Twelfth Day-ish

Greetings, Dear Reader! I hope your Twelve Days of Christmas have been delightful and that 2026 looks to be full of promise for you. Although Epiphany has passed, in this household our tree is still up, for it is Candlemas that will be the day for its packing up, so you might think we are still in the throws of the Festive Season. There has, indeed, been a little bit of this and that, but in the main it has been a fairly quiet affair this year.

Xmas lunch à deux

Excepting that we did something different by flying* to the capital of the People's Republic of Victoria on Christmas morning. There we went to a couple of fancy restaurants and slept in a fancy hotel, bookending a descent upon our dear friends' home to polish off their leftovers on Boxing Day. Short and sweet was the visit. The Barmy Army was in town for the cricket, so the hotel prices were simply outrageous, and the weather was freezing, so it almost feel like we'd gone to Ye Olde England for a couple of days!

Friend M's Xmas cake

If you remember that the Pipistrellos went mad a few years ago and gave up carbs, it is still the same merry caper in the Something-to-Eat Department, but a bit of throwing it all to the wind when the occasion calls for it, most especially for some chocs, a bit of Xmas cake, a glass of bubbles &c. &c.

 

But rest assured, in the main we have been traditionalists for the rest of it.

Over in Restoration England, if you're not up-to-date with the goings-on of Samuel Pepys, his last diary entry was also for Twelfth Day[-ish]. Amongst the outings of his busy last day of Christmas, he and wife Elizabeth went to a playhouse and saw Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night". It was "acted well, though it be but a silly play and not related at all to the name or day."** He confided to his diary on this otherwise pleasant and busy last day of Christmas, being "somewhat vexed" that his wife left her bundle of pricey clothes she'd been toting in the coach on the way home, "though, I confess," he adds, "she did give them to me to look after, yet it was her fault not to see that I did take them out of the coach." Cough. Anyways, he promises that Christmas now done, his resolutions of less carousing and plays and more hard work and making money, are in full swing as from tomorrow.

Are there any resolutions coming from Your Correspondent in response to Mr. Pepys fine promises? Not really. Just a bit more time needs carving out for Ye Olde Blogge ... Off to a cracking start, methinks! So what were some highlights of the year past?

 In my orthodontist's 'hood

On a whim, ol' Pipistrello decided to start some orthodontic work a few months ago and in a couple of years the gnashers should be looking a tad less uncoventional, shall we say. I was surprised to learn that you don't have to be a whipper-snapper to do such things, and your teeth won't fall straight out of your head if you try to move them around in an ageing jaw. Indeed, the charming orthodontist is also doing her mum's teeth at the same time, and she's in her 70's!

A still Melboure dawn

In the Dancing Department, it had been a corker of a year, until it wasn't :( Last January saw me off to the capital of the People's Republic of Victoria to take part in my first intensive workshop with a famous ballet teacher visiting from the U.K. It was as satisfying & gruelling as expected and I went through an entire box of Epsom bath salts and a tube of embrocation during my stay! But, amongst it all, I did enjoy the sight of hot-air balloons drifting over the cityscape at sunrise from my window.

I shall not see a link between 40 dance classes
in a month and a bit of, ahem, wear & tear

Fast forward a few months and my Dance Card was positively chockers, viz. see above. Then, disastro! in May and an old pre-ballet hip injury flared up which saw everything crash to a halt and then the calendar was drearily marked for doctor-MRI-physio-physio-physio-Pilates ad nauseum, until the green light was given to ease back into dance classes. Of course, after a few months of being good and cautious about pushing things, I did go and get a bit carried away just before Christmas and have had a bit of a setback. The days are again filled with physio-physio-physio but things are looking better for stepping back soon into the studio.

Mr. P's paw pre-surgery

It had also been a bit of a shocker of a year in the life of the Pipistrello colony, with the associated dislocation, relocation and emotional roller-coasting that attends the passing of an older member. And Mr. P  had his own brush with disaster in an encounter with a staircase determined to come off the better. We are still here, thankfully, a bit banged up in the chassis compared to this time last year, but still running! And there were some lovely times to be had with family, friends, books, music and the rest. So 2025 was a mixed bag all up. Now, let us see what comes ...

* And was somewhat disappointed that the be-antlered Qantas hosties did not offer up a mince pie as comestible, as I thought they might.

** He had seen it once before, as a "new play", but couldn't enjoy it then as he'd snuck in with a friend after chancing upon it on a walk and was in the guilts over having sworn to his wife he wouldn't go to a play without her. 

Image credits: 4: via Pinterest; rest: Flying With Hands

Merry Christmas!

 

Dear Reader, I wish for you glad tidings and good cheer at this Christmastime.

My offerings to you of salutation this past year have been the slimmest of slim pickings,

such that I almost feel I should perhaps reintroduce myself to you.

But let us have that pleasure, hem hem,

in the New Year and I shall regale you then with this & that.

Pipistrello x

Table Talk: Dinner With The Pepys's

Samuel Pepys 1666 portrait
by John Hayls

Mr. Pepys's rather entertaining diary entries are popping up in my email inbox* these days, and as such can furnish these pages with some much-needed Table Talk. Goodness knows how starved you must be, Dear Reader, for any crumbs that might come your way, hem hem, so a couple of his recent delightful dinners (read lunches) hosted with relatives, both of the beloved and unloved varieties, can serve as fine a way as any of announcing Your Correspondent's reappearance about these pages. And apart from partaking of the occasional cake for supper**, his menu seems not too dissimilar to the Pipistrellos! 

Wednesday 26 March, 1662

From Robert Venables
The Experienced Angler, 1662

... At noon come my good guests, Madame Turner, The. [Theophilia Turner, aged ~11], and Cozen Norton, and a gentleman, one Mr. Lewin of the King's LifeGuard; by the same token he told us of one of his fellows killed this morning in a duel. I had a pretty dinner for them, viz., a brace of stewed carps, six roasted chickens, and a jowl of salmon, hot, for the first course; a tanzy [herb-scented pudding] and two neats' tongues [cows' tongues], and cheese the second; and were very merry all the afternoon, talking and singing and piping upon the flageolette [Ed.: oh, misery, the recorder]. In the evening they went with great pleasure away, and I with great content walked half an hour in the garden, and so home to supper and to bed ...

The Pepys's, Samuel and Elisabeth, are entertaining some beloved Cozens (sic) to a chicken apiece and more on this day in March several hundred years ago, and one Mr. Lewis who is singing for his supper by entertaining the party with a sordid and salacious tale of murder. (No doubt young Theophilia was all agog at the story.) Anyways, the merry Stone Feast was in honour of Mr. Pepys fourth anniversary of the successful operation to remove his bladder stone, performed at Mrs. Turner's house. The miracle of his surviving another 45 years, I read, is that he was the first patient of the day of Mr. Thomas Hollier, whose hands and instruments were relatively clean and not besmeared with the gore of others. 

Nota bene: Avert your eyes now and skip the next excerpt if you don't wish to read Claire Tomalin's*** gruesome biographical account of this pre-anaesthetic operation to remove his "tennis ball"-sized stone (fear not, a tennis ball in 1658 was a much tinier affair at around 1 or 2 inches diameter), which, of course, he kept for posterity. But, for the strong of stomach, what follows is positively fascinating:

The surgeon got to work. First he inserted a thin silver instrument, the itinerarium, through the penis into the bladder to help position the stone. Then he made the incision, about three inches long and a finger's breadth from the line running between scrotum and anus, and into the neck of the bladder, or just below it. The patient's face was sponged as the incision was made. The stone was sought, found and grasped with pincers; the more speedily it could be got out the better. Once out, the wound was not stitched—it was thought best to let it drain and cicatrize itself—but simply washed and covered with a dressing, or even kept open at first with a small roll of soft cloth known as a tent, dipped in egg white. A plaster of egg yolk, rose vinegar and anointing oils was then applied. Pepys, no doubt now fainting with shock and pain, was unbound and moved to his warmed bed.

Anyhoo, back to the dinner table:

Tuesday 8 April, 1662

Hendrick de Fromantiou
Still life with Oysters, 1661

Up very early and to my office, and there continued until noon. So to dinner, and in comes Uncle Fenner and the two Joyces [more Cozens]. I sent for a barrel of oysters and a breast of veal roasted, and were very merry; but I cannot down with their dull company and impertinent. After dinner to the office again ... By the way home and on Ludgate Hill there being a stop, I bought two cakes, and they were our supper at home [!!].

Mr. Pepys, ever the genial host, mostly keeps his critique of those in his orbit to his diary pages but occasionally words are had between relatives or work colleagues. A couple of weeks ago came an entry with the following admission:

... This noon came a letter from T. Pepys, the turner [and yet another cousin], in answer to one of mine the other day to him, wherein I did cheque him for not coming to me, as he had promised, with his and his father's resolucion about the difference between us [over an annuity and threats of a law suit, and many "high words" have passed betwixt them recently]. But he writes to me in the very same slighting terms that I did to him, without the least respect all, but word for word as I did him, which argues a high and noble spirit in him, though it troubles me a little that he should make no more of my anger, yet I cannot blame him for doing so, he being the elder brother's son, and not depending upon me at all.

Between the theatre, the office, church, overseeing his household and his "paynter" working on his and Elisabeth's portraits and his builders working on some home improvements, diligently practicing his "musick", and whatnot, Mr. Pepys is a busy young chronicler of Restoration England. Such a distraction for the reader some several hundred years removed, but dinners with the Pepys's are soothingly familiar.

* Subscribe to www.pepysdiary.com and you, too, can have his diary entries to read each morning, annotated by readers. It doesn't matter when you start reading the diary, it just keeps recycling over the years and there's been a few runs through already, apparently. Consider his writing as part of your morning blog feed, except the commentators chat amongst themselves rather than with the author!

** And the odd reference to overindulgence of food and/or drinke and the need to, ahem, have a little Roman-style purge in his back garden to make a bit more room for the supper he never seems to forego.

*** Claire Tomalin, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, 2002

Image credits: 1: Wikimedia Commons; 2: via Google; 3: PubHist.com