Patrick Horgan

            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for the ninth verse of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Street) by Boris Vian. There are two more verses left. 

            I finished revising my translation of “Your Under Arrest” by Serge Gainsbourg and called it “Seeking Samantha in the Bronx”. I sang and played it and then uploaded it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. I’ll probably have it posted tomorrow. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first session of two. 

            I weighed 85.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I went down to No Frills where the grapes were all too soft and so I didn’t buy any. I got two packs of raspberries, dental floss, chili sauce, salsa, Bolognese sauce, ground chicken, roasted garlic hummus, red pepper dip, tzatziki, a jug of orange juice, two containers of skyr, and Miss Vickie’s chips. My nice cashier Jessica pointed out that one of the skyrs was past its best before date. I went to look for another but they were all dated November 10 so I just got one. I thanked Jessica and told her that was one of the reasons she was my favourite. When I got home there was no dental floss among my groceries and it wasn’t on the bill and so I must have left it in the bottom of my basket. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before lunch. I had Triscuits with five-year old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. It was very cold on my hands on the way back despite the fact that I was wearing my fall gloves. I had my winter gloves in my backpack but I was too lazy to stop and dig them out.

            I weighed 85.8 kilos at 17:15, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening in 26 days. 

            I didn’t get caught up on my journal until 19:00 because last night I got sleepy and went to bed before I could finish my review of Green Acres. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my electric version of “Time of the Yo-Yo” I set the audio balance to be entirely from my Audacity recording with nothing from the camera microphone. I added the effect of a fade to black at the end and tried out a few other effects. I settled on a warping of the video from side to side. I rendered it as a movie and then uploaded it to YouTube. So now I’m finished with playing “Le temps des yoyos” and “Time of the Yo-Yo” as part of my regular song practice repertoire and I’ll be replacing it with “Le Moribond” by Jacques Brel and my translation “When They Put Me In that Hole”. 

             I watched most of the 1945 film Ziegfeld Follies. It’s a collection of segments of dance, comedy or both with different writers and directors and inspired by the Ziegfeld Follies. It’s entertaining but the only thing that really stands out is Lucille Ball in a feathery pink gown cracking a whip to control a group of black clad cat women.

            I made two ground chicken patties and grilled them in the oven. I had one on toasted seven grain bread with chili sauce, Dijon, horseradish, and roasted red pepper dip. I ate it with a beer while watching season 3, episodes 12 and 13 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Oliver is preparing to leave for a farmers symposium and Lisa wants to go too. But Oliver says she can’t come because the farmers are not taking their wives. She is uncomfortable being alone while their hired hand Eb is away. At Sam’s store he meets Tony Ashley, who is tramping across the United States while writing a book about it. He has stopped in Hooterville to find work and so Oliver hires him. He is handsome and very much a gentleman with Lisa, kissing her hand upon greeting her and pulling out her chair at meals. Lisa tries to use that to make Oliver jealous so he’ll let her come along to the symposium. Oliver does feel slightly threatened by Tony’s perfect manners and so finally he gives in to let Lisa come along. 

            Tony was played by Patrick Horgan, who was not only an actor who specialized in playing Sherlock Holmes but he was also an Arthur Conan Doyle and a James Joyce scholar. He played Holmes several times on stage and performed the complete series in recordings for the blind. His first co-starring role on television was as Gilles Cobham on the BBC series The Gentle Falcon. After moving to the States he made guest appearances on several TV series. He played Dr. John Morrison on the soap opera The Doctors. He was the narrator of Woody Allen’s Zelig. He wrote the book The Detection of Sherlock Holmes in which he draws connections between the Holmes stories and the bardic legends. 

            In the second story Oliver is once again fed up with the antiquated tractor that Haney sold him as it once again falls apart. Then a Mr. Farley comes to Green Acres looking for Haney because he thinks it’s still his farm. Lisa directs him down the road where Farley still thinks that Haney owns the Douglas farm. Farley tells Haney that he’s from the highway commission and they are considering putting a highway interchange at Green Acres, saying they would pay him well. Haney then sets about to trying to buy the property back from Oliver. But Oliver learns from Hank Kimball about the highway and decides to teach Haney a lesson by spreading the rumour that oil has been discovered on his property. Haney tells him that when he sold the farm he kept the mining rights but Oliver says he can’t get to the oil without crossing his property and so they would have to split the money. Haney starts drilling and strikes water.