Kitchen Refliction

            On Sunday morning I reworked some of the rhymes for my translation of “L'homme à la tête de chou" (The Man with the Head of Cabbage) by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I worked on updating my journal.

            Around noon I brought down the stepladder from upstairs and cleaned the big mirror in my kitchen. It had been a long time since I’d applied window cleaner and paper towels to that glass and the result was striking. I startle myself now whenever I turn my head to the left while preparing food or doing the dishes. I still have to clean the mantle, the southern wall, the shelf by the kitchen table and the radiator casing before getting back to my floor cleaning project. It might be a week and a half or two weeks before I get there.

            I wanted to buy a six pack of Creemore before it was too late in the day. I went to the liquor store and stood in line for about twenty minutes. In all the line-up I’ve been in the last month or so I'm the only one I've seen that brings a book to read while waiting. Maybe everyone else is reading books on their phones.

            I didn’t have enough cash to pay for my beer and so I used my debit card but my purchase was denied. I knew I had the money in the bank because I’d looked at my account online the day before. I went home to get my bike. The tires were about halfway deflated since I’d pumped them up the day before, so I topped them up again and rode to Freshco. I was glad there was no line-up and so I was able to go straight to the bank machine. There was nothing wrong with my card and I got money with no problem. I took my bike home and walked back to the liquor store. Since I'd already waited in line before I asked the security guard if she’d let me go right inside and she did. There was a different cashier but my beer was still there.

            I wanted to but a new tube for my back tire but the bike shop a couple of doors up from my place always had a line-up and so I didn’t bother.

            I had crackers and cheese and skyr and pie for lunch.

            I took a siesta and dreamed about a song where the repeated phrase at the beginning of each line was "Elders of wash" and I can still remember the melody.

            In the early afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In 1951 the show started getting offensive because their sponsor was Rexall and they passed me a counterfeit $10.00 once, which is why I’ve boycotted them for the last twenty years.

            This Amos and Andy story was a rehashing of one from a few years before. Sapphire tells Kingfish to stop hanging out with Andy because they are co-dependent in their lack of ambition. Just as Kingfish is considering dumping Andy, Andy gets a telegram from his uncle in Brazil to come down and help run his plantation. Andy gives Kingfish $850 to book his passage. Kingfish wants to find the cheapest boat so he will have lots left over for himself and so he pays $300 for a ticket on a cattle boat. But when Kingfish learns that Andy will be paid $200 a week, which would be about $2000 a week now, Kingfish cooks up a scheme to take Andy’s place. He tells Andy that he’s just learned that he and Andy were mixed up at birth by a nearsighted doctor and that Kingfish is really Andy and Andy is really Kingfish. Andy believes him and hands over the ticket. When Amos finds out he reminds Andy that Kingfish is three years older than he is. Andy says, “That just proves how nearsighted the doctor was." Suddenly Sapphire bursts in looking for her husband. When Andy tells her he’s on his way to Brazil she confesses that she is the one that sent Andy the telegram pretending to be his uncle because she wanted to get rid of him.

            I took a bike ride but was worried about my back tire going down and so I brought along my pump. I had to put it in my backpack with the top third sticking out and the two zippers meeting it at the top. It was shifting awkwardly as I rode and so I stopped to rearrange the bags in the bottom of my pack so the pump would fit in deeper. It wasn’t too bad after that, although the handle hit me on the back of the head a couple of times. When I got home the tire was still fairly firm.

            I had an egg, two sausages and some naan for dinner with a beer while watching two episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood.

            The first story was from season four, episode five. A boy of about ten steals bread for his mother because the sheriff has taxed it so high that no serfs can afford it. The soldiers pursue the lad but he takes sanctuary in Friar Tuck’s church. The sheriff declares that the boy will hang unless the bread that he stole is returned five hundred times over. The trick is that no one can afford flour and the sheriff has put all the flour in Nottingham into the granary under heavy guard with the intention of selling it for a high price in London. Robin dresses as the sheriff and some of his men dress as his soldiers. They stage a battle with the rest of the outlaws in front of the granary, just far enough away so they won’t recognize they are not the sheriff and his men. After the disguised outlaws defeat their fellow bandits, the fake sheriff orders the guards to load all of the flour onto a wagon, which they take away. All of the serfs, Friar Tuck and Robin and his men spend the night baking and the next day 500 loaves are delivered to the sheriff. The boy is set free and the sheriff storms away in defeat.

            The second episode is the fifth of the first season and the story that formally introduces the Lady Marian Fitzwalter. She appeared briefly two episodes prior to this in the company of the Sheriff of Nottingham. It was indicated then that the sheriff had proposed to Martian on several occasions and that she had expressed an unusual fascination with Robin Hood.

            This story begins with Robin’s men having robbed a courier carrying treasure in payment of Prince John’s taxes. When Robin sees the treasure he recognizes on a ring the crest of the family of Sir William Fitzwalter, who is still fighting in the Holy Land. He says that Marian Fitzwalter was a childhood friend and she was as good with a longbow as he was. He orders the treasure returned to Marian. But Marian does not know of this decision. Her family has been ruined by this theft and she seeks to capture Robin Hood. She disguises herself as a male page and goes to Sherwood Forest. Robin recognizes her but plays along and invites her back to camp where she demonstrates skills with a bow and judo style fighting that would make her an asset to the band. She is told however that new members are traditionally required to cook that night’s meal for all of the men. In the early morning she sneaks away from camp in order to contact the sheriff's men. Robin catches up with her. He explains that stealing her family’s treasure was a mistake which he had already corrected by returning it the previous day before they met in the forest. They are about to kiss when the sheriff’s men surround him. Robin is overwhelmed and arrested and chained in the sheriff’s dungeon. Marian pretends to the sheriff that Robin can't be hanged until it has been gotten out of him what he did with her family’s jewels. She goes to his cell and tells the sergeant to bring two torturers to make Robin talk. When they are alone she sets him free. She Says, "Quickly Robin, tie me up and bind me!" and thus begins their kinky relationship. He ties her in a cross position and just before gagging her gives her a kiss.