David Watson

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the first two lines of "Au bon vieux temps" (In the Good Old Days) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the second verse of "Le Couteau dans le play" (The Knife in the Play) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I audio and video recorded song practice while playing my Kramer electric guitar. I did Megaphor in one take. When I played the B flat in The Accordion I heard a weird rattling sound that I've never heard before but in the audio playback I couldn't hear it. 

            When I turn up the reverb dial on my amp there's an annoying hum but I was able to eliminate it in the audio recording by taking a noise profile of the sound when it's by itself and then removing it from the entire recording. I had to do it three times to get it to sound clean but it was a satisfying result.

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around 12:30 I went to L'il Demon guitars to pick up my Japanese fake Gibson electric guitar. I'd brought it the day before because it was crackling and popping at the jack socket whenever I moved while playing. He had warned me on Wednesday that if he needed to change the socket he'd charge me $6 for the replacement. Even if he'd said five cents it would have seemed unfair to me considering he's already been paid almost $300 for fixing it. Good business etiquette would dictate that he'd feel responsible for not having properly completed the job and so he shouldn't have charged me for the extra part. But sure enough he charged me about $6.75 for the new socket. I paid it but he's lost a customer because of his chintzy attitude. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and stopped at Freshco on my way home. I bought three bags of grapes, two bags of cherries, a pack of strawberries, a pack of blackberries, a pack of blueberries, a bunch of bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a bag of Miss Vickie's chips, a jug of limeade, a lint roller, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, two packs of Nabob Full City Dark coffee, and a jar of Basilica sauce. 

            I weighed 85.1 kilos at 17:30.

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:19. 

            I reviewed this morning's song practice video. The camera mic definitely picked up the rattling sound from the B flat chord. Maybe the action on the Kramer has lowered again but the problem doesn't stand out for any other chord. I only heard it while playing "The Accordion". I only made it to the end of "The Wooden Leg" before the camera timed out. 

            I watched another thirty five minutes of Nanook of the North. It shows the building of an igloo. I didn't know that while the main part of the shelter is made of hard snow there is a window fitted in made of transparent ice and Nanook even set up a block of snow perpendicular to the window to angle the horizontal sunlight down through the window. There are ten minutes left to watch. 

            I scanned a set of colour negatives from spring of 1987 that have shots of my ex-girlfriend and her friend Suzanne all dolled up. Then I did a set of black and whites that are from around the same time with more pictures of Brenda and Suzanne, plus Brenda's ex-boyfriend Glenn, who Brenda eventually went back to and married. I started another set of colour negs from the same time but which are mostly street shots. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a piece of pork loin while watching the fourth season finale and the fifth season premier of Petticoat Junction. 

            In the first story Kate's southern belle cousin Mae comes with a plan to turn the Shady Rest into a fat farm. She can get backing from her wealthy banker boyfriend if they can make his daughter Agnes lose twenty kilos in two weeks. She says they also need a male subject to achieve the same to promote the effectiveness of Mae's method and so they force Uncle Joe to participate. Mae leaves Kate to supervise while she goes back to Louisville to supervise the banker. But Agnes does not respond well to dieting and she's suffering so much that each member of the family secretly sneaks her food, not knowing that the others are doing the same. Joe, while maintaining the diet at home, sneaks off every day to fish and then gorge himself on trout. Agnes and Joe both gain weight. But when Mae returns she isn't disappointed because she now has another boyfriend who can help turn the Shady Rest into a chinchilla farm. 

            The second story is very similar to one from the third season in which Betty Joe comes back from a trip to New York with Lisa Douglas. The trip to a cosmopolitan metropolis has transformed her. In this story she returns from Paris talking in a sophisticated manner and dressing like a fashion plate. In the earlier story a snobbish young man she met on her trip comes to visit, while in this story it's three men, Ronnie, Brad and Peter who make fun of the rural culture. Like in the earlier story Betty comes to her senses and tells the men to leave. 

            Peter was played by David Watson, who was born in Texas but raised in Britain by British parents. He sang in a choir at the coronation of Elizabeth II when he was a boy. He began his acting career in Shakespearian theatre. He starred as the title character in a made for TV musical production of The Legend of Robin Hood in 1968.