Francis Pryor's Blog, page 22

Lambing: a good start, fingers crossed

Like every sheep and cattle farmer in Britain, we’re keeping our fingers crossed in case we’re hit by the dreaded Schmallenberg Disease which could easily cause us to lose 80 of our expected 200 lambs. But worse even than that, is the effect on the farmer and I have such sympathy for those poor men and women whose farms have been infected by this horrible virus. I don’t know how on earth we’d react, but it would be hell. And after seeing interviews on television, those who still think that farmers are only in it for the money, should reconsider. I know we’re not: it’s about creating life and keeping old traditions and breeds alive. It’s also about landscapes, about fields and grassland, trees and hedges – a whole way of life. You won’t find vast featureless prairies in livestock country.

As I write we’ve had ten lambs from six ewes, which is a pretty good start. Later on, we’ll begin get the multiples, the triplets and quads. We’ve also had our first badger-faced black (actually dark brown) lamb, which I’ve pictured here, being held by Emma Wood, Time Team’s surveyor and member of the geofizz team. Emma’s kindly been helping us out for the first few days.

We never give our lambs names, but I wanted to call the badger-faced one Alan Cadbury, as that way I could mention his name on this blog and provide a link to my Unbound page, as the book still has quite a long way to go before it’s fully funded. We’re just over 30% which I’m told is pretty good for two weeks, but I suppose I’m just an old worry-guts. Anyhow, I’ll take any chances I can to plug my first venture into fiction. Oh, didn’t I mention it? It’s a detective thriller, The Lifers’ Club, set in the Fens, and starring fearless archaeologist Alan Cadbury.  Trouble is, the badger-faced lamb is a female. So she’ll just get a number, like all the rest. And was it such a good idea, after all – the name I mean? Or perhaps not.

Time to do another hourly patrol.

Emma Wood (Time Team’s surveyor) holds the badger-faced lamb.

The Ladders to Heaven at Bath

Bath is best known for its stunning early Georgian architecture, mostly designed by John Wood, father and son (see The Making of the British Landscape, pp. 424-7). These superb buildings have quite rightly earned the city a place as a World Heritage Site, but we must not forget that it would have been far more important, had not most of its working-class and tradesmen’s houses not been recklessly demolished (with the shameful approval of the City Fathers), in the 1960s, an event remembered by urban archaeologists, as ‘The Rape of Bath’.

Anyhow, while I was waiting to do my talk I decided to spend an hour or so looking around the magnificent Abbey (now the parish church). This is a superb building with some very sensitive Victorian restoration (mostly by Scott) and a host of wonderful 18th century memorials to worthies from all over the country, who had taken the waters for their health – but who nonetheless succumbed. Sadly, many of these were hidden behind some modern artwork, which was not good. In fact I found the evangelical tone of the place rather all-pervasive and a bit heavy-handed. I know the Church does some good abroad, but the anthropologist in me feels they should also acknowledge the fact that missionaries destroyed so many native African social structures – which partly explains that unfortunate continent’s many current problems… But I digress.

The abbey interior, especially the Sanctuary at the east end (the equivalent of the Chancel in a non-monastic church) is stunning, and its fan-vaulting leaves one breathless. In fact I developed a bit of a stiff neck and I was reminded just how good, and how unique (in Europe) is British late Perpendicular architecture: King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, and St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, are the two best-known examples, but the quality continued, right through the 16th and just into the 17th centuries. My old college, Trinity, Cambridge has a fine later Perpendicular chapel, although not of the quality of the Bath Sanctuary.

One of the unique joys at Bath are the two ladders of ascending angels carved into the north and south piers of the west front. These were executed when the Abbey was still under monastic control in the late 15th century and are not part of the later rebuilding and restoration, which followed the Abbey’s dissolution (in 1539). Then the buildings began quite rapidly to fall down, doubtless as a result of the lead having been removed from the roof.

Angels ascending the ladder to Heaven on the West front of Bath Abbey (late 15th century).

A close of the less-than-fully confident angels, on the ladder at Bath Abbey.

I gave my talk, which seemed to go down quite well, largely I suspect because my interviewer, Jenni Mills, was so professional. I also handed round cards for the Alan Cadbury detective/thriller, so we’ll see if anyone responds. Fingers crossed. Then afterwards, as I was walking to the station I turned my mobile back on again and noticed I’d missed a call from our neighbour, who I shall call Jack. I knew we’d had half a dozen new lambs, and I also knew that Jack, being an ex-stockman, was always at the end of a telephone line, in case of emergency. So, without putting-on my glasses, which lay concealed deep inside one of the hundreds of zip-up pockets in my rucksack, I thought I’d text Maisie in the lambing sheds, to find out why Jack might have phoned me:

‘Jack phoned. Do you know why?’

This morning she showed me what predictive text had made of my myopic effort to wrestle with the keyboard, while walking downhill (something I don’t do often in the Fens):

‘Jack sinned. Do you know why?’

And that’s where I’ll leave it: my Thought for the Day.

Lambing 2013 Kicks off with healthy twins!

Lambing officially (i.e. 21 weeks after we put the tups to the ewes in early October) starts tomorrow, but when I went out for the dawn patrol this morning, I came across these two lovely lambs wandering around near the big round hay bale feeders. Luckily their mother was near them and I could easily spot her because of the blood around her back-end. But what was more worrying was that they were being licked and nuzzled by another ewe: we call them ‘aunties’ – and they’re a right pain. They’re more obsessive than the real mothers and if not taken away they will eventually cause mums to reject their own lambs, simply because all the licking by the auntie removes their own smell – and smell is a very important way of binding ewes and lambs together at this early stage. Later on, we’ve noticed, that sound – quiet bleating – becomes more effective.

Anyhow, I sprayed the lambs’ navels with iodine and penned them up with their mother. Next I checked her milk on both sides. And it fine: nice and thick and creamy (watery milk is a very bad sign). Finally, after a rather Rugby football -like series of moves, I managed to catch-up the auntie and pen her securely. I’m afraid she’ll have to be penned-up until she lambs. We can’t risk her licking any more lambs – which experience has shown, she’ll do.

Then I took the photo and wrote this post. And now I feel like a big farmhouse breakfast.

Our first lambs of 2013. Both are female and they were born one day prematurely. Only about 200 to go!

A Most Remarkable Woman: Gwen Raverat (1885-1957)

Gwendolen (Gwen) Darwin was the grand-daughter of the great Charles Darwin. In 1911 she married a Frenchman, Jacques Raverat and one of their daughters, Sophie, married my father’s elder brother Mark. Dr. Mark Pryor was a very distinguished zoologist and Senior Tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge. Gwen was an artist of very considerable talent and was particularly well-known for her prints and wood-cuts. I met her several times when I was a youngster (she died when I was just twelve) and I well recall her going upstairs in the evening to work in her studio. She was very self-disciplined. When I knew her she lived at the Old Granary in Silver Street, Cambridge. The house was next door to the Newnham Grange, where she had spent her childhood, and both houses are now part of Darwin College. A couple of years ago I went to Darwin for dinner, and I have to say the college gardens, which retain the old property boundaries that run down to the river, are simply stunning. In other respects the place has changed enormously, but the balcony at the back of the house, which over-hangs  the river,  is still there and I have fond memories of me and my cousin William Pryor (Sophie’s son) trying to grab hold of the tops of the punt poles of passing student punters – in the (vain) hope that they’d fall into the river.

Gwen was a member of the Bloomsbury group and carried on a long correspondence with Virginia Woolf – and happily these letters survive.  But she is probably best known for her book Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood, which she both wrote and illustrated. It’s a wonderful, warm, humorous and affectionate book and is still as popular as ever. The Edwardians haven’t had a very good press: most of us think of them as stuffy and rather stuck-up. But they certainly weren’t in her family, or indeed in academic circles. It reads rather like a modern person has been transported back over a hundred years and it’s impossible not to identify with the young Gwen. It’s one of my favourite books.

My cousin William and others have just set up a new website devoted to Gwen: http://www.raverat.com/ All sorts of activities are being planned, including concerts and exhibitions. So give it a click.

I thought I’d include her print ‘Horses at Night’. It was in my room at school and university and I’m very attached to it. Despite her name, Gwen was, I think, very English.

The Waltz of Time continues: Spring, Spring, late-late, Spring

It has been slightly warmer in towns and cities than out in the country, but I reckon that even though we’re only a few miles from the coast, where winters are supposed to be less severe, we’re at least three weeks behind the season. And, if anything, spring’s getting even later. But at least my rather blasphemous prayer seems to have been heeded and the rains have held back. Some of the lake-like puddles on our lower-lying land are now, at last, starting to recede. Incidentally, an old friend from college days, on reading my horrible attempt to imprecate the Almighty, reminded me what a pleasure the real thing can be. He sent me this extract from the original (1662) Book of Common Prayer:

For fair weather.

O Almighty Lord God, who for the sin of man didst once drowne all the world, except eight persons, and afterward of thy great mercy didst promise never to destroy it so againe: we humbly beseech thee, that although we for our iniquities have worthily deserved a plague of rain and waters, yet upon our true repentance thou wilt send us such weather, as that we may receive the fruits of the earth in due season, and learne both by thy punishment to amend our lives, and for thy Clemency to give thee praise and glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Harsh?   but fair!!

I don’t think anyone ever has written more gorgeous English than the men, mostly Archbishop Cranmer of course, who gave us the C of E prayer book. Personally, I’d even take it over The Bible. Shame about some of the content, though. [Stop it Pryor: you’re starting to digress – Ed.]

The lateness of the season must be the main reason why the dawn chorus hasn’t yet begun. We start lambing on March 2nd and when I get up to make the early morning inspection of the sheep, usually around 4.30 AM, my round is usually punctuated by a few cheeps and chirrups from wrens, chaffinches and blue tits. But not this year. I normally get up around 5.30 or 6.00 to work on my current book (I shall have more to say about that ‘ere long) and by that hour the garden should, by rights, be alive with early morning birdsong. But again, not this year. No, mornings have been horribly quiet.

It’s an ill, or rather a chill, wind that blows nobody any good, and the up-side this year has been long-tailed tits. I adore these fabulous little birds. They occur in flocks of about 20-30 and inhabit the willows that fringe our pond. There’s not a lot of food around at this time of year, so they’ve taken to feeding at the improvised bird-tables we’ve erected in the garden, near the house. And they really are hitting the fat balls and fat cakes, big time. They fly fast and frantic, and when six or eight are feeding together, they almost smother the bird-tables, especially  when their feathers are puffed-out against the cold. As I said, I adore them.

Two long-tailed tits feeding.

Dundrum: My Final Broadcast Time Team

Sob, sob. I said ‘broadcast’ because the last one we filmed was Brancaster. So the future will be documentaries and for these we’ll move to a later slot, usually around nine o’clock. There’ll be two more ‘as live’ excavations after next Sunday (March 3rd and 10th), then the series closes with two compilations, one on experimental archaeology, the last one, fittingly, on ‘20 Years of Time Team’. And yes, it is a sad moment. Up till now I’ve put a brave face on it, but even so, it’s still sad.

Now, he adds brightly, what about next Sunday’s episode (at 4.20 pm, Channel 4)? It was filmed in the second week of June and the location was Dundrum Castle in Northern Ireland. It was a staggeringly beautiful location, with the Mountains of Mourne running down to the Irish Sea in the background. Now admittedly they were often shrouded in rainclouds, but when they were visible they quite took your breath away. And that lovely song became a positive ear-worm for me, throughout the shoot.

The Mountains of Mourne, from the walls of Dundrum Castle

The Castle was one of those early Anglo-Norman buildings, essentially erected to show the locals who was now in charge. Personally I was interested to see whether the Norman builders had erected their circular keep on a virgin hilltop or somewhere that was already important to Irish communities in the area. And my suspicions were confirmed. Although I say so myself, it’s a splendid film with a some really significant academic discoveries. We always knew Dundrum was important, but after our three-day stay there, we now know that for certain. Our trenches came up with the goods, they really did. But I shall say no more…

The round keep and Curtain Wall of Dundrum Castle, Northern Ireland

Now I’ve been reliably informed that I would be well-advised to bring my fictional detective Alan Cadbury in at this stage. The thing is, lots of people read my Time Team blog posts and it would be good if some of those discerning readers could be persuaded to click on the link below and subscribe to the book. At least that’s what the publishers said, but they told me not to be too obvious about it: I should insinuate Alan Cadbury into the story in a natural, unobtrusive manner. So here goes.

It’s a strange coincidence that Time Team should be excavating at Dundrum Castle, because Alan Cadbury used to love coming here. He was born and brought up on an arable small-holding in the Lincolnshire Fens, and he frequently found himself and his arthritic sheepdog Bloater out this way, trampling through the heather of the Mountains of Mourne. Like all Fenman, he loved a steep hill. Alan was a shy, rather taciturn young man who kept himself to himself, and he liked nothing better than a rowdy evening of folk dancing in local hostelries. He had a dry sense of humour, and at home was partial to a few pints of Old Slodger Best Bitter, but in the bars around Dundrum he could often be seen sipping Bailey’s Irish Cream with gusto. After several glasses of Bailey’s, he found he could speak Gaelic fluently, which went down very well in Protestant pubs. You could see why he was such a regular visitor. Phew! So to enjoy a video, and to subscribe to his first published adventure, go to:

http://unbound.co.uk/books/the-lifers-club

‘Making History’, Radio 4: Your Hero Rides Again

I love doing radio and of course Radio 4 is la crème de la crème. There’s nothing else remotely like it anywhere in the world. And rather like our Town and Country Planning Laws (see The Making, p. 573), ‘we meddle with it at our peril!’ One of the things I enjoy about making radio programmes is the relaxed atmosphere, even if you’re not outdoors, on location, but are recording in the studio. The last time I did Making History was at the beginning of the current series and we recorded the interview at Flag Fen. The format of the programme includes two studio guests who say a few well-chosen words about the recorded clips. If you recall the studio commentators’ words that time were rather hostile to crowd-funded projects, and were, I thought a touch elitist.

This time it was to be my turn in the studio which was located close to the seafront at Brighton – an idyllic spot. The other guest was Dr Julia Laite of London University. Julia, it turned out was originally Canadian and we spent much time discussing her home country (where I spent nine extremely happy years), when, that is, the sound recorders weren’t actually turning over. The excellent presenter, Tom Holland, was crippled with indigestion following a dodgy curry, I think he said it was, but I was able to offer him a tin of Altoids – extremely strong but amazingly comforting peppermint pills – which he munched from time to time, again when the recording wasn’t underway. Now you wouldn’t be able to do any of that on television: no chatting about distant lands, no munching on Altoids. And as a result the programme was wonderfully relaxed. Nick Patrick, the Producer, is one of the world’s most laid-back individuals – and I think it shows in his programmes.

I don’t want to give anything away at this stage, because you’ll have to listen to it tomorrow afternoon: ‘Making History’, Tuesday 19th February, at 3.00 PM, Radio 4. But having said that, it was a very philosophical programme, more about the meaning of history and archaeology: how our thoughts today shape our perceptions of the past; whether there is such a thing as an absolute account of a given process or event, or whether everything is relative – which is what I personally favour. It was a programme that needs a Zen approach to get the most out of it. So I do hope you enjoy it. Then, may I suggest you listen again, on your iPod or computer, this time with a glass of wine or whisky to hand. It’s certainly worth a couple of hearings. Cheers!

A Funny Old Season

I do apologise to my long-term followers for all the recent stuff about detectives and fiction. The thing is, a chap has to earn a living, or in my case something that approximates to a retirement, and to do that you need to keep working. I’ve found over the years (a) that digging, whether for archaeology or for vegetables, pays very little and (b) that I enjoy writing. So I decided that the best way I could ensure to continue with the former (i.e. [a]), was to diversify the latter (i.e. [b]) – if you see what I mean. Complex enough?

Meanwhile, having dipped my toe into the Twittersphere, and having rapidly withdrawn it, I have returned to my Fenland garden and looked around. And it was great to find myself back in the real world: I almost cried for joy when my boot revealed a crack above the sole in the lambing barn, and icy-cold liquid manure seeped into my sock. The smell and brown stain was very, very real. Wonderful. And quite un-Tweetable. Deliciously un-Tweetable…

I don’t think I’ll ever make it as an urban sophisticate, so I shall stop trying, and if my Twitter profile grows, it will be through natural causes. There’s no point in pushing things beyond, to use a handy modern cliché, my ‘comfort zone’. So, as I said earlier, back to the real world.

It has been a funny old season. Normally, cold winters are dry. This one’s been wet, and very cold for weeks on end. Speaking as a livestock farmer, I suppose it could have been worse: I haven’t had to get out on the land, which is just as well, because it’s waterlogged. That’s why I feel so sorry for arable folk: many of our neighbours around this part of the Fens haven’t yet managed to get their winter wheats drilled. And now it’s getting on for too late. Quite a lot of land isn’t even ploughed – and if you think it’s bad in the east, just head over to the west, and you’ll find it’s one Hell of a lot worse. I remember hearing farmers complain they hadn’t cut any hay or silage when I was filming that Time Team episode at Coniston, Cumbria, back in early July. And forage, whether hay or straw, is now incredible expensive, and that’s if you’re lucky enough to find any. As I said, it’s been a funny old season.

But sometimes bad seasons can have unexpected effects in the garden. The sustained low temperatures held back the aconites and hellebores, then the sudden recent snap of warm weather pushed the snowdrops forward. And the result? Everything’s now flowering at the same time.

On Saturday we met my brother-in-law (and web editor/advisor) Nigel and his family at Anglesey Abbey, the superb winter garden and snowdrop collection, just outside Cambridge. I nearly said I’ve never seen so many snowdrops, but then I remembered Walsingham Abbey in Norfolk, which is quite literally carpeted with the things: acres and acres. At Anglesey Abbey, they’re more concerned with the different varieties, of which there are dozens – and you can buy them there, too (albeit at National Trust prices). The snowdrop, incidentally, belong to the genus Galanthus and the (rather sad?) people who collect the different varieties are known as Galanthophiles. I like snowdrops, but I prefer to admire them from a distance. I can’t be bothered to pull out a magnifying-glass and examine the patterns on the under-sides of their sepals. Life’s too short.

Anyhow, the garden at Anglesey was superb, but Maisie and I nearly fell flat several times. It was so, so crowded. There were literally thousands of people there; the car park was heaving; the restaurant was packed. The reason we nearly fell was that Galanthophiles would crouch or kneel on the ground to get a closer look at their favourite varieties. I think they should have roped-off special areas for them, maybe labelled Sad Places or Galanthophile Reserve or just Grown-ups’ Playground.

The Nut Walk with path into the wood in the background.

This morning I went for a quick walk in our wood and the display of early bulbs was as good as I’ve ever seen. I approached it by way of the Nut Walk, which I’d trimmed-up in the autumn to look more arcaded. It seems to have worked. Then the first flush of hazel catkins, which appeared around Christmas, got delayed by the cold of January, but have now come into full display: so you’ve got snowdrops, hazel catkins and aconites all looking superb at precisely the same time. It really is something to behold.

Snowdrops and aconites in the wood. The trees are mostly ash, now threatened of course by disease.

A hellebore in full flower in the wood. For the past ten years these lovely flowers have been seeding themselves freely. With luck, this cold winter will have germinated plenty of new seedlings.

I also don’t think the snowdrops in the wood have ever looked better and the hellebores, too, look stunning, although one or two have been grazed off by passing pheasants or Muntjac deer.

Still, we mustn’t get too confident. The weather talks of getting colder in three days’ time. Having said that, it could be a lot worse: cold conditions help cut down on the spread of disease during lambing. What we really don’t want is any more rain. If there is a benign God high up above those lowering rain clouds, then please, please restrain them. Do anything: you can even slip them some of my prostate medicine. I don’t mind, I’ll do anything.  But  please,  PLEASE: let’s have no more bloody rain.

My Life in Crime

I suppose that should be: My Life in Crime Writing. Some followers of this blog may have noticed that from time to time I’ve mentioned my ‘friend’ Alan Cadbury. Well, now I must confess: he isn’t a friend at all. In fact he’s an obsessive figment of my imagination: an archaeologist who loathes authority and cannot help himself from solving crimes. So I’ve written a book about his first major exploit. It’s set in the Fens and it involves excavations and a prison set in open, lonely Blackfen. There’s an honour-killing and other grisly deeds, too…

Instead of the usual publishing routes, I’ve decided to release The Lifers’ Club through Unbound,  a crowd-funding internet publisher. One of the co-founders of Unbound , just three years ago, was Justin Pollard, with whom I did several episodes of Time Team in the early naughties. Anyhow, I bumped into Justin when promoting my Making of the English Landscape, at Hay-on-Wye in 2011, and he told me about his new venture. As I was then busy writing an early draft of Lifers’ Club, that set me thinking. The DigVentures excavation at Flag Fen, another crowd-funded project , had been a great success, too. Anyhow, the process of publishing with Unbound starts with a promotional video, which will give you the opportunity to subscribe to the project starting at only £10 for an e-book edition, or £20 for the more conventional, if beautifully produced hardback, right up to £150 for two signed copies and two invitations to the splendid launch party.

Incidentally, we filmed that at Black’s Club in Soho. A wonderful place.  Once we’ve put together a large-enough list of subscribers, the book will be published. And if we fail (and perish the thought), everyone will get their subscriptions returned. And that’s guaranteed. So PLEASE subscribe – not only would it make me very happy, it would also bring to life a strange character who has been haunting most of my waking hours for the past two years….

Verbal Incontinence is Spreading, It Seems

Will my followers please forgive me, but I’ve been got-at by a rather obsessive archaeologist called Alan Cadbury. He’s been bugging me about writing-up his exploits, and like a complete idiot I said Yes. You know what it’s like when a pain in the neck asks you for a favour, you say Yes – just to be shot of him. And that’s what I did. The thing is, he’d been inside my head for months and months, making life, making sensible thought, impossible. Damn you, I thought, I’ll expunge you from my brain. So I agreed to his demands, which grew and grew. Two years later I’d finished the book. Then he said: ‘Get it published…’ So I started the process with Unbound. Then he said, TWEET it! Frankly, that was too much. Going TOO far. So in desperation I asked my sheepdog Twink what she thought about it all. She put aside her ipad, and said: ‘Go for it’. Mark you, that’s the only English phrase she knows, but it seemed to make sense at the time. So I did. God help me. I blame the dog…

Anyhow, stay tuned for more on Tuesday. But don’t worry, I’ll be miles away. All on my own, under a large rock somewhere, pretending I don’t exist. But I do. Oh well…

Can someone please give me PR advice? Or a large whisky…