Robert Browning

            On Friday morning I ran through “Mozart avec nous" (Mozart Is With Us) by Boris Vian in French. I still need to readjust my English translation before it’s ready to post on Christian's Translations.

            I finished memorizing “Mélo Mélo" by Serge Gainsbourg and worked out the chords for the intro and the first line. It seems to be a basic boogie woogie if I understand what a boogie woogie is.

            My right middle finger is still sore from trying to put pull the tight bike tire onto my rim on Wednesday and Thursday. When I strum the guitar that finger tends to brush against the strings a bit and so it ached a bit when I played. 

            I weighed myself in the late morning and was surprised to see that I only weigh 89.4 kilos and so I’m not overweight. I look and feel fat but I guess it's because I've lost a lot of tone in the last year. 

            I took a siesta from 12:34 until a little after 14:00. 

            I had mashed avocado and plantain chips for lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Ossington and Bloor. 

            I researched some of the references in Oscar Wilde’s "The Critic As Artist". There are a lot of references even in the first six pages out of forty two. He certainly seemed to be a big fan of Robert Browning and though he had his criticisms he declared him to be “the most Shakespearean creature since Shakespeare.” This was mostly because of his ability to write in other voices. Wilde also mixes up his references so one is not sure he is talking about a real person or a character in a literary work unless one looks it up. 

             I took a second siesta between 18:50 and 19:50. 

             For dinner that night, while watching Andy Griffith I had the last two bowls of the spicy soup that I’d made on Tuesday. 

             In this story Opie becomes jealous of his father’s relationship with Peggy. He's worried Andy will lose interest in him. He gets a hint of that when they take Peggy fishing and Andy is impressed with the size of the fish Peggy catches even though Opie’s is twice as big. The next night that Andy has a date with Peggy Opie pretends to be sick and so Andy stays home. The next day Opie tells Peggy he wasn’t sick, making her think Andy had made up an excuse not to see her. Before the next date Peggy leaves a note with Opie to tell Andy to pick her up in front of the drug store but Opie throws it in the garbage. That night Andy is waiting for Peggy in front of her house while Peggy is waiting downtown. Both call Andy’s house but Opie doesn’t convey their messages. Finally Andy comes home and then Peggy storms up angry and tells Andy if he doesn’t want to go out with her to just say so. Then she tells him not to call her anymore and leaves. Opie overhears all this and confesses to his father what he did and why. Andy assures him that he’ll never love anyone more than he loves him. The next day Andy and Opie are supposed to go fishing but Opie is nowhere around. Then Opie walks up with Peggy, having invited her to come along. This is an odd story when compared to the other three episodes in which Peggy’s character appears. In her previous appearance Opie loves Peggy and loves having her around. It’s possible that they mixed up the chronology of the stories because this would only make sense just after Andy and Peggy had first met. This was the final appearance of Joanna Moore as Peggy.