Under the Weather

Yo, ho, ho; have again plundered The Assassin’s Cloak, edited by Irene and Alan Taylor.

3 February, 1826
This is the first morning since my troubles that I felt at awaking
‘I had drunken deep
Of all the blessedness of sleep’*
I made not the slightest pause nor dreamed a single dream nor even changed my side. This is a blessing to be grateful for. There is to be a meeting of the Creditors today but I care not for the issue. If they drag me into the Court obtorto collo** instead of going into this scheme of arrangement they will do themselves a great injury and perhaps eventually do me good though it would give me much pain.
Sir Walter Scott
* Christabel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
** by the throat

3 February, 1973
Still reading Walter Scott’s journal. He the least valetudinarian of men, recorded the incipient signs of his old age: ‘Terrible how they increase the last year.’ He clearly had little strokes, yet was not sure whether they were strokes or not. Found he could not marshal his words, and thought it was fear or nerves which caused this; that he must pull himself together and snap out of it. Reminders of mortality are indeed painful.
James Lees-Milne

3 February, 1977, Brussels
Dinner at a very good fish restaurant enlivened, if that is the word, on the way out by sensing a slight feeling of embarrassment amongst the staff, which was indeed well founded, as we saw on the ground floor – we had been eating on the first floor – the upturned soles of a Japanese who seemed at least unconscious and possibly dead. When we got outside an ambulance drew up and a stretcher was rushed in. We asked Ron Argen, our inimitable driver, whether he knew what was happening. He said: ‘Oh, yes, certainly oyster poisoning. Quite often happens, but the restaurant is insured against it, so there is no need to worry.’
Roy Jenkins