This morning did give my wife 4l. to lay out upon lace and other things for herself. I to Wardrobe and so to Whitehall and Westminster, where I dined with my Lord and Ned Pickering alone at his lodgings. After dinner to the office, where we sat and did business, and Sir W. Pen and I went home with Sir R. Slingsby to bowls in his ally, and there had good sport, and afterwards went in and drank and talked. So home Sir William and I, and it being very hot weather I took my flageolette and played upon the leads in the garden, where Sir W. Pen came out in his shirt into his leads, and there we staid talking and singing, and drinking great drafts of claret, and eating botargo and bread and butter till 12 at night, it being moonshine; and so to bed, very near fuddled.
I dine with owls
and in hot weather drink
great drafts of moon.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 5 June 1661.
Superb.
I had to look up “botargo” and found that in Turkey it is known as Tarama or Haviar – both of which made more sense to me than the C17 English word.
Thanks. Yeah, there was a whole discussion of that word among the Pepys Diary annotators.