The best stuff is in the Volvo

True story. I don't watch much TV, in fact I hardly watch any at all. I have been taking the opportunity of being proactively unemployed to watch the Jeremy Kyle Show, but beyond this guilty pleasure I mainly listen to music for my entertainment. Not so this past week however. I noticed on Thursday there was a brand new episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm on More 4. I planned my night around it. I waited patiently for it to begin. Within two minute of it starting I got the first text off Kate which resulted in a back and forth text conversation that lasted the entire episode and finished exactly as the credits rolled. Roll on Friday, I decided to have 'TV night', mainly to ensure myself that I wasn't actually missing anything by not watching TV, also cos I was at a low ebb and was a little bit down and couldn't be bothered to do owt else except stare at the idiot lantern. I watched TWO SOLID HOURS of the X Factor repeats. I felt dirty and shameful by the end, but not once did I hear a peep from my phone. I noticed a Peter Kay show was on later, something that I'd not seen. I like Peter Kay and his spoofs, so I set the reminder on the TV to turn over when it started. It duly did and within two minutes of it beginning Archer called me for the first time in a year to ask if I wanted to go and see Alice Cooper with him. I had to spend ten minutes explaining why I hate Alice Cooper and why I would rather pull my own eyes out and stamp on the stalks than watch him prance about pretending to be Satan when he is a fucking Born Again Christian. He slags of Black Metal bands, by saying they are 'only out to shock', talk about bare faced hypocrisy, as 'shock rock' is what his entire career is based on. Fucking Douche Bag.

Alice Cooper; hypocritical Born Again Christian, Golfer and complete cunt

I politely declined Archer's kind offer and tried to get him off the phone as quick and as pleasantly as possible to watch the rest of one of the few programs I was looking forward to. Peter Kay finished and there was a double episode of Family Guy about an hour later. I duly set the reminder and began watching an hour of laughter filled fun. Not for long as the phone went again, this time it was a half cut Bob. She was wanting to escape Brighton, fleeing from an unfortunate snogging episode that had gone terribly, terribly wrong she was heading north and was coming past Rotherham on Saturday. She half mentioned seeing her Grandparents in Whitby, so I jumped on that and suggested we carry on from Rotherham and head to the coast and stay over. By this stage I was also worst for wear as well having a sunk a few bottles over the course of the evening. In our inebriated states it seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do. Drive for miles, arrive after dark, find an expensive place to stay and drive home the next morning. The Road trip was on!

Whitby: Bracing

So this is how I found myself at Charlotte's house in Northallerton surrounded by several drunks, several empty bottles of wine and cheap Tesco Cava, listening to Fleetwood Mac and Dire Straits whilst being told 'the best stuff was in the Volvo'. We had decided on the journey up that it would be better to stay at Bob's parents place at Northallerton rather than pressing on to Whitby. This was mainly due to Bob's lack of Navigational skills, my lack of noticing motorway exits and the round about way we were slowly heading north. I awoke this morning in Bob's parents spare room feeling like a cat had shat in my mouth and not relishing the drive back home.

Clear your heads with another extract from Singapore...

Sunday, June 03, 2007

We dug all the anomalies that the array had brought up on area 2 and not one turned out to be ordnance. Not a sniff. Nada. Zip. Which is a good thing, as I don't really fancy having my arms blown off. This means that we have now finished the second area that we have to scan and dig. This is also the biggest, so as scanning goes we are nearly half way to finishing. Area three may pose a problem, as we have already found a load of bombs. We dug them up yesterday whilst waiting (again) for Mr's Wong and Sing to finish bashing the jungle. One of the anomalies turned out to be a massive shit pit packed full of what appeared to be aircraft parts. There was Japanese stuff in there as well. Or that's what Ang told us. His word is his bond, I guess. We pulled about 2,500 British Bullets out of the ground along with about one hundred small aeroplane bombs. None of the bombs went off, even when Ang was shaking them out of his machine bucket about ten foot off the concrete floor. Whilst he was doing it, I started running off, he panicked and was shouting 'No running!! No!!' Oh, how I laughed.

I met up with Ariff (From Ironfist) and his mate on Friday evening. We had a few drinks and chatted shit. Ariff works just round the corner from where I live, he's a car-park attendant by day. The lads were telling me that in order to buy a house in Singapore you have to be either married or over 35 years old and even then you will not be at the top of the list. So I guess I am lucky I have this apartment to myself. The lads left, Ariff had a date with the guitarist out of Tormentress, he has done the rounds with the whole band, it seems. I headed back home after some dinner. I went down to St James' Power Station again last night, I didn't stay long. I'd had enough by about 1am. But before I left I went to the toilet and found myself in the Malaysian part of the Night Club. The place is divided into three separate clubs. One bit is mainly Chinese, another Malay and the last big one is a mix of people. The Malaysian one was an eye opener. There was a band on, but not the same band that played the Flamenco shit and was fronted by a Spanish Brian Ferry looky-likey. This was a Malaysian band, fronted by this guy who was a complete throwback to 1987. He had aviator glasses on for Christ's sake. The Malaysians are like the Singaporeans little brothers, desperately trying to fit in and look cool, but failing miserably. Mind you give em their due, they got the crowd going well enough. I wonder if Chumbawamba were aware that their song 'Tubthumping' would become such a hit that it was covered by a crappy Malaysian Night Club band? The mind boggles.

If you know of a better 'ole...then go to it pt6

Lichfield! Ah, Lichfield! Nestling in the heart of Staffordshire, quietly majestic down the centuries, like an aged Grandparent quietly watching the rest of the world evolve & mature. Great men came and went, great women came and went, moulding the planet in their image. Stone tools superseded by metal, in turn outdone by machinery. Lichfield watched it all. Feet gave way to carts and wagons, the internal combustion engine ushered in the era of the car, pioneers soared into the blue skies aboard aeroplanes. Lichfield sat and pondered the changes. Lichfield sat pondering.

Saturday night entertainment in Lichfield in the 1980's

Lichfield was still pondering the changes when Onsite got an evaluation trenching contract before development commenced on a new mall complex including a Cinema on what was the existing council carpark and the area surrounding the bus station:


This project was the biggest upheaval in Lichfield's history since Prince Rupert of the Rhine demolished the cathedral's spire during the English Civil War. It was such an upheaval, in fact, that the local newspapers were full of letters from the older generation (of which Lichfield is made up of about 80%, Lichfield being somewhere you go to die, not live...) debasing the coming cinema. The cinema would give the local 'youths' somewhere to gather. Obviously this would lead to them all hanging around in groups and smoking Ecstasy until they were ripped off their tits on LSD Acid. What the letter writers failed to note was that the local 'youths' had nowhere to go and hung around in groups smoking ecstasy anyway. At least a Cinema would give them a focal point and help release some of that tension that living in a town populated by geriatrics who get excited at the prospect of a Christmas show from Phil Cool can generate. This was the kind of attitude we were up against in Lichfield. Development and change=BAD, sitting on your arse for centuries doing nothing=GOOD. laissez le bon temps d'arrêt.

The Church says NO(to the cinema)!

It wasn't all bad, Lichfield had it's share of characters as only parochial places can. We stayed in Pauline's B&B for the most part and I have covered my adventures there in this post. I forgot to mention in that post that the dentist Daniel was mistaken for turned out be a Hungarian/Bulgarian/Romanian (I was never quite clear which) man with quite a dour demeanor and a hatred of 'the Muslim'. He was never seen in daylight hours and I'm fairly positive that 'Vlad the Extractor' slept in a coffin lined with soil from his homeland...

'Please be to opening ze mouth and saying ze Arrrghhhh'

There was Sven the bartender in one of the pubs, a Margret Thatcher supporting Wiccan Wizard. He spotted my Tenhornedbeast t-shirt and asked if it was a Star of David I was wearing. A Star of David with ten points? I thought you were an authority on Magic Symbols Sven? He also bored me for a while with his stories of laylines instead of allowing me to try my lay lines on the attractive barmaid he was working with.

'One for the road, Lads?'

Vlad and Sven were not the only weirdos that we met within the city walls of Lichfield and I'm sure Duck L'Orange can wax lyrical about them for hours, but that is not the purpose of this piece. Lichfield marked the last job I would work for Onsite for nearly two years. This probably had something to do with what happened on the day before I left the company. We had been erecting fences around the holes we were digging in the carpark, Nick had come down from York to oversee Lauren and myself, as Barry was off eating pies or something. Lauren had been tasked with watching the machine as it cut it's way into the ground. I was, single handedly mind you, building the fences around the holes. In a brief pause I placed a spare fence panel absentmindedly against the half built fence. The wind took the panel and it fell into the carpark. It fell into an empty bay, unfortunately the next bay was occupied by a vehicle (I don't remember the particular make, it's all a bit of a blur after this..). The fence panel was exactly the right size to fall on the car's left side and scratch about twenty identically spaced lines down each panel of the vehicle.

How the car looked to me in those pregnant seconds after dropping the fence panel...

I looked at the fence panel, looked at the car, looked at the fence panel, wondered if I could get away without saying anything. I decided it was far too obvious and had to 'fess up to Nick. Nick looked at the fence panel, looked at me, looked at the car, looked at the fence panel, looked at me, wondered if he could get away with smashing my teeth down my throat in broad daylight. He decided it was far too obvious and left a note on the car to get in touch with him about insurance. Apparently the lady did and although I never found out exactly how much Nick paid out in insurance for the repair job he reminded me of the incident every time I talked to him on the phone for the next eighteen months. I sheepishly left Onsite for France, but I'll talk more about that in the next instalment, so while you think about that, I'll give you another bonus from the Singapore blog:

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Today is Vesak Day, we had the day off and I was going to spend it lying prostrate in front of a massive Golden Buddha, releasing a load of doves and then taking part in a candle lit procession like the good Buddhist I am. I got on the MRT and was heading down to Chinatown when B*** called me, telling me to come back to Yishun. Apparently I was needed as we were going to change our flights back to the UK. I thought they only needed my passport, which I had dropped off earlier. But, no, that wasn't good enough for Singapore Airlines. I needed to be there in person T**** had been told on the phone. So I duly arrived back at their apartment and we all set off down town. When we got there it turns out we didn't all need to go and least of all we didn't even need our passports...

Having ruined my Vesak day, which I had been looking forward to since the last one, me and B*** went in search of a Gun Shop he had read about in the Yellow Pages. God I was so angry I was gonna get a gun and just start blasting! Imagine, ruining MY BUDDHIST CELEBRATIONS!!

The shop was shut, so I went around the Arab quarter which was really nice, like Morroco, but better. Then walked back into town and bought myself a guitar for about £50. This is how nice people are here, I bought the guitar, the guys in the shop gave me a load of plectrums for free and then took a dollar off the price as they had no change. I then went up stairs to see Dean in To Megatherion, I bought the CD I am listening to now and he knocked two dollars off the price, again because he had no change. Imagine that in the UK?

And further to this, we needed some tyres for the array, the ones that were provided have copper banding in them. The instrument is looking for metal in the ground, so obviously having metal in the wheels fucks up the readings, as the machine reads the wheels and not the ground. We went to this bike shop called Cheap John's (true.), told the guy (I presumed it was John) our problem and he said "here, take this wheel, it's plastic, has no metal in the tyres." We said,"OK,How much do you want for it?" 'John' said "Don't worry, try it out and if it works then pay me, if not, then bring it back whenever." We were Gobsmacked. The upshot of the story was we couldn't be bothered to change the wheels over so we took it back to 'John' anyway. We are well on the way to finishing the second area of the site, there are quite few large anomolies that we have picked up with on the scanner but they shouldn't be a problem, unless they are 2,500lb Japanese Bombs. Mind you, we won't have any more problems if they go off...

Only B*** and I have been on the site for the past couple of days, T**** seems to have gone down with Dengue, the disease spread by mosquitos. It's like flu but takes about a month to get over. One of us had to get it. I expect we will all come down with it at some point. It's not fateful but there is nothing you can do about it. Mind you Dengue is the least of the problems if there is a Japanese bomb sitting under the ground, we'll find out tomorrow....

Gallows Gallery

Last night was the 2008 Unofficial Onsite Christmas Party. Wait a minute! I hear you say, this is 2009! FTW? Well, allow me to explain, Nick had failed to organise a Christmas Party last year and the last one the company had was in 2007. This involved a Chinese meal, drink, Karaoke, drink, gravy for Sir Stanners, drink, more drunken karaoke and more drink. Maybe the jamboree that was the 2007 party dissuaded Nick to throw another one in case his staff were arrested and were unable to come back to work. So Duck L'Orange and Stanners decided to organise an unofficial one this weekend. The comeback was Nick has actually organised a 2009 party as well, obviously he was shamed into it... We started the night off quite well behaved, after meeting Mark and Preston at their place and then wee Ryan outside the Judges in York. Berny was waiting inside. In fact he was so excited about being let out of the house he'd been waiting for us since Wednesday. Speaking of which, Tim had been drinking since Wednesday and turned up already sauced up. Robot the Bruce followed him after a moment and last but by no means least Barry Onions turned up.

How the evening began...

What followed I only remember in snippets, like me getting Barry to admit he enjoys women shitting on his chest. Barry also told us his top five films. He included the The Chronicles of Riddick with it's amazing dialogue. He tried back peddling and said he also had Dr Strangelove and Lawrence of Arabia in there as well. The damage was done and we poured scorn on his love for Vin Diesel. Berny told us all about his flower covered love wagon camper van and dressing his young 'un up as a pixie. Bruce and I shared a moment over a MASSIVE kebab. Stanners was his usual Daily Express disgruntled self, despite Lauren chatting up some pole dancing skank for him. She turned out to be engaged (the skank, not Lauren). Tim was his usual drunken boorish self, attempting to gain entry to the private staff areas in the guise of looking for the toilet. After trying to get into the Willow Restaurant to no avail, the plucky few ended up in the Gallery nightclub. It's been a long time since I've been in there and it will be a longer time before I ever set foot in that filthy hole again. Stanners, Lauren, Mark and I returned to Mark and Preston's place to find Preston asleep on the door step after having some sicky pudding for himself. I'd heard rumours that this kind of thing happened, but had never seen it until now. I am a wiser man for it.

How the night ended...

I managed to get myself and Lauren home and safe in one piece mainly being helped by a Morrison's Breakfast. I now turn you to the delights of another Singapore blog entry: read on and be AMAZED!! (And no this isn't further proof that this blog has Jumped the Shark, I promise I will sort another digging memoir this week...)

Monday, May 28, 2007

This is the biggest and best paid Cake and Arse party I have ever been involved in. When I worked for Cotswold Archaeology one day Allen and I sat in the van all day 'Waiting for the digger driver', I thought that was a piss take. It was bettered by my last week with Arcunts, when each morning I got a piece of pottery out of a bag to be washed, by the end of the day it was still waiting to be washed. This weekend takes the fucking biscuit. On Sunday we got to work and set the diggers off doing their Jungle bashing business. We have to wait until the jungle is cleared away so we can set the array up and drive over the areas and scan them. B***, T**** and I had nothing to do, so we hung around for the morning and after lunch time at one o'clock we locked the gates with the diggers in and fucked off to a swimming pool. We spent the next three hours swimming around, jumping in, sunbathing and drinking Tiger Beer. I thought we might have been taking the piss a little bit, but it soon passed.

After work the three of us headed over to Woodlands Cinema to see the latest installment of the Pirates Of The Caribbean films. I should have realised what I was letting myself in for after about half an hour, I was bored. Yes, Buckles were swashed, main-braces spliced and a whole host of other Piratical terms beyond, but I found the whole thing a little dull. It takes itself far too seriously, and there was no Ninjas kicking Pirates arses.

The film finished about 3am the next morning, and T**** was convinced that the Mall we had parked the car in would be locked up. In a panic we dashed out of the cinema, promptly got lost and found ourselves walking through the loading areas of Woodlands mall, going past signs saying 'KFC Staff ONLY', 'Unauthorised Access will be punished by Beheadings' and the like. We got to the car in sweaty and panicky mode to find out that the place doesn't shut at ten thirty at all, but merely the price goes up after ten thirty.

I have spent all day sunbathing watching Ang dig big holes in the Demolitions pit we have to clear. Then B*** brought his Ipod, so I listened to the Macc Lads for a bit. As we have nothing to do in the morning I have been given the morning off, so I will spend it lying in bed like the sun-burnt sow that I am.

Anglo-Saxon Peasant Metal

On Saturday, as I mentioned on my last post, I went to see a Pagan/Folk Metal gig. There were four bands, Andraste, Annwn, Ravenage, with Northern Oak headlining. I'm not going to give you a massive breakdown of what I thought about these bands. For a start it doesn't fucking matter, what I want to do is have a look at the third band Ravenage. They were a Viking Metal band from Hull, I really like some Viking Metal and I thought they were pretty good, least of all for their singer's 'comedy gold' introductions to each song in a thick East Yorkshire accent. But some of their songs were OK, the bassist's hairy moobs were a bit distracting and the keyboardist's keyboard was at a jaunty angle. The guitarist closest to us was dressed in a chainmail shirt and had pretensions of the Viking Warrior about him. This brings me on to what I want to talk about; why is that all metal bands just concentrate on the warrior aspects of the Viking Age*? I started thinking about all the other aspects of the Viking Age that haven't been covered by Viking Metal bands. Rather than sacking monasteries or mustering a great army to crush the Saxons, what about the nine or ten months of the year that 'Vikings' spent on their farms? Where are the songs about tending the pigs and chickens? Where are the concept albums about sleeping in the loft of the long hall above your livestock to benefit from the heat of the animals? Where are the nine minute epics about using the loom to make blankets and clothing? I gonna start a Loom Metal band called Spindlewhorl, we're gonna be bigger than Turisas, I tell ya!

*I obviously know the answer to this, so don't comment telling me what I already know you fucking douchebags.

Bang your fucking heads!!

In a similar vein I saw that a U2 tribute band were playing locally, they are called U2-2 and are apparently the 'most authentic U2 tribute in the world'. Now, if you've read this blog before, you probably now that I have a slight problem with U2 so the fact that why anyone would want to emulate U2 is beyond me and why you would pride yourself on being the 'most authentic' tribute? OK, OK, I can give a bit of leeway and say most people are in cover bands for money. Most people would rather hear a lame band playing songs they recognise than not. That I can understand, it's easy, it gets you gigs and money/beer tokens and the adoration of fat middle aged men when you belt out your ropey cover of Wonderwall.

"Thank yoo, that was Boogie Town, this next number is our own take on an the Artic Monkey's Mardy Bum. One, Choo, Free, Four..."

I've always thought the idea of being in a band was to create music, write new songs, get some sick jams going, not to learn a few of the easier Jimi Hendrix songs and play them as though you wrote them. Look, I'm not above doing cover versions myself as you can see here with my 'Lost Wisdom' cover version, but U2-2 take this beyond the pale (excuse the pun). Not only do they sound like U2 but they fucking look like them as well! They are all middle aged men attempting to look like someone else. Someone else in a fucking shit band. Someone else who is the biggest fucking hypocrite on the planet. What is wrong with their lives that they have to attempt to live vicariously through someone else. Can you imagine waking up every morning and checking the tinternetz to make sure your facial hair is still exactly the same as The Edge's? No, Me neither, mind you it's not that the Edge has changed his facial hair for the past ten years, he's as stuck in his own rut as the rest of his fucking band is with their music. I can guarantee you that 'Frank' (or Phony Bono, as his mates probably call him) works as a plumber but fixes toilets with those stupid fucking sunglasses and that stupid fucking hat on. Speaking of which, why can't someone nail that fucking hat to Bono's fucking head like a Turkish emissary. At least that way he won't forget it and have to fly it half way around the world at the same time as increasing his carbon footprint and spending a thousand pounds that could have been better spent on the poor kids in Africa.


I could go on and on about this, but I can feel the vein in my forehead throbbing, so I'll leave you to read the next part of the long lost Singapore Blog:

Saturday, May 26, 2007

I have just returned from the most Metallist day ever, in fact it would be difficult to get more Metal than today without, in fact, turning into Metal itself. I have returned from the Sabbat/Ironfist gig in the Gas Haus. I had been in touch with Iron Fist through myspace and Ariff, there singer, told me about this gig. I went down to the Gas Haus this morning about twelve. Ariff introduced himself and told me the gig wouldn't be starting until about 1.30pm. I wandered down to the Singapore Art Gallery, where I was assaulted and insulted by more degenerate modern art. Regular readers of this weblog will know my views on modern art, so I won't repeat myself here. Suffice to say, I only wished I had some cans of paint with me in order to cover up the monstrosoties on display.

Infuriated I returned to find the first band was on, there was seven lined up for the whole day. Holy God, how much Metal can one man take? They were a pretty good Thrash outfit who finished with Necrophobic and Raining Blood by Slayer, which always gets top points in my book. The next band were called Tormentress and were made up of three girls and a bloke on drums. Again, good thrash, starting with a good cover version of Troops of Doom by Sepultura. I think they did some Sodom covers as well, but I forget. It seems everyone in Singapore is into Sodom, I only like their first EP and the Agent Orange LP. Maybe I haven't heard enough of their stuff? Then we had the spectacle of Iron Fist, Ariff, whom seemed quite normal when I met him earlier, turned up on stage wearing just a cod piece and covered in Corpse Paint. Some transformation. This is when the crowd went berserk. They had been warming up during Temptress' show, but the shit really hit the fan during this point! Diving, surfing and slam dancing made sure there was bodies flying all over the room, it literally was like a Chinese fire drill. Iron Fist finished with War Pigs, excellent!

Sabbat came on and whipped the crowds into mad frenzies with their blackened thrash. Again everyone went berzerk. I only wish I had taken my camera so I could have shown you what it was like. The rest of the bands suffered a bit from the crowd disappearing after Sabbat had played. I met a guy in To Megatherion the other night, Mike, his band played also. They were very good, technical Death/Black Metal, not really my cup of tea, but very very good musicians.Ariff came over and gave me a Iron Fist CD, which I am listening to now. He didn't want anything for it, a present from Singapore he said. I was chatting to the sound engineer and he told me he was from Leeds, small world. He asked me if I was from Halifax with my accent, I told him to fuck off.

I was knackered this morning when I set off, I was out til three last night at St James' Power Station, it was a bit crap to be fair. I had a bit of a dance,had a few drinks then headed home. I got in the taxi and purposely got in the back to try and have a bit of a snooze, but the bloody driver kept me awake with his questions about what I was doing in Singapore etc. To be fair he was a nice guy, so I couldn't begrudge him a bit of banter. Now if I could only do that with women, I'd be beating them off with a stick.

B***, T**** and I spent Friday looking for a beach to sit on during our day off. We drove over to Changi in the east and headed for the beaches there, B*** stood in some crude oil at the shore's edge, so that put the stoppers on that idea. We headed back to a place near our site called the Orientus, a resort complex. We paid our three dollars each and swam in the pool all afternoon. Twas brilliant.

Right, I'm tired, you've all had enough, fuck off home.

Blast from the Past

I went to see Up on Wednesday (Orange two for one offer...). It's brilliant, it's probably one of the best films this year, if not the best film of the year. For a cartoon it has so much depth it's mind blowing. Of course it has all it's little Pixar moments, it has its chases and it has its very funny moments but beyond that is the human touch it offers the audience. I don't want to spoil it for people who haven't seen it but one of the most affecting moments for me was when Carl puts his hand on the hand print of his wife on the mailbox. There are so many other tiny subtleties (the perfectly made side of the bed that belonged to Ellie for instance) throughout that it seems like not one shot was wasted. Go and see it.

Thumbs up for Up!

I think Owen gave me a plug on his Radio Show and in response I said I'd do the same back for his blog, so here we are: Read It Here. Kate and I saw him last night at a Pagan/Folk Metal gig, he was up to his usual tricks, laughing at fat Vikings and jigging about like a Medieval Flemish Peasant.

I fail to see what's so funny, Owen

Someone was complaining about the colour of the background and the font colour of this blog. If you don't like it, you can FUCK OFF. I like it therefore it stays.


There will be further excavation memories when I get a chance to write them, but before that I was also thinking about the Singapore Blog and below is the first of several installments as I will be reprinting the blog in full. I'll shove it at the bottom of the page so if you can't be bothered to read it then you don't have to. It doesn't exist before May 24 2007 as I deleted it from Myspace in a fit of rage, so all that remains of it is from this point until I got fired in June. Where this installment begins I had already been in Singapore for a few weeks and we'd settled into the job. So enjoy it or enjoy it again for those of you that saw it the first time round!

Mr Wong says 'hooray for the Singapore Blog!'

Thursday, May 24, 2007

This is the first one for a while, I've been a bit busy and last night Myspazz was being a MOTHERFUCKING BITCH and not letting me post a new weblog. On Monday I went into town after work, we found some dummy practise bomblettes on site. You know the kind, plastic white things they drop from aeroplanes before they give the airmen real ones to drop on Primary Schools. I went to find To Megatherion, Singapore's primary Black Metal store. I wanted some new Cd's. Thinking I knew where it was I found myself walking around Raffles Plaza Mall about eight fucking times, completely lost. I even asked a doorman where Coleman St was, the street it is on. He sent me the wrong way the stupid bastard. I was not in a good mood on Monday and I was getting hot and sweaty, so decided to jack it in before I committed pavement rage on someone. I went down again on Tuesday, this time armed with a map. I found the place, only to see it was locked up!! Gah!! Last night I was actually successful and managed to not only find it, but find it was open. I even bought some Cd's. Endstille (what does this mean John?), Impiety and Rotting Christ's 'Passage to Arcturus', which I have on vinyl, but the last track 'Inside the Eyes of Algond' skips so I wanted it on CD. It also has bonus tracks, so a bargain all round... I also bought my ticket ready for Saturday's BM fest...

On Wednesday we entered site at eight in the morning and as we were driving Ang to his digger a military Land-rover appeared out of nowhere and we nearly broadsided it (I'm glad I was driving, I would have hit it. I have been driving all round site in order to practise, I will go for my test after this is all over. At last.). It seems that, unbeknownst to us, the Singapore Army's EOD team were on site to do some practise demolition. It doesn't matter that WE are the only ones who are supposed to have access to the site. We have already had to see of the Dog Handlers section of the SAF, now we had EOD to contend with. It's not that we mind these people being on site, we just wish they'd tell us they are coming, instead of surprising us at junctions. Anyway they had laid out some pretend ordnance to blow up. We went site looking for it. They had a large airdropped Japanese WW2 bomb, a large torpedo looking bomb and a 105mm howitzer shell made in plastic. We asked them if they wanted to blow up the REAL ordnance we had found in the last few weeks. The commanding officer told us they weren't insured to deal with real ordnance.

Fat lot of good they will be.

I was watching Lifeline the other night, it is the single worst soap opera I have ever seen. It is set in the Singapore Civil Defence firefighting team. The acting is so dreadful it has to be watched to be believed... The latest episode involved a load of models getting into a truckload of trouble during a photo shoot. The photographer made the best of a bad job by photographing all the firefighters as they were doing their job. He even turned up in the hospital shooting the girls in
their bandages. I can't wait for next week! You know when you've been in Singapore for a while when I walked up some stairs for the first in four weeks the other day. Mind you, I stood at the bottom of them for ten minutes thinking it was just a really long escalator. I also had trouble
using my knife and fork the other day, I was trying to balance them like chopsticks.

At about break time yesterday morning I was laying out a grid for us to run the array across, Mr Wong shouted from the other side of the field. He was bringing my attention to this little figure crossing the field towards us. On closer inspection it turned out to be a girl. I approached her, I thought for a second that she may be a reporter. another unannounced visit. anyway it turned out she was a Spanish Girl looking for the MRT. I asked her if she was lost, she said yes and looked concerned when I told her we were working on clearing bombs and such from the area. She was probably about as far from the MRT as you can get in Singapore... She had taken a wrong turn and walked down the entrance road to the camp, Mr Wong was waiting for his diesel van and had the gate keys. She had asked him directions and being Malaysian and a very poor speaker of English he had brought her about a mile into the camp to talk to us... She was fit so I began chatting her up as we ran her back outside the camp and to the bus stop, I found out she was visiting a friend who lived nearby and was working in Indonesia as a vet treating Orangutans. B*** suggested she could give me a once over. After she had left we decided on the idea that we would go back and under the pretence of asking her if the gate was unlocked during Mr Wong's guarding of it I would give her my phone number. The plan was infallible, except we didn't plan on the SMRT bus service being so goddamn reliable. She was gone by the time we got back to the bus stop.

Mr Wong was asking me if I was married, I told him no and he suggested I should have got the girl's phone number. I told him I tried and he laughed at me. Bastard, that is probably the last time I shall ever see a woman beside T**** in this line of work...

Went to the Beach tonight at Tampines, had a swim, had some food and came home. We have taken tomorrow and Saturday off as we all thought today was Wednesday due to tiredness. It was only made apparent that it was Thursday when Mr Wong and Ang came over and said 'So we work on Sunday, but not tomorrow and Saturday?' B***, T**** and I all looked at each other, Tomorrow as well? Three days off? We thought mutiny was afoot. But no, it was just us being tired and working very hard.

Tree Beard's Revenge

We have been slowly winding down at Nostell, there is only a couple of soak aways to dig before we move off the carpark site. Duck L'Orange and I have been trowelling the natural in one for the past two days. We passed the time mainly by me shouting at Duck L'Orange about people being unhappy and accepting it rather than actually doing something that quite obviously would make them happy. Sir Stanners and G-Funk have been finishing another trench until this morning when G-Funk went off into the woods to dig out three trenches by hand for some drainage scheme. He came back at break time and told us he'd been attacked by a dog. We reckoned that a women had been walking through the wood and spotted a lone lunatic digging what she probably assumed were shallow graves and set the dog on him. After lunch he took Sir Stanners to 'go and do some levels'. The Brown Wizard had taken Pippin into Fangorn Forest. Duck L'Orange and I had visions of G Funk stripping himself naked and chasing Stanners through the woods like a cemetery rapist with twigs and leaves stuck in his beard and hair.

A short one, but I thought I'd just share that with you. If you want to see the blog post that got me fired in Singapore, you have to leave me some comments...

If you know of a better 'ole...then go to it pt6

There was a massive cull at Arcus after the Broad Street gig had finished. This is typical of shortsighted archaeological contractors. A big job finishes and rather than finding all the well trained staff something to do, like cleaning finds or other post excavation work, they let them all go. Two weeks later another big job comes up and they have to start hiring again, but by that time all the well trained and competent ones have already got off their arses and found themselves a new job. This leaves the useless lazy cunts as the only ones that take the new work. The other positions are filled by students and new people who are untrained. Like I said, most archaeological companies can't see past their own fucking noses. Being one of the former I had already found myself a new job, in the form of a Bomb Disposal Technician at the Seletar East Base in Singapore:


It's a lot more glamorous than it sounds, but here's how I got the job. I was in Poland on holiday when Bill contacted me. I couldn't take the call and called him back when I got home, Bill had worked as NML's EOD cover at Vimy and various other sites, so I knew him well. He had mentioned when we worked together at Vimy that he had a job in North Wales coming up and if I was interested on working on it. So I thought that was the job he was calling about. Turns out the North Wales job was over (thank fuck, I wouldn't have to go back to Wales again...) and he had a position in Singapore if I wanted it. It took me about two seconds to think it over. One of the main reasons was I'd never been to Singapore before. The other, the money was about three times more than I was earning at Arcus. Food and accommodation was all included, as were the flights. I was rubbing my hands together with glee.

Singapore, shit. I'm still in Singapore...

Like I said the job sounded a lot more glamorous than it actually was. For the most part we were running a magnetometry survey over the disused airbase looking for anomalies that might or might not (more often the case) be explosives. We had a wonderful digger driver, Ang, he had his own machine that we hired along with him. He had some brilliant turns of phrase, the lanky streak of piss Dr David Kenyon joined us for two weeks. When he left Ang asked after him 'Where's Big Foot?'. Brilliant. We also had the dodgy Mr Wong who drove one of the other larger machines and his simple minded work mate who's name I forget but who smiled all the time. The Malaysian Mr Wong and Laughing Boy mistrusted the Chinese Ang and vice versa. Politics between digger drivers who would have thought it?

Boss Man Ang sitting in his 'wife'

I had some good times in Singapore, but I ended getting fired for writing a blog about it on Myspace. I'm not going to go into details but I still believe there was a lot more to it than just the blog, but whatever; there can't be many people who have been pinpointed by the Singapore Secret Services... If there is enough demand for it I will publish the post that got me fired. I was back in Rotherham and jobless, so I did what every part of me told me not to do. I took a job with Arcus. This time at Garden Street in Sheffield:


I was working again with a few old colleagues, Izzie was running the site but as is usual for archaeologists, not getting paid the proper amount for the job she was doing. It was during my time at Garden Street that I also started to work at Brodsworth, but only on the weekends. I was needing to work all the hours God could send to get things off my mind so being able to work Saturday and Sunday was great. It was also during my time on Garden Street that Nick from Onsite got in touch and hired me to work on the Barbican project he had running at the time. I jumped ship from Arcus and piled up to York:


The site was a medieval cemetery with nearly six hundred skeletons in the area indicated. There was also a couple of Roman skeletons and features, but it was mainly dominated by the Civil War mass graves and recut medieval graveyard. Added to this was the medieval church foundations, preceded by the Anglo-Saxon wooden church. This is were I met all the lads from Onsite, Tim, Sir Stanners (with whom I had worked before as you will no doubt remember...), Berny, Barry Onions, Alice and Wincey. I also helped Lauren get a job with Onsite whilst on this site (she's never thanked me for it...). Robot the Bruce was running the site under high levels of stress and we were made to dig the graves under the yellow light of streetlights one morning before the sun had risen. We had a shitty cabin with no electricity in the middle of a rat infested carpark and one gas heater around which we would all huddle during breaks. The rats had become so used to us they would stand at the cabin door watching us eat our lunch. A tramp once broke in and slept in the place overnight. I even think he was appalled at the squalor we were working in and tidied the place up for us...

BONE FRENZY!!!

We didn't have a site toilet at the Barbican as the site was over the road from Kent Street toilets (the building directly south on the photo, the one with the trees surrounding it). Kent Street toilet was a notorious cottaging spot in York and we had to run the gauntlet of grimy middle aged bummers trying to crack onto us every time we wanted a piss. Believe it or not, it was the first time I've been confronted with the seedy underbelly of homosexual lifestyles and not something I want to repeat. There was a guy who would always bring his dogs down to the toilets as he pursued his hobby. We called him Dweezil as he bore an uncanny resemblance to Frank Zappa. At Christ's Mass, he would bring the dogs down with tinsel tied around their leads, bless him for getting into the spirit of the season. At other times in late summer he would wear tight cycling shorts as he snoozed on the benches waiting for clients.

It's going to be a wet one, boys...

Everyday there was an advert scrawled across the cubicles for the particular fetish that was in demand that day. Sir Stanners was freaked out to see 'I want a Young Builder in a Lilac Bra', being the youngest male on site it seemed that the shitty finger was pointing at him. Another time I found a post-it note on the floor of the cubicle, with delicate fingers I took the offending item over the road for the others to see. It was covered in a scrawl which looked like a spider had fallen into an ink well and crawled across the page. The note was covered on both sides with a story about an eighteen year old boy meeting a middle aged man in the toilets, it ended with the ominous phrase 'Roll on meat week'. It quickly became our site catch phrase. There was a shopping list in the same script that was plucked from the toilets for our amusement, it was calling for 'limons' and 'wharter'. Kent Street toilets has now been closed down by the Police, but during our time there someone tried to burn the place down, we never found out who this was, but I do remember a particularly angry scally running up and down the road threatening to stab someone after he'd been propositioned in the toilets. Maybe he'd got a posse together and tried to exact some mob justice. I could fill a whole blog post just on the Barbican, but I'll leave it there. I was off to Lichfield, but that's to come in the next part! If you missed the previous posts of this story find them here:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

And to finish another plug, here is a link to Ashley's rather good blog of writings: Dangerous Ideas from the Wood

TV, Get Off The Air!

Last night on Facefuck, I told Jamey I was going to write another Archaeological adventure chapter, but after today's shitty work I'm going to have a rant instead. We've been further reduced of ground to work on; since Tuesday we've been working on an area about ten meters square and I've had Sir Stanner's arse in my face all day (something most women in Wakefield would probably enjoy, but not me, no sir). Lauren has also been off sick, it could have had something to do with the Amazing Racist telling her that her hat was 'spiffing' or the fact that we are now surrounded on all sides by monkeys driving heavy machinery. And they're not even those clever trained monkeys that can use tools and shit. We are breathing in heavy diesel fumes and having to shout over the noise. I asked Kevin, the groundworker's Foreman, if the machines had a volume button and if they could turn them down a couple of notches, but my requests went unheeded. Added to all this was the incessant rain that G-Funk's weather circuits failed to register. Stanners though that some rain had got into his circuitry and damaged his electrics. Whatever, he didn't bring us in to shelter in the cabin.

'Yeah, it's that kind of rain that takes seven hours and fifty five minutes to get you wet, we can work through it...'

As Stanners and I were not in the best of moods all day we had our own rant about TV celebrities, which reminded me of how much I hate TV. In particular Top Gear. My Brother was home for a couple of days before heading out to Cuba for a month again. He was watching Top Gear as we were getting ready to go out for a drink. This particular episode had that little shit Richard Hammond driving a 4X4 Yuppie Cadillac in a race with a motorised kayak across Jökulsárlón, the beautiful glacier lake in South East Iceland. Obviously, that withered little cunt was driving across the land at the side of the lake, although the TV spectacle of watching him drown trapped in the locked vehicle in the middle of the lake would be something to set the video for. I watched this particular piece in absolute dismay. I've been to Jökulsárlón and it is an area of breathtaking outstanding natural beauty, it is one of the nicest places I have ever visited, the combination of sea, land and ice is unbelievable. I have watched seal colonies laid out on ice flows basking in the sun. When the weather was hotter I have watched ice broken off from the glacier float majestically by like an ocean liner in utter silence. It is one of Iceland's many beautiful high-points. So to have that little shitbag drive a gas-guzzling tank across the snow, churning up the gravel in order to win a race where the prize money comes out of license fee payer's pockets made me cry on the inside. Added to this was the fucking bellend that was thrashing through the water in the kayak. I was wondering how many of those seals appreciated the end result of the race after their colonies are broken up amidst panic. This is what Top Gear is all about, as long as the three presenters (that strutting cock Clarkson, that simpering cunt May and the hobbit motherfucker Hammond) get their fucking kicks they don't give a shit about anything else. The fucking idiot presenters ecological destruction doesn't stop there, they raced across the incredibly delicately balanced Makgadikgadi salt pans in Botswana, they have also churned up heather on Ben Tongue mountain in Scotland. When will the madness end?

LET'S OFF ROAD!!!

The problem is this, they are getting paid from BBC license payer's pockets to go and do all this stuff mainly just for kicks and in the name of entertainment. I don't know about you but I don't want to sit and watch someone else having fun at my expense. It's like giving all my records to someone else to listen to as I have to watch them through the window of a soundproof booth. Top Gear has become unfeasibly popular over the past few years. It used to be about cars and it never had a studio audience. Now it's just about the three tossers rolling about in their own shit while the crowd of baying imbeciles and invited sycophantic celebrities egg them on. It's totally dumbed down, it treats you and I as though we fall over our own feet anytime we attempt to stand up. It's obviously hitting the lowest common denominator button like a senile American President about to push the red button to launch atomic apocalypse on the Soviets.

'I'm the biggest cunt!'
'No, I'm the biggest cunt!'
'Seriously Jeremy, I'm the biggest cunt here!'
'OK, but I'm the biggest asshole!'
'No, I'm the biggest asshole!'
Ad Nauseum until end credits...

Further to this, Top Gear is not the only offender when it comes to insulting us. I have watched about forty five minutes of TV in the past week, two minutes was devoted to Top Gear as detailed above, twenty five minutes was devoted to Flight of the Conchords (brilliant, as ever) and the final eighteen minutes was all I could stomach of the hour long Andrew Marr's the Making of Modern Britain. It was a new series about about the Edwardian period and the lead up to the Great War. It covered the first powered flight, the Suffragette movement, the general strikes and welfare reform. It could have been brilliant. It could have been a real in depth look at an interesting historical period that changed the world forever. What we got was dodgy reconstructions, shaky camera work and Andrew Marr's impressions of Prime Ministers of the time. Andrew Marr is a political commentator not Rory Fucking Bremner. This is why I could only stomach fifteen minutes of this. and why I rarely watch TV anymore. Gone are the days of the brilliant documentary The Great War, a program made in the sixties and one that didn't treat it's audience as though they sucked on their feet like it was a hobby. Do me a favour, turn off your TV, let the powers that be know how you feel about this dumbed down, bite-sized, celebrity obssessed idiot lantern that sits in the corner of the room mocking you like the slack jawed imbecile that you're not!

Is there anything on the other side?

This day anything goes, burning bodies hanging from poles, I remember Halloween

I went back to work at Nostell Priory on Friday, Nick had called on Tuesday to ask if I could give a hand for the next couple of weeks. Although I am in the middle of setting up a business, a little extra money never hurts so I agreed but said I couldn't start until Friday. I was asked back because on the site the developers have lost all sense of reality and decided to they would be laying soak-aways and pavements outside of the already agreed footprint of the car park. The ground workers have moved in and begun construction of the car park site. Obviously these new areas are archaeologically sensitive areas and we need to be there not only to watch the machines but to excavate and record anything that comes up. When I left, it was a pastoral idyll, a sweeping view over cow littered fields. Majestic trees reaching towards the clear blue skies. A lush greenery rarely seen on archaeological sites. It felt good to be there, it was a tonic for the heart and mind. Detox for the soul.

How I left Nostell...

The site now resembles Isengard after the Orks move in. The site is being run over by massive 360 Earthmovers, Bulldozers and dumper trucks. It like being in the centre of some horrific future war where the Robots have risen against their human masters and built killing machines capable of destruction on an industrial level. We are the lowly human resistance cowering in our final 20m grid square, each moment could be our last as the War Droids move in.

How I returned to Nostell...

Friday night was my Cousin Sara and Shaun's Wedding reception. They'd got married in Jamaica a couple of weeks ago. I didn't go as I couldn't afford it, so it would have been churlish of me to miss the reception, even though I was on the guest list for the Cannibal Corpse gig at the Corporation that night (not that I'm bitter). In the event it was a great night, Sara was suitably pissed from the start, everyone was dressed in their wedding best and most of the party goers were up dancing to the tunes belted out by the fat Rod Stewart Lookalike DJ. It was a good chance to catch up with the family something I rarely get a chance to do as I get older. There was even the obligatory karaoke, with Rotherham's Boots the Chemist workers caterwauling to It's Raining Men.

No one butchers disco tunes like Rotherhamites!

The Evil Doktor Herr Clay had also asked me to go over to York to celebrate Halloween at a student party on the Saturday night. It was also to meet the woman he's been keeping in his Austrian dungeon for the past 23 years. Her name is Anna and she seems to have developed Stockholme Syndrome, as she was quite attached to the Evil Nazi Scientist. It was all set, Dr Clay was to come to Rotherham and pick me up on the way past. Twenty minutes before he was to pick me up I get the following text message: Change of plan bitch, I'm coming up to York by train. You OK to drive up? Sorry for the mix up, but don't pretend you're surprised... As ever; the best laid plans of Mice and John... Put John Clay into the mix of any scenario and the whole thing goes to rat shit as soon as you can say 'cake and arse party'. You'd think that someone who has spent so long in Germany perfecting diabolical machinations against humanity would have picked up some of that world famous Teutonic rigidity for organisation... I duly drove to York and met Herr Doktor Clay and his captive Anna, we then spent the next few hours running around getting various pieces for our costumes. The three of us went over to Aleisha's where were saying for the night, I smeared curry and then fake blood all over her walls and we set off to the party. It was a great bash, there were far more people there I knew than I excepted, the music was loud and booze was free, 99% of the punters had some costume on. I thought the best ones where the two short lads who came as hobbits.

This photo ably demonstrates Clay's cop-out costume (Crime scene) overshadowed by the lengths some people go to make a real effort...

And what did I go as? Well, I carried a toolbag filled with hammers, wore a fake beard and a blood splattered shirt. I accessorised with a bling necklace and three fingered dollar sign ring. Can you guess? I was Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Rapper...