Harriet Walter

            On Sunday morning I had to start wearing a pony tail again to keep my hair from sticking out at the sides like a mad scientist. It's still not long enough to catch entirely with a hair tie but it probably will be by the time I can get a haircut. 

            I almost got all of “Apocalypstick” by Serge Gainsbourg memorized. There are only three verses and each verse is a couplet so there’s not a lot to learn. I adjusted my translation once I got a better sense of the rhythm. 

            My B string has started to go further out of tune and so obviously the new machine from Washburn has done nothing to fix the problem. The next time I have to go downtown I'll take the guitar to Remenyi so they can ship it back to the company and either repair or replace the guitar. 

            Around midday I finished steel wooling all the blackness from my kettle. It took at least an hour and the worst part was on the spout. It’s so silvery now I barely recognize it. Back in the late nineties it used to whistle but I think I somehow lost the part that caused that effect. Next I want to clean my main cooking pot but since it’s stainless steel I can’t use steel wool on it. I'll just have to see what I can accomplish with baking soda and a cloth. 

            I isolated my June 23 recording of “A Ham and a Fiddle" and converted it to WMV. I deleted the rest from that day as well as all of June 24. Getting rid of those MOV files really frees up a lot of space on my computer. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride but only rode fifteen minutes to Ossington so I’d be home by sunset at 17:00. 

            I deleted my song practice recordings from both June 25 and 26. 

            I worked on my poem series “My Blood in a Bug". 

            I checked my academic history online and found I got B pluses for both of my fall courses. It’s a bit disappointing but not surprising for these courses. Hopefully, Introduction to British Literature II will give me at least an A minus. 

            I worked a bit more on partially colourizing my black and white photo of the skateboarder from the 80s. 

            I translated a few more lines of “Les enfants du paradis” and “Les remparts du sud."

            I deleted the recordings of my June 27 and 28 song practices. 

            I made slice of bread pizza with sauce, salsa, french fries and cheese. I had it with a beer while watching the Doctor Who special that was broadcast on New Years Day. 

            SPOILER ALERT!!! 

            The Doctor is in space prison and has been away from Yasmin, Graham and Ryan from their perspective for ten months. It might have been at least twenty years from her point of view. On Earth a rising British politician named Jo Patterson is the minister of technology and she forms an alliance with Robertson, the US businessman who was clearly modelled after Donald Trump. He is mass producing robots that will be used for British policing. The robots are Daleks but only the mechanical shells and they seem to be totally under human control. But Leo, the scientist who developed the robots found organic material inside of the original robot and decided to grow the cells in his lab. Robertson tells him to destroy it but before he can the Dalek attaches itself to his back and forces him to grow more Daleks. Meanwhile back in the space prison the Doctor is taking her daily walk when Captain Jack Harkness calls to her from one of his cells. He says he had to commit several crimes to get there to rescue her and it took him nineteen years to get the cell next to hers. He uses a device that creates a rolling forcefield in which they run until they are free. She and Jack return to Earth and learn about the Daleks. The thousands of Daleks that are being 3-D printed were secretly weaponized by Leo. The Dalek creatures are teleported inside of the robots and they begin to exterminate all human life. The Doctor’s only solution is to send a signal to the Dalek SAS forces in space. They arrive in their flying saucer and begin exterminating the newly built Daleks because they consider them impure in that they contain human DNA. The original Daleks successfully exterminate the new ones but then Robertson tells them that it was the Doctor that signalled them. They search for the Doctor and she makes herself available to them by floating the Tardis above the Earth. Meanwhile, Jack, Graham and Ryan teleport onto the Dalek ship, plant bombs and teleport away just as they detonate. The Doctor opens the door of the Tardis and tells the Daleks to come in and get her. All of the Daleks fly in after her but it isn’t the Doctor but rather a hologram and this is a spare Tardis which she has programmed to fold in on itself once all of the Daleks are inside. The Doctor tells them they are about to leave for a system that is a restaurant where the food, the furniture and the waiters are all made out of meringue. But Ryan announces that he is going to stay on Earth and when Graham hears this he decides to stay as well. Yasmin decides she will continue with the Doctor. There are goodbyes and hugs all around and the Doctor gives Graham and Ryan each a telepathic identification card. They decide they will use them to save the world but meanwhile Ryan still wants to learn how to ride a bicycle, which is how these characters were introduced. They end on the same cliff where Ryan keeps falling off the bike. Jack says he is going to spend some time with Gwen Cooper, his former Torchwood colleague. 

            Jo Patterson was played by Harriet Walter who was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2000. She has won many other awards for her work in theatre. She played Mary Shelley in Birth of a Monster and Dr Kalania in The Force Awakens. She is the niece of Christopher Lee.