Lauren and I at Dimmuborgir, Iceland, STANDING IN THE MOUTH OF A FUCKING TROLL!!!!
I have been working back in an Twelfth Century church today. Previously I was excavating in the bowels of the west tower and undermining the foundations of the church in the lovely little village of Alne in the hope it would collapse. I am always wary of going in churches, my deep seated hatred of organised religion always make me think that I will either burst into flames or do something to incur the wrath of God that will see me struck by lightening. But this was not so. I suppose we were working hand in hand with the church authorities so God kept his fucking nose out of it for the time we were there. Basically the church is having a new floor put in and as the church can be traced back to the 12th century it was quite important that we were on hand to see if anything from the olden days came up. It was actually a watching brief that should have been an excavation. What I mean by this is, the builders should have been digging out the ground surface of the tower whilst I watched, but in reality, the possibility of archaeology being present meant that I had to dig out the ground surface whilst the builders watched. It became one of those jobs where I had to spend a few days explaining to the builders that my job wasn't about the fact that we hadn't found anything 'interesting' but the fact that I was actually there to make sure anything that may come up was recorded. Being a part of the building industry, you would assume that builders have a reasonable idea about what archaeologists do, but this never seems to be the case and I end up explaining my job to people who don't really give a fuck in the first place.
You do what? For Money?
The builder lads I was working alongside were good guys, as people generally are, except for the cunts. Who are cunts, whatever. Anyway, these lads weren't cunts. One of them had the best two tattoos I've ever seen. One was a dog that looked like Rude Dog, from Rude Dog and the Dweebs, giving a smutty gesture. If that wasn't bad enough he'd gone back a few years later and got an even worse inking. It was a heart with a scroll across the centre. Upon the scroll he'd had written the name of his object of affection: BABY SPICE. I also had the usual queue of interested parties coming through the church to have a nosy at how the work was progressing. The trendy vicar, with his 'hair do', the church warder and the 'Colonel' from the Vicarage over the road. I don't mind the general public, or explaining what is going on, but when each one requires a half an hour lecture on what we've found, I wish they'd all come at the same time so I can get on with the work with minimal interruption. Despite all these interruptions, Jim and I managed to get the job done well within time. There was quite a panic on getting the job finished as there was a wedding being held, we were repeatedly told, 'On Friday'. Obviously it was the biggest thing to ever happen in Alne since the Plague and the entire village appeared to have been invited along to see the youngest people in the village betrothed. In actuality the couple weren't even from the village and were coming up from the south to get wed, so most of the village were probably gathering to see 'the queer foreigners from that London.' And our work had no right to stand in the way.
Nothing stands in the way of this!
But today I was sent back out there, ripped from the warm bosom of my front room, where I was writing a report, into the howling gales of Hurricane Scrimshaw or whatever it's called. I had been told the builders might have found some bones in what I previously thought was an empty trench. The trench actually was empty when I walked away from it the other day and they assured me that they would be doing no more digging in there. Surprise surprise, they did some more digging when I wasn't there and found some stuff. So I found myself scratching away at a child's skeleton whilst the noises of playtime drifted across from the local primary school. a very strange experience indeed. Added to this I was still recovering from Saturday night when we had one of our twice-a-decade work night out. This one was pretty messy in all events. There are large chunks of Saturday night missing from my memory, which is unusual for me.
Stanners tries his luck
