Francis Pryor's Blog, page 19

Gin Lane Gazette: Roads to Then and Now

Here’s a slightly paraphrased extract from Britain BC (pages 67-9): “The old road from Peterborough to Northampton is very familiar to me. It twists its way along the Nene valley, swerving randomly from one side to another. Nowadays a soulless dual carriageway bypasses anything of interest, but that old road went through all the villages and hamlets. One of these was the pleasant village of Earls Barton … In 1982 an extraordinary discovery would be made that would forever tie the village into the Ice Age, over ten thousand years ago …”

I then go on to describe how in a quarry on the outskirts of the village a so-called Lyngby axe was discovered. These ‘axes’ were made from a carved reindeer antler and they seem to have been general-purpose tools used by the late Ice Age reindeer hunters who travelled across the cold tundra-like plains of south-eastern England, the bed of what is now the southern North Sea and across to Denmark and North Germany. It’s a superb piece, and now in the British Museum. And it was discovered by a young Adrian Teal, who was fascinated by archaeology and used to visit the quarry regularly with his father.

Fast Forward, as they say, to the launch of my Lifers’ Club project with the crowdfunding publisher, Unbound. It was an entirely new world to me and I was immediately made to feel welcome by everyone, including one or two successful authors who had just been through the entire process and had emerged, bloodied, but unbowed. Adrian was one of them and he gave me numerous tips and gently guided me into the strange new world of Twitter, Tweets and Tweeting (not a firm of chartered accountants). Now Adrian is at the next, and in some ways hardest, stage of the Unbound process: he has just launched his book into the shark-infested waters of the wider book trade. And this time I can offer some help, having been through that particular mill many times.

The most important part of launching a book into the trade is to have a good book. Despite what people say, you can’t sell a book on celebrity alone. Yes, it’ll go with a bang for a few weeks, but then it’ll die because readers, even the readers of celeb drivel, have brains and they’ll tell their friends. In fact, word-of-mouth is the most important salesperson for a new book. Nothing matters more – and I speak as someone who has had one or two very snotty reviews from academics. Ultimately they don’t matter and it’s best just to ignore them (not that Adrian has had any). The most important thing is that readers enjoy reading your book. And I bought a copy of Adrian’s Gin-Lane Gazette, but shortly after he’d achieved his subscribers’ target, so my name isn’t in the back! Oh, the injustice! The ignominy! The shame! But I digress.

Apart from writing a good and enjoyable book, the next priority is to get it reviewed.  I’ve seen an excellent review for The Gin-Lane Gazette in my favourite historical magazine, History Today, but today we live in the internet age, where blogs matter as much as journals, so I thought I’d cover it here, partly because I often do book reviews, have already done a post on cartoons (which I adore), but mostly because I loved the book and want other like-minded souls to enjoy it too. But I warn you, it won’t be a simple process. The Gin-Lane Gazette isn’t something you can just pick up and peruse. It will take commitment. But I assure you: it’ll be well worth the effort.

But first a very quick summary. It’s a ‘compendium of articles’ apparently written for the scurrilous periodical The Gin-Lane Gazette (an 18th Century equivalent of Private Eye, but with added knobs and whistles), between 1750 and 1800, by its Editor and Founder, Nathaniel Crowquill Esq. And that’s almost all I can say about it that’s factual. Oh yes, and the typeface is genuinely 18th Century, with long –s’s  (that appear as on the printed page as f’s). This takes a little getting used-to, but I assure you, it’s well worth the effort: so persevere!  At one level the book’s all about Georgian London, at another, it’s about our own times, and as I said in a recent Tweet, if I had my way I’d insist that all modern politicians were forced to read it. It might put them back in touch with some form of reality – and a time when their counterparts were held in equally low esteem by the voters.

The wonderfully imaginative text is supported and enhanced by the author’s superb drawings that are everywhere: as main illustrations, as small vignettes and as part of elaborate Grinling Gibbons-like frames and floral swags. It’s a real pleasure just to open. And here are three examples to whet your appetites.

This book also raises some wider issues about modern approaches to the past. Adrian is a cartoonist and caricaturist and his work has been widely published in most national newspapers, History Today, and on the hugely popular TV quiz show, QI. But he does have a special affinity with the bawdier side of the 18th century. Indeed, don’t we all? I certainly do: I adore the novels of Sterne, Goldsmith, Fielding, Smollett, Swift and others. I’ve also had the great pleasure of working for two years in an 18th Century brewery in Brick Lane – surely the model behind Hogarth’s Gin-Lane (but if I’m wrong, please don’t tell me; I hold certain illusions dear)? There’s something so refreshing about the 18th Century: it’s so different from the prudery and starchiness of the Victorians and it also contrasts with the repulsive double-talk that is the management-speak of our own time. And besides, what’s wrong with bawdiness? We sometimes forget that a drunken crowd in a pub can talk sense. They can also cut to the chase, and express a few home truths that we in our prissy middle class bubbles would rather avoid.

Adrian’s book is all about pissing on convention and bursting those prissy bubbles. The spirit of his writing, and of his cartoons, is 100% genuine 18th Century. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s like those re-enactors who dress-up as Vikings, Cromwellian soldiers or US marines about to sail off to Normandy for the D-Day landings. Invariably those people are clean, washed and scrubbed. Their weekdays are spent in offices staring at computer screens. They are no more re-enacting the past than I am experiencing Indian culture when I’m forking-down a Chicken Bangalore Phal in a local curry house. But so what? Both are highly pleasurable activities and surely people should be allowed to do pleasant things without the likes of me scoffing at them? But having said that, we should also be aware of the limitations of what we do. To re-enact is not to re-experience or re-live. It’s not even truly experimental. But it’s a form of populist history, even so, and as I said, it’s fun – and it makes a great spectacle. But it doesn’t take anyone any closer to the bit of the past in question. That’s my point. To do that, you need to immerse yourself deeply in the period. I see it as an almost Zen-like experience. It’s not until you’ve lived, slept and dreamt the Bronze Age for years that you can say you’ve got any closer to it. Put another way, it takes discipline, energy and above all commitment – and stamina, too. But it’s worth it. Boy, is it worth it!

I think it is very important that we try to come up with new ways of connecting to the past. Historical novels and costume dramas are one thing, but increasingly I find them less and less convincing. Sagas like Downton Abbey and the recent BBC series about a medieval queen left me cold (not that I watched any complete episodes). And why? Because the characters were all  manifestly modern people. The young women wore modern make-up and like the young men were impossibly glamorous, but in a Celeb Magazine sort-of way. It was a more glossy, blander version of people re-enacting Viking Age battles and hacking merry hell out of each other’s plywood shields with double-sided axes. So, if you want more than just historical pap, you’ll have to be prepared to make the effort. Personally, I’d first buy a book by Jane Austen, or one of the authors I mentioned earlier. That’s the genuine article. But there are only a few of these – and besides, why not experiment a little?

So if you want to try something a bit different, it helps to be in the company of somebody who has made a deep commitment to the period. And that’s what Adrian has done with his book. Everything about it is ‘real’: the drawings are of real people and the scandalous anecdotes are both Georgian and modern at the same time. In a nutshell it’s a genuine re-creation, rather than an ephemeral re-enaction. And right now, Unbound are running a special Mid-Summer sale of their books. So don’t delay! Go to:

http://unbound.co.uk/books/gin-lane-gazette

A great book to take on holiday, but keep it out of the reach of children and young teenagers….

Orkney: Archaeological Paradise

Orkney is an archaeologist’s paradise. It’s as simple as that. If there is such a thing as the After Life, that’s where I want to find myself. Conversely, Hell is somewhere with no history at all – and right now I can’t think where that might be, which is maybe why it would indeed be hellish.

Our flight landed in driving rain and horrendous cross-winds and the pilot deserved a round of applause. Then I got wet crossing the tarmac to the Kirkwall Airport Terminal. I got even wetter unloading the taxi at the hotel, which overlooked the fabulous Loch of Harray, not that I could see it through the fog and murk. The hotel was excellent and I drank rather more Highland Park whisky than I should, I guess to raise my flagging spirits, as the invisible sun squelched below the horizon.

Then the next morning I got up around six, and was astonished when I drew back the curtains to discover that the sun was shining brightly through a sunless sky. Lambs were skipping and bleating merrily! I expected skipping shepherdesses in muslin frocks. It could have been a different country, no continent, no world, to the place of the previous evening. But then that’s Orkney for you: surrounded by the fickle waters of the Gulf Stream, its climate owes more to the sea than the season and seems to take a perverse delight in defying what the forecasters predict. I looked south, and could see the tell-tale hammerhead clouds of thunderstorms starting to grow over the mainland. It was to prove a rough and not very rapid flight south to London, later in the day.

We set out around six-thirty for what must be the most perfectly preserved group of prehistoric sites in north-western Europe. They’re grouped around a narrow strip of land which separates the Lochs of Harray and Stennes towards the centre of Mainland Orkney. The most famous site has to be the chambered tomb at Maeshowe, which was as magnificent as always – if anything I found it improved by farm animals.

The huge mound of Maeshowe chambered tomb, which overlooks the Stones of Stennes, the Ring of Brodgar and the Ness of Brodgar, across the Loch of Harray.

Then we went to the third largest stone circle in Britain, the Ring of Brodgar. Recent research has revealed the actual quarries where many of the stones came from and it would appear they were selected for the colour of the rock.

The great stone circle, the Ring of Brodgar (or Brogar). This huge monument is encircled by a large ditch and it was constructed late in the life of the Ness of Brodgar.

Around lunchtime we headed towards the centre of the narrow strip – known as the Ness of Brodgar – which separated the two lochs. Here, back in 2002, Time Team’s geophysicist, John Gator, and his Company (GSB Prospection), had revealed a huge complex of buried Neolithic remains, right at the centre of the Ness. They covered the entire strip of land, over a distance of about 250 metres and included an estimated one hundred (or more) Neolithic buildings. The discovery remains quite unprecedented. These buildings were erected, maintained and rebuilt, from about 3300 to 2300 BC. They are huge by Neolithic standards and were built superbly in the finest stonework possible, but it would seem they were never used as houses or as farm buildings. Instead, they are best described as ‘temples’. But unlike churches, which are kept clean and tidy, these buildings accumulated all sorts of finds: thousands of pieces of pottery, animal bones and stone tools, including some remarkable carved stone slabs. The finds are breath-taking.

The Ness of Brodgar excavations. A general view, looking across to the Loch of Harray.

The Ness of Brodgar excavations. Close-up of a perfect Neolithic wall (in Structure 12). It’s hard to believe this was constructed around 3000 BC.

The man in charge of the excavations is Nick Card. He’s a field archaeologist to his fingertips, but he also appreciates the importance of keeping the public involved. So visitors are welcomed. There’s a large viewing stand and fine dig shop. I could easily have spent a whole weekend there. Nick also has to raise the funds for the dig which he does through the normal routes, plus he runs a wonderful blog and many other fund-raising projects. But I know for a fact that money is still very tight; so if anyone out there has anything to spare, I can’t think of a better, more important project to support.

The complexity of the dig put me in mind of a deep urban site. Walls are beautifully preserved, and in some places buildings are built on top of earlier structures. There are ‘sealing off’ deposits, such as a thick carpet of cattle bones when one building was abandoned. But this wasn’t just a dump of bones, Nick told me there are quite strong hints that it was carefully and deliberately structured – indeed, like so much else at the Ness.

On the way to the airport we passed the Stones of Stenness, the other well-known site of this extraordinary landscape. I stopped the taxi and took this picture. It’s such a strange place: not just a simple circle and probably never ‘completed’ at all. In fact, we wonder now whether its builders had such an intention in the first place.

Some of the Stones of Stennes. I have always thought that these stones appear to be reaching upwards, towards the sky. But equally, they could be pointing towards worlds below the ground.

If you can, do please visit the Ness of Brodgar. The dig runs for another three weeks. If you can’t go this year, then go in 2014 – which promises to be yet another wonderful season. Who’d go on a world cruise or waste their time in a luxurious health spa, if they could visit Orkney? Not me – and that’s a fact.

So is the dig at the Ness of Brodgar somehow going to ‘demystify’ the site, or the other monuments around it? I don’t think so. You could excavate at Ely Cathedral till you were blue in the face; you could study theology till the Bible came out of your ears, but again, you’d never explain what lay behind them. And if you thought you had done it, you’d be wrong. Nick and his team are providing a factual basis for understanding when, and how, people built and used these remarkable buildings. But as at Ely, that’s one thing. It’s quite another to explain why we feel the way we do, when we visit these extraordinary places. Do they, or do we, generate the magical atmosphere? I don’t know, and to be frank, I don’t care: I’m just profoundly grateful that they move me, and everyone who visits them, so profoundly.

A Few Roses: My Way of Saying Thank You

I’m writing this on a train which is wending its way across those much-threatened sandy heathlands of Dorset, returning from a day’s filming in Cranborne Chase and at Bournemouth University, for a Time Team documentary. Last night in a very hot hotel just back from the sea I was reading a wonderful book, written in 1921 by R.C. Sherriff, the author of the well-known play about the Great War, Journey’s End (1929). The book’s title says it all: The Fortnight in September. And that’s what it is: a simple account of a very ordinary family’s two weeks holiday in a guest house at Bognor, just along the coast from where I was steamily sleeping last night. The book was quite unlike anything Sherriff had written up until then, but he doubted whether any good publisher would even look at – it was, he thought, so ordinary and unexciting. But Victor Gollancz, whose company had published Journey’s End, realised its potential at once, and accepted it. He was entranced, just as I am now, and promised to print it without altering a word. And I’m delighted to say it proved a huge success, but then, as sometimes happened, it was overtaken by events, the main one being the Second World War, and it went out of print. It was rescued from obscurity by the superb publishing house Persephone Books of London, who republished it in 2008. And that’s the edition that sits on the vacant seat beside me. It’s one of those books that’s so enjoyable, you don’t want to finish. And that, I suppose, is a reason I’m wring this blog post, on a train, which is now pulling out of Southampton Airport station.

But the main reason has to be to say a huge thank-you to everyone who has subscribed to the Lifers’ Club. The train’s WiFi doesn’t appear to be working right now, but last night the total stood at 85%. So, we’ve almost done it. I can’t say how excited I am! And again, many, many thanks to everyone who contributed – I hope we get to meet one day.

Having said all that, I’m also very aware that this blog has many loyal followers who don’t find my dip into the world of crime particularly fascinating. Many of these are gardeners. So to reward their patience I’m publishing here a set of photos of the roses in our garden this year, which was one of the best. Maisie loves old varieties, especially ones, like the Revd. Pemberton’s Hybrid Musks which smell delicious. We also don’t believe in constraining them too much. Our roses tend to sprawl about; neatness has never been a feature of our garden.

I won’t discuss each rose in each picture, or add any captions. Just enjoy them and imagine the smell. Now here’s an odd thing: the train’s now approaching Basingstoke – surely one of the least fragrant towns in southern England – and suddenly my head is filled with the scent of roses. Bliss!

Hurry, While The List is Still Open

If you’re one of the people on my email Contacts List who has recently received an email from me about The Lifers’ Club, then read no further. I have no wish to waste your valuable time. And sorry about this, but I must keep up the momentum: we are heading towards the final furlong and the Winning Post is already in view. End of slightly tortuous racing metaphor.

If you’re new to this blog you might not (he assumes an air of false modesty) have heard of my venture into the world of crime fiction. The Lifers’ Club is an archaeological detective thriller set in the present and it features a prehistorian called Alan Cadbury. Alan is a nice chap, albeit a bit obsessive. He was born and raised in the Lincolnshire Fens, where this, his first adventure, is set. Much of the action takes place on excavations. So there’s lots of digging, skulduggery, intrigue and GORE. I try not to revel in the GORE, but it’s there. And quite GORY.

The Lifers’ Club, is to be published by the internet crowd-funding publisher, Unbound. As part of this process I need to find about 600 subscribers, and to date we’re about 72% subscribed (if I drop dead tomorrow, everyone gets their money back in full!).  In order to give my campaign a bit of a leg-up (not over), those nice people at Unbound have arranged a special deal for my friends and blog followers. As usual you can subscribe at several levels: £10 gets you an e-book version; £20 a hardback printed book and £30, secures a signed copy. Normally, signed copies retail at £50, but not for you! But please bear in mind this offer runs out at the end of July – a saving of £20.

All you have to do is sign-up at unbound.co.uk and pledge for my book.

When you check-out you’ll be asked if you have a gift/promotion code. Just enter the word ‘trowel’ here.

All levels of subscribers get their names in both the printed and e-versions of the book. What’s more, those names will remain an integral part of the book in all its future editions. So if you can, it would be great if you could subscribe – and remember: by the end of July.

End of blatantly commercial piece of exploitation…

Made for Walking: my life and footwear

I nearly found myself starting this blog post with: ‘I don’t really approve of Twitter, but I Tweet.’ Then I thought about it. Aside from the fact that it’s fatuous, what on earth do we mean by ‘approve of’.  I mean most of us over-sixties say it, but so what: what does it mean? And increasingly I’m convinced, it’s a frustrated expression of our inability to keep-up with current trends. So we ‘disapprove’ of them – as a way of cloaking our technological incompetence with a coating of academic rigour. So we ‘disapprove’ of Twitter in much the same way that we ‘disapprove’ of, say, Neo-Nazis. In reality, of course, we don’t understand the one and we detest and abominate the other. But as usual I digress: this blog post was meant to be about footwear, not boots or shoes mind, but footwear.

Actually the previous paragraph wasn’t so much a digression as a diversion – and I’m not about to get further side-tracked into that particular distinction – maybe we can enjoy that in the future. No, I mentioned Twitter because in a moment of madness I Tweeted that I was planning to write a blog post about Footwear. And why? To be quite frank, I haven’t the faintest idea. I just said it. Maybe that’s why I sort-of ‘disapprove’ of Twitter: it allows you to say things. But then you have to live with the consequences – a fine of £500 if you slander an innocent man, or, in my case, you have to produce an interesting blog post on Footwear. Mark you, I’m not doing badly so far: nearly three paragraphs and not so much as a mention of heels, tongues, soles or laces. And that’s another thing I disapprove of: laces.

Surely to Goodness we were not put on this earth to spend months, yes, months, of our lives tying and untying shoe laces? Having said that, I was a lace-slave myself until I started to keep sheep, then one lambing spent bent-double doing or undoing my laces every time I had to enter the house, to collect a bottle of milk or a syringe of antibiotic from the fridge, soon cured me of that. Now I understand why the Australians invented elastic-sided boots. Being right-thinking sheep minders they realised that laces were insane and a particularly gifted Aussie, one R.M. Williams, designed a boot with only one seam (up the back). So they never leak! They’re also guaranteed for life. Personally, I don’t demand that RM replace my old boots, as I consider they’re worn-out fair and square; but then I only buy another pair every four or five years. My current pair are in their third season. And boy, are they tough: I live in the damn things; in fact, Maisie thinks I sleep in them when she’s not at home. R.M Williams also produce superb and very hard-wearing moleskin jeans which I also adore, keeping the thin, worn-down pairs for summer. Most last me three or four years.

My ageing R.M. Williams boots

And then there are boat-shoes. I wear these in the house and in the garden, too, in summer. I’m aware they have laces, but I never, ever, undo them. They remain permanently laced – like some of my more dissolute archaeological friends in the past. For reasons best known to him, my brother Felix has given me two pairs of boat-shoes. I don’t know why. Suffice it to say: he lives in London, where they have strange attitudes to footwear.

My boat-shoes

And that’s it. I don’t possess any other Footwear. When I was on the Ancient Monuments Advisory Committee (I nearly wrote Clinic) of English Heritage, back in the ‘90s, I used to wear a grey suit and black shoes for my monthly trips to Savile Row. When I’d finished my stint on AMAC my black shoes remained in a dark cupboard. Then about five years ago, I took them out to wear at a funeral, and as we were driving there, they quite literally fell apart, revealing white foamy stuff in the heels. They must have been very cheap indeed. So now I have no black shoes and in October I’ve got to attend a school re-union in a smart West End London Club, where, I gather, black shoes are obligatory. Maybe I’ll smear my RMs with tar or treacle? Maybe I can borrow a pair? I suppose I ought to be getting worried about upsetting social convention, but I just can’t be arsed. I know I shouldn’t say so, but I don’t think that footwear matters very much, so long as it’s well-made and keeps your feet dry. And yes, doubtless it does express all sorts of important social trends and aspirations, but then so do the frames of people’s spectacles or the tint of their car windows. You can’t analyse everything all of the time – that’s what I’m trying to say. Stop analysing and float. It’s summer for Christ’s sake! Maybe that was what I was attempting to Tweet. OK, I should have remained silent. Sorry!

Still life with footwear, succulents and petals

Haymaking ends with thunderous chords

I can remember about thirty years ago visiting a distinguished young academic in Cambridge. He asked about the dig I was running and when I told him that the funders had slashed our budget by half he was astonished.

‘So what are you going to do?’ He asked.

‘Do?’ I replied, ‘I’ve done it. Charly and I are doing the earthmoving ourselves. Charly’s driving the dozer and I’m on the 360…’

The 360 is a large hydraulic excavator. Anyhow, he was very surprised. Incredulous, even.

‘But surely, that’s going to take you weeks, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but it’ll be worth it.’

And I was right: the site, Etton, revealed previously unknown insights into life in the Neolithic, over five thousand years ago. But I could see that something still troubled him.

‘But isn’t that…’ he was groping for the right word, ‘…isn’t that rather…er…dull. I mean boring? You just sit at the controls and drive. For weeks on end. Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ Then he paused and sighed. I won’t forget his final, and rather patronising thought: ‘I know I couldn’t do it.’

No, I recall thinking, as I headed out of his office towards the nearest pub, you couldn’t, because ordinary tasks require skills and imagination you could never acquire. The routine things of life aren’t always simple.

And the same goes for haymaking. It’s always a rush against time and the climate and this year was no different. I first heard that we were expecting at least a week of hot, dry weather when I was in a train heading west for a day’s filming for a Time Team documentary in Cardiff. So I phoned the contractor (our very obliging neighbour, Charles) and he agreed to get mowing immediately. Meanwhile, the anti-cyclone grew in strength and it got hotter and hotter. Then the day before yesterday, they forecast thunder for eastern England and the east Midlands. That’s us.

Hay in the meadow rowed-up and ready for baling.

The 4-foot round bales ready for carting.

The hay was rowed-up yesterday morning, and by late afternoon it had been baled. When Charles began the baling I started up my aged (1964) International B414 and started to move bales into the barn. Around five o’clock I could see a slight darkness over towards the south-western horizon. By six the clouds had grown into a thunderstorm and I’d barely shifted half of them. I drove like a maniac and the air around me was getting hotter and more clammy. It had to break. Then I felt the first big drops on my legs around seven. There was light rain for about forty-five minutes, and then it got worse, while I carted the last four bales. Mercifully the eye of the storm missed us, but I could see a second one growing, as I closed all the gates behind me.

All is safely gathered in: my B414 tractor (still very hot), Twink (ditto) and bales in the barn.

It’s wonderful, isn’t it, when you’ve just finished a hard and difficult job? All was safely gathered-in and I was exhausted but happy. Over to the south-west the clouds were still building. This time, now that the threat was off, they didn’t look so much threatening, as glorious. It was a Beethoven sky and I could positively feel the thunderous chords. So I took this picture.

That Beethoven sky.

Then I thought about that academic in Cambridge, confined in his ivory tower all those years ago. Poor sod: sure, he’d never get his hands dirty and would publish dozens of erudite works, of the greatest wisdom and truth. Then, as I put my little camera away, I also knew why he would never experience moments like that. Over the years I’ve done many, many tedious little jobs. In fact, I think they’re what I do best. But anyhow, now it was my turn to pity him.

Bring on the rain!

I Love Strawberry Jam!

I don’t like big productions of any sort. I hate being surrounded by people with strange titles (Production Coordinator’s Second Assistant etc. etc.). Even simple photo-shoots can be hard work, with Photographer’s Assistants, Set and Prop Designers, Food Stylists and Cookery Consultants all getting under each and everyone’s feet. BUT having just attempted to photograph strawberry jam and somehow convey just a hint of its fragrant deliciousness to you, the readers of this at times intemperate blog, I must freely confess, I could have used a few Food Stylists and their able young Assistants. Jam is impossible to photograph. End of. Light is reflected from all of its surfaces. And of course you can’t photograph or film smell (who wants HD when one day we’ll be treated to Smellyvision??? But I digress…).

Three days ago I was just starting to pick strawberries when I lifted up a leaf and suddenly realised that this was the season’s BIG ONE: there were plump, fully ripe strawberries in abundance. And it was also threatening to rain, which would have wrecked everything. So I picked like a maniac for 45 minutes and the result is the first photo. I suppose I could have used a proper photographer’s black-and-white bar scale, but somehow it seemed inappropriate. So I used objects that might be familiar to readers of this blog (the Pimms bottle will probably be the best-known to many of you).

Then I took a picture of Maisie gamely picking-over the fruit and removing stalks. Next she magicked the crop into half a dozen jars of conserve (more fruit, less sugar, but with a shorter shelf-life) and a dozen 1 lb. jars of jam. The conserve began to set after just 10 minutes of boiling, whereas the jam took over an hour – hence my anguished Tweet, for those of you who follow such things.

And then, finally, there’s that picture of jam in a pot. I know it doesn’t work, but it’s a question of credibility. If I didn’t post it here in this blog, hundreds of you might think that all this talk about jam-making was phoney; that nothing was made; that we just pigged-out on strawberries and cream; maybe we stripped naked and rubbed them onto our bodies, while we writhed pleasurably on the lawn…No, sorry, that’s going a bit far.

So I took the photo to prove that we were sober, responsible, jam-making citizens, like anyone else out there. And then suddenly it struck me: how do my blog followers know that it’s our jam and that we made it? We could have simply spooned out a jar of Tiptree’s finest Strawberry Conserve? Oh, bloody Hell: is nothing ever simple in this life?

I’ve suddenly lost the will to live…

Archaeologists make the best team-workers: shearing 2013

For years I’ve been saying to anyone who’ll listen that archaeologists make the best team-workers. And by God, we proved it on Saturday when with the help of two young contract shearers (brothers Harry and Sam Lombardi) we managed to shear around 150 sheep between ten o’clock in the morning and four in the afternoon (including a good long lunch break for the brothers’ backs to recover). The day got off to a slow start because the previous evening, when very sleepy (and after an excellent supper), I texted Harry the postcode of the house we lived in until 1993. To make matters worse I left my mobile charging indoors, so only received their (six) urgent calls when I noticed they hadn’t arrived. I hadn’t exactly covered myself with glory. Meanwhile, however, the group of archaeologists who’d been invited to help (they do it for love and a good feed in the evening) had got on with preparations, so that when Harry and Sam did eventually find us, they were able to get straight down to it.

The Shearers in action with Sam (foreground) and Harry Lombardi behind him. Behind them the winding team are waiting for fleeces.

We don’t have any hard-and-fast rules about who does what, but generally speaking men tend to work on the ‘supply side’, driving sheep towards the shearers’ specially-built trailer. The supply side team also handle the shorn sheep, dabbing any cuts with a special soothing oil that also repels fly and maggots and usually administering a dose of wormer. That’s normally my job. Then, at the end of the day the various sheep have to be driven back to their pastures.

This year the shearers, Harry and Sam, were new to us, because our usual shearer, Stephen, had hurt his back quite badly. The winding team would have to work particularly hard, as they had to service two shearers. Wool winding isn’t as easy as it looks. The fleece has first to be thrown out, then the sides are folded to the centre. It is then tightly rolled and the neck wool twisted into a long rope, which binds the fleece into a tight ball. Then the rolls of fleece are packed into wool-sacks (or ‘sheets’) – about 30 to a sheet. As soon as each sheet has been filled, it must be removed from the frame in which it hangs, and another one put in its place – and all this without delaying the shearers.

Winding two fleeces at the same time, with (from left) Kate, Rachael, Liz and Maisie.

Kate with a rolled gimmer’s fleece, ready to go into the wool sack. These are the first fleeces a sheep yields; the wool is very fine, but the quantity is a bit smaller. A ewe’s fleece would be about 30% larger.

The winding team mid-way through the day: (from left) Rachael, Maisie, Liz and Kate.

Work on the supply side is less continuous, and also easier on the back, although when the sheep aren’t co-operating it can be very hard graft indeed. It’s all about maintaining a continuous supply of animals into the shearers’ trailer. It’s easier for the shearers to catch the next sheep if the trailer is kept full, so the supply-side team have to be alert. And when things go wrong (for example, a sheep escapes) it’s the supply-side team who have to sort the problem, while the winders keep winding.

Harry Lombardi told my wife Maisie that our winders and supply teams were the best he’d worked with so far this year and everything ran very smoothly. As we were working I realised that the whole set-up felt like a well-run excavation: we all had our jobs and knew what we were doing. But just like a real dig, we didn’t do our jobs in isolation. We always kept an eye on the general picture and if ever a problem arose, I’d soon find helpers arrive, without having to call for assistance. That’s the way it should be. I’ve always known archaeology made a good training for life, but I never really realised why. It’s because good practical field archaeologists are all good team-workers.

Finally, a word about the two teams. On the supply side it was me, Nick (like me, semi-retired, now a consultant in building conservation and project management/design), Mike (a wood-working specialist and currently supervising a major prehistoric excavation), Becky (an animal bone specialist, and also currently working on a prehistoric dig) and Mark (director of an archaeological contracting company). The winding team was led by Maisie (a leading specialist in ancient wood-working) ably assisted by Liz (a Professor and leading conservator, at London University), Kate (an experienced archaeologist, now working in television production) and Rachael (an archaeological Project Manager with the National Trust). Not a bad line-up, eh?

The winding team mid-way through the day: (from left) Rachael, Maisie, Liz and Kate.

The supply side team with Mike (left), Mark and me (without sheep, but with filthy trousers). The picture was taken by the fourth member of the team, Nick.

Mick Aston RIP

I have just heard the sad news that Professor Mick Aston died last night, or early this morning (June 24th, 2013). I thought I would write this short post as a tribute and as a way of facing-up to his death myself. I’ve just spoken on the phone for some time to Phil Harding and he, like me, is finding it hard to accept what has happened. Maybe things will become clearer soon.

I’ve known Mick for the best part of 30 years and even saw the first screening of the Time Team pilot film, back, I think in 1990. I thought it was contrived and terrible. I didn’t think it stood a chance of launching a series, let alone twenty of them. But it did, because the Commissioning Editor of Channel 4 could see its potential, which I couldn’t. More fool me. But Mick was about far more than Time Team alone. He was an ardent, almost obsessive, archaeologist and he loved to be out there, surrounded by it. Visiting a church with Mick was a wonderful experience: he had no sympathy whatsoever for the religion, but he loved what it had bequeathed us in the form of buildings, graves and monuments. Whenever I saw a vicar approaching I would try and steer Mick in the opposite direction.

I’ve been through my photo album and have selected two pictures. The first was taken by my wife Maisie and shows Mick rather self-consciously wearing one of his (many) ‘trade-mark’ striped jumpers in front of Long Sutton Church, in south Lincolnshire. This was a publicity picture for a lecture he did a few weeks later as part of a fund-raising campaign to save the Church roof (which was successful within a few months, largely thanks to Mick).

The second is a close-up I took on a Time Team shoot, back in 2007. I think it shows his more thoughtful, reflective side. Anyhow, there it is. And I think I’m starting to face-up to his parting. Rest in Peace, old friend.

I’m Doing Too Much…

Everyone tells me that, but it doesn’t help. It’s like telling a depressive that he or she ‘should snap out of it’. It’s fine in principle, I concede, but how does one put it into practice? How does one set about doing less? I suppose one drastic solution might be to self-harm: lop off an arm, say. But even then I’d still be doing the same amount, only I’d be taking much longer to do it. The thing is, I manage to clear my diary for a few days, then sit back and relax. ‘Hooray!’ I shout in anticipation of several days of uninterrupted gardening, then the bloody phone rings. Could I do a quick interview with local television about a proposed wind turbine farm. And like a bloody idiot, of course I say yes. Next it’s the local radio and press. And bang go two days of my life. Eventually I get home, after a drive at breakneck speed across the Fens, rush down to the shed in the vegetable garden, and as I run I feel the first drops of rain. Then a clap of thunder and Twink, who loathes lightning, is a twitching wreck lying at my feet. So I console her for the next two hours.

Meanwhile, of course, I shouldn’t have been thinking about gardening at all. Contractors are replacing fencing around our fields and this morning I found a young lamb with fly-strike – and that took an hour to sort-out. Normally I’d have sprayed all the lambs by now, but the fencing hasn’t been there, so I can’t. Hence the close daily inspections. Still, I’ll get them sprayed next week, a day or so before shearing starts. And then of course there’s my book for Penguin, which was progressing quite well in May, but has hit the buffers in June. It doesn’t help that I’ve been filming a Time Team documentary for next season. And poor old Alan Cadbury. The Lifers’ Club subscribers’ list is very slowly grinding its way upwards, we’re at 55% right now and I have various plans to get things moving again, but they all involve work. And as I said at the head of this blog post: I’m doing too much! How do people find the time to take holidays? How do they follow soaps? I’ve never gone out ‘for a nice drive’, since I passed my driving test (half a century ago). I’m always hurtling from A to B – and invariably getting there half an hour late! And what would I have said to the police if I’d been done for speeding: ‘I had to get back to the vegetable garden?’ I can just imagine the supercilious look on the copper’s face: ‘Yes sir, frightened your marrows might burst, were you?’ Grrrrr!

I have to concede, I’ve never led an ordered life. I’ve never attended church on Sundays, for instance. I don’t do the secular equivalent, either. I don’t drop in on the village pub for a Sunday lunchtime g and t, or pint. I don’t have any regular habits, social or otherwise. Most of my time seems to be spent avoiding people who would like me to do something either with, or for, them, when I’d much, much rather be tending my runner beans in glorious silence, or with Test Match Special quietly on in the background (an Englishman’s equivalent of silence). That programme reached previously uncharted heights of Zen enlightenment on prolonged rainy days, when play was slow or intermittent… Bliss!

Anyhow, today I found the time to straw-up my strawberries and net them. I use the wheat straw left over from lambing and I grow several varieties, but I would strongly advise you to avoid El Santa, the most commonly grown commercial variety. They are well-shaped, a good rich red colour, but taste of absolutely nothing. I bought some by mistake three years ago and have grubbed them, all up. I even went so far as to burn them, imagining as I did so, that I was martyring the board members of all Britain’s big supermarkets. I do hope we get some sunshine, or else none of the varieties I do grow will taste of much. Last year’s crop were pretty tasteless and unexciting. And those little tiny Alpine strawberries are just getting ripe. They’re delicious dropped into a pre-meal glass of white wine or, strange this, but true, cider. Then I net them using a lightweight plastic net on a cobbled-together framework made from canes and those strange plastic sockety things one sometimes sees in garden centres. And wire. There’s always green, plastic-coated wire somewhere. One final thing. While the strawberry net’s up I make a point of checking it each morning and evening in case birds get snagged there. Every season one or two fledgling blackbirds or thrushes get caught in it and so far I’ve managed to find them before the cats do. So am I doing too much? Am I? I don’t know. It seems like normal chaos to me. I mean, would you let those young birds die? I think not.

I rest my case – or do I? Oh God: it’s starting again…

The strawberry bed, with red and black current bushes on the left.

They’re almost ripe, but not quite.

The temporary netting cage. This is cheap-and-cheerful. They can cost thousands.