The Miller's Tale

            On Sunday morning I finished working out the chords to “Privé" by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through the song in French. 

            Around midday I cleaned my bathroom sink as it was getting pretty grungy. 

            For lunch I had rice crackers and cheddar with some orange juice. 

            The heat still isn’t on and so I wore my hoody and had the oven on most of the day. 

            When I got up from a siesta in the afternoon I started reading the General Prologue from Canterbury Tales, but my vision was fuzzy. I spent twenty minutes looking for the glasses that I haven’t worn for years. The lenses were dirty but while cleaning them an earpiece came off. I tried to put it back on but the tiny screw fell on the floor and I couldn’t find it. When I put the glasses on my reading vision was worse anyway and by then my eyes were clearer. 

            It took three hours to read the Prologue because it’s in Middle English and I had to keep dipping down to look at the footnotes. 

            It’s a description of all the pilgrims who stopped at an inn on their way to the shrine in Canterbury. Most of the people were pretty self interested no matter what their station except for one poor priest and his farmer brother. 

            I read the Prologue to the Miller’s Tale from Canterbury Tales. The miller is drunk and it isn’t his turn to tell a story but he insists. 

            Then I went on Blackboard to read the assigned translation of The Miller’s Tale. 

            A carpenter has a much younger and very beautiful wife. Young Nicholas the astrologer and Absolon the clerk both want the pretty Alyson but Nicholas grabs her by the pussy and charms her. In order to get the carpenter out of the way Nicholas convinces him that it’s written in the stars that a great flood is coming. He tells him that he should get three large barrels: one for himself, one for Alyson and one for him to suspend from the rafters and sleep in while waiting for the flood. While the carpenter is sleeping in the barrel Nicholas and Alyson sneak off to bed. While they are in bed Absolon comes to serenade Alyson and won’t leave without a kiss. It’s dark so when she sticks her bum out the window he doesn’t know he is kissing her anus until he’s done so. Angry, Absolon goes and gets a hot poker from a blacksmith and goes back to ask for another kiss. This time Nicholas sticks his ass out the window but gets burned. While he’s shouting for water the carpenter wakes up and thinks the flood has arrived. He cuts the rope holding his barrel and falls to break his arm. Nicholas and Alyson tell the townspeople that the carpenter went mad and thought that a flood was coming. 

            I grilled five hot Italian sausages and had one on a bun with mustard and chili sauce while watching the penultimate episode of The Count of Monte Cristo. 

            In this story the Duke Charles of Andorra has a visit from his brother Victor when one of Victor’s men kills Charles. Charles’s servant sees this and runs to help the duke’s young daughter Renee and son Gerard escape. He tells them to go to their secret place and wait for him but after they have gone down a rope from the balcony the servant is killed. Meanwhile the duke’s friend the Count of Monte Cristo, along with Jacopo and Carlo come in answer to a letter from Charles. The count is welcomed by Victor and told that Charles has died of an infectious disease and the children are quarantined. The count is invited to be Victor’s guest but the count is suspicious because Charles had not mentioned an illness in his letter. They sneak along the edge of the castle to Charles’s chambers and find the knot from the rope by which the children escaped. The count goes to the secret treehouse that he helped Charles to build and finds the children there. Victor learns that the count has left the grounds in a closed coach headed for the French border and he sends his men after it. But the coach is a decoy so that the count can double back and meet his friends with the children to take them to Spain. Victor anticipates this and sets up a roadblock at the Spanish border. The count and his friends meet a group of travelling performers who agree to help them. The wagons of the players are searched and the children are not there. The next day the performers return to Andorra and tell the guards they will be returning to Spain that night. They pick up the count, his friends and the children who disguise themselves as the players. But Victor has captured one of the players and forced him to reveal the plan. The wagon is crossing between the two borders when Victor and his men catch up. There is a fight that the count and his friends win. Victor is arrested by the Spanish border guards. 

            Renee was played by Susan Seaforth Hayes, who would go on to spend sixty years in the cast of the soap opera Days of Our Lives. 

            Gerard was played by Johnny Crawford who was already one of Disney’s Mousketeers along with Annette Funicello at the time of this episode. Later he would co-star as the son on The Rifleman.