordings. I spent about half an hour setting up the project and got the two recordings about a minute apart.

            It was so cool in the evening that I put my sweat pants and socks on instead of shorts and bare feet for the first time in weeks.

            For dinner I had a fried egg and warmed up naan with a beer while watching two episodes of The Adventures of Sir Lancelot.

            In the first story King Mark has laid siege to King Boudwin’s castle. Mark's men catch one of Boudwin’s knights trying to escape with a message for King Arthur. They kill him and find that the message speaks of an alliance between Arthur and Boudwin against Mark. One of Mark’s men disguises himself as the courier in order to learn Arthur’s battle plan. But Merlin advises Arthur to only tell Lancelot the plan and for him to commit it to memory. Meanwhile Merlin has trained a pigeon to carry messages and claims that he invented the idea although it goes back to ancient times. Lancelot knows this but as usual keeps his friend’s secret that he’s not as magical as he wants Arthur to believe. Brian is given the task of caring for Merlin’s pigeon and so when Lancelot and Brian leave with the impostor, he takes the bird with him. The courier leads them into a trap and Lancelot and Brian are captured. Lancelot is tortured but he refuses to reveal Arthur’s battle plan. Mark’s wife Isoult comes to tend Lancelot’s wounds and slips him a dagger. Brian is taken away and Lancelot is given time to think about talking before they begin to torture his squire. Lancelot sends Merlin’s pigeon to Camelot with a message asking Arthur to change his battle plan. When Arthur sends back a new plan Lancelot tells Mark that he will reveal the plan that he had refused to give under torture but only when Brian is returned to him. When Brian is brought back Lancelot tells Mark the plan, then he uses the dagger to get himself and Brian out of the cell. He signals to Arthur from the castle walls and lets him into the castle. This is such a low budget production that all Arthur has for an army to attack Mark’s castle is himself, Merlin and two knights. Mark doesn’t seem to have many more knights than that either. So Arthur’s few knights beat Mark’s somewhat more knights and Mark is imprisoned for a while and forced to swear that he will never attack Boudwin again. Isoult divorces Mark and goes to live at Boudwin’s castle.

            In the second story, Sir Bliant is a good old knight but his three sons are assholes and they have abducted the three daughters of Sir Rolf and taken them to Sir Bliant’s castle. Sir Bliant comes to Arthur to ask for help. Sir Lancelot proposes that he use his ability to create disguises to transform him to look like Sir Bliant so he can return to Bliant’s castle and teach his son’s a lesson that an older man can’t. This is easy since Sir Bliant is already being played by the actor who plays Lancelot. Lancelot as Bliant convinces Katherine, the oldest daughter of Rolf, to tell his oldest son Bart that she and her sisters will marry the champion of the games. Since Bart knows that he and his brothers are the best at these games he agrees. The three sons are surprised when their father Bliant steps up to challenge them. First he defeats Bartelot in the spear throw, then he conquers Breause in wrestling and finally he faces Bart in a sword battle but the other two brothers also draw swords and so Bliant, with a little help from Brian, overwhelms all three, forcing them to submit to his authority and release Sir Rolf’s daughters.        

            Katherine was played by Gillian Owen, who moved to Australia where she became a drama coach.

            One of Rolf’s daughters with a non-speaking part was played by Yvonne Romaine, who is most remembered for her roles in horror films such as “Corridors of Blood”, “The Curse of the Werewolf”. “Captain Clegg” and “Devil Doll”.  When she moved to Hollywood she was in “The Swinger” and “The Last of Sheila”. She is married to Leslie Bricusse, who wrote the libretto for “Victor Victoria” and “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and the lyrics to “Goldfinger” and “You Only Live Twice”.  She was offered a contract with Frederico Fellini but turned it down to stay in Hollywood with her husband.