Antoinette Bower

            On Friday morning I memorized the fourth verse of “Les frères” by Boris Vian. There are eleven verses to go. 

            I worked out the chords for the fifth and sixth verses of “Amour puissance six” (Love to the Power of Six) by Serge Gainsbourg. I’ll probably have the song finished on Saturday. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the third session of four. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before breakfast. 

            I left for class at 12:15. It was snowing and I wore my new winter boots for about the third time. I was scheduled to do an opening dialogue with Andrew but the other opening dialogue and the discussion of it took up the whole class. Professor Ballot said we could do ours next time. I was scheduled to do an opening dialogue with myself next Friday but it turns out it’s Good Friday. We’re going to probably extend our class for an extra hour on April 5 to make up for the lost day. 

            Professor Ballot told us about the Mappa Mundi Hereford, the largest Medieval map. 

            I said that the narrator of The Hobbit is definitely addressing 20th century readers. There are modern references. 

            Earth was called middle earth in the middle ages. It comes from the Norse “Midgard”. 

            In Tolkien’s world wizards are incarnated immortal spirits. That makes them less impressive since they didn’t need to work at being magical. 

            Each chapter is an adventure The Hobbit was written before WWII. Tolkien was a WWI vet. Lord of the Rings came after WWII with the message that one can't trust power. 

            Tolkien’s book gives its location a history that is not detailed. This is true of Gawain and the Green Knight also. 

            Dungeons and Dragons is in Tolkien’s world sort of. 

            There are different meters for the elf, dwarf and goblin songs. Goblin songs are more physical.

            Tolkien was a Catholic and believed in providence and an ultimate purpose. 

            Simona said that it’s easier for a woman to identify with Bilbo than the few gratuitously feminine women that appear in the story. The other women are non other women. 

            I said there is no colour for a hobbit.

            I was disappointed that I didn’t get to do my dialogue. 

            The snow was falling much more heavily on the way home. I was at around Ossington on Queen when a streetcar beside me suddenly opened its doors. I squeezed my brakes and my bike slipped in an icy pothole causing it to slide out from under me. I slammed my knee on the pavement again like I did a year and two months ago. It still hadn’t healed since then so I don’t know if this will add to the injury or if it will heal to at least the point where I started out today. It’s pretty sore now. I also hit my chin and scraped my nose. I saw that my chin was bleeding a bit when I got home. I shouldn’t have braked since I probably would have been at the front of the streetcar by the time the passengers had gotten off anyway. 

            I weighed 84.1 kilos before a late lunch at 16:00. 

            I took a siesta from 16:30 to 18:18. 

            I weighed 83.4 kilos at 18:30. 

            I was behind on my journal and hadn’t caught up before dinner. 

            I sautéed two scallions, garlic and a lot of ginger. I added Vegemite, mushrooms and lima beans. I had it for dinner while watching episode 2 of Amos Burke Secret Agent. 

            These stories seem to always begin on a plane where Burke gets his mission in a high tech room with a lot of beeping and booping instruments. His mission is to find an Algerian boy named Ahmed Bassa, the son of Algerian diplomat Mohammad Bassa. The boy was with a girl when he was kidnapped and she was killed. Her sister Clare is staying at the Albion. They’ve bullet proofed Burke’s Rolls Royce. Clare asks for passage to the US and Burke agrees if she tells him where Ahmed is. She says they took him to the Escargot Rouge. She says there’s a hidden door in the washroom. But their conversation is being bugged. When he gets there a vacationing couple that knows him from Los Angeles calls to him. There’s nothing in the secret room but Burke is attacked when he leaves. He’s knocked out in the alley and then shot by one of the waiters. His bosses, General Zachron and The Countess Mouton discover that the gun was shooting blanks. The Countess shoots the waiter but Burke is gone. 

            Back at Burke’s hotel a British agent tells Burke about General Zachron. He had been part of the revolt by De Gaulle’s generals and escaped to El Salvador. He informs Burke there is a dead girl on his bed and it is Clare. But before she died she wrote “Chateau Martin”. Burke goes there pretending to be a tourist but Zachron recognizes him. Burke says he has a flat tire. Zachron says it’s been taken care of and the countess drives him to to a railroad track where his Rolls has been loaded onto a boxcar. The countess kisses him and then someone points a gun at him. They force him in with his car and then toss a poison gas grenade before closing the door. He uses the jack from his trunk to break open the door. Burke goes to a US embassy party where he meets the countess again. She’s surprised to see him alive but the next thing you know they are necking in Burke’s hotel room. Burke’s watch buzzes and that means he has to go back to mission control on the plane. The countess stays in his room and calls Zachron. He tells her to kill Burke when he gets back. She puts together a gun from items in her purse and shoots when the door opens but she doesn’t realize as she leaves in the dark that she has killed the British agent and not Burke. But before he dies he informs Burke that Zachron’s plan is to assassinate De Gaulle. 

            Burke goes back to the chateau and knocks out a workman to steal his clothes. He sneaks into the house and in one of the rooms finds a full supply of weapons and explosives. In another room he finds several TV screens, with one of them viewing the room where Ahmed is being held. He’s caught by the countess but he takes her gun away easily however another guard captures him. He has a fight with the guard until the countess knocks him out with the butt of a rifle. Burke wakes in a cell but breaks out with a strip of plastic explosives in his belt. For some reason they hadn’t taken his lighter. On one of the TV screens Burke watches Zachron outlining the plan to attack De Gaulle’s motorcade. Explosives will be set off in the tunnel and Ahmed’s body will be found on the detonator so the assassination appears to be an Algerian coup. One of the guards goes to get Ahmed and Burke jumps him. But Burke is outnumbered and injected with a sedative. The countess tells Zachron that she will kill Burke. Burke’s body is placed in a wine barrel and carried off on the next shipment from the chateau’s vineyards. The barrel rolls off the truck on the way and smashes open, revealing Burke to be still alive. Burke goes back to the chateau and sets a detonator in the explosives storage room. Then he blows the big house up. Although Zachron and his crew are off to kill De Gaulle, there would most probably be at least kitchen and cleaning staff in the chateau, so that makes Burke a mass murderer.

            Zachron has a duplicate motorcade to replace De Gaulle’s and a man in a De Gaulle mask in the main car. The explosives are being set in the tunnel when Burke pulls up in his Rolls. The unrealistically fickle countess knocks Zachron’s gun and runs to Burke. She is mortally wounded on the way. Burke kills Zachron and several of the men and then drives to the other side of the tunnel. While a guard is distracted Ahmed knocks him out. Burke pushes the detonator and blows up the tunnel with the rest of Zachron’s men inside. The countess dies in Burke’s arms. 

            The countess was played by Antoinette Bower, whose first job was as a Field Language Supervisor for the International Refugee Organization in Germany. In 1953 she joined her family in Canada where she became a DJ for a radio station in Owen Sound. This led to employment for CBC radio and television in Toronto. She began acting for CBC television and her first screen appearance was in a CBC production of The Telltale Heart. She had a recurring role on the Canadian Western series Hudson’s Bay. In 1960 she wrote, produced and narrated a radio documentary about Canadian actor Barry Morse. She moved to LA and her first US screen appearance was in the TV series Hong Kong. In the early 90s she moved back to Canada to co-star in three seasons of the CTV series Neon Rider.