Drenching

We're at Julie's house, watching the film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It's beautifully shot, but it's as dull as dishwater. In fact, it's duller than dishwater. We've actually just given up on it!

On the way here I did a terrible thing. It's been pissing it down all day. The roads are shining like glass, reflecting headlamps and neon lights and creating something of a blaze. As I drove along a road somewhere near Bermondsey, with misty, smeary windows and not a great sense of what was going on around me, I found myself hitting an enormous puddle. A massive wall of water surged from underneath the car and burst onto the pavement next to the road, just as someone was passing. Unfortunately that person was a) an old man b) a very old man c) a disabled, very old man d) a disabled, very old man, struggling his way down the street with the aid of two enormous sticks. According to Nathan, he got a drenching, and I am going straight to hell!

350 years ago, Pepys hosted a dinner at the Mitre Pub, to which twelve friends from his previous job at the department of the Exchequer had been invited. He shelled out for a good chine of beef, three barrels of oysters, three pullets and "plenty of wine." At the end of the mirth-filled dinner, Pepys made a "foolish promise" to do the same thing in twelve months' time. By the end of the day, however, he'd decided that it was definitely a promise he wasn't prepared to keep!