Up, and with Sir J. Minnes by coach, being a most lamentable cold day as any this year, to St. James’s, and there did our business with the Duke. Great preparations for his speedy return to sea. I saw him try on his buff coat and hatpiece covered with black velvet. It troubles me more to think of his venture, than of anything else in the whole warr. Thence home to dinner, where I saw Besse go away; she having of all wenches that ever lived with us received the greatest love and kindnesse and good clothes, besides wages, and gone away with the greatest ingratitude. I then abroad to look after my Hamaccoes, and so home, and there find our new chamber-mayde, Mary, come, which instead of handsome, as my wife spoke and still seems to reckon, is a very ordinary wench, I think, and therein was mightily disappointed.
To my office, where busy late, and then home to supper and to bed, and was troubled all this night with a pain in my left testicle, that run up presently into my left kidney and there kept akeing all night. In great pain.
cold as our black clothes
our hands reckon and point
and all night my left
testicle aching
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 6 March 1665.