Becoming Human

Another day of rest. I’m slowly drifting back down to earth and feeling almost human again. Almost. I never feel entirely human.

I’ve been sending emails all day and paying the last few invoices associated with the Requiem. The good news is that I’m not yet in the red, so must have come in pretty much on budget.

The live premier film went up online today and it all looks rather good. It’s very rare for the atmosphere of a live event to come across on film, or for the sound quality to be so high.

I went for a run to celebrate freedom; up to Muswell Hill, and back to Archway Road via Cranley Gardens where I collapsed in a heap. I want to be lithe by Christmas. I looked through a set of photos of the premier and couldn’t distinguish myself from a sack of potatoes.

I see the lovely Letitia Dean has gone back into Eastenders with an enormous blond barnet, which is the first thing to enter a shot and the last thing to leave it.

350 years ago, Elizabeth Pepys had returned to London from Huntington and found a newly extended and refurbished house which she very muched liked. Pepys was pleased to report that she was a little fatter than she'd been when she left. Comely was good in those days. Pepys immediately took her to bed where he “had her company with great content and much mutual love.”

Whilst away, Elizabeth, who was probably quite a demanding woman, had managed to fall out with her in-laws and her houseboy, Wayneman, who, by her reckoning, was going off the rails.

September 29th was Michaelmas day, which meant Pepys’ various abstemious resolutions were over, so he spent the next few days taking his wife to the theatre and drinking copiously, promising to get back on the wagon as soon as he could. They went to see A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream at the King’s Theatre, which didn’t impress Pepys in the slightest; “the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.” It’s a quote which made its way into the Pepys Motet, because it struck me as so bizarre. The following day, they saw The Duchess of Malfi and Pepys discovered that he was worth 680l, which made him feel very excited.