Aucassin and Nicolette

            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse and chorus of “Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais” (I just came by to tell you I'm gonna leave) by Serge Gainsbourg. The rest of the song has the same chords and so it will be just a matter of inserting them in the right place now.

            I washed another six-board wide section of my bedroom floor in the area where the foot of my bed sits.

            I went down to Freshco at King and Jameson where I bought grapes, raspberries, mouthwash, yogourt, hair conditioner and coffee. Chicken drumsticks were on sale and I got two packs for $5.20. At the checkout I bought a large reusable shopping bag.

            I had a small can of beans with toast for lunch.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Sapphire is upset that Kingfish doesn’t give her money to buy new things and she threatens to do something desperate. She meant she would get a job. Later Kingfish hears that a woman stole $300 from a store and then when he comes home he finds $300 hidden in the closet, thinking that Sapphire is the thief. He takes the money and tries to turn himself in to keep his wife from going to jail but finds the real thief has been caught. Kingfish finds out that Sapphire is the treasurer for her women’s group and she was holding onto the $300 they made at the charity bazaar until she could put it in the bank. The police arrest Kingfish for stealing his wife’s $300.

            There was a joke about US President Truman’s speech the night before in which he’d lifted controls on meat. Andy said he’d made a lot of horses very happy.

            I read the first two chapters of Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance. I guess the reason we are reading this is because it shows the influence that the Renaissance had on the aesthetic and decadent movements.

            The first chapter is about the medieval love story of Auccasin and Nicolette. It is a chantefable or sung story about the love between a Christian knight and a Saracen slave maiden. I downloaded the original text.

            Pater also mentions Abelard and Heloise, the true story of the Christian philosopher who fell in love with his student and got her pregnant. Her uncle castrated him and he became a monk while she became a nun and their relationship continued in the form of correspondence.

            The second chapter is about Pico della Mirandola, who wrote the Oration on the Dignity of Man, which is considered to be the manifesto of the Renaissance because of its attempt to connect all the world’s philosophies and religions into agreement.

            The third chapter was about Sandro Botticelli who through his painting interpreted the work of Dante.

            I had a piece of toast with cheese and a beer for dinner while watching Wanted Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen.

            Have you ever noticed that every western town on television is perfectly flat?

            This story begins with a man wearing fancy and very jangly spurs knocking another man unconscious in an alley in one such flat western town named Lordsville. A woman named Lucy enters the alley calling for Vick, who is the assailant. She asks who the unconscious man is and he tells her he’s just a drifter. Vick leaves and she pulls out a derringer, killing the drifter, then rips her own clothes and calls for help. The next day Josh arrives in town on the trail of Vick Warsaw and the sheriff informs him he’s dead and shows Josh Vick’s personal effects. On learning that there was a $2500 reward for Vick Warsaw the sheriff leaves town to fetch the US marshal so that Lucy can receive the reward

            I’ve always been confused about the difference between a sheriff and a marshal, so I looked it up. Sheriffs are elected by towns to keep the peace while marshals are federally appointed law officers.

            Josh looks again at Vick’s personal effects and then smiles, realizing that Vick is still alive and someone else was buried. He goes to visit Lucy and tells her of his conclusion. Later Josh receives a note from Lucy asking him to meet her. Near her seamstress’s shop Vick tries to gun him down but has to escape when he is not hurt. Later he hears Lucy calling for Vick as to her surprise Josh walks up. She confesses and says she’ll lead him to Vick. Vick tries to shoot him gain and Josh kills him. Lucy is arrested.

            Lucy was played by Betsy Drake who was born in France. She is best known for her first film “Every Girl Should be Married" in which she starred with Cary Grant. She married Grant shortly afterwards with the best man being Howard Hughes and they were married but not together for thirteen years. During her marriage to Grant they underwent LSD therapy together and took it over 100 times. She was in Spain in 1957 while Grant was filming The Pride and the Passion with Sophia Loren. She left on the Andrea Doria when she found out he was in love with Sophia. She was rescued when the liner sank and she lost $200,000 worth of jewellery and a book manuscript she'd been working on. She wrote the script for Houseboat and thought she would co-star in it with Grant but he wanted Loren so the script was rewritten and she received no credit. Their divorce settlement won her a million in cash and a percentage of the thirteen films he mad while they were married. She gave up acting wrote books and attended Harvard, earning a Master of Education degree.