Adrienne Corri

            On Tuesday morning the Popeye’s downstairs began frying chicken at around 6:00, even though they don’t open until 11:00. It's an annoying odour to have to inhale constantly, especially during yoga. I would much rather be living above a Swiss Chalet or some other barbecued or roasted chicken place.

I memorized the fourth verse of “Joujou a la casse" (Dolly to the Trash) by Serge Gainsbourg.

Around midday I scrubbed and washed three floorboards under the credenza in the kitchen starting from the front legs and working in. In terms of what can be seen by someone standing anywhere in the kitchen I don’t really have to clean any more because the part that I cleaned makes it look like it’s fully washed under there. But there are still eight boards left and so I'll clean them anyway. I’m working my way in because when I get to where the floor meets the baseboard there’ll be dirt coming out from underneath and so if I start from the wall the water would get dirty right away.

For lunch I had two cold chicken drumsticks.

In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. This was a rehashed story about Kingfish being provided with a secretary for his work as Kingfish of the lodge because the lodge brothers found all the paperwork in disarray. But Wanda Jackson is very attractive and Sapphire insists that Kingfish fire her. Kingfish refuses and so Sapphire and her mother plot to make Kingfish believe that Sapphire has gotten a job as the secretary for a local bank executive who happens to be dating his secretary. They arrange for Sapphire to be sent roses every day and when Kingfish learns that the executive is taking his secretary to lunch every day and that he’s planning to elope with her he thinks Sapphire is the woman in question and becomes very jealous. Finally Kingfish fires Wanda and makes a deal with Sapphire that she can choose his next secretary. But she chooses his mother in law.

I took a bike ride to Bloor and Yonge, south to Queen and then home.

For dinner I had a potato, sautéed onion and orange pepper, a sirloin steak and gravy. The steak was bigger than usual and slightly too filling.

I watched two episodes of The Adventures of William Tell.

I had to find the first story online because for some reason I didn’t have the story "The Master Spy" in my download of the series. Either it wasn’t included or I accidentally deleted it.

In the story the gold that the Swiss allies in Burgundy have been holding for the resistance has been stolen by the Austrian master spy known as The Shadow. When the Shadow arrives in Altdorf to deliver the gold, Gessler is surprised to find the agent is a beautiful woman named Mara von Hecht, Baroness Gunvald. After paying the Shadow the large sum she demands Gessler asks her to stay and capture William Tell for him. She says she will do it for 20,000 crowns. Meanwhile with the help of an attractive barmaid named Rosa three Austrian soldiers are lured into the tavern where they are knocked out by Tell and his men and their uniforms stolen. They get into the castle, steal the gold from Gessler’s office and escape over the wall and into the moat. The Shadow tells Gessler to have the town gates shut because Tell could not have swum the moat with the gold and must have thrown it over the wall. She guesses his plan is to do the unexpected and to keep the gold in the city until later. She tells Gessler she will retrieve his gold again for an extra 4000 crowns. A week goes by during which the Bear and Anton are holed up in Altdorf with the gold. They have run out of food and so Anton goes to get some from Rosa at the tavern. One of the Shadow's men eavesdrops on their conversation. While Anton is still at the tavern the Shadow, dressed as a Swiss peasant comes running up pursued by Austrian soldiers. Anton knocks out the soldiers and takes Mara to the hideout while she secretly leaves a trail of rice. Shortly after they arrive the soldiers burst in to capture the Bear, Anton and the gold. The Shadow then tells Gessler to release the Bear and to thank him for his help. This arouses suspicion among all the partisans but Tell that he led the soldiers to the gold. The Bear leaves the camp because he doesn't want to cause trouble. Meanwhile the Shadow arranges for Anton's escape and as he leads her to Tell she once again leaves a trail of rice. But when they get to Tell's hideout Anton reveals that he knows Mara is the Shadow. Since they now know soldiers are coming Tell plans an ambush. Gessler is among the soldiers and when they are defeated Tell offers to spare him for the gold. Gessler says it’s on the way to Austria but the Shadow says he's lying and it's still in his castle.

The Shadow was played by Adrienne Corri, who is remembered for her performance as Valerie in her teens in the movie “The River”. She starred in “Devil Girl from Mars"; “Moon Zero Two"; "Bunny Lake is Missing"; and played Lara’s mother in "Dr Zivago". She co-starred in “Revenge of the Pink Panther’. But she was most famous for her role as Mrs Alexander, the gang rape victim of Alex and his Droogs in Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”. She resented Kubrick for years because he insisted on several takes of this scene in which she was nude, except for a pair of red stockings. One scene was shot thirty nine times until Malcolm McDowell finally declared that he couldn’t hit her anymore. One year when Kubrick had been complaining about always losing his socks she sent him a pair of red ones for Christmas. She was an expert on 18^th Century portrait painting and wrote a book about Thomas Gainsborough.

In the second story there is a traitor in one group of the Swiss resistance who has been tipping the Austrians off about all their activities. William and Hedda Tell travel to their camp to try to help them. They are given the cave to sleep in but that night the camp is raided by Austrian soldiers who go directly to the cave to try to capture Tell. But Tell and Hedda did not sleep in the cave after all. Tell is puzzled because the soldiers must have been informed instantaneously that they were there since General Bullinger’s castle is too far for the traitor to have travelled there. The partisans suspect a member named Rolf who left the camp recently for his farm. Tell instructs Hedda to give the group the false information that he is going to question Rolf at his farm but Tell is really going to General Bullinger’s castle. On the way Tell steals the apron and the tools of a master carpenter on his way to work in the castle. The room in which Tell is sent to work is next door to Bullinger’s office. Tell looks out and sees a flashing reflection of sunlight coming from the mountains near the rebel camp. Bullinger comes out on his balcony with a code book and writes down the message being sent to him. The message is that Tell has gone to Rolf’s farm. Tell escapes from the castle after fighting Bullinger and a few soldiers. When Tell gets back to the camp it is nearly sunset and so Tell leaks some for false information so he can catch the traitor sending the signal. He tells the men that they will rendezvous that night with twenty men from another group in a chalet on the pass. Shortly after this one of the men sneaks out of the camp and Tell follows him. But it turns out that he has gone to secretly meet his girl and to tell her that he can’t get together with her that night. When Tell returns to the camp he finds Hedda gone and he is told that she followed Kramer out of the camp. In the mountains Hedda tracks Kramer to a cave where he retrieves a highly reflective shield and begins sending a signal with reflected sunlight to Bullinger’'s castle. She takes a sword and confronts him. She holds her own for a while but he overpowers her just as Tell arrives. After a fight the traitor is killed.