The House Husband

After a solid week of house related (and Science Museum) work, I had today off and spent it with Dawn. I hadn’t seen her for ages and was really looking forward to it. Imagine my surprise when she didn’t cancel at the last minute!

The day, however, did not begin very brightly. The weather was pretty foul with strong winds, evil clouds and drifting sheets of rain. Add to this a frantic and fruitless search for Mirinda’s bank cards and the day was looking decidedly glum.

Mirinda managed to only miss one train and I saw her off to a very important meeting with a leading provider of hat robbing engineers. As I walked back to the house, the sun started to appear and the clouds gradually dispersed.

Dawn was in the highly unusual situation of having Nicktor at home to attend to all the usual duties so she could spend as much time out with me as she wanted. Generally when we have lunch I only get an hour or so before she has to race off to collect, feed and water the boys. But not today!

We started off by driving down to Winchester Uni (where she’s doing her PhD) to see Julie (one of our tutors at Surrey so many years ago) who was sorting finds from a student dig. Actually, she was washing oyster shells. There are an awful lot of oyster shells on the site and it looks like poor Julie is washing all of them. She had a room full of students washing various other finds. She was at her usual acerbic best. And I’m convinced she had no idea who I was. Still, she knew Dawn and that was enough.

She gave us a tour of a few of the better finds from the dig. Some tokens (used instead of money as I’ve mentioned a number of times in prior posts), some wonderful Murano glass fragments and a tray of very small objects which Julie asked us to identify.

We tried a few guesses but couldn’t work it out. Apparently they had to send them away to an expert to find out what they were as well. They looked like tiny little lead weights but were shark denticles (also called placoid scales). These form the sharks scales and are similar to tiny teeth. Shark was used a lot by Medieval monks.

We were also shown a couple of jug handles with faces on them. Brilliant finds! Exactly the sort of thing I’d never find in a million years of digging.

After spending a little time listening to how awful a certain staff member is, we left for lunch in Winchester. We went to the Bishop on the Bridge and had a lovely meal (and beer…except Dawn has gone off beer and enjoyed an alcoholic ginger beer instead which she justified by saying it had ‘beer’ in the name) before going for a short wander and coffee.

We went into a lovely little cafe but they didn’t want to serve us so we popped across the road to the much more accommodating Maison Blanc. we sat outside and enjoyed our coffee and watched people strolling around, cameras in hand, enjoying the gorgeous day.

We then left Winchester and paid an unannounced visit to the dig site. Dawn wanted to talk to the bone expert (to do with her PhD) and we really wanted to have a sticky over the site.

We both felt a very strong pull to get out our trowels and start scraping away but, fortunately, we didn’t have our trowels with us and I had sandals on. Instead we managed to get a look at an exposed skeleton which one of the guys was excavating (actually he was drawing the plan and taking measurements while we were there but it’s all part of the process). I managed to get a photo as we discussed what was wrong with him.

The site used to be a Medieval leper hospital so our assumption was that he (Dawn said it was a ‘he’) was a leper though a person on blip said he was probably misdiagnosed as it looked like he had psoriasis. Anyway, he look jolly happy, like most skeletons do. This is because the lower jaw falls down after everything rots away from the bones, giving the skull an eternal grin. Death and happiness. Maybe that’s where the crazy stories of heaven come from, the cheerful dead.

Possibly a leper but definitely dead

We wandered back across the field to the car and drove back to Farnham where we had a brief detour so Dawn could see what the storage unit looked like – she’d never seen one before – as she’s thinking of putting Nicktor in one. Or, at least, his junk collection. Her verdict was that it wouldn’t be even close to being big enough for him.

We then enjoyed a lovely coffee on the patio while fussing with the dogs before she left. It was a lovely day, improved by the fact that Mirinda found her bank cards at work and had an excellent meeting.

After Dawn left, I decided the grass was dry enough to mow (for any prospective house viewers) and set to it. It always looks so much better after a mow and much more inviting. I then rearranged the lounge room to make it look bigger – no easy task but I think it worked.

So, a full and very enjoyable Monday. Tomorrow it’s back to the house improvement programme with, possibly, painting on the agenda.

So. My final Weasel adventure? Perhaps. These are my notes from the final day and the trip across the Channel.

What is wrong with these people? Clearly they’re not like me at all. Perhaps, after all is said and done, I am ill-suited to archaeology. Smart arse know it alls.

There seems to be a desire for nothing to change and for everything to be ‘as it should’. Why, for instance, was there such a negative reaction to the huge Roman style building at the top of La Gacilly? Why must everything conform?

Along the canal we spotted a chateau with a satellite dish. This was seen as some sort of crime against humanity! Perhaps we should have been rowing up the river in a hollowed out log. Actually, I’m not sure about all these structures. I think leaving the trees 50 million years ago was a mistake.

After all, what is the original home of Homo sapien? Pre-civilisation, pre-agriculture, pre-technology…caves, I guess. Well, that’s what I want to see. A landscape unblemished by the trappings of ‘civilised’ human-kind.

But who is the arbiter of how far back we should go? This is, of course, a personal issue and one that makes no sense. We sit in a modern vessel, eating a drinking the products of civilisation (we didn’t have to go and hunt or brew anything) and claim people shouldn’t have satellite dishes.

What has been painfully apparent on this trip is how negative everything is viewed. Too new, too old, too many tourists, not enough modern conveniences (how ironic), etc. None of them view the world with an appreciation of the new as something beautiful. If this is archaeology then I don’t like it very much.

When I see something I’ve never seen before, I am generally all wide-eyed and enthusiastic, wanting to learn about it. I don’t criticise things because they encompass different periods of human history. Ok, if I see something I don’t like then I’ll say so but I don’t just simply dislike everything because it’s painted the wrong colour. Art must be an impossible appreciation for these people.

I hope I am never so bitter and twisted that I see the world through ashen glasses. While I may kid myself with my rose tint, I am, at least, generally a happy soul.

This is why I need to go off on my own from time to time. At first I thought this was because I had fallen into the trap of the lonely but I am now convinced it is because I need to escape the negativity that seems to surround the group like a dark cloud, a thick fog of despair.

The boat could be Charon’s dark barge, cruising the Styx!

Why does Matt ALWAYS look so miserable? What’s that all about? He seems to take great care to make sure his mouth is set in a grimace at all times. This is all you see. Sort of like an anti-Gary. Maybe that’s what he is. My antidote.

I realise how independent he is – I’d be an idiot if I didn’t – but he takes it to ridiculous lengths…as if no-one else exists or even matters. I guess that wouldn’t be too bad if you had something to offer the world.

Why does he just leave the boat without a word to anyone? It’s like he doesn’t know (or care) how a group works. It’s like he feels as if everyone else should just do what his agenda indicates.

But Matt I could understand, after all, he’s just unpleasant but Sean? What was Sean’s problem? I thought I had a great relationship with Sean. He has always been wide-eyed, innocent and up for total fun. Why did he suddenly decide not to talk to me? And all of a sudden he becomes very pally with Matt.

At first I figured Matt wasn’t talking to me because of that night after the Globe when he acted like a child and Sean and I took Bev up to Trafalgar Square. But clearly that wasn’t it. Matt has some other problem with me.

Interestingly, the night at La Gacilly, Bev was up and awake when I returned from walking the streets. We had a long, hushed chat. She told me how she wasn’t enjoying herself, how she feels she can’t be herself. I get so sick of telling her how she’s in a ridiculously self destructive relationship that I don’t any more. What’s the point?

I guess I’m fortunate in that, if I choose, I can probably manage to never see Matt again. The same with all of them, really. Though it would be a shame to lose touch with Lorna, Darren, John and Tom. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they all just put up with me and Matt is the only one honest enough to ignore me.

Anyway, when all is said and done, I think my holidays should only be spent with Mirinda. We see things the same.

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A highlight of the trip was as we boarded the ferry back to England. Sean and Carlee were with Lorna and Darren. We cruised on ahead, leaving them at the border control. They never made it onto our ferry because Carlee’s visa was out of date.

This meant they all missed the ferry and had to try for the next one, leaving Carlee and Sean in France.

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