Raquel Welch

            On Saturday morning I finished memorizing “Entre l'âme et l'amour” (Between Love and Spirit) by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the chords out of habit but didn’t really expect anyone to have posted them. The only music sample I have of the song is an extract from the middle on Apple Music. That should be enough to figure the whole song out but the extract player doesn’t allow moving back. One has to listen to the whole sample and then listen to it again and so I can’t work out the chords in sequence. I have to do it in patches jumping through different parts of the song until I get it all. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first of four sessions. I played a little louder than usual because now that my upstairs neighbour is dead there’s nobody to complain. 

            I weighed 86.4 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since last Saturday. 

            In the late morning I went down to No Frills where I bought five bags of red grapes, a pack of raspberries, bananas, a pack of chicken legs, a loaf of Rudolph’s seven grain bread, two artisan naan, a pack of ground beef, sliced dill pickles, a jug of orange juice, and two containers of skyr. I forgot to buy potato chips. There was a really bad smell where one puts one’s items on the checkout belt. I think it was coming from one of the cart-baskets. 

            I spent about half an hour trying to organize the poem “Pearl” to line the translated lines up with the original Middle English but I’m only up to line 156 in a 1200 line poem. I have to stop trying to make the lines look neat because it’s too time consuming. My final paper is due in six days. 

            I weighed 86.8 kilos before lunch. I had a slice of seven grain sandwich bread with the last of the pumpkin butter, five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I only wore one scarf and used my spring gloves. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:00. 

            I lined up another 100 lines of Pearl and made some notes: 

            In this dreamscape even with the display of a multitude of pearls on which the mourner walks he is not reminded consciously of his lost Pearl. Indeed, after line 58 when he falls asleep distraught, he is experiencing so much joy in this fantasy realm that he does not think of his dead daughter at all for 107 lines of bliss until the transformed version of her appears before him and he recognizes her. At that point he is suddenly reminded of his grief. She is not even his reason for wanting to cross the river, as that desire manifests itself almost as soon as he sees the beautiful stream. 

            The lining up of the poem is time consuming but it’s important to have the right line numbers. Hopefully I’ll make better headway tomorrow because the deadline is getting closer and I have a lot of writing to do. 

            I made four ground beef patties and grilled them in the oven. I put one between two halves of a naan with chili sauce, Dijon and three slices o dill pickle. I had it with a beer while watching season 1, episode 8 of Bewitched.

            In this story Darrin’s boss Larry is going to Paris on business and taking his wife Louise along. Before he leaves he unloads all of his work on Darrin and so Darrin is so busy that Samantha hardly sees him at all. Samantha is bored and playing solitaire when her mother pops in. Samantha is very glad to see her and suggests they go for lunch. Endora seduces Samantha into having lunch in Paris. They do so and then Samantha thinks it’s time to go home, but Endora tempts her into going to a fashion show. But at the show Samantha is spotted by Larry Tate who is there with Louise and insists on them coming to dinner with them. From the restaurant Larry calls Darrin at the office to surprise him with the fact that he’s run into Samantha in Paris. That’s obviously a shock to Darrin. Samantha comes home to find Darrin drunk and feeling sorry for himself. He thinks that Samantha has become bored with their marriage and is living the high life that he can’t provide. Samantha is mad at him for not trusting her and so she goes back to Paris. Larry Tate returns from Paris and tells Darrin he left Louise there, who is hanging out with Samantha. He says Samantha is only pretending to have a good time and is clearly miserable. This makes Darrin happy because now he knows that Samantha is not bored with him. He decides to fly to Paris, but after he leaves, Samantha comes to the office looking for Darrin. When she learns Darrin has taken a flight to Paris she goes looking for him on all the planes heading east. She looks into each plane through the windows from outside and causes one woman to faint. Finally she sees Darrin and taps on the window to wake him. He sees her and shouts in surprise causing the flight attendant to come to calm him down. We only see her from the side and the back and she’s not really recognizable but apparently the flight attendant is played by Raquel Welch a year or so before becoming a star and one of the greatest sex symbols of all time because of her role while wearing an animal skin bikini in the movie One Million Years B.C. 

            Raquel Welch won several beauty contests in her teens. While in college she became a TV weather girl. She modeled and then got her first screen exposure on television, mostly as eye candy. Her debut film was a small part in A House is Not a Home. Her first starring role was in One Million Years B.C. in 1966. She co-starred in Fantastic Voyage, Bedazzled, Fathom, 100 Rifles, Myra Breckinridge, The Wild Part, The Three Musketeers (1974), The Four Musketeers, Blue Beard, The Prince and the Pauper, Animals, Shoot Louder I Don’t Understand, Sex Quartet, The Oldest Profession, The Biggest Bundle of Them All, Bandolero, The Lady in Cement, Fuzz, and Mother Juggs and Speed. She starred in Kansas City Bomber, The Legend of Walks Far Woman, Right to Die, Hannie Caulder, and Flareup. In 1970 she starred in the hit TV special Raquel. She co-starred in the TV series American Family and Date My Dad. She’s apparently the 21st Great Granddaughter of King Edward I.