I memorized the fourth verse and the chorus of “Lucette et Lucie” by Serge Gainsbourg.
Song practice was once again a trial with more tuning troubles. One breakthrough is that I’ve learned that if it’s only the B string that has gone off then I can get it back without the tuner. That is often the case but if the E string also goes sharp or flat then I can’t figure them both out by ear. Then I spent ten minutes or more between each song trying to get the tuning back into place with the tuner. A couple of times I got so frustrated that I started crying. I didn’t cry while I was tuning but rather after I finally had it in tune for a while and had begun singing. Singing while sobbing sounds horrible and it looks bad too. Now that I have an older face I look especially ugly when I’m weeping.
In the late morning I went to No Frills where I bought four bags of grapes, a half pint of blueberries, mouthwash, dental floss, detergent, and paper towels. At an empty shelf a little old man had spread out his coins, which were mostly nickels and seemed to be carefully counting them. After buying yogourt from the other side of the store I remembered that I’d forgotten to get Irish Spring, honey and olive oil. I went back down the paper towel aisle and the old man was still there counting. I thought later that maybe I should have just slipped him $5. But then again, maybe he's really eccentric owner of the store and he comes around to collect all the nickels from the cash registers and looks through them for rare coins.
I had Breton crackers and old cheddar for lunch.
I worked on my British Literature essay for a couple of hours until my brain gave out.
For dinner I bumped up a can of pasta sauce with sautéed onions, garlic, and Chinese chili sauce. I had it on some rotini and some cheese on top and ate it with a beer while watching part three of Quatermass II.
This story begins with Quatermass and member of parliament Broadhead attending a meeting of members of the ministry that has been financing the restricted plant by the meteor site. All of the members act as if they are in a trance and they all bear a mark from meteor contact. Quatermass leaves to talk to Fowler and when they return they find Broadhead alone, marked and also in a trance. Quatermass meets with Fowler and a man named Rupert Ward in an espresso bar. This is 1955 and the waitress laments that the trend is now tea places and no one appreciates a good cup of coffee anymore. Ward has a government pass to the facility and he has been there six times to deliver members of a tour, but he never stayed to look around. Quatermass wants him to use his pass to take him and Fowler inside. Meanwhile on a beach outside the facility a mother and father and their teenage son have stopped to have a picnic on the beach. The soldiers come with guns to tell them to leave. The middle aged father is standing up to the armed guard when Quatermass’s car passes. Inside the facility there ate more zombielike workers. He learns that the “food” tanks are pumped with ammonia and methane. Ward wanders off and while looking for him they see him stumbling down the steps on the outside of one of the tanks. He is covered in slime because he slipped inside while investigating. He dies and Quatermass takes his slime covered necktie for analysis. The car belonging to the family on the beach is towed into the facility with a limp arm hanging out of the window. While the gate is open Quatermass and Fowler drive through. At the rocket group the tie is analyzed and it is found that the “food” would be poisonous to any human. Quatermass thinks it is food for something for which oxygen may be poison. Pugh has calculated that the meteors are coming from an asteroid that approaches the Earth every 48 hours.
The waitress was played by Margaret Flint, who was in the movie “Silent Playground".
The mother was played by Illona Ference, who was a castmember of the TV series “Solo for Canary".
Pugh was played by Hugh Griffith who graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the top of a class of 300. He was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance in Look Homeward Angel. He won the 1959 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing Sheikh Ilderim in Ben Hur. In 1963 he was nominated for another Academy Award for his supporting role in Tom Jones. The scene in which the horse falls on him was not planned and it resulted from him riding drunk. He was a lifelong friend and drinking companion of Dylan Thomas. He was fired from “How to Steal a Million” for persistent bad behaviour, such as wandering naked through the corridors of the hotel while wearing a sign over his genitals that read, “Do disturb.”
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