Heather Chasen

  

            On Saturday morning I went to bed just after midnight but couldn’t get to sleep until after 3:00 because I was arguing with my Canadian Literature TA in my head. I think she prefers a certain line of reasoning from the students in her tutorial and dismisses comments that deviate too far from those cookie cutter points of view. Part of the problem is the electronic format. In a live setting I would be able to respond to her responses but online we have to turn our mics off after we speak and once she’s responded she just moves on to the next person. There is no room for back and forth debate. 

            I sang and played by translation of “Barcelone" by Boris Vian to make sure the lyrics fit the music. On Sunday I’ll upload it to Christian’s Translations. 

            I memorized the chorus for “Disc Jockey" by Serge Gainsbourg. The song has a lot of repetitions and so there's really only half a verse and a couple of lines left to learn, which I'll probably nail down on Sunday. 

            A little after 11:30 I went to No Frills. None of the grapes were very firm and so the only fruit I got was a half pint of raspberries and a jug of orange-grapefruit juice. I bought mouthwash, a big wedge of old cheddar, forty garbage bags and a pack of two outside round steaks. 

            I felt very tired just before lunch and decided to take a siesta beforehand. I slept better than the night before but sleeping at 13:15 rather than 14:00 felt like I was wearing clothing I’m not used to. 

            For a late lunch I had rice crackers with cheddar and vanilla yogourt with a fruit and nut bar. 

            I finished reading The Pardoner’s Prologue from Canterbury Tales and then went online to read the “grime mix” of the modernized Prologue to Canterbury Tales by Patience Agbabi. But I couldn’t access it on Blackboard. Maybe it had timed out, but after searching around the internet I found a free PDF of the poem. It’s basically a rap version. That took care of last week’s required reading. 

            Since Monday is Thanksgiving there shouldn’t be any reading for next week but there is.

            I read the York Crucifixion in Middle English and then started reading selections from Thomas More’s Utopia. It was a relief to read something from this course in plain English and it was a lot quicker to get through. In this early 16th Century story an old scholar named Raphael tells More about a society that he visited for five years called “Utopia”. It’s basically a predecessor of a communist community, but there is the death penalty and suicide is encouraged though not enforced on those that have become a burden. Britain at the time had a death penalty for theft and there was a good argument against that. If a society kills those that steal it makes theft and murder equal. I just have a few pages left. 

            For dinner I had a hot Italian sausage on a kaiser roll with a beer while watching Interpol Calling. 

            In this story a large, unexploded German bomb left over from WWII is found at the bottom of a dam in Scotland. It could go off at any time and on top of that the dam’s engineers can only hold the water back so long without causing a flood on the other side. On top of that there is heavy rainfall occurring. Two bomb experts are brought in but they are unfamiliar with how to diffuse this particular device. Duval has to try to track down any designers of the bomb that might be still alive. Duval contacts the German Defence Ministry in Bonn. The minister can’t find any records of the bomb and says it must have been top secret. It is determined that it must have been dropped by a large plane from the nearest base, which would have been in Norway. A General Von Schriber was in command of that base. The general confirms that one of his planes dropped the bomb but says that the Luftwafe were not trusted with information about the bomb’s design. He only knows the bomb was made by a secret research organization responsible only to Hitler. Most of the group were taken prisoner by the Russians but five escaped and two of those are known to be now dead. Duval finds that one of the three is senile and another is in a coma. The only one left is Frederik Braun but he is on the lam. Meanwhile the bomb has become active and it’s ticking. They pull in Braun’s girlfriend Inge Vern and at first she is uncooperative but when she learns about the bomb she says that Braun was running from a gang boss and went to Norway, changing his name to Bruno Mueller. Duval finds out from Norway that Mueller invented a new explosive whaling harpoon and is working on a Norwegian whaler in Antarctica. Duval gets in touch with the ship but Mueller denies being Braun. The captain of the ship forces him to confess and he reveals the sequence of dismantling the fuses and so the bomb is disarmed. 

            Inge was played by Heather Chasen, who worked a lot on British television and is famous for her roles on the soap operas Crossroads and East Enders.