Barbara Edwards

            On Thursday morning I posted my translation of “Yes man” by Serge Gainsbourg and then transcribed his song "Ciel de plomb", which is his translation of "Stormy Weather". Jazz standards in English tend to have inane lyrics and so I'm going to see if I can improve on "Stormy Weather" by translating "Ciel de plomb" back to English. 

            In the late morning I took a bike ride to Bloor and Yonge, south to Queen and then home. There sure were a lot of cops around today, both during my ride and earlier in Parkdale. They seem to be doing a lot of spot checks. 

            On the way home I stopped at Freshco. The red grapes were extremely cheap and so I got nine bags. I also bought strawberries, a corned beef brisket, kettle chips, canned peaches, and home style hot salsa, saltines. They were all out of the regular spoon size shredded wheat and so I bought the more expensive, organic version. 

            I had kettle chips, salsa and sour cream for lunch. 

            In the afternoon I wanted to get back to one of my home improvement projects that was put on hold at the end of the summer when I started the fall term at university. I'd planned on doing some sanding of the door frame in the bedroom but then when I thought of moving my guitar out so it wouldn’t be covered in dust I thought it would be inconvenient to put the guitar someplace else as long as the guitar stand is broken. I decided then that fixing the stand would be today’s project. I discovered that the tube of Krazy Glue I had was all dried up so I went over the hardware store. The guy recommended and sold me a tube of Titebond III for $23.70 after tax. 

            I chatted with Benji and Shankar outside our building for a few minutes until it began to sprinkle and I went inside. 

            The wood glue instructions are to clamp the item for only thirty minutes and not to stress the joint for 24 hours. Since the angle was too awkward for a clamp I just pressed it with my hands while watching a half hour episode of Andy Griffith. 

            In this story Andy and Barney are about to close the courthouse and go home when they get a call from state police that they have to hold a prisoner in their jail for the night. Andy and Barney gently argue over who gets to go home and finally Andy gives in and says he'll stay with the prisoner. But before Barney leaves Andy steps out for a minute and then the state police arrive with a very beautiful woman prisoner. Suddenly Barney doesn’t want to go home and when Andy comes back he doesn’t notice the prisoner. He sends Barney home and then notices the woman and he's stricken by her beauty as well. She's also very charming. Barney returns and says he doesn’t need to go home. They argue a bit and then they both stay. They set up a screen for the prisoner’s privacy but when they turn out the lights they can see the silhouette of her undressing. Then Otis comes in drunk and wants to sleep it off in the other cell but Andy and Barney for some unknown reason can’t let Otis stay there next door to a female prisoner. They flip a coin over who will take Otis home and Barney loses. The prisoner asks Andy to pull up a chair and talk with her and so he does. They get along very well. Then she says her suitcase Is stuck and Andy comes into the cell to fix it. There is a moment of temptation as she is standing near and puts her hand on his neck. They are about to kiss when Andy hears Barney coming back. Andy decides to go home but after an hour or so he can’t stay away. When he returns to the courthouse he catches the prisoner escaping and Barney is locked in her cell, without even realizing that he’s locked in. The prisoner says, “You can't blame a girl for trying" and they don’t. 

            The prisoner was played by the beautiful Susan Oliver, who played Vina in the unused Star Trek pilot, The Cage and many other memorable roles in theatre, film and television for three decades. 

            I decided to wrap some tape around the part that I’d glued just to secure it until tomorrow afternoon. It’s not a lot of pressure so I’ll see how it worked in a day. Meanwhile the guitar is just leaning against the wall. 

            I started downloading the fifth season of The Andy Griffith Show. I’m a little over halfway through season four. 

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

            I returned to colourizing parts of my black and white skateboarder photo from the 80s. 

            I had a potato and two chicken wings with gravy while watching two more episodes of Andy Griffith. In the first story Otis buys an old convertible and Andy and Barney are worried that he is going to drive drunk. When they see him stagger out from a party and fall unconscious on top of the hood of his hot rod that take him back to the jail and put on a performance to teach Otis a lesson. They wake him up and then start talking to each other as if Otis died in a car crash. Otis becomes convinced that he's dead and when they wake him up again he reveals that he’d already sold his car and handed over the keys before he collapsed on top of it. 

            In the second story Barney is the soloist in the choir because he’s the only tenor the choirmaster John Major could find. He’s not bad but he doesn't sing with enough feeling and Major is hoping to find a replacement. One day outside choir practice Gomer is fixing Major’s car when he starts unconsciously singing along with "Santa Lucia". Everyone in the choir stops singing and are blown away by Gomer’s amazing voice. This is the first time on the show that we hear Jim Nabors sing. Major takes on Gomer as the new soloist and Andy has to break it to Barney. When Gomer sees how disappointed Barney is he fakes losing his voice. But just before the concert Barney discovers that he was pretending and he doesn’t want to solo. Finally Andy has to push them both forward and the three do the solo together. Gomer enunciates way too well in his singing voice for someone who is supposed to be untrained. 

            One of the choir members was Andy Griffith’s wife Barbara Edwards Griffith. They married in 1949 and worked as a musical comedy duo. They divorced in 1973. They were both alcoholics.