No Restrepo for the wicked

I haven't really said much about the work I'm doing at the moment. well, I'm back in the warm bosom of the University of York, teaching their first year students which end of a trowel to use and how to draw different kinds of mud to a quasi-scientific level. These skills are the kind they will need when they are deciding which bag of Tesco value frozen sausages they should buy (pork flavour with added sawdust or beef flavour with 50% chicken lips) since they won't be able to afford any other kind of food with the pittance that 'professional' field archaeologists are paid. Most of them have come through the clearing system, which basically means that they wanted to study history but as they didn't get the grades they ended up studying the hand maiden of History, Archaeology. Of the ten in my group only two actually wanted to do archaeology as a degree. One of whom has had the worst attendance of the group. I ask you.

If you're not careful, this is how you'll end up...

Having said that, my group are the best for attendance this year out of the whole site (four other groups of ten). But I have habitually had at least one missing each day. She has been missing so consistently that I believe she doesn't even exist. Even the University staff proper have no idea who she is. Maybe she was a phantom name that was invented in order to make the others look good. The rest of the group are your usual students, it's a bit like the Breakfast Club, the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, the criminal, the serial killer, the train driver, the pornographer, high priestess of Satan, the turkey farmer. You know, the usual kind of people. Two of the girls seem to show up either hungover from the night before or still drunk, having got home at about 5am after kissing boys and getting sick down their tops in the Willow. One of them, let's call her Lowrie, was telling me about the Afro-Caribbean Society that she was secretary of when she was at school. The membership was low. It consisted of three people: two blondes and a Jew. These two keep complaining whenever I drop the 'C-Bomb', which is pretty much every other word when they are not working hard enough, which is all the time.

'YOU WORK NOW!'

These are not the only problems I have to deal with, there is another student, let's call this one Myles, who turned up last Monday painted blue. He also goes around singing the Rebbecca Black song 'Friday' until all you want to do it pound his miserable head into the ground. But he's so bloody happy and nice all the time it would be like kicking a puppy. He wrote an article for the official blog that mentioned me. Read it here.

Idiot

Anyway, that's enough of that shit. Tomorrow is the best day in the calender! It's the Eurovision Song Contest! I've been invited to two parties, one in Sheffield and one in Iceland. Can you guess which one I might go to? Well, I would, but I can't afford the plane fair to Reykjavik, so Sheffield will have to do instead. As Norway have already been kicked out at the semi finals it looks like I'll have to back my home from home, Ireland and Jedward:

Finally, I got hold of my old bear skin rug. I think it looks boss in the front room:

Ye Cannae Get to Heaven in a Biscuit Tin...

Fuck the Royal Wedding. The wedding of the year was up in Edinburgh this last weekend. Yeah, that's right, Stan (Kirsten) was finally getting hitched to Paul McPoo. And it was all happening in the alcohol-soaked-dour land of the Scotch! Even after two sessions of drinking heavily on a school night the preceding week I headed North for further alcoholic shenanigans. Actually, the only reason I wasn't drinking on Friday night was because Bob had decided that we were to get earliest train ever to get to Edinburgh before the sun rose. She had decided that we (Myself, Becky and Mike) had to get up before a sparrow's fart to hang around in Edinburgh for about 40 hours, just in case the train was delayed. The locomotive duly whisked this plucky band to Pictish-central, whilst Becky told us endless stories about her cats and slagged Rotherham off so much and so loudly that even a gentleman of a certain age with a Thai wife of a certain age joined in. By about 10.30 we found ourselves at an Edinburgh B&B dining in the fresh morning air after having introduced Mike (a colonial from New York) to the culinary delights of Greggs.

One has to dress up for dining at Greggs

Yes, we had made it over the border, the passports had been checked, the scenery turned from the lush green fields and village squares of Merry Olde England to the blasted heaths, dead mountains and industrial fishing ports that exemplify that queer country which the Scotch call home. The wedding was held in an old ex-religious Kirk. The ceremony was a Humanist occasion, which basically meant that everyone in the place cheered and whooped when Stan and Paul exchanged rings. You'd not get that in the usual fucking boring traditional religious weddings. Oh no. They are more like fucking funerals. This was a much more joyous occasion. Even accompanied by readings of Bruce Springsteen songs and some guy playing guitar. I turned to Bob and whispered: 'It's always the fucking same. You go to a party and some cunt pulls out an acoustic and starts playing bad cover versions...'

Down in front!

The reception was being held in a massive marquee and the champagne and food never stopped flowing. Every time my glass ran empty, there would be an attentive waiter pouring more, almost tipping it down my gullet. Almost everyone I've ever met in my life was there. Alright, not everyone. But most of them. Pins, Rose, Paul, Megan, Dave, Livvy (+ Bethany), Dermot, plus assorted other halves were all there guzzling the free canapes and champers. Mind you, during the meal it was just my luck to get seated next to a fucking PhD student who insisted on telling me about the fucking thesis she was writing, even with me trying to to steer the conversation towards the Nazis. The meal also included a couple of faux pas: I said to her: Where in the States are you from? She says: Canada. I turn to her husband and ask: Where in Canada are you from? He says: San Fransisco. Oh well, I will never see them again.

The blotter acid was a big hit

As I said, the wine kept flowing, the conversation got bawdier and bawdier, the céilidh kicked off and saw me being swung around like a whirling dervish, sweating my bollocks off as I'd forgotten to remove my blazer. Fuck knows where they teach this stuff, it must be a Scottish gene that everyone automatically knows how to dance to the céilidh. The only ones spinning about completely out of time and uncoordinated were the English. The evening ended with the worst DJ set ever, I mean: Tears of Clown at a wedding? Maybe he'd just been jilted by his missus that day and wanted to ruin everyone's fun. Pfft. I robot danced my way through a few Northern Soul numbers then was brow beaten by Pins to head on the bus back to town to find somewhere else to dance. By the time the bus had rolled into Edinburgh central it was lashing it down, I was almost as sober as judge and any fire had long since burned out of my desire to dance. Instead of taking the lift offered with Dave and Livvy back to the B&B I spent the next hour and half tramping around in the rain looking for a taxi. The following day found us bleary eyed, half asleep but propping up the bar from midday. We all recounted the previous evening's debauchery to one another and half past five found Bob and myself on the train back to civilisation, a great deal happier but rather fatter.

Stan, It could have been me...

Shadows over Sheffield

Friday was the event the entire nation has been waiting for, the flag waving little patriots that they are! Yes, the whole country's collective breath has been held because on this Friday, GOAT LEAF played at the Corporation for the first time ever! This won't amount to a hill of spit for most of you, but for the band it a  major step forward from being a 'local' band to being a 'professional' band. They were supporting Corrosion of Conformity, so it was a really good opportunity to play in front of a bunch of people who had paid to see a band rather than just wander in off the streets as the entrance was free and they needed somewhere to carry on drinking and places with bands on usually have a late licence. One of the best things was the biography on the Corporation's website that described Goat leaf as 'a band from Rotherham'. I told them they should have that as a quote on their next album... Anyway, I had a good time, saw some old faces, got drunk (which I need to do more often right now, to be honest...) and ended up eating tortillas and homous backstage, where there were defiantly too many dicks on the dance floor.

Today I went to see the new Kenneth Branagh directed Super Hero film, Thor. There wasn't any surprises, but it did have Natalie Portman in it, that a gets a big thumbs up from me. Here is my review:

Set in the Catskill Mountains during the roaring 20's Portman (LEON, SIDEWAYS GLANCE, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA) plays Anatolia Groady, a middle aged sales clerk at the local Woolworths. With her life stuck in a rut, she makes the brave decision to begin importing seal fur from Canada. Seal fur being banned under the prohibition laws. The venture is a massive success and Portman is able to open a 'speakeasy', where well healed towns folk gather to wear fur and parade around without the watchful eye of the local Police force. Her counterpart in this is Arkright MacMollases (Robin Williams: ILSA SHE WOLF OF THE SS, ZOMBIE NOSH, DUMBO), a light comic relief character who tends the bar. The pair run the place successfully until a raid by the police sees MacMollases gunned down in a pitched battle. As MacMollases lies dying, Groady flees the scene, but not before emptying the till of the takings. A desperate flight sequence follows which is part real time, part dream sequence ala the autre movement of the 1970's. Groady is approached by a shell-suit wearing lizard in a particularly hard to watch hallucinogenic scene. The lizard (voiced by the ever brilliant Tom Bosley: NIL BY MOUTH, THE RIGHT STUFF, YOJIMBO) tells Groady she must go to California to seek her fortune there, throwing off the shackles of crime. She follows this sagely advice and within minutes of arriving in San Fransisco she discovers a gold mine, turning her life around, away from crime. She lives the rest for her long life on the profits of the gold. The classically scored soundtrack by Ted Nugent really brings this film alive and I for one would miss it for the world.

For no other reason than because I can...

I have also been toying with the idea of a new tattoo. I was forwarded the following examples of beauty and was wondering which one to go for. I like the first one for its artistic merit, but I think the second one has a stronger message.

Just leaving this here:

Harry takes her up the aisle

With the country on tenterhooks for the wedding of the Century tomorrow, I received the following text messages off the Evil Dr Clay this afternoon:

I couldn't sleep last night, i was so excited about the royal wedding! i don't think i'll get much sleep tonight either


I hope you've stocked up on tissues for the ceremony, i have! Not for drying my tears though!!!


If it rains on the royal wedding tomorrow i'm going to burn down a church to express my anger at god.


I hope there is a thunder storm and camilla parker 'whore' bowles is struck dead by lightning, it would serve her right after what she did to william's mum.


Then I received the following in an email from Clay: 

Fuck Christ

an accusation was levelled at me that the last post wasn't sacrilicious enough, so I'm going to readress the balance in this one for Easter Monday.

And finally for the Heathen in all our Hearts:

Bad Friday

This is the start of a long Easter weekend, with Friday and Monday both being Bank Holidays. That means half the country don't have to go to work, if you work in reasonably decent job like me, or if you're a brainless drone, stacking shelves and working in a menial dead end job, you have to remain at your position to serve us, your natural Overlords. This still doesn't stop the elite panic buying in the supermarkets. The shops are shut for one day! This is not the aftermath of a nuclear fallout where the population is reduced to bartering with their children and fighting over patches of untainted grass. It's two days, maximum, of closed shops. If we can't survive for 48hrs of no access to milk or bread then we're truly fucked when the balloon does finally go up.

'Well, what day will you be open?'

How did we get to this position? Well, we were fucked into a cocked hat by Jesus, back in the year 36BC, or something. Sit back and I'll tell you the story of Easter, to the best of my knowledge from what I've gleaned off of Wikipedia. Jesus was born in 000AD and grew up to become a carpenter by trade, or so I'm told. The baby Jesus performed miracles in the form of curing the obese, feeding the five and making Lazarus the star of a third rate TV show. He made a name for himself all across the Roman Empire, selling Holy vacuum cleaners (that Jericho dust is a sod to get out of the carpets) and plaster casts of the Eiffel Tower. The latter mostly sold in Gaul. His extensive Tax evasion brought him to the attention of the Emperor Julius Caesar who vowed to have Jesus brought to trial.

Jesus, laughing at the Romans. Little did he know what they had in store for him!

King Caesar sent the Private Detective Herod out to Palestine on a manhunt for Jesus. He was easy to catch as he spent most of his weekends trashing salesman's stalls at temples. Herod just had to follow the trail of destruction to get his man. It was in the great Dome of the Rock in Damascus that Herod caught up with Jesus. Herod launched his attack and got Jesus in a choke hold. Jesus proved to be a wily adversary and scissor kicked Herod in the back of the head, causing him to release his hold. Jesus seized the opportunity and fled for the door, but was brought down by a rugby tackle from Herod. The fight spilled out into the street and Jesus grabbed a folding chair on the side of the road. Using this as a rudimentary cudgel he beat Herod about the head until Herod was silly with concussion. The hubris proved too much for Jesus, for whilst he was flexing his muscles in front of the crowd that had gathered, Herod climbed onto the ropes and performed his finishing move, a flying pile driver. Jesus was knocked senseless and Herod dragged the limp body to the court house.

 

Jesus in court. The boot's on the other foot now isn't it?

Now, Tax Evasion was a serious business back in 73BC, so the Judge gave Jesus the maximum penalty: 150 hours of community service. No, I mean, DEATH! Yeah, the Judge put his black cap on and handed down the death sentence. There was no lethal injection back in the olden days, neither was there gassings, sledgehammers or firing squad. The many ways people are killed today. There was only one way to kill someone in 12AD, and that was Crucifixion. So this is how Jesus was killed. They nailed him up to two pieces of wood and left him there with his two mates, Romulus and Remus, to die in the hot sun. When he'd carked it, the Romans threw his body to the lions and let them eat it. There was something else about rocks and caves and some other shit, and a guy called Judas or something, but I forget it now. Anyway, that is why the shops are shut for two days this weekend. If you'd like to know more, then here is a short educational film I made to give you more details about Easter:

The Well of Souls

This past two weeks have been rather stressful. I have been up to my knees everyday in water excavating a sequence of Roman wells. I mention this as I referenced it in the last post and The Evil Doktor Clay wanted to know more about it. I live in fear of this man. I have seen what he did to the neighbours dog last time he was here at my house and I am unwilling to walk around with a limp for the rest of my life, eating baby food through a straw, so it is better to do as he asks than risk the consequences. Below are a series of photographs which illustrate the difficulties we've had and what we've found over the previous fortnight. If you don't like archaeology or find this post boring then I suggest you look at these old websites I built a decade ago:

Dorkshire


The Les Dennis Experience

For the rest of you with more than one braincell to rub together, let's take a journey into the olden days!

Gevi encounters mud...

...and wood...

...and good (weather)

Collapsed revetments

In situ preserved wattle

Berny's Votive Offerings...

More collapsed structures

Berny suffers from trench foot...

Drastic situations call for drastic measures...

welly and bag combo, it what they wear in Milan...

That's a big one...

DUCK OFF!!

Get Ducked!!

The last person to touch this before I lifted it was someone 1500 years ago... Ruminate upon that!

The last stake

A worked Saddle Quern

Another 1500 year old stake

 

The end of the well

 

And finally, I think Banksey must be in York...