News of the day? Not much, really. Last night, I made a cottage pie, as opposed to a shepherd’s pie because of the kind of meat involved. It’s interesting how a cottage pie is made with beef and in gay polari* a ‘cottage’ is a public toilet. Ponder that for a second. I don’t think shepherd has any meaning in polari, but a ‘looker’ might, and down on Romney Marsh, they call their shepherds, ‘lookers’, as they do in my mysteries set on the marsh, the Saddling series. (Any excuse for a plug, eh?) I have no idea where this thought is coming from, too much onion gravy, I imagine (which took over an hour to make, by the way). Here’s a photograph.
Today, I shall be sending the final draft of ‘Acts of Faith’ to my proofreader ahead of deadline, and will then return to the reading I was doing yesterday, which also had nothing to do with polari, but everything to do with the Police Illustrated News of 1893, a fascinating read if you’re into all things crime related from the late 19th century, and a lot easier to read than the hundreds of other publications in the National Newspaper Archive that I spend more and more time in each day when looking for the next story, or details to use in the current one.
If the mood grabs me, I may take myself out for a wander later, I’ll see what I feel like doing. One thing I know for sure, is that we have a heap of cottage pie left over, so lunch is taken care of.
* Polari (noun) a form of slang incorporating Italianate words, rhyming slang, and Romani, used originally as a kind of secret language in England by people in theatres, fairgrounds, markets, etc. and adopted by some gay people in the 20th century.
