Annotations and comments

Tonyel has posted 292 annotations/comments since 11 March 2013.

Comments

Second Reading

About Saturday 1 June 1667

Tonyel  •  Link

"for I do find it necessary for me, both in respect to honour and the profit of it also, my expense in hackney-coaches being now so great, to keep a coach, and therefore will do it."
This must be the third or fourth time that Sam has tried to justify this expensive move to himself.

Such a familiar problem - "I 'd really like that flash car - and of course it makes financial sense - but will folks think I'm showing off? - well, I'm not the office boy anymore - then again..."

About Saturday 18 May 1667

Tonyel  •  Link

And I wonder what she gets drunk with so often? Surely not Mr Pepys fine wine in his special bottles? That would change his love for her, especially if she replaced it with beetroot juice or - no, let's not go there......

About Thursday 9 May 1667

Tonyel  •  Link

"and how he is gone through with the purchase for my Lady Jemimah and her husband"
The purchase of what? Have I missed something?

Thanks, by the way, for the definition of abu as an Irish war cry. Pete Seeger used it in a comic song about the police banning singing in Washington Square c. 60 years ago and I can stop wondering what he meant at last.

About Saturday 13 April 1667

Tonyel  •  Link

Speaking as an old man with a long memory Sarah, I would say that things have changed a lot more between 1960 and now...

About Friday 12 April 1667

Tonyel  •  Link

"I did give her a kick in our entry, and offered a blow at her, and was seen doing so by Sir W. Pen’s footboy, which did vex me to the heart,"

"though I did put on presently a very pleasant face to the boy, and spoke kindly to him, as one without passion,"

This whole paragraph could have been written by Larry David.

About Wednesday 3 April 1667

Tonyel  •  Link

Thanks James for finding this. I could almost see Sam bustling along the streets.
I could certainly imagine the terror of a fire breaking out.

About Tuesday 2 April 1667

Tonyel  •  Link

"which he will make purposely for me with great perfection, which I will make one of the beautifullest things that ever was seen of the kind in the world,"

So that's where Trump gets his style from !

About Saturday 23 March 1666/67

Tonyel  •  Link

I'm surprised that no-one so far has referred to our present world-wide plague which is beginning to make Sam's world sound even more familiar - shops shutting, folk out of work, unreliable cures and nostrums being offered and an air of panic coupled with mistrust of politicians......

A plane flew over yesterday leaving a contrail in a clear blue sky, the first for about a week. I found myself watching it until it disappeared - not quite open-mouthed but with a vague sense of wonder.

Good luck to all of us.

About Sunday 17 March 1666/67

Tonyel  •  Link

A late thought from yesterday's entry where Sam commented on smoke still rising from cellars six months after the Great Fire:
Surely, there must have been many homeless people who might find shelter in abandoned cellars and could light a fire to keep warm?

About Monday 4 March 1666/67

Tonyel  •  Link

At last he's back to Bagwell.

I think this is the first indication that Mr Bagwell knew of his wife's "arrangement" with Sam and presumably encouraged it as a means to improving their lot.
Otherwise Sam was taking a big risk if he knew that Bagwell was within calling distance while he had his wicked way.

About Monday 28 January 1666/67

Tonyel  •  Link

'gainst JOHN Lord Viscount MORDAUNT, Constable of the Castle of Windsor, for several High Crimes and Misdemeanors committed by him.'
I had always assumed that "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" was an expression invented by the Founding Fathers but they borrowed it and "Impeachment" from the old country apparently.

About Tuesday 1 January 1666/67

Tonyel  •  Link

Goose fat.
Growing up in the country in WWII I was told of poorer children being covered in goose fat and sewn into their underclothes in the late autumn (fall) and not released until the spring. This was supposed to be protection from the cold and damp.
I don't suppose it did much for their social life.

About Monday 31 December 1666

Tonyel  •  Link

Maths has never been my strong point but if Sam's 'gettings' are down and his 'spendings' up over the year, how does he end up £1800 better off?
Is this the first recorded instance of creative accounting?

Happy new year and may we all prosper like Mr Pepys.

About Friday 21 December 1666

Tonyel  •  Link

What was that Robert Altman film set in the thirties where a mother tries to pimp her daughter to a film director? And what about Harvey Weinstein over the last twenty years? Men with power were /are ever thus and women who needed favours had to make their own decisions about how much they were prepared to pay.

About Saturday 27 October 1666

Tonyel  •  Link

asked the King to banish Catholic priests and Jesuits, to put the recusancy laws into force by proclamation, to disarm all Pepists

Hey, we're the Pepists Terry! Don't disarm us.

About Thursday 25 October 1666

Tonyel  •  Link

Can't think of any other reasons for such a regular major disruption. Anyone else know why if not the above?
Sarah, maybe because they just felt like a change? After all, the European Parliament (750 MEP's plus staff) move from Brussels to Strasbourg every month for just four days at an estimated cost of £150 million per year! Just one of the reasons the UK is trying (and so far failing) to leave the EU.

As always, people who spend other peoples' money..............

About Sunday 14 October 1666

Tonyel  •  Link

"So dined, and after dinner (a good discourse thereat to my brother)"
Note "to" my brother, not "with". Poor John has to pay for his dinner.

About Friday 5 October 1666

Tonyel  •  Link

"A great want thereof there will be of books, specially Latin books and foreign books; and, among others, the Polyglottes and new Bible, which he believes will be presently worth 40l. a-piece."

How long before Sam and the others think of sending a ship somewhere to import paper? There's always a profit for someone where there's a shortage.