Miners

Up and to my office preparing things, by and by we met and sat Mr. Coventry and I till noon, and then I took him to dine with me, I having a wild goose roasted, and a cold chine of beef and a barrel of oysters. We dined alone in my chamber, and then he and I to fit ourselves for horseback, he having brought me a horse; and so to Deptford, the ways being very dirty. There we walked up and down the Yard and Wett Dock, and did our main business, which was to examine the proof of our new way of the call-books, which we think will be of great use. And so to horse again, and I home with his horse, leaving him to go over the fields to Lambeth, his boy at my house taking home his horse.
I vexed, having left my keys in my other pocket in my chamber, and my door is shut, so that I was forced to set my boy in at the window, which done I shifted myself, and so to my office till late, and then home to supper, my mind being troubled about Field’s business and my uncle’s, which the term coming on I must think to follow again. So to prayers and to bed, and much troubled in mind this night in my dreams about my uncle Thomas and his son going to law with us.

we fit ourselves to the dirt
walk down the mine

having left my keys to the field
in a dream


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 15 January 1662/63.

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