I was watching "Doctor Who Confidential" on BBC iPlayer this evening (nothing unusual about that!), when a bit of theatrical jargon caught my ear. During a section about lighting effects, the gaffer (head electrician) explained that he was following the script "from what's called 'sides'" - and I was suddenly taken back four hundred years. "Sides" was a term back in Shakespeare's day for the individual scripts which contained each role's lines and cues; lacking photocopiers or typewriters, the copyist provided each actor with only the bare minimum he needed to follow his part.

For me, one of the joys of history is discovering unexpected links with ancestors long dead, and today's find was a very small but still pleasurable addition to that list...