Chuddie

I’m currently lounging around in my friend, Julie’s sitting room. We’re doing a day of watching rubbish telly and eating glorious food. We’ve just had a plate of spaghetti drizzled with delicious homemade pesto and a bowl of Julie’s fabulous peach crumble. Perfect.


A rather embarrassing thing happened earlier on which made me feel like the woman who stuck the cat in a wheelie bin. Julie had just told us about her brand new convertible car and we rushed to the window to look at the lovely thing parked on the street outside. I was chewing gum at the time, which isn't something I do very often and it didn't taste very nice, so I decided to spit it out. Some strange impulse came over me and I foolishly chose to throw it out of the window. As I flicked it away, I wondered how embarrassing it would be if it suddenly went off course and actually hit the car that we were all busily admiring. Imagine my horror, therefore, as we watched my chuddie, in semi-slow motion, flying through the air and glueing itself to the windscreen of Julie's car. Highly embarrassing, and obviously I had to immediately run out and un-attach it. Now Nathan's calling me Cat Ben Lady.

Earlier in the day, we had lunch in Highgate with our friend, Cary. We ate at Cafe Rouge, but unfortunately the place seemed to have almost entirely run out of food. Whoever heard of a chain restaurant running out of eggs? Surely this seriously impedes on its right to call itself a cafe? And surely, with Tesco just down the road, it would have been very possible to pop out and buy a few dozen more just to tide things over until the next delivery? For the record, they’d also run out of lemons... Curious.

September 12th 1660 was a Wednesday and at rained all day, which meant Pepys’ cousin, John Snow didn’t turn up for dinner as arranged. I wonder if they sent word to say they weren't coming. Ah, the days before mobile phones, when you could spend hours waiting for someone who never turned up...

How things have changed in 350 years... and yet, Pepys' final sentence of the entry reminds us that some things haven't changed at all; “At home all the afternoon looking after my workmen, whose laziness do much trouble me”