Everard has become a fugitive from the law in Bactra in 209 BC. Night falls. Air cools. Streets quieten. The few street-facing windows are shuttered and mostly higher up, light showing through cracks.
Everard envisages the occupants:
eating light cold suppers;
drinking nightcaps;
exchanging news;
playing games;
telling children stories;
making love.
He hears a harp and a song but, to a time traveler who is also a fugitive:
"All seemed more remote than the stars." (p. 60)
And those occupants have no conception of the real nature of this passerby.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And have WE passed, or been passed by time travelers? I might even sometimes wonder if an ordinary looking stranger who walked or drove by me was a time traveler!
How would I do if I ever got sent back in time 50 or 100 years? Not at all well, I strongly suspect!
Ad astra! Sean
Incidentally, having the main meal at midday is far more common than our habit of having it around sundown.
That in turn is a recent development. In the Medieval period, it moved from fairly early morning to the early afternoon.
Our current pattern only definitively emerged in Britain in the early 19th century. "Fashionable" people kept pushing their midday meal ("dinner") later and later, then invented "luncheon" to tide them over until then, and the "English breakfast" (a substantial meal with meats, porridge etc.) about the same time. Ditto afternoon tea.
Working-class usage, particularly in northern Britain, kept the use of "dinner" for the (main) midday meal much longer, well into the 20th century.
Hobbits, quintessentially English creations, have seven main meals a day:
breakfast
second breakfast
elevenses
lunch
afternoon tea
dinner
supper
Kaor, Paul!
Ha! I prefer only two meals a day. Trying to eat like a Hobbit would probably kill me!
But Old Nick would be at home in the Shire!
That said, Hobbits should not be underestimated. When they had to, they got by on lean rations.
Ad astra! Sean
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