Saturday, 23 March 2019

English Cowboy



            On Friday I had to work in the afternoon. I took my laptop along in hopes of getting caught up on my journal during my breaks but since the work involved relating the events of Thursday night’s Poetry Master Class, which involved transcribing the separate comments of four people from four sheets of paper, I didn’t get as much done as I would have if I’d been just straight writing.
            I worked for Brianne Service on the first instalment of a two-week pose. For the first time in years I worked on the same stage with another model. Her name is Deb Blok and she’s been working at OCADU for three years without us meeting. I was telling her that in the 80s OCA had two models for almost every class. She didn’t look old enough to have been there then but nodded so knowingly that I asked, “Were you here in the 80s?” She said, “I was born in the 80s!” She said she started modelling when she was 18 and so she’s been posing for half of her life. I started when I was 27 and I guess I could say the same thing now. She seems to still like it.
            A student told me that she remembers what great poses I do and I told her that at my age it takes three days to recover from a pose.
            Deb and I had to do short poses together and interact with one another. She had a little hand timer and so I suggested that she call the changes and I would respond to each of her poses. Brianne commented that Deb and I had a real synergy.
            We spent the last hour in a pose with me in a chair and Deb on the stage. For Brianne’s students this was a three-week pose but this was the only time that Deb and I would pose together for the assignment. Next week they will draw me alone and the week after that Deb will take her position without me.
            Although the sun was still shining when I left, it was chilly and quite windy. I was glad I’d brought my two scarfs and my winter gloves.
            I stopped at Freshco where I bought a couple of bags of grapes, three half pints of blueberries, a mango, some avocadoes, some tomatoes and a large jug of orange juice.
            Because I didn’t want to go out again during the weekend I rode directly to No Frills. I had hoped to find black sable grapes there but they only had some green grapes and some red ones that were both on the soft side. I bought a couple of bags of their firmest green grapes. I also got a bunch of bananas, some greenhouse tomatoes on the vine and a few more avocadoes.
            I worked on updating my journal but still didn’t get it finished that day.
            I felt achy all over, perhaps partly because of posing and partly due to my fast.
            I had two tomatoes and two avocadoes for dinner and a banana with blueberries for dessert while watching The Rifleman.
            In this story a ranch owned by an absent English lord named Ashford and supervised by the lord’s younger brother Jeremy is managed by a foreman named Norv Waggoner. Waggoner has basically taken over the Ashford ranch for his own purposes. He finds on the range a cow that has recently given birth to what Norv assesses to be a prize calf. Despite the fact that the mother has Lucas McCain’s brand he takes the calf for his own, despite Jeremy’s protests. When Lucas and Mark find their cow they see that she has calved and knowing that it wouldn’t have wandered away from its mother they follow the trail left by Norv to the Ashford ranch. Jeremy is afraid to stand up to Norv and so when questioned by Lucas he denies any wrongdoing. Norv comes and cracks the tip of a whip onto Lucas’s cheek. He warns Lucas that if he puts a rope on a calf with his brand he can legally shoot him for rustling. The next morning Lucas comes with the mother, lets her find the calf and he doesn’t have to use a rope at all because the calf begins to follow its mother. Norv and his men open fire and Lucas takes most of them out. Jeremy arrives and takes cover. Mark comes, grabs Jeremy’s rifle from his horse and brings it to him. On seeing his son in the line of fire Lucas comes out of cover into Norv’s gunsights. Norv is about to fire when Jeremy shoots him.

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