Gripes

I've been ill all day. I got the shakes before going to bed yesterday and spent the night shivering and sweating. I woke up this morning with terrible stomach gripes and have been unable to do anything useful all day. I’m curled up on the sofa feeling incredibly sorry for myself. Daytime TV is so rubbish when you’re forced to watch it. I get so irritated by all the adverts, the canned laughter, the tinny theme tunes and those endless competitions with stupid answers. I just don’t have the energy to find something more interesting.


350 years ago, Pepys wasn’t feeling very well, either. He had a cold and a cough and was much troubled with it all night. He spent the day, dressed informally, packing things for his journey to sea. It was a Sunday and he doesn’t seem to have gone to church. Certainly if he did, he didn’t write about it, in this, the shortest diary entry from him I’ve read for some time. Perhaps he was just too busy packing. The wench, (or Jane, as I like to call her) was also a busy woman, sorting all the things she’d need to wash for him for his trip to sea.