Middle English

            On Friday morning I finished posting my translation of “Disk Jockey” by Serge Gainsbourg. Next I'll start working on memorizing his song "Tennisman".

            I think the new B string on my guitar has had enough time to stretch and yet it’s still going out of tune like the old one. Maybe the neck needs to be adjusted. I wish I knew how to do that but I don’t trust my technical skills enough to experiment with those kinds of manipulations without possibly screwing up my guitar forever. 

            I worked on my short essay for British Literature. I’ve been trying write my own translation of the Middle English description of the Green Knight in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. After that I'll write an analysis of his appearance. 

            I had a heated chicken wing for lunch and some yogourt with honey. 

            I took a siesta and when I got up I went to Freshco. It was my first time outside since last Saturday. There’s no riding to classes or work this year and so it was nice to get outside, however briefly. 

            I got four bags of black grapes, two half pints of raspberries, a cottage roll, a beef roast, three bags of skim milk, two cans of peaches, a bag of Miss Vicky’s chips and a jar of hot salsa. 

            There was a very outgoing guy behind me at the checkout. He was buying a whole case of canned sandwich meat and a couple of bags of hot dog buns. He told me he was going to put it all on the floor by the cash and then get behind me again. I wondered what he was going to do with all that canned meat. He looked like he was from the Caribbean although he had no accent and so I remembered that my ex-girlfriend from St Kitts had showed me once how to make a spicy hash with canned meat. I think he told the cashier it was for the food bank. When he saw me put my stuff in my backpack he said, “You're walkin it! I feel for ya bro!" 

            I worked some more on my translation of the Green Knight’s description. This is what I have so far: 

            An awesome master

            On Earth’s mound the most high in all measure 

            From neck stem to hip sides so thick set and square

            And his legs and his limbs so long and so great

            Half ogre on Earth that I gather he was 

            But mostly a man I mind him to have been

            And to eye the merriest of massive men that might ride

            For his back and his breast were all strong on his body 

            Both his womb and his waist were worthily small 

            And all his features followed the form that he had

                                    Fit clean;

                        But on his hue men looked with wonder

                        Set in his semblance seen

                        This fearsome freakish warrior

                        was all over fully green 

            And all garbs in green this guy did he wear

            A straight-coat full stretched that stuck on his sides

            A merry mantle over, matted within

            with expert pure peltwork of a piece that fit clean

            of blithe badger full bright, and also his hood

            that was lifted from his locks and laid on his shoulders 

            I made gravy with the rest of the chicken drippings I had in the fridge. 

            For dinner I had two potatoes, a chicken breasts and gravy while watching Interpol Calling.

            In this story a diplomatic courier is found dead in his room on the Intercontinental Express. The steward says that he’d just served him coffee two hours before but the examining doctor says that he’d been dead for 24 hours. The train crosses six countries from Istanbul to Paris and Interpol needs to figure out which of the countries was the place of death. Duval also wants to find the killer and so he goes to Istanbul to recreate the courier’s journey. He boards the train at the same time, takes the same room and dines at the same time, at the same table with the same meals. On his way to dinner someone tries to push him out of the train and he barely manages to hang on. At dinner the steward tells him that the courier had dined with a blonde woman and says he would recognize her again. When the steward goes to the kitchen he is stabbed and thrown off the train. When Duval returns to his room he is attacked but after a fight in the dark he manages to overwhelm his assailant. The man is arrested and questioned but won’t talk. He becomes frightened when asked about the man that killed the courier to assume his identity for free passage across countries. Duval calls Moray and gets him to check all women that might have been on the train, with photographs. Moray meets Duval on the train when it gets to Trieste. He says the only woman of the bunch with a criminal record is Suzy Cartier and even more interesting is that her current boyfriend is Jules LaRoche, who has three known murders to his credit. If LaRoche crossed any frontier it would be on the wire to Interpol in five minutes. This gives him a motive for killing a diplomatic courier and taking his identity. The steward looks at Suzy’s photo and confirms she had been in the compartment next to the courier. Duval goes to the club in Paris owned by Suzy Cartier and tells her that if they don’t find LaRoche they will charge her with murder. She confesses that LaRoche has come to kill a young woman in custody as a vice witness who is being held at a country estate. Duval goes there and stops LaRoche just in time before he kills the woman.

            Suzy was played by Jane Hylton, co-starred in “My Brother’s Keeper”, “Here Come the Huggetts”, “Passport to Pimlico”, and “Burnt Evidence”. She worked mostly in B movies. She played Queen Guenevere in The Adventures of Sir Lancelot.