Too Much Off the Top

            On Monday morning I translated the first two verses of "Barcelone" by Boris Vian.

            Around midday I washed and scrubbed the top of the credenza in the kitchen but it was so dirty that I had to use four batches of wood soap and even then the water was black. After it dried I saw that I’d actually washed the veneer off, but it couldn't really be helped because it had been very filthy. I still have to wash the rest of the credenza before I can put my comic books back inside.

            For lunch I browned in the oven a bag of fish balls that I got from the food bank.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. This was another mostly recycled story. Andy is hit by a wealthy woman named Nancy Van Dyke in a sports car. They end up dating and after a couple of weeks Andy decides to ask her to marry him. Kingfish warns him that she has a reputation for changing boyfriends faster than people change their socks. When Andy goes to her place with the ring she is already entertaining a new man who is an author and an expert in literature. Andy decides to get educated and to get fit to impress Nancy and so he begins taking night courses to improve his mind and training at the gym to fix his figure. But after he is transformed he goes back to Nancy and finds that her new boyfriend is a Hipster. The previous ending was funnier because she was with a very dumb prize fighter.

            I edited the Movie Maker project to create a video of my July 1 performance of my song “Calendar Girl”. I managed to almost synchronize the camera audio with that of the voice recorder. The microphone recording is just a split second ahead so I should so I just need to shave a bit off the beginning.

            For dinner I had a potato, sautéed onion and orange pepper, and gravy while watching two episodes of The Count of Monte Cristo.

            In the first story some corrupt justice officials and police officers of Bordeaux are arresting wealthy people for guillotine punishable crimes they did not commit. They force them or their families to pay large sums of money for their freedom or to delay their executions. The Count de Morcerf is one such victim of false charges and his wife Mercedes is forced to sell her jewellery in order to save her husband. One of those items is a ring given to her by the Count Edmund of Monte Cristo when she was Edmund’s fiancé. But Morcerf had Edmund imprisoned on false charges on the night he was to marry Mercedes and then she, thinking Edmund was dead, married Morcerf. Now just by chance Edmund finds the ring in a jewellery shop and buys it and then when Mercedes asks for help from the Count of Monte Cristo he returns it to her. Mercedes is surprised to see Edmund because she did not know that he is now the Count of Monte Cristo. She does not think she should be asking him for help but he offers it anyway, for her sake. The count goes to see Bennett, the Prefect of Police for Bordeaux, who says he is open to further evidence to prove Morcerf’s innocence. He says his axiom is that it’s better for a thousand assassins to go free than for one innocent man to be punished. They arrange to meet the next night at The Golden Lion, but instead Bonet sends his gendarmes to arrest the count, Jacopo and Rico. Accompanying the police is the jeweller from whom the count bought the ring and he claims that the count stole it at gunpoint. The count calmly thanks the jeweller and tells him that he has rendered him a great service. As soon as the count is placed in his cell he offers Captain Florian half a million crowns for the release of himself, Morcerf, Jacopo and Rico. Florian says setting the count and his men free would be easy but he would lose his head if he released Morcerf. The count argues that he could arrange for Morcerf to escape so he wouldn’t be to blame, but he wouldn't get the money until Morcerf is free. The count writes the bank draft and he takes it to show Bonet. Bonet reminds Florian that Morcerf knows too much and they will only be safe if he is dead. The count, Jacopo and Rico are released and the count is told that they must return at 23:00 on November 11 for Morcerf’s escape. After they leave Florian calmly murders one of his prison guards as Bonet looks on.  The count goes to Paris to tell his friend the Minister of Justice about the whole deal and he agrees to come to Bordeaux at 23:00 on the 11^th. Bonet then declares that the count and his men escaped from the prison and murdered a guard. He issues a reward for their capture, dead or alive, but to insure that the count still shows up on the 11^th, he has Mercedes kidnapped. On the 11^th, Bonet and Florian wait with Mercedes in Bonet’s chamber for the count to arrive at the prison. But Bonet does not expect the count and his men to sneak in through his window. The count gives his pistol to hold Bonet in his office while they take Florian to Morcerf’s cell. But there are guards waiting for them at the cells and Bonet easily disarms Mercedes. As soon as Morcerf is released the guards attack. Jacopo is quite a little fighter. The count and he are like a 19^th Century version of the Green Hornet and Kato. Bonet tries to shoot the count from his chamber but winds up hitting Florian. Just then the minister of justice arrives. Bonet is searched and the bank draft for half a million crowns is found in his vest. Bonet is arrested and Morcerf is set free.

            Mercedes was played by Australian actor Betty McDowell, who was known mostly for maternal film roles. She was in “Dead Lucky” and "The Omen". She played Laura Archer on the long running BBC radio soap opera, “The Archers”.

            In the second story, in 1835 Princess Anne of France is on her way to England to be married, with the count and his men as her escorts. The coach is schedules to stop for the night at an in a small town on the road to Calais. A maid named Simone is in charge of Anne's needs at the inn. Later that night Simone reveals to the count that Anne has been kidnapped. The price for her return is the passage of the fugitive Paul Bonnet on Anne’s boat to England. Simone reveals that the counts help she will pose behind a veil as Princess Anne until she and Bonnet are safely aboard the ship. Meanwhile Jacopo and Rico investigate and discover that Bonnet is wanted for the murder of a bailiff employed by Baron Milet, who owns the ship that they are to board. They arrive by coach to Calais and stay at an inn while waiting to embark and Bonnet joins them there. They board the ship but then Paul reveals that he lost Anne. He had taken her to a church in St Etienne when armed men broke in and took her away. Simone says she thinks the kidnappers were Baron Milet’s men. She reveals that she is the Marquesse de Vancourt and that Milet wants to force her to marry him so he can gain her property. This is why Milet had Paul falsely accused of murder. They all try to escape from the ship through the stern but are trapped there by Milet and his men. He says everyone else can go free if Simone agrees to marry him at sea immediately. He hands Simone the marriage contract that he has already drawn out. He reveals that Princess Anne is already aboard the ship. But the count points out that the marriage contract is the very proof that Milet had a motive for murder. The count always signals Jacopo and Rico by rubbing his ring when he wants them to start fighting and they do. The captain tries to throw a knife at the count but Simone shoots him. Milet and his men are defeated, the police arrive and Anne invites Simone and Paul to come with her to England.

            Princess Anne was played by former child star and singer Ann Stephens.

            Simone was played by Adrienne Corri of “A Clockwork Orange” fame.

            Anne’s handler the elderly Duchess was played by Elaine Inescort, who was the mother of Hollywood star Frieda Inescort. Elaine was more interested in her theatrical career than in being a mother and so Frieda was put in boarding schools. But when her husband divorced her in 1911 she and Frieda moved to the United States. After WWI they returned to England. Elaine was in the films "An Arabian Knight", "Androcles and the Lion" and “The Princess in Kensington”.