A Day In The Life
A day in the life of a farmer
By daybreak, the farmer is already at work, having started his labours several hours earlier. Dressed in leggings, a blouse, and smock, he is in the barn, feeding and milking the cows. This is followed by breakfast: porridge, bread, an egg, cottage cheese, and milk. These are prepared and served on stout pottery vessels, which some copper and wooden serving dishes. Following breakfast, it is time to turn the cattle out to pasture, clean the barn, and remove manure and straw to a compost heap. Meanwhile, his wife and children are seeing to other livestock, the garden, churning milk, making cheese and sausage, cooking, cleaning, mending, preserving, spinning yarn, weaving, and helping in the fields.
For the remainder of the morning, time will be spent repairing equipment, making items, ploughing/planting the fields, and repairing fences and hedgerows.
Around noon, a hot lunch is enjoyed at home, typically a vegetable stew with a little meat, bread, cheese, and ale or beer. On special days there may be berries or a custard for dessert.
Work continues until late afternoon, when the cattle are brought back to the barn, and feed it set out. The cows are then milked. Some further work may be done in the fields or repairs around the home. At sunset, supper is had, consisting of soup, bread, butter, and milk, and perhaps with some fruit as dessert. By early evening, everyone is asleep after a hard day.
A day in the life of a master craftsman
The master craftsman will arise early, before daybreak, to dress himself, and eat a substantial breakfast of fruit, pancakes, eggs, sausages, bread, tea or coffee. The food is prepared by a cook, and served by a maid on good porcelain and with drinking vessels of copper or glass. The meal is shared with his senior apprentice. Other apprentices eat in the kitchen, and are served cold meats, cheese, bread, and water.
When the master and apprentices go to the workshop, just after daybreak, other employees are already at work.
Until around noon, the master is busy working, overseeing the work of others, dealing with customers, and checking the accounts.
Shortly after noon, the apprentices and other employees have lunch in the workshop. The master goes off to dine with others of his rank. They enjoy a great meal of baked fish, grilled chops, vegetables, bread, ale, cheese, and fruit tarts. There is much talk about business, guild affairs, politics, and gossip. After lunch, they enjoy coffee and brandy, light a pipe, and continue their discussions. After the two-hour affair, the master returns to the workshop, and continues the day’s efforts.
When the day’s business is done, the apprentices clean up the workshop and go off to their lodgings. The master may have a guild meeting to attend, and will have his supper there. If not, he will go upstairs to his residence, clean up, change into suitable robes for the evening, and eat supper with his family. This meal is served on silver platters and porcelain dishes, and consists of meat pie, potatoes, vegetables, roast mutton with gravy, bread, ale, wine, fruit, and nuts. Crystal drinking vessels and small serving dishes will be used.
After supper, the master will spend time with his family, talking or playing games, before retiring for the evening.
A day in the life of a labourer
The labourer will wake up before sunrise, dress in old work clothes, and enjoy a breakfast of bread, leftover stew, and beer or water. He will then pack lunch into a leather wallet and report for work just after daybreak.
Around noon, he will have lunch, supplementing the cold food with a bowl of soup or a meat pie bought from a street vendor. This will be enjoyed with buttermilk, milk, beer, or water. Lunch is short, perhaps half an hour, and then it is time to return to work. By sunset, the day is done. The labourer will collect his pay and head for his lodgings. Along the way, he might stop at a pub for a beer. If he isn’t married, or doesn’t live in a boarding house where supper is provided, he will buy supper from a cooked food vendor, or buy the ingredients and have them prepared at a cooking house: a pasty of potatoes with meat, pickles, and bread. He will probably take a bath at a bath house.
If he is married, he would return home and enjoy soup or a vegetable stew, with bread and beer to accompany. The serving and eating utensils will be made of tin, wood, or a few pottery pieces.
Not long into the night, he will be sound asleep, on a relatively thin straw mattress, after an exhausting day.
A day in the life of a senior mage
The magic user will probably sleep through the morning hours, rising mid-morning to wash, don his professional robes, and go downstairs for a leisurely breakfast of fruit juice, pastries, and coffee. The meal will be served on dining ware of exotic design and materials, perhaps decorated porcelain, tortoise shell, silver, electrum, and crystal glass. He will have a butler, a housekeeper, a cook, and a maid to see to the running of the household. After breakfast, he will read a bit and have a smoke as he finishes several more cups of coffee.
Mid-morning he will stroll to the guild, greet his fellows, and meet with some to discuss interesting ideas or experiments. Then he will go to the library to read or the laboratory to pursue research.
Early afternoon the mage will go to the dining hall of the guild to have lunch with his colleagues. The staff will have prepared a fine meal, set upon clean linen table cloths, served on fine porcelain and silver, with crystal goblets for water and wine. The meal starts with turtle soup with fine pastries and dry sherry, followed by various breads, stuffed duck or goose, roast meat with gravy, potatoes and vegetables, and several casserole dishes, all accompanied by one or more vintage dry red wines. Dessert may be a crème brulé topped with berries and cream, and sweet white wine. Following lunch, the mages retire to the lounge, for coffee, chocolate wafers, fine brandy, cigars, and conversation.
Then it is time for further work in the library or laboratory, or to perform some other tasks related to guild affairs. By early evening, the mage will take tea, perhaps accompanied by biscuits or a pastry or two. After this brief interruption, he will resume his work. By mid-evening, the mage will return to his residence, unless he has an appointment at the guild or elsewhere. Once home, he will wash, exchange his professional robe for a housecoat, then have an aperitif while attending to any messages or personal administrative matters.
Later in the evening, he will be served a light supper of assorted raw vegetables with an exotic dressing, quail eggs in aspic, bread, and a light dry wine. Once this is cleared away, the staff retires for the evening. This leaves the mage with plenty of peace and quiet to pursue his personal work further, devising new concoctions, novel spells, or new theories, all recorded in a special grimoire. Hours after midnight he is done for the day – locking away certain secure items, casting whatever safety spells as are required to ensure the security of his person and his domicile, and then retire to his bed chamber.
A day in the life of a shop keeper
A shop keeper who sells goods brought into his shop (as opposed to a manufacturing craftsman) will arise around daybreak. While performing his toilet and dressing for work, the maid will be helping his wife prepare breakfast: sardines, fried tomatoes, a sausage and egg, with toast, jam, and tea to finish. Cooking and eating utensils will be of copper, tin, and pottery. About an hour after daybreak, the shopkeep will go downstairs to receive deliveries, arrange the stock in the stock room, and set out items in the sales area.
His shop will open promptly on the hour. From then until noon he will be busy waiting on customers, arranging goods, restocking shelves, and placing orders. If he has an assistant or an older child, the shop will remain open while he has lunch. Otherwise, the doors are closed for a short while. Lunch will be light: mutton with onions, potatoes and carrots, bread, and tea. After lunch until late afternoon, he will be downstairs tending to business. By sunset, the shop is closed, and the shopkeep is cleaning up, checking stock, calculating the day’s takings, and writing out new orders. By early evening, he goes upstairs, washes, probably changes clothes, and joins his family in the parlour for conversation. The youngest kids will have been fed by this time, and he will see them to bed before settling down for relaxation. Supper will be eaten in the small dining room: a relish tray of vegetables or a broth, then a vegetable and mutton pie or a stewed chicken as the main course, with bread and cheese, followed by a glass of port and some nuts.
By mid-evening, the supper will be cleared away and the family will be in the parlour again, socializing for a while, before turning in.
A day in the life of a wealthy merchant
The wealthy merchant will be roused well after daybreak by his manservant, who has drawn a bath for his master. While bathing, the manservant lays out his master’s clothing and then helps him dress. Arrayed in his fine garments, the merchant meets his family for breakfast.
The meal is overseen by the butler, who in turn oversees the maids, who bring forth an array of dishes of silver, laying them out on the great sideboard: fruit, bacon, sausage, kidneys, sardines, lamb chops, hot porridge, and slices of cold salmon, trout, and eel from Edgecliff. Select cheeses, stacked pancakes, fritters, fried toast, pastries, and sweet breads are set out. Pitchers of fruit juice, milk, water, hot chocolate, tea, and coffee, stand ready. When the family is seated, the servers plate the food and fill the finely cut crystal glasses. While having a coffee, his personal assistant enters the breakfast room, and lists the day’s anticipated tasks.
The merchant and the assistant then leaves for their place of business in the merchant’s carriage, complete with footmen, driver, and postillion. Upon arrival, he will be greeted by junior officials, as he inspects the workers to see that they are performing their duties correctly. He then goes to his chambers to meet with his officers, take their reports, give them instructions, review accounts, read correspondence, and dictate letters.
In the early afternoon, the merchant will travel by coach to the guild hall, or perhaps a fashionable inn, for a business appointment. There, he will have an elaborate lunch with his colleagues, spending a good while discussing business. He may then visit another’s place of business, inspect warehouses, go to the docks to see cargo being loaded or unloaded, or examine goods being produced or traded.
Before the day’s end, the merchant will return to his place of business to check on matters. He and his assistant will usually be the last to leave the premises for the day. By early evening he will be driven to his mansion, where he will wash, change with the assistance of his valet, and be ready to meet his evening guests. He and his wife will be excellent hosts, greeting the dinner guests and making sure they have wine, fancy liquors, relish dishes and appetizers. Supper will be announced and the house staff will see that everyone is properly seated.
The grand supper will last until late into the night. Silver, perhaps gold, service will grace the buffet and long table. After the meal, the ladies withdraw to the salon and the men to the smoking lounge, where, over cigars and brandy, much business will be conducted and many deals made. The party ends around midnight.
The merchant then goes to his personal chambers where the valet will assist him with the final matters of the day, before he retires to a great curtained bed with a feather mattress, presumably to dream of great profits.