Barbara Perry

            On Sunday morning I woke up twenty minutes late because I hadn’t reset the alarm clock forward an hour. I rushed through yoga and was only ten minutes behind when it was done. When I’m holding poses, especially the difficult ones, I catch myself cheating and skipping ahead while counting. Often I can consciously correct it and count properly but sometimes I see it slip out from under me so there’s a constant struggle. This time I deliberately didn’t wrestle with the cheater in me and I got less behind.

            I finished posting my translation of “Mesdames, mesdemoiselles, mes yeux" (Madames and Madmoiselles, My Eyes) by Serge Gainsbourg. Then I started looking for the lyrics for his “Quand ça balance” (When it’s Unbalanced). I found them on a Gainsbourg site, but they were pressed into a block of text with out division into verses. They also weren’t copyable and so I started transcribing them. I’ll finish doing that tomorrow. I also found there’s an audio of Zizi Jeanmaire singing the song on YouTube, so I’ll be able to learn it and work out the chords.

            I weighed 89.3 kilos before breakfast.

            I took a siesta from 12:00 to 13:30.

            I weighed 89.8 before lunch and 90.5 after a glass of orange juice and some grapes. 

            I got an email from the head TA in response to my appeal of my mark in the most recent reading quiz. He told me my argument sounded reasonable to him and so he changed my mark, so that now I’m 4 for 4 on the quizzes so far. I felt good having won my appeal. Sometimes I think that they deliberately put wrong “correct” answers in the quizzes just to keep students on their toes and to get them argumentative. 

            I took a bike ride. It was a lot colder outside than it looked through the window, especially because this time of year some people walk around dressed as if it’s springtime, even when it’s wintery. But I dressed for winter because I don’t trust the weather this time of year and I was comfortable. There was a strong wind blowing from the northwest and so it was a slow climb up Brock Avenue. I rode to Ossington and Bloor as usual. 

            When I arrived home I felt my back wheel dragging. The wheel was up against one of the brake pads and so I adjusted the brake balance and it seemed fine. 

            I weighed 90.2 kilos when I got back. 

            I finished researching George Eliot’s “The Natural History of German Life” and started re-reading for the fourth time “The Critic As Artist” by Oscar Wilde. He’s certainly less boring to read than George Eliot. I was looking for quotes that may support my essay. A couple I found so far are: “To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is the proper occupation of the historian” and “there is no art where there is no style, and no style where there is no unity, and unity is of the individual.” 

            I weighed 89.4 kilos before dinner. 

            I mixed tomatoes, avocados, a little chopped scotch bonnet pepper with some lime juice and ate my meal while watching Andy Griffith. 

            In this story Andy and Barney are moving his trunk of memories into Andy’s garage because Barney’s landlady wants to grow mushrooms in the basement. When the trunk collapses and they start picking things up they find their high school year book and begin reminiscing. Andy particularly remembers his sweetheart Sharon, with whom he went steady for the last two years before graduation. Suddenly Andy proposes a high school reunion and Mary Lee, one of their former schoolmates who never left Mayberry helps to organize it. On the night of the event Barney meets Ramona, who he told Andy had an incurable crush on him and used to write him love poetry. But Ramona doesn’t remember Barney at all and thinks he’s the bartender. It isn’t until later in the night that Sharon arrives. She and Andy dance and then take a walk in the garden. They kiss and remember that on graduation night things unfolded in a very similar way and they wonder why things didn’t go further. They remember they had an argument but they don’t remember what it was about. They talk about Sharon’s life in Chicago and how she could never live in Mayberry again and Andy talks about how he knows Mayberry is the only home he’s ever wanted. Suddenly Andy remembers that was what their fight had been about. They have a sad last dance. 

            Mary Lee was played by Barbara Perry, who played the part of Trouble in Madame Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera when she was four. She trained as a tap dancer and headlined at famous nightclubs in the US and London. She was in the sitcom The Hathaway’s and she was the first actor to play Buddy Sorrel’s wife Pickles on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Her one woman show “Passionate Ladies” won two Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards. She was still working at the age of 97 when she died and is said to have had the longest film career in history. 

            Ramona was played by Virginia Eiler, who played Kate Hancock on Ben Casey. 

            Sharon was played by Peggy McCay, who gave a good, subtly emotional performance. She studied acting with Lee Strasberg in New York. She played Nurse Caroline Brady on Days of Our Lives from 1983 to 2019.