Deep Thought

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Deep Thought has posted nine annotations/comments since 8 January 2019.

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Second Reading

About Saturday 4 January 1667/68

Deep Thought  •  Link

And 600 years on, pencils are still made in Keswick, the market town just up the road from Borrowdale in England's lake district
https://www.derwentart.com/en-gb/…

Growing up in the UK in the 60's Lakeland was the name of the leading brand of pencils. Every kid would have a set of the colouring pencils as a birthday present at some time.
Now, from San Diego Sarah's post, I know why.
Thanks

About Friday 29 November 1667

Deep Thought  •  Link

Have we discovered in the footnote to this entry the origin of 'Tibbles' as a pet name for a cat? ...

1. A male cat. “Gib” is a contraction of the Christian name Gilbert (Old French), “Tibert”).

It's only two short hops from 'Gibert' to 'Tibert' to 'Tibbles'

About Sunday 21 April 1667

Deep Thought  •  Link

Sorry djc, but you will have been christened at the Churn of St John-at-Hackney and not St Augustine's church that Pepys visited. St Augustine's was pulled down, all bar the tower, in 1798, to be replaced by a new larger church, constructed in the field behind St Augustine's graveyard.
If the bells were rung to celebrate your christening, then these would have been bells that Pepys would have heard: they were transferred to the new church.

About Monday 24 September 1666

Deep Thought  •  Link

Scraping paper? Certainly. I painfully recall having to present my school homework to my father each evening for him to read through. Any spelling mistakes would be carefully scraped out with a safety razor blade to allow correction. But I did receive a superb Scottish grammatical education. It’s stood me in great stead ever since.

And can I re-emphasise. NOBODY suffers from PTSD in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic or life-threatening event. Distress, nightmares, anxiety symptoms, avoidance, emotional numbing in the first days weeks and even months after such a thing are the normal human responses. Can we please stop applying our 21st century psycho-pathologising tendencies to 17th century behaviours.

About Saturday 15 September 1666

Deep Thought  •  Link

Pepys was not suffering from PTSD. The nightmares and recurrent anxieties he was experiencing are normal phenomena in the early days and weeks after witnessing a serious traumatic event. It is only when these phenomena persist for a month or more and significantly interfere with normal everyday functioning that a diagnosis of a psychopathological condition is justified.
As stated in the Mayo clinic article San Diego Sarah links to:
“Most people who go through traumatic events may have temporary difficulty adjusting and coping, but with time and good self-care, they usually get better. If the symptoms get worse, last for months or even years, and interfere with your day-to-day functioning, you may have PTSD.”

- ‘but Lord’, exclaimed Pepys, ’ these 21st century annotators can’t distinguish normality from temporary distress and seek physic for a fright. No wonder their health insurance premiums are so cripplingly high’

About Sunday 15 July 1666

Deep Thought  •  Link

I think staphylococcal food poisoning to be the most likely cause of Pepys’ stomach upset. Rapid onset with a short-lived bout of colic, diarrhoea and vomiting is typical. Unlikely to have been due to the milk, but maybe he had some food to eat with it, not mentioned in his diary entry.

About Sunday 7 January 1665/66

Deep Thought  •  Link

“The Court of Charles II was very fluid and nobody ever really knew where they stood. He would exercise his powers on and off to keep people and protect them if/when it suited him, but often people got jostled in and out with the waves of others in the political process. “

10 years on, Jennine's comment on Charles describes well the modus operandi of the USA's current 'monarch'. I look forward to a restoration of decent democracy.