Captain Caveman

Not a great deal happened today. I went into town to meet Nathan and Jim for lunch. They ate burgers. I had something which involved a mushroom and a fair amount of garlic.

I spent the rest of the day doing admin; trying to come up with loads of ways of marketing the Requiem, and sorting out a final set of notes to give to PK before the Requiem goes off to be mastered and there's nothing else I can do to change it! I’m feeling the pressure, obviously. I’m about to hand my baby over for the rest of the world to rip apart... or worse still, ignore.

I went running for the first time in a while, and my body responded well. I’ve been looking like Captain Caveman for way too long. I think it knows that and wants to help.

I ate soup for tea.  I felt slightly disappointed as I looked at it sitting there in the bowl, though it was good to get some plain food inside me after a week and a half of stuffing food down my throat like my mate Philip whenever there’s a free buffet.

Did anyone see Richard Whitehead in the 200 meters Paralympics final today? He was nowhere in the race, and then, in the last 50 meters, looked like someone had put a motor onto his blades. The joy about watching these games is that people can end up winning by massive margins. Oscar Pistorius, for example, seemed to win the 200 meters by about 200 meters!

350 years ago, Pepys found himself at The Wardrobe, with a junior colleague, playing music by Matthew Locke. Pepys loved music, and this was the first he’d heard “in a great while.” Imagine that? These days we’re surrounded by music; it’s almost inescapable.

Pepys spent the evening with two workmen removing all of his goods from William Penn’s house and putting them into a tiny rented room to be “quit of any further obligation to him.” Pepys got into a tizzy in the evening after losing his keys, and receiving a letter from his wife in the country which said their “boy” Wayneman was playing a rogue. A troublesome lad; probably somewhere between 10 and 12 years old, Wayneman was shipped off to the Bahamas in late 1663. Pepys refused to step in and help, fearing that “to keep him in England would eventually take him to the gallows...”