Cum grano salis

(Lord’s day). Up, and busy all the morning, getting rooms and dinner ready for my guests, which were my uncle and aunt Wight, and two of their cousins, and an old woman, and Mr. Mills and his wife; and a good dinner, and all our plate out, and mighty fine and merry, only I a little vexed at burning a new table-cloth myself, with one of my trencher-salts. Dinner done, I out with W. Hewer and Mr. Spong, who by accident come to dine with me, and good talk with him: to White Hall by coach, and there left him, and I with my Lord Brouncker to attend the Duke of York, and then up and down the House till the evening, hearing how the King do intend this frosty weather, it being this day the first, and very hard frost, that hath come this year, and very cold it is. So home; and to supper and read; and there my wife and I treating about coming to an allowance to my wife for clothes; and there I, out of my natural backwardness, did hang off, which vexed her, and did occasion some discontented talk in bed, when we went to bed; and also in the morning, but I did recover all in the morning.

for my sins I ate
only a little salt

this first hard frost
is a cold supper

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 3 January 1669. (Note that the previous three diary entries from which I made erasures were actually from 1660, not 1669. Oops!)

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