Bernadette O'Farrell

            On Thursday I had all but the last verse of “Chez Max, Coiffeur Pour Hommes” by Serge Gainsbourg memorized.

            Around noon I tried to remove the pain splatters from my kitchen mantel with alcohol but that didn’t work. I then tried paint brush cleaner but all that dissolved were parts of my lungs and brain. I’ve concluded that the only solution is to sand the mantel down and re-varnish it, but that’s not in my immediate plans. Maybe the varnish was originally put down on top of the paint.

            For lunch I had a pork souvlaki on a stick and some yogourt.

            I looked out the window and I saw a guy face down in the middle of the Dollarama parking lot with a male and a female cop on top of him. Has anybody ever noticed that a lot of female cops have blond highlights? On top of that they all look alike. She resembled the woman that threatened to handcuff me and throw me in the back of the cruiser because I sighed when I handed her my identification, but that one was with a different division. When they brought the guy top his feet I saw that he was a big man with glasses. He didn’t look drunk but he seemed to move in a way that suggested that he might be developmentally challenged. I assume that since this was in front of the Dollarama that it might have been a shoplifting issue. Statistics show that store managers steal twice as much as customers, plus they don’t get slammed down onto the concrete and handcuffed.

            I did my exercises in the afternoon while listening to Amos and Andy. This was another rehashed old story.

            Kingfish tries to get his mother in law out of his place by getting her kicked out of the country. He tries to convince an immigration official that Ramona is from Cuba. By reading him a fake letter from a doctor in Cuba declaring that “this future mother in law was just born today in 1888”. The immigration officer kicks him out. Ramona does move out but Kingfish discovers that she’d been paying their rent. They take in a boarder but he plays saxophone and eats them out of house and home. He gets rid of him because he’s a germophobe and convinces him that he has a very contagious tropical disease. He moves out quickly, leaving all his stuff and Ramona moves back in. She decides to learn to play his saxophone.

            It had rained earlier and so there were some puddles on the street and because of that I decided not to take a bike ride downtown. I just went to Freshco where I bought seven bags of grapes, a pint of strawberries, two half pints of raspberries, a bag of frozen shrimp, a pack of five year old cheddar and two containers of raspberry skyr.

            For the last couple of months there has been a village of about twenty homeless tents in the Parkdale Amphitheatre park at Queen and Dufferin.

            I recently received a notice by email that I’d been invited to join the English Specialist program at U of T, so today I went onto the Acorn site to accept the invitation. At first I got a message with an exclamation mark and realized I had to drop my English Major first. So I dropped English Major and Philosophy Minor but I was not allowed to drop French as a Second Language online. I assume it will be dropped automatically but I emailed a registrar for my college to ask if there’s anything I need to do.

            I also checked my marks for Indigenous Studies and was surprised to find that I got an A on that horrible course.

            I made a video of my song Calendar Girl from my July 21, 2017 song practice and deleted the rest of the session. My performance in this recording is not good enough for public view but I’ll keep it for personal reference.

            I had a potato, a carrot and a chicken leg with gravy while watching Robin Hood.

            In the first story Little John is upset that Will Scarlet has been taking on more leadership responsibilities and he feels that he is being displaced. Robin assures John that he is still his lieutenant but that he would not necessarily inherit the leadership of the band were something to happen to him. He says it would be up to the men but doubts if he would be chosen because he is too quick to anger to be in charge. Little John can’t accept this and decides to leave. When the deputy sheriff gets word of this split he takes advantage of it. He sends a letter to Little John care of the Blue Boar Inn offering him a full pardon for the crimes that initially made him an outlaw and all of the crimes he committed while being forced to live the life of an outlaw. The letter says that the deputy will come alone and unarmed to the Blue Boar with the pardon. He comes the next day and signs the pardon, with Friar Tuck signing as witness. Robin and Will watch from the woods nearby to make sure that Little John is not tricked. The deputy tells Little John to go out and enjoy his freedom. He leaves, looks again at the pardon and storms back inside the inn. He accuses the sheriff of lying. He says he should have been outlawed according to the laws of the land under Prince John. Under a decent man’s law he would not have been made a criminal. The pardon only proves that the sheriff wants people to believe that he is merciful when he is not. The pardon only proves that any man that wants to leave Robin Hood’s band and live under the law of a tyrant can do so as a toady. Little John tears up the pardon but the sheriff laughs and tells him the paper doesn’t matter because his pardon will be publicly proclaimed. The sheriff says again that all of Little John's crimes are null and void. Little John grabs a staff and says, “We’ll just have to commit a few more!" He attacks the sheriff, repeatedly hitting him until he declares, "You'll hang for this!" The sheriff runs out and his soldiers attack Little John. Robin sand Will join him to fight them off. Little John is back in the band.

            The second story has serfs ranging in age from young teenagers to the elderly being kidnapped by soldiers. A fourteen year old named Henry is taken from his grandmother and the soldiers mention that he will serve Count DeWalden from now on. The grandmother tells Lady Marian, who immediately goes to the count to demand Henry's release. he says he will release the boy in exchange for Marian joining him for dinner. Marian goes to tell Robin. He speculates that these wretched people are somehow being enlisted by the count as soldiers. He reasons that soldiers need armour. Tuck tells him that there is only one armourer in the area, and that is Master Fell in Wattley. Robin and Little John go to see Fell under the pretence of buying a sword. Fell tells him that all of his orders are from the count these days and he has no time for any others. Robin and Little John gain employment from Fell to help him deliver the armour to the count but on the way Robin and his men take over the entire shipment as a means to infiltrate the count's castle. Meanwhile Marian accepts the count's dinner invitation to serve as a distraction with Friar Tuck as a chaperone. Marian and the count are going to play a game of chess and she asks Tuck to take a look around the castle. When he leaves he finds where the keys are hung. Meanwhile Robin’s men overwhelm and replace all of the count's men and put on the armour as disguise. Marian asks how the count expects to make use of an army of children, cripples and old men. He tells her that it doesn’t matter if they can fight because King Richard only has a garrison of 500 men in this shire. If they see an army of 3000 advancing towards them in armour they will retreat without a battle. Robin frees the prisoners. Marian checkmates the count but he begins to come on to her very strong. The door is locked and she can’t escape. She is having a hard time holding him back and he begins pushing her into his bedroom just when Robin climbs through the window. There is a short sword fight that Robin wins. The count runs out to get help from his guards but all of the men in armour laugh at him.

Marian was played by Bernadette O’Farrell, who became famous in this role because it was the first British TV show to become a hit in the United States. She left the show in 1957 to avoid type casting. She retired from film acting in 1959 and settled into country life with her husband and two young daughters. In later years they moved to Monaco.