Anne Reid

            On Friday morning I called the landlord about my leaking pipes. Of course his first response was to place blame and to complain that all the plumbing problems are always in my place. I didn’t see how that was true. He said he’d come by later but I assumed it would be late at night as usual.

            Around midday I went out in the hall and switched off all the breakers marked “3” so I could wash the bathroom light switch while cleaning the wall between the bathroom and the hall. None of those switches shut off the power in my kitchen. I noticed that the ones for “1" had “#3 Fuse” written beside it in pen and it was in my writing. It must have been years ago that I figured out the right switches and forgot about them. I found the correct one and washed the wall and the light switch and plate. I still had plenty of clean water when I was done and so I washed the planter and the marble fragments on the stand that I'd just moved against that wall. Later the marble pieces were a bit of a puzzle to fit back in place.

            I had half a bowl of cocktail peanuts for lunch and a spoon of yogourt.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Sapphire has a job supervising thirty two typists and the boss wants her to come in over the weekend and send the typewriters out to be cleaned. But Sapphire has caught a cold and asks Kingfish to take the $320 to pay to the Acme Typewriter Cleaning Company. Andy comes to help him move the typewriters but while they are doing this there is a knock from a man named Sam who says he can clean the typewriters for $3 each. Kingfish thinks he can pocket the rest of the money and so he accepts the deal. But the guy takes the typewriters and makes off for Mexico. Kingfish’s first impulse is to take the money he made and leave town but Sapphire's mother finds his coffee can under the floor boards.

Kingfish goes to a place that offers typewriters for no money down for a month and asks for thirty two typewriters. “Thirty two? That free trial is always applied on just one typewriter. I’m afraid we couldn’t do it on thirty two!" Kingfish asks, "What's the difference if one person gets thirty two typewriters or thirty two people each get one?” "There's no difference but I don't like it!" "But think of all the bookkeeping you'll save and if something goes wrong you'll only have one fella to throw in the clink instead of jamming up the jailhouse with thirty two people!” “We require a $50 deposit on each machine.” “How can it be a free trial if we’re gonna pay you $50?" "That's just a deposit. At the end of the thirty days, if you're dissatisfied we’ll refund your money." "If that’s all that's bothering you there’s nothing to worry about. We is dissatisfied now!" "You can't take the typewriters without the deposit! That way you'd have the typewriters and we’d have nothing!” "Yeah, but at the end of the thirty days when we is dissatisfied we gonna bring the typewriters back, then you gonna have the typewriters and we gonna have nothin! You get your nothin now but we gotta wait thirty days for ours! If you’re gonna be happy with nothin in the end you might as well be happy with it now!" Kingfish doesn't get the deal. He ends up selling his car and uses the money to buy second hand typewriters to replace the ones he lost. But when Kingfish gets home Sapphire tells him that she noticed that Kingfish didn’t arrange for the typewriters to be cleaned and so she called a number she found in his pocket for Sam the Typewriter man and arranged for him to clean them.

I took a bike ride. There were a lot of cyclists in the Bloor bike lane and so I often had to go out onto the street to pass long lines of them.

My landlord came by at around 19:30. He made a wet mess under my sink testing to find the leak and so I had to mop it all up later. He called a Sri Lankan plumber who would come at 9:00 on Saturday.

I watched a few more videos of me performing “One Hundred Hookers”. Watching myself try to get through a song without any mistakes is like watching a home team play with the odds against it. I’m on the edge of my seat and encouraging myself to get it right. In at least three of the days I did the song twice because I’d screwed it up the first time. I couple of them were not bad and one seemed to be pretty good.

For dinner I steamed the leftover squash that I’d cooked the night before and had it with the last of my pork chops and some gravy while watching two episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood.

In the first story William Blount, the sheriff’s tailor is jealous of Ulrich, the owner of the Blue Boar Inn, because his customers pay immediately in cash while the sheriff and the tailor’s other noble customers always use credit and take months to pay their bills. He convinces the sheriff to tax Ulrich out of business and let him buy the Blue Boar. In exchange the sheriff wants Blount to use the tavern to spy on the outlaws. Upon hearing this from Ulrich, Robin Hood plots to make business so difficult for Blount that he won’t want to keep the place. Ulrich and the barmaid Alison stay on as Blount's employees to help with Robin’s plan. Robin poses as Sir Giles, a long term resident of the inn. Sir Giles immediately befriends Blount and begins offering him advice that leads to his failure. Blount will not pay Ulrich for the inn until he’s done an inventory and so Blount’s servant Saunders goes out to check things off the list. One of the items includes a turkey in the larder, although turkeys were not brought to England from North America until 1526 and this story is supposed to be set in the late 12^th Century. Ulrich also informs Blount that the sheriff taxed him so highly that he wasn’t able replenish the ale supply and so he sends Saunders to Nottingham with a wagon for ale. But as soon as he returns Robin’s men steal it right in front of the inn as Blount watches. Sir Giles tells Alison that she should air out Blount’s bedding since it looks like rain. His bedding gets soaked and the next morning he is sneezing. Blount has nothing to eat for breakfast while Sir Giles is eating a full meal because he always carries extra food in his saddle bags for emergencies. Blount sends for ale somewhere else but ends up with a barrel of vinegar. He sends Saunders back to Nottingham to ask for the sheriff’s protection of his supplies. The sheriff arrives to find that Sir Giles is Robin Hood and the fight between the soldiers and Robin’s men makes a mess of the inn. Robin’s men fight the soldiers off with brooms and pots and pans. When the sheriff tries to stab Robin he pierces the barrel and gets a face full of squirting vinegar. Robin rides away on the sheriff's white horse. Ulrich gets the inn back and Robin gives him the bag of gold he got from selling the sheriff’s horse.

Alison was played by Anne Reid, whose work on Robin Hood and other shows led to a decade as a star of Coronation Street. Later in life she starred on the show “dinnerladies” and the film “The Mother”. She is a Member of the Order of the British Empire. She has been on both the 20^th and 21^st Century incarnations of Doctor Who. She also has a cabaret show in which she tells stories and sings songs about her own life.

In the second story three champion jousters, Sir Lawrence, Sir John and Sir Ralph have finished the tournament season and are regretting returning to their manor houses and their wives for the winter. Their prize money is not enough to make it all tolerable but then they learn that there is a 750 crown reward for the capture of Robin Hood. They go to the sheriff with a plan to pose as travelling players passing through Sherwood. Sir John says that a magician once taught him a trick for making a man disappear. Robin’s men, bored for entertainment jump at the chance of seeing a show and so the impostors set up their equipment. John makes Lawrence disappear and then offers to also make Robin vanish. Robin is hooded, bound and spun around, then he is pushed down behind a barrier where a sliding floor pulls him through a secret passage in the stage wall. Then Lawrence and Ralph gag him and take him away. They are supposed to rendezvous with the sheriff’s men who are flashing a signal. But Tuck had left the performance early for Michaelmas and sees the sheriff’s men. Tuck uses his own lamp to make a signal and lures the abductors to a lake where he dunks the knights and sets Robin free. Robin and his men fight off the sheriff’s men.