Fancy Barber Bandit

            On Thursday morning I shot the fifteenth video recording of my daily rehearsal. I was kind of out of it this morning and made mistakes on songs that I normally do well. I had to start "A Ham and a Fiddle" over several times. It didn't feel that hot yet but maybe the heat got to my brain long before it reached my body. I think a couple of songs came through all right.

            At 11:30 I left for my appointment with Amy at the Yonge and St Clair Top Cuts. I drank some water before leaving and took a glass with me to fill up once I got there. I also took along a scarf to wear in case I was required to cover my face. It’s a good thing I did because that was the case. I was glad that a scarf was enough and I didn't need a surgical mask. I think that starting next Tuesday everyone in Toronto is required to wear a face covering at the supermarket and in any other indoor public places. This was the first time I’d covered my face since the pandemic began. The scarf has a black background with gold flowers and I looked like a fancy train robber. It was the first time I'd worn it for many years and it was a bit dusty and so I think I'd better wash it before wearing it again.

They are only allowed to have three customers at a time right now. Since they aren’t allowed to use blow dryers my neck and back was itchy when I left because of bits of remaining hair. They charge an extra two dollars for special cleaning that they have to do now although I never noticed anything special. I had to have my temperature taken and sign a form before we started.

            Amy said it’s difficult to cut hair for people wearing masks, especially the ones that hook over the ears. She said they should have masks that just stick to people’s faces so the hair is free to cut. Near the end she untied the scarf and I had to hold it over my face while she finished things up at the back. It was easier to breathe when I was just holding the scarf over my nose and face.

                                                

            It was so hot on the way home that I didn’t feel any cooler with the haircut. It was just nice to have less messy hair that made me look like a clown if I didn’t constantly comb it.

            I stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought five bags of cherries, three bags of grapes, a mango, a bag of cocktail peanuts, lemonade, honey, raspberry skyr, shampoo and Irish Spring soap.

            I’d left the fan on in my place but I still had to remove my shirt when I got home. I ate a cold burger for lunch with barbecue sauce but no bun and then I took a slightly late siesta.

            I skipped my afternoon exercises. I made tea with honey and lemon and chilled it in the fridge. I ate the young coconut that I’d gotten from the food bank.

            I got caught up on my journal.

            I got rid of a few episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood since I already have a smaller version of the same series. I uploaded the video that I’d shot in the morning.

            It was too hot to make it hotter by using the stove and so for dinner I had two cold chicken wings and potato chips and salsa with a beer while watching “Voice in the Night”, which is the twenty-fourth episode of the 1957-1968 Alfred Hitchcock produced TV series "suspicion". This story had only downloaded 25% but instead of jumping ahead to the end in ten or fifteen minutes it froze in real time and there were only moments where for a minute or two the story would start moving again. I got the basic idea from those little bits but after it was finished I found it on YouTube and watched it again.

            This story is probably set in the 19^th Century and begins with a schooner stuck in the fog on a windless sea. Captain Biersdorf and his mate Carson are on the deck in the night when suddenly they hear a voice call to them. The man says that he rowed out from an island but Biersdorf had been certain that there was no land for well over a thousand kilometres. The man asks for food for he and his wife but insist they can’t be rescued. He requests that Carson not shine his light on him. The food is given and the man rows away. But later he comes back and tells them that his wife thought it would be best to tell someone their story and so he recounts the tale from his rowboat.

James Thomason is the captain of the finest sailing ship on any ocean and he has recently gotten married to Eleanor. After the honeymoon he announces to her that he is about to ship out on a year's journey but she insists on going with him. At sea they are hit by such a devastating storm that it destroys his ship and kills his crew. Only he and Eleanor survive, floating on the broken mast. They see a ship and climb aboard but find it to be abandoned and covered with a strange slime. There are canned goods on board and they try to clean up the fungus but it returns and when it invades their bed they take the ship’s rowboat to a nearby island. But the island is also covered with the fungus except for a small patch of beach where the lichen will not grow. Other the fungus and them there is nothing that lives on the island. There are no plants, no animals, no birds, no fish to be caught off shore and even no insects. When the fog finally lifts and James would be able to make a sail for the rowboat and chart a course by the stars, they both had become infected by the fungus. They decided they could not go back to civilization because it might be something they could pass on to others.

After James has finished telling his story, Carson briefly shines his light on him before he rows away. When Biersdorf asks him what he saw Carson says it looked like a sponge.

This story was based on the 1906 short story "The Voice in the Night" by William Hope Hodgson, who wrote many sea-based horror stories but even some science fiction. It was later made into a Japanese horror film named for English audiences “The Attack of the Mushroom People" in 1964.

Captain Biersdorf was played by Patrick Macnee, who of course was later to become famous as John Steed on The Avengers.

Carson was played with not a bad accent by James Coburn.

Eleanor was played by Barbara Rush, who won the Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer in "It Came from Outer Space". She appeared opposite many A-list actors in middle of the road pictures. She was more successful on the stage but she did appear on a lot on television. She was a regular of Peyton Place and All My Children and she appeared on the Batman TV series as the villain Nora Clavicle.