I have just returned (well a few hours ago) from a weekend in the big city, attending an archaeological conference with Dawn and lots of people I don’t know. It was called Archaeology 2010 and was at the British Museum, downstairs in the lecture halls. Ignoring the less than diverting discussion on coin moulds, it was a great weekend. Most notable was the lack of muddy poodle paws. Though we did have plenty of rain.

My main reason for going to the conference (apart from a great love of archaeology) was to hear a few of the speakers. Most notably Mary Beard (Professor of Classics from Cambridge and one of the 100 most influential woman in Britain), Chris Stringer (the foremost expert in evolution in the world) and Brian Fagan (Professor of Anthropology, University of California and the author of a few ancient climate books, most notably The Little Ice Age, which I recommend). Each of them was brilliant. Prof Fagan was particularly entertaining. But there was so much more than these three.

In fact I think it will be a long time before I forget the sight of Prof Fagan listening to a long involved question from Dr Julian Richards and then striding over to him, explaining he was going deaf and bending down to him in the front row, asking him to repeat the question.

I’d never heard of Sam Moorhead and David Stuttard. They have just published (like, so new, it’s not actually for sale yet, except at the conference where the copy I bought still had wet ink) a book called AD410: The year that shook Rome. It’s about the sack of Rome. So far (I’ve read one page) it’s very good. They spoke on Saturday and were very engaging.

They were followed by ex-Monty Python star, Terry Jones with his (now old) presentation about Barbarians. It was also a BBC series. While very entertaining, it was irritatingly unscientific and, therefore, annoying. So what if the Romans called anyone who didn’t speak Latin a barbarian? The word originally meant foreigner! Anyway, the previous talk by Moorhead and Stuttard was streets ahead and far more interesting.

Along with Chris Stringer, another chap spoke on Sunday morning. His name is Clive Gamble and he is a professor at the Centre for Quaternary Research at Royal Holloway. His talk was also on Out of Africa but in greater detail. He had a wonderful anecdote about his visit to an Australian palaeolithic site two days north of Alice Springs. He told the story of his first trip there.

He was sitting in the Landrover, next to the dig director. They had already been driving for a day and a half, through the wonderful red centre, scrub and desert all around, and he was wondering where the dig actually was. He asked the director who said he was looking for something. When asked what this was, he replied, completely straight faced, “a filing cabinet.” Clive digested this without any sign of alarm.

Suddenly there it was! On the side of the road. A filing cabinet. The dig director quickly relaxed and said, “we take the next right“. They left one track for another and sped off into the bush once more. Half a day later, they arrived at the site. The audience thought this was hilarious. I just sat back and thought, ‘yeah, that’s Australia‘.

Frances McIntosh from the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) was another person I’d never heard of. She is writing her Phd on a particular type of Roman brooch. Her presentation sounds like it would be dire but, in fact, she made it very interesting. She was followed by a guy who’s been working on improving the online searchable database for the PAS. The new site looks fantastic and I am going to use it for my dissertation.

All round, a fantastic weekend. And Dawn agrees wholeheartedly.

Spending the night at the flat was interesting and not a little odd. But at least I didn’t have to get up too early on Sunday morning.

Below is a photo of lecture hall #2 just after Chris Stringer’s talk on the Out of Africa proposal. I should add that it was packed and this is between lectures!

Lecture theatre, British Museum

My main job since the takeover is to set up a factory for the creation of new degrees at ABC College where I work. Instead of letting everyone do their own thing, it is my role to work out how to coordinate and systemise this across the College. And as part of that I have decided to set up a pilot to trial using some of the methods employed by University of the Resuscitated Bird. This pilot has taken several months to organise (not least because some of the Americans didn’t have passports and have taken time to get this organised) but at last this week a team of five arrived in London to start working with us.
All of them come from Dead Bird City in the middle of the American desert – a strange artificial place about which our Dean of the Law School once commented that the world would lose nothing if it were “abruptly wiped off the face of the planet”.

Now let me tell you about these 5 visitors. Bobby is a real live Mormon – he managed to find a church in Kensington last Sunday and told us all about listening to the “supreme authority” (ie the pastor) – though currently he is still single. Greg I have nicknamed Texas boy (the first thing out of Texas that I have ever liked), Marcia brought me a bag of trail mix (nuts and sultanas and things) that I had in Dead Bird City on my visit last year that I really liked (she remembered – very sweet), and Jan and Cindy are two young American females obsessed with hygiene.

Now I thought they would like a true English experience, so I booked Jan and Cindy into a lovely Georgian flat in Islington. Big mistake, as gradually over the week complaints have trickled back to me – no wifi, nail sticking out of the floor, leaky shower head, dirty rug and so on. I tried to explain that England is old, lots of places are shabby, and bathrooms almost always a bit grim. But once I heard that they were actually in tears about the place I thought I am going to have to move them – and pay for a second flat! (another £6000 note) The real issue turned out to be they thought the place was dirty. They cleaned it twice themselves– and still thought it was dirty. My PA suggested we get a professional cleaning company in – but they said (and I kid you not) that they didn’t think it could ever be clean because they would always know that there was dirt under the floor boards (ground floor flat you see).

I mean, what do they think the planet is made of? Plastic? Well I guess it kind of is these days thanks to hygiene obsessed Americans!!

Sometimes I could just kiss the (very muddy) ground in thanks for my upbringing of Angledool, guinea pig shit and an agricultural high school.

Despite all this I like all 5 of them very much and am very impressed with their calm professionalism at work. So much more professionalised in their approach than ABC College tends to be. It is a whole new way of working and I am learning a lot –and clearly they are as well.

But even so …. seriously, what do they think is underneath the houses in Dead Bird City??

And I doubt I will be able to get through the next week without giving in to the temptation of telling them that in London no one is ever more than 7 feet from a rat.

Two news items cropped up today which have amazed me.

Firstly, a woman in England (the Midlands, I think) was on a bus with a very young baby. The baby started yelling for food so she proceeded to breast feed it. Another passenger complained to the driver, saying the mother was being obscene. The driver then called the woman to the front of the bus and told her to get off. Which she did, having been told she was being obscene. It was pouring with rain and she had a baby and, I presume, a stroller. She managed to get a taxi home.

The bus company, as soon as it heard of this, contacted her and apologised, sent her a bunch of flowers and some ‘vouchers’ and said they would investigate. All well and good but what I want to know is who the hell would seriously think breast feeding a baby is obscene? I mean really. It’s one of the most natural things in the world. I think the driver should have turfed the person who complained off the bus.

Then again, I did see a new sign in one of our local buses recently that reads “For the comfort of all our passengers, please do not eat or drink on the bus”. Clearly the baby would have contravened this rule and maybe been asked to stop.

Secondly, the Canadian ice hockey team was told off for celebrating their recent Olympic victory. After the spectators had left the rink (note the use of the word ‘after’) they returned, drinking beer and smoking cigars, whooping it up with the cleaning staff. Clearly someone complained and they had to get all contrite and apologise. One of the players actually had the affront to lay down on the ice!

Fortunately, the IOC and the Canadian body responsible for the sport saw fit NOT to punish anyone for celebrating the fact that they had won a gold medal and have put it all down to a natural exuberance. The players have apologised, saying they realised their celebration had strayed from the dressing room and, perhaps, shouldn’t have. Very sad, if you ask me, that people have to apologise for celebrating an Olympic win.

So who are these people complaining about such stupid things? And, more importantly, how sad are their lives that they have to? I’d throw them off the bus, especially if it was raining, for being obscene and not cheerful enough.

And, thank you mum, I fixed the photo.

Today I spent a lot of time doing housework, drying the poodle’s paws off every time they came back inside, doing uni work and generally doing WORK so, in the evening, I decided to relax a bit by updating the website.

And I’ve been quite busy. There’s a new photo album, full of old family photos (try looking in the ’0000′ photo album). I have updated the pages to include 2010 (though the present links only go to existing pages because we’ve not been anywhere yet!). I have transcribed a few more war memorials and added an email contact. I have tried (unsuccessfully, three times) to convert a video of a Cambridge University lecture by Mary Beard so I could watch it on the iTouch. This takes so long, it’s infuriating when it doesn’t work. I blame the iTouch, personally.

And now I’m exhausted and need to go to bed.

I had my presentation today and it went very well. I managed a bit of sleep last night and the stench of beer and whisky was washed away with my morning shower…I hope. I was still changing the slides on the train into uni and agonising over the jokes.

Fortunately I went last, that way I could bounce off the previous presentations as well as present my own. I had a few laughs (tricky with a multi-cultural crowd) and, according to the lecturer, managed to explain everything very well. In fact, he has already emailed me my preliminary results and gave me an excellent.

I think it’s probably a bit unfair given my background but, hey, I don’t make the rules. I did enjoy it a lot. And made me think I’d rather enjoy being a lecturer. I have also come to the conclusion that charm and a positive outlook on life can get you a long way.

But I don’t want to go on about that. Being an actor I know my strengths (and weaknesses) and am arrogant enough to admit it. No, today I want to talk about spam. More accurately, the spam I get on this blog.

Every day I delete at least two spam posts. They are either for drugs or porn and probably always contain nasty viral links if someone was foolish enough to follow them. Fortunately I have set the blog to spam out anything that isn’t from a regular poster so no-one but me has to see them.

And I wonder why they bother. Though, really, I know why. It’s to make people follow them and either buy something dodgy or load a nasty thing onto their machine. Still, you’d think they’d give up. Though, again, I know it’s not human but a bit of software that just wanders the web and deposits it’s little evil presents where ever it can.

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Tonight I have the wonderful treat of having Chelsea v Inter Milan in the Champion’s League being telecast on terrestrial TV! Woo hoo! You’d better skip the rest of this self-indulgent post if you hate football.

Damn! Less than 3 minutes into the game and Inter score! Poor defending by us. Milito scored for them. Conversely, after 6 minutes, their defending is excellent so far.

The interesting thing about this game is the manager for Inter Milan. It is Jose Mourinho, who was the Chelsea manager who led us to lots of victories two years ago. He knows all of our players well, knows their skills. He also signed Drogba for Chelsea, who is becoming one of the best centre forwards in the world at the moment and can’t seem to stop scoring.

Ancelotti, our current manager is a very different type of manager but just as hungry to win. Let’s hope he’s really, really hungry because Mourinho is always famished.

It’s an exciting, physical battle so far. There has been a bit of a spate of yellow cards for both teams for the last ten minutes (23 minutes in). Apart from the goal, both teams are looking pretty even at the moment.

The Inter goalie has two black eyes. According to the commentator, he was in a car crash yesterday. He smashed his Lamborghini into a pole. He’s one tough guy, clearly. And his keeping is very good so far, keeping Chelsea scoreless.

Inter nearly scored again. It was harder to miss but miss he did and I can breathe again. Our only real chance came from a Drogba free kick and it hit the underside of the cross bar and bounced out.

Just before half time, we should have had a penalty but didn’t and so it’s still 1-0 as they leave the pitch after the first 45 minutes.

The second half has started where the first half ended: All full on. AND WE SCORE! five minutes into the second half. A nice little tap back by Ivanovic onto the boot of Kalou and he wallops it into the net. An important away goal for us.

And then, four minutes later, Inter scores again. 2-1. And the crowd goes crazy. They are making a wall of sound, according to the commentator. And they are loud. I can hear them from here…and they’re playing in Milan.

Damn. Our goalie just injured himself and is being substituted by our second string keeper, Hilario. It looks bad and could be a knee injury. If so, it’s not just a problem for tonight but for the rest of the season.

So close to another Chelsea goal. Brilliant build up. Sharp one touch passing. Excellent movement through the defence. Their goalie just managed to get in the way. More luck than anything else.

The Inter defence is still very strong. Each time we charge down into the final third of the pitch, they tackle and clear the ball. Very frustrating. They have one player, Lucio, who is winning them the game.

It’s still very spirited but the players are all slowing down after the intense combat. With five minutes to go, they all look ready to drop. The build up is still there but the finishing isn’t and it looks like tiredness.

In the final three minutes and they have all put on a last spurt. A corner with two minutes to go and Chelsea almost scores. And it’s all over. In three weeks, the return match will be at Stamford Bridge. Gripping game.

Ah, glorious February. Grey sky, rain and mud. Yes, that is what we came to England for. I guess it makes the weather forcasting easy. “For today, we shall have, mostly rain.” says Carol on Breakfast. And the back garden is a quagmire.

Last night was the final episode of season 1 of Nurse Jackie on BBC1. I watched it during lunch today. What a fantastic show. Edie Falco (The Soprano’s) is Jackie, a nurse in New York’s All Saints hospital. She is far from a perfect character. She is married with two children and having an affair with the pharmacist at work. She has a serious drug problem with prescription painkillers and no-one but the pharmacist knows. And she is an ‘angel‘ as a main character describes her. She believes in common sense rather than process.

Nurse Jackie doesn’t fit any of the standard moulds for TV entertainment. It isn’t a comedy but has very darkly funny moments. It isn’t excatly a drama though dramatic it certainly is. It’s not exclusively a hospital story (like ER) though it’s all about the nurses and how much they do for the patients. It’s also only half an hour long so it doesn’t have the long character and storyline development opportunities you associate with a drama series.

The show is hard hitting and not for the overly sensitive. The sex and swearing is not softened. Nor are the injuries of some of the patients – though the guy with his intestines sitting on his tummy is both funny and graphic at the same time. OK, Nurse Jackie is not for everyone but it is brilliant and I for one cannot wait for series 2.

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Tonight Nicktor is coming over – Aldershot is actually playing at home so we’re going to the game – so it will probably be my usual late Tuesday night. I have a presentation at uni tomorrow though, so I really should make an effort not to drink quite so much whisky.

So…Aldershot lost 2-3 when they were up 2-0 at half time. It was a dismal display.

I had another uni result today. One of my essays was a purely philosophical one in that it was about the philosophy of information. Now, I always love to babble and this was the perfect opportunity. Naturally, by the time I’d finished and submitted it, I was convinced it wasn’t very good and I’d babbled far too much. I guess I didn’t. I managed 80%! Who’da thunk it? I am rather pleased. As well as surprised.

To be honest, uni wasn’t a lot of fun today. It started ok, though the weather was foul and I was damp for most of the day. We discussed a lot of information retrieval stuff and then it came time for the tutorial presentations. It was the usual long drawn out process of getting people to go out to the front to present their findings. As usual this was like pulling teeth.

It was, however, exacerbated by the lecturer filling in forms with each group’s results. This took an age – there are eight groups – and, quite frankly, was a huge waste of time. It would have been a lot better had he asked us to fill in the forms prior to class so the findings could just be discussed.

The results were interesting and we managed to discuss some of them but the time was running out and we had to abandon class before the final group entered their figures. The class finished just before the next class were due to take over the room.

I headed out to get some lunch. The day was still miserable and my mood wasn’t much better. I decided to ditch my second class and give myself an early mark. The notes are all on the uni website and I could study in the warmth and comfort at home. The poodles were very pleased. I was very pleased.

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Butterick Update!!
Following on from yesterdays post…After a bit more research into St Augustine’s, Kilburn, I discovered that it was only consecrated the year before the Butterick mass baptisms (1880). Apparently, the priest at the old parish church wasn’t too happy with the way things were going and decided to branch out on his own. He wanted a more Catholic approach and so opened his own church, with the bishop’s blessing, of course. This was St Augustine’s. Now, my assumption is that the Butterick family were all for this new brand of worship and so shifted allegiances from the church they knew and loved to the new one down the road which promised more in heavenly trading stamps. This belief is strengthened in that a few years later, another Butterick child was baptised at the new font. This one was also well past birth.

“Well, she crossed her legs so there can’t be too much wrong” – two old ladies talking in Waitrose in the dairy aisle. I assume they were talking about someone’s plastic hip. Actually I found out the other day that Waitrose was named after two grocer-type chaps who joined together in 1908; a Mr Waite and a Mr Rose. Actually, there was also a Mr Taylor, but he left in 1906. It was then called Waite, Rose and Taylor, which doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Had Mr Rose left, it may now be called Waitaylor. Or if Mr Waite had slipped off, it could be Rosetaylor, which is almost Rose Tyler, and we know what happened to her. I can’t imagine having to dimension hop for my groceries.

Having a rest from my presentation preparation this afternoon, I had a dig around the old family tree for about half an hour. I have been a tad remiss in keeping up with the ancestors, I must admit. I did find something interesting about the Buttericks. For some reason (a reason I may find out one day) three of the Butterick children were baptised on the same day at St Augustine’s church in Kilburn. This may not sound particularly odd, but bear in mind they weren’t the only children and one of them not baptised was, I think, a twin of one who was. Bloody confusing!

The rest of the afternoon was spent on my presentation, prettying it up, basically, and making sure my jokes are evenly spaced. Mirinda was doing a bit of work, so we both beavered away in adjacent rooms while the puppies occasionally wandered from one room to the other. There is also the occasional movement of documents between email accounts as Mirinda finishes drafts of things for me to proof read and give an opinion on.

We did take a break to wander up to the castle and back. Though, I should admit, we didn’t quite make it to the castle because of the deep mud we’d have had to plough through. The park, like our back garden, is not particularly pleasant this time of year. I think February in England – I think rain and mud. Naturally, while the sun has shone for large extents of the day, it drizzled with rain the whole way around, soaking the dogs.

Which reminds me, the odd hail storm we had last night and the fact that the temperature took a while to creep into positive figures this morning, made the path into town quite slippery this morning and I was fortunate that my muscles remembered the various flexing techniques learnt from a year spent ice skating in Homebush, or I would have found myself with a wet butt on a number of occasions.

This is an experiment. I have uploaded a video of the poodles to YouTube. You should be able to see it below. Please let me know if you can’t.

On February 19, 1998, Mirinda and I boarded a plane, leaving Sydney and flying to London. I can’t remember what the weather was like, but we arrived in England on February 20 and took off for Somerset. And now, every year, around this time, we go out for an anniversary dinner. This year is no different. We are off to St John’s, our favourite local restaurant to celebrate our 12th year.

To otherwise celebrate, we went for a long ramble over Hankley Common. While we generally do this, it is a nice way to remind us why we love living here. Today it was pretty much deserted, giving us that great feeling of isolation we so rarely find. Mirinda noted how brown it all looked, the heather preparing for the spring. The gloriously sunny morning had also turned a dismal grey but, even so, Hankley looked beautiful.

Later, sitting at home, working feverishly on my presentation for next Wednesday and playing Mirinda the CD of my newspaper reading, we were treated to a sudden, delicate hail storm, which left the road all white and the puppies a bit wetter.

By the way, Mirinda’s sister rang last night.

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The meal was delicious, as usual. We arrived home in time for me to see Match of the Day. To round off a wonderful day, Chelsea won but, more importantly, Man U lost!!!!

For today’s class we had another guest speaker. She was from a publisher. She looked about 15 but was clearly older…given her job title and the fact she was coming to a university to tell us what her company did and how. She was very quiet.

The room we use on Fridays is not that big and there would be about 30 of us in it. Still, it was hard to hear her. I was in the second row, about ten feet from her. She was quiet. I’m sure the people at the back (five rows back) were lip reading or missing everything.

What she had to say would have been interesting if we’d been able to hear it properly. It always takes too much energy to concentrate on a quiet voice. So much, in fact, that you start to not understand the language.

Anyway, her lack of volume was further pronounced each time the lecturer asked her a question or interjected as he was a LOT louder. I’m assuming she won’t be asked back because she was so quiet. At least I hope so, for the sake of next years students.

Things managed to turn nasty when the loud mouthed American of the class decided to quiz the speaker.

“So, how much does your company make each year?” She asked loud and brashly.
“Um, I’m sorry, but we can’t discuss that,” She said quietly.
“What do you mean? You are funded by the public. You have a responsibility to tell me!” Raged the American
“But we’re not funded. We’re a private company.” She whispered
“You’re paid by universities who are funded, therefore you are funded. You HAVE to tell me!”

At this point, the lecturer stepped in by standing up and speaking loudly.

“I think you’ll find that the publisher is a privately owned company and has many people paying them money. University libraries are a large part of their customer base but by no means the only one,” He said.

This seemed to satisfy the loud mouthed American. At least I thought so. As I left after the lecture, she was just in front of me and speaking to a pair of students. She was complaining loudly about how pathetic the girl had been and how she deserved an answer to her question. I’m sure her parents would be very pleased with their little girl, given every second word was vulgar.

A voice beside me said “Boy, she’s clearly having a bad day.” I turned and agreed with another of the students.

This brightened up an otherwise dull Friday at school. And then, to top it all off, as I left the uni, a massive group of Moslems held an outdoor, mass prayer thing, complete with mats and knowing the direction of east. There were lots of people watching and photographing it. There were also placards proclaiming their right to pray. Watching it, briefly, made me wonder why they need a mosque. It’s different for Christians, they have to sit down.

Mass prayers at uni