Friday 5 July 2024

Hermione Baddeley


            On Thursday morning I published “Litany in Lithuania”, my translation of “Litanie en Lituanie” by Serge Gainsbourg on my Christian’s Translations blog and posted the lyrics on Facebook. There are twenty two Gainsbourg songs left to learn. I memorized the first two verses of his “L'impression du déjà vu” (A Sense of Déjà Vu) and those two verses are repeated several times. There are only two different verses to nail down now. 
            I weighed 88 kilos before breakfast. 
            I moved several more photos from my main hard drive to the Samsung SSD alphabetically from “Sexual Doll” to “Too Many Girlfriends”. 
            I weighed 87.9 kilos before lunch. 
            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and on the way back I stopped at Freshco. I tried to look on my phone for cheaper prices for the grapes but it was too slow and I couldn’t find a single flyer after wasting several minutes. On my computer it takes seconds to find what I’m looking for. I bought five bags of green grapes, a pack of raspberries, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a rack of pork ribs, a pack of salmon, three bags of skim milk, and a pack of Full City Dark coffee. It seemed to me that my cashier didn’t put the grapes fully on the scale and so they came out as lighter. Maybe it’s my imagination but I got the impression she did it deliberately to charge me less money. 
            I weighed 87.4 kilos at 17:45.
            It had been relatively sunny all day and so I was hopeful about the evening light being good for shooting videos of people for my project. But it was clouded over by the time the sweet period when the light would have been warm arrived. It’s been cloudy every evening but Monday so far this week. Monday was the night I shot the video of Whispering Ghost that I screwed up and have to ask him to do again. The forecast for Saturday and Sunday looks pretty good. 
            I was caught up on my journal at 19:09. 
            I compared the video of my performances of “The Wooden Leg” on August 16 and 26. I think the one on August 26 is a little better. I compared August 28 to August 26 and they both look equally good but I’m a little more expressive on August 26. I compared September 1 to August 26 and I think my acting is better on August 26. I compared September 7 to August 26 and saw that September 7 is not as clear a video. I compared September 11 to August 26 and I think I played the song better on August 26. I’ll have to start a new project in Movie Maker but I think August 26 is the winner. Next I have only four electric performances of “The Wooden Leg” to compare so I should know tomorrow all four versions of the French and English acoustic and electric versions of “La jambe de bois” that I’ll upload to YouTube. I might even have time tomorrow to start working on the acoustic French video. 
            I tried again to listen to another cassette while running the player through my interface but it didn’t work. It recorded into a USB drive fine but I can’t make it play through my speakers. This one is from another recording session at Mike’s Place, this time mostly of “Seven Shades of Blues”. For most of it though my voice is at a barely audible volume while the instruments are loud. I’ll try to turn my voice up in Audacity. 
            I roasted a pork tenderloin and had a piece with a potato and gravy while watching season 4, episodes 14 and 15 of Bewitched
            In the first story Samantha and Darrin have just returned from an antique show where Darrin secretly bought a rocking chair that Samantha wanted as a surprise. So when the antique dealer Alice Swanton calls Darrin he has to be deceptive about who the person is and so Endora suspects that Darrin is cheating on her daughter. To prove to Samantha that Darrin is lying to her she casts a spell on him so that his ears will grow every time he tells an untruth. They already grow after Samantha asks who was on the phone. Then he goes to meet Swanton and is about to give her a lift uptown when he runs into a local gossip named Hazel Carter. His ears grow again when he tells Hazel that Swanton is a client. It’s then that he notices his ears and puts on a motorcycle helmet. Then they get so big he needs a beekeeper’s head covering. Finally he has to confess to Samantha about the surprise and she feels foolish for doubting him. 
            In the second story Samantha hires the nanny that she had as a child to take care of Tabatha. Elspeth arrives and she’s an over the top imitation of Mary Poppins but with a cockney accent. Endora resents the competition for Tabitha’s affections. She contacts Elspeth’s most recent employer, Lord Montrako of Ipswich. He comes to reclaim Elsbeth and blames Darrin for taking her away. Montrako tries to shame Darrin into facing his obligations, first by fusing a rose between Darrin’s teeth before he meets a very macho client. Then before he meets him again he makes him dress like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Darrin fires Elspeth and then Montrako appears to take her back but she refuses to go. Montrako blames Darrin again and calls him a mere refection of a man. He locks Darrin inside of a mirror and apparently it’s cold on the other side. Samantha learns that Montrako is practically a hermit and Elspeth is the only one he came in contact with for years. She realizes that he wants Elspeth back because he’s lonely. Samantha goes to his castle and conjures a sign out front offering free tours. Then she conjures a British copy of herself to serve as a tour guide. Montdrako walks in in the middle of a tour. Samantha makes a haunted tapestry fly at the tour group to scare them and suddenly Montdrako is delighted. He realizes that Samantha has let the sunshine into his life and he no longer needs Elspeth. He frees Darrin. 
            Elspeth was played by Hermione Baddeley, who made her stage debut in 1918 at the age of 12. She made her film debut in 1927 in the silent film, A Daughter in Revolt. She co-starred in the film noir Brighton Rock, and Passport to Pimlico. She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Room at the Top and holds the record for the shortest amount of screen time to earn a nomination. She played Mrs. Nell Naugatuck the housekeeper on Maude for which she won a Golden Globe. Her Broadway debut was in A Taste of Honey. She was nominated for a Tony for her role in The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore. She was known for her talents at dancing and comedy.




No comments:

Post a Comment