Lex Lector

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Lex Lector has posted 13 annotations/comments since 13 January 2014.

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Second Reading

About Monday 15 August 1664

Lex Lector  •  Link

The Dutch: then as now the tallest people in Europe. Reason? Very flat landscape: less gravity? Discuss!

About Saturday 9 April 1664

Lex Lector  •  Link

Honeycomb; bag; blanket; leaf... all kinds of tripe need "dressing" before they're allowed out. In UK they're mostly bovine, but there's pig bag too. Pressed udder was (is?) sold as "elder".Tripe! It's the tofu of Old (Northern) England: high protein, no fat, accepts flavours...you can dip in a herbed batter for "Tripe tempura" yum! tripe - assuming you aren't vegetarian - is terrific. Cultures where waste is frowned upon eat their animals top-to-toenail: in a Korean-owned restaurant in Minami, Osaka we regularly braised our own unrecognisable bits of animal digestive (and other?) tract over charcoal at the table and ate with dips and kimchi. Mm! It's truly decadent, isn't it, to eat only the "attractive" bits of animals?

Dave: bedwetting - I have an edition of John Ray (founder member, Royal Society)'s "Proverbs" - the expanded 2nd end. of 1690 or so which includes "he who first a good name gets, may piss a bed and say he sweats" Sam?

About Wednesday 4 November 1663

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After some time away, charmed: to return to the Diary and discover that Mrs. P. and I have both made Quince "Marmalett" on the same day ( a mere 353 years apart). Terrific on sourdough toast...
Quinces are beautiful. Are they the original "Golden Apples" - of the Sun, or the Hesperides?

About Tuesday 13 January 1662/63

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We had a brass clockwork "roasting jack" at home (in Sheffield, Yorks.) in the 1950s/60s. I think it had passed down from Victorian grandparents; though the clockwork functioned it had become an "antique". It was about 20 inches high, made to hang, and have meat hung below and turn next to a fire. Not large: enough meat to feed a Victorian family for a single meal, perhaps, and of a size to suit a kitchen range in an unpretentious lower middle class house...I think these things were pretty normal...

About Monday 5 January 1662/63

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Apples and Ale = "Sheeps' Wool": winter drink, especially in the Yorkshire Pennines. Mulled ale - heated in the mug with a poker from the coals of the fire, with stewed (foamy) spiced apple stirred in. Yum! on a cold night....

About Wednesday 31 December 1662

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I second John: thank you, Phil, for building and maintaining this fulgency, this civilised site, this cleverness; thanks to annotators old and new. I'm a once, present and future "lurker": joy and fulfilment to you all, actives and passives, for the coming year. And a kinder World.

About Monday 26 May 1662

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Marlowe was killed by Ingram Frizer, apparently. I think it at least possible that the murderer's name was "Frazer" (Ingram and Frazer are both scots names, are they not?) and that "Frizer" is a cockneyfication.

About Sunday 25 May 1662

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Has any of us (males, mainly, probably) tried pumice for shaving? I'd give it a go. I started using oil 2 years ago, experimentally, after hearing of it's use historically: works a treat! cheap; portable...the Adelaide Pie: England's Pea & Pie Stall on Barnsley Market, South Yorkshire (in the 70's) sold Albert Hurst's excellent pork pies floating on a studge of mushy peas. Some liked to add a smatter of mint sauce. Albert Hurst also made the best black puddings ever - they won prizes in Germany and Belgium - a family tradition ended (I think, but have not returned to Barnsley for a few years) when Albert died. This has little to do with the Diary, which I love: Phil; hero, genius: I - intermittent follower these 5 years - thank you very very much.

About Tuesday 22 April 1662

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Ah! Celebrating the birthday - now, 23rd. April - of (perhaps !) Sam's favourite playwright with a tasteful griddling of the third harvesting this Spring from my humble asparagus patch: fine fat phallic fronds - and May still over a sennite away (eructates politely) (the aphorementioned phrond best cut with a sharp steel knife subterraneously, of course: if Sam didn't know, mine Host would've put him right)!

About Friday 21 March 1661/62

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Evra : I shall create
Cadabera : as I speak: Hebrew, my phonetic spelling. Surely: "In the Beginning was the Word..."
The storyteller Roi Gal - Or posits that early written language was all consonants; that vowels were the speaker's breath that gave words life, therefore magically transformative and of the Spirit - and Not To Be Written Down! Abracadabra! (or, as Sooty used to say, "Izzy-Wizzy: Let's Get Busy") Absinthe! the taste of Wormwood...but that's Artemisia Absinthium, not quite the same as artemisia vulgaris, flavouring the beer, also called "mugwort" - or "Chernobyl" in Ukrainian..... Absinthecadabra! ("Mug" for the beer-vessel, or the drinker? Cured the ague, among other things, said - I believe - Culpeper)

About Monday 17 March 1661/62

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"Pinks" seem to have existed over a considerable period of time - Patrick O'Brian mentions them several times in his series of "Aubrey/Maturin" novels set during the Napoleonic Wars. There were three main types: Dutch, Danish and Mediterranean; all small and narrow-sterned, all square-rigged, all used principally for coastal work.
Sources: P.O'B, and Dean King's "A Sea of Words" - which is an invaluable concordance for the series.

About Friday 6 January 1659/60

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12th.Night; the twelve days of Christmas etc: a recent book review in the "Guardian Saturday Review" suggested that it was only in the Victorian era that we began to be encouraged to remove the Christmas decorations on 12th. Night - to gee us up and get us back to work. Prior to that the decorations hung about to brighten the drear days and no doubt to shimmer in the candle-light (for those who could afford candles!) of an evening until the days began to lengthen...I was performing in an Epiphany festival in Puglia, Italy a couple of years ago: big festival; church processions; fairs, bonfires in the streets, special deep-fried cakes &c. The children look forward to a visit from "Befana" - she's a witch, all sooty from dropping in via the chimney, who will leave sweets in a sock for "good" children, coal (or dark sweets - liquorice, or treacle toffee, maybe) for the bad. Surely all this stuff is agro-pagan pre-christian feasting: hope and fear and forgetting in the dark days after the solstice?