Odd-looking bird

I spent much of the day sitting at the kitchen table, formatting a document about homophobia for a meeting with BBC London tomorrow. At some point yesterday, I suspect just after I’d eaten a big bag of chips, I started to feel a lot better, and I woke up this morning with a very strong sense that my cold was gone. Perhaps acknowledging that I was stressed out did me the world of good.


I went to the gym earlier on. Running about like a mad thing to a series of Eurovision Songs seemed to do me the world of good. I feel refreshed.

They’re playing Back to the Future 3 on the television, which remains, to this day, the only film that has caused me to actually walk out of a cinema. I’ve slept through plenty of films in my time, but never been so bored that I’ve needed to walk out. Watching it now, I’m not really surprised. It’s pretty bloody rubbish.

I literally have nothing else to say. Help me out, Samuel...

Wednesday 22nd May, 1661, and Pepys went to the Wardrobe, Sandwich’s official London residence, seemingly to watch his patron sharing a venison pasty with a selection of upwardly mobile Londoners. I can only assume that it was an enormous pasty, or that when Pepys writes that they'd dined “at a venison pasty” he meant a series of smaller ones. Before dinner, Sandwich’s daughter, Lady Jem, sang songs at the harpison. Lady Jem was an odd-looking bird with a funny-looking neck, so I'm sure everyone applauded very politely, even if she sounded like a honking goose. Pepys returned home, where his barber came to trim and wash him. I assume he merely washed his hair but you can never be too sure. This was, afterall, the 17th Century!