Elizabeth Harrower

            On Friday morning I memorized the fourth verse of “Calypso Blues" by Boris Vian. 

            I did an initial translation of “Ciel de plomb" (The Sky is Leaden) by Serge Gainsbourg. I found an audio of Zizi Jeanmaire singing it and I sang along a couple of times. It’s Gainbourg's translation of the jazz standard "Stormy Weather". Tomorrow I'll start memorizing the "Ciel de plomb" and probably try singing my translation to the melody, which will cause me to make adjustments. 

            In the late morning I returned to sanding my old secondary exit door in the bedroom. This time I spent half an hour on the section at the bottom of the right vertical door frame. When I had bedbugs six years ago I slathered the plaster very heavily down there to try to cover up any crevices where the bugs might be living. Now I'm trying to get that part of the frame to meet the floor at a right angle rather than a slope. Since there was a considerable pile of plaster dust on the floor when I was done, I must have made progress. It seems like there’s much less of a slope now but I still have to work on it some more. 

            I weighed 88 kilos before lunch. I had kettle chips with salsa and sour cream. 

            I took a siesta and ended up sleeping fifteen minutes longer than usual. 

            I took a bike ride but once I was underway I realized I'd forgotten to wear my hoody. I didn't want to bother going back so I just put on my spring gloves. Once I was at College and Brock I stopped to pull a scarf out of my backpack and then I was warm enough to continue. I intended to go along Bloor to Yonge but it started sprinkling at Ossington and then when it began sprinkling harder at Spadina I decided to head south to Queen and then home. It didn’t rain after all during the time I would have been riding but I didn’t want to take the risk of getting wet. 

            When I got home I took the tape off my guitar stand and put my guitar back on it. So far it’s holding. 

            I weighed 89.1 kilos at 17:50. 

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

            I cut a video of my performance of “A Ham and a Fiddle" from June 29 and deleted the rest of the session. This was a pretty good performance but I've improved the lyrics since then and I think I can do better. Maybe if my Washburn gets fixed to stay in tune I’ll do another bunch of recordings this spring and summer. If it doesn’t get fixed I'm seriously considering buying another guitar, this time in the $1000 range, but not at Remenyi again. 

            I worked on colourizing the black and white picture I took of the skateboarder in the 80s. 

            I scanned a sleeve and a half of negatives. The first was from a roll I shot in the fall of 1987 when I was sharing a house with my friend Mike and his wife and kids. There are some nice shots of my gorgeous ex-girlfriend Brenda, There are a couple of shots from a Halloween party when we dressed up in clothes that Brenda brought back from Saudi Arabia. I was dressed in traditional Arab headgear and she was wearing a black niqab. I’d been hoping to find the negatives from the other sleeve because they are the very first photos ever taken of my daughter when she was fresh from the oven. One frame has Nancy fully pregnant and overdue and the next shows her with the newborn Astrid. I still have a couple more strips from that roll to scan. 

            I grilled three chicken legs and had the biggest one with a small potato while watching two episodes of Andy Griffith. 

            In the first story Ben Weaver tells Andy that merchandize has been disappearing from his department store. Andy concludes that there's a shoplifter on the loose. Barney suspects Ben of taking his own stuff and collecting the insurance. That’s not unreasonable since it’s a statistical fact that most store theft is done by management, but that’s not the way it was in this case. Barney goes undercover as a store mannequin and is sure he’s found the thief, but when he tries to nab the old lady she has nothing but a Bible in her bag. She says she’s going to sue and Ben is very upset with Barney. Outside the store Andy tells Barney that one should never arrest a shoplifter inside the store. Then as the old lady is leaving Andy stops her. He tells Barney to get a bathroom scale from the store and then makes the lady step on it. She weighs far more than she should for her size. Andy opens up her coat and it’s lined with jewellery and silverware from the store. After they put her in jail Andy asks Barney where his gun is. Barney has to get it back from the lady. 

            One of the store customers was played by Elizabeth Harrower, who was born during the flu epidemic of 1918. Her mother succumbed to the virus six weeks later and her father had a nervous breakdown. It was believed that babies spread the flu and so her mother’s family put her up for adoption. She was adopted by Scottish immigrants but during the Great Depression the family was in hard times and so her mother took her out of school and got her work as a child actor. In 1935 she appeared in Becky Sharp, the very first feature length colour film. She played the teacher, Miss Perkins on Dennis the Menace. In 1979 she became the head writer for “Days of Our Lives” and continued writing soap opera scripts until 1991. Her daughter, Susan Seaforth Hayes became a star of Days of Our Lives for three decades. 

            In the second story Andy is stressed out over work and snapping at everyone. Barney convinces him to take a vacation and hires Gomer to be his deputy while he serves as acting sheriff. At first Andy tries to just relax at home and read National Geographic, but Barney and Gomer keep getting themselves in trouble. First they both lock themselves in the cell and Andy has to come and get them out. Then they come to Andy for the extra set of handcuff keys because they’ve locked their wrists together. Finally Andy decide to go camping in the mountains to get away from everyone. But just after he leaves the state police come with a prisoner they have to hold in the Mayberry jail for the night. Within two minutes the prisoner has taken the keys off the wall near the cell and walked away before Barney and Gomer even know he’s gone. But the escapee just happens to go to the mountains and approaches Andy’s campfire for some bacon. Andy can tell buy the man’s shoes that he’s an escaped con and he captures and ties him to a tree. Then Andy prepares to cross the lake to call the state police. But Barney and Gomer come looking for Andy and when they find the man tied to the tree they don’t recognize him and set him free. Then Barney thinks Andy is the convict and tackles him. Andy recaptures the convict. When Andy’s vacation that never was a vacation is over, Andy suggests Barney take a week’s holiday, right away. Barney does so and with him gone Andy can finally relax at work as if he was on vacation.