Month: May 2017

Most of our beneficial interactions are unplanned and unintended. You just turn up to an event, not knowing a single soul, and then you meet someone you have something in common with. This was indeed the case in the Mendip Society ramble or walk which was on the Somerset levels on this occasion. We spotted it in the "Mendip Times" in the morning and it sounded good so we thought, why not? Due...

Thursday 5th May 1664. here is an extract from Samuel Pepys's diary... So home to dinner, and to the office, where all the afternoon, and thence betimes home, my eyes beginning every day to grow less and less able to bear with long reading or writing, though it be by daylight; which I never observed till now. We read of extraordinary health conditions where someone has walked around with an...

The Great Plague lasted from 1665 to 1666 and was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England. The plague killed an estimated 100,000 people, almost a quarter of London's population, over a period of 18 months. The plague was caused by a bacterium usually transmitted through the bite of an infected rat flea. Samuel Pepys's diary Wednesday, 4 May 1664 reminds us how...

The press or should I say the Main Stream Media  would have us believe that we are becoming a more uncaring society but in spite of that I see many acts of goodwill and courtesy. Why is this? I remember reading that if you put a certain number of rats in a cage they behaved reasonably well towards each other. If you introduce more and more rats until it became overcrowded their behaviour starts...

We try and have a least one day out every week. This is not so easy when the gardening season is in full swing or when Francoise is attending Yoga or painting classes. We went to see "The Sense of an Ending" at the Little Theatre in Bath. Prior to that we had our usual Gorge-Fest in Jimmy's restaurant where for a very moderate amount of money you get an 'all you can eat' three course meal. Soup...

Samuel Pepys is certainly blunt with his criticism. On Monday, 2 May 1664, he went to the Kings Playhouse (now the Theatre Royal) with his wife and a 'mademoiselle' friend, "and there saw 'The Labyrinth,' the poorest play, me thinks, that I ever saw, there being nothing in it but the odd accidents that fell out, by a ladies being bred up in man's apparel, and a man in a woman's".  As if that...