Simon Jenkins is a Dog Bummer

I have just returned from a week in France so I thought I'd tell you all about that, also, you can read about last night's Damnation Festival, the highlights and lowlights of a day of METAL! First off though, France:

Moody battlefield cemeteries...

After Danny deciding he was going and then deciding he wasn't going about forty times, I travelled down to Brighton, stopping on the way to see Jo at Victoria Station, we had a jolly nice meal at Cafe Rouge, in order to get me ready for France. It was really good to see her again, albeit for an hour or so. I carried on to Brighton and met Justin ad Lucy at the station. Back at their gaff Bob (aka Sarah) called over (in a fucking sweet Reign in Blood t-shirt...) and in time so did Danny. After a wild drinking session, the bunch of us piled upstairs to play with Justin's gun collection.

Rule number one of gun safety, never point your weapon at someone else unless you intend on killing them...

We had to get the guns out from under Justin's bed where he'd hidden them in case the landlady came round and didn't take too kindly to her house being used as an arsenal. After more drinks and curry we hit the hay for the early morning rise for the trip to the ferry. The ferry journey was enlightened by a lovely Romanian girl who gave us all a massage for next to nothing. She offered to take me to a private room for my massage and I must say the offer was tempting... But I didn't fancy getting thrown overboard by the ship's crew for giving her undue attention. Arrival at Ocean Villas tea rooms was greeted by meeting the rest of the lads and lasses of NML and also Walter Rapp, the descendant of Jakob Hones, the body I discovered at Serre a few years ago. Shaking hands with the descendant of a body you have excavated is a humbling experience. After a look around Avril's museum and a buffet meal, Justin, Danny and I made for the place we were staying for the week, Snowden House:

Sixteen archaeologists crammed into a house packed with World War One Militeria makes for a great week!

By the time we had reached Snowden House the Irish Contingent of the team had arrived and we said fond hellos. I haven't seen many of them nearly two years and it was great to see everyone again. Even Simon, the Dog Bummer. During our stay in Snowden house we were over looked by this rather alarming looking fox:

David had to be physically restrained from trying to hunt this poor fellow

Unaware that Sunday was supposed to be a work day, Danny, Justin and I took off on a walk around a small part of the 1916 front line. The day was beautiful and we didn't want to waste it by working so we settled down for a snooze by one of the many CWGC cemeteries that dot the landscape of the North East France. It was the middle of shooting season and there were many French farmers walking around blasting anything that moved, so we didn't linger too long in anyone place for the fear of taking a peppering of buckshot.

The lanscape of a small portion of the 1916 battlefields

The main reason we were in France was to work on trenches that we had excavated in previous years. A few years ago, the Somme Association of Northern Ireland had bought Thiepval Woods opposite the Ulster Tower, Carol, the boss of the Somme Association had asked No Man's Land (of which I am part) to help out excavate the trenches that lay in the woods. This was in order for it to be turned into an interpretive visitor attraction for the growing tourist market in the area of the Somme. Actually it works as a non-profit attraction but tours of the trenches have to be booked at the Ulster Tower before hand and they are the only excavated original front line trenches that exist on the Somme Battlefields today.

A Mortar Pit, situated just behind the front lines, as excavated and reveted by NML and the Somme Association

Obviously the trenches need constant repair and rework in order that they don't collapse in on themselves. Over the past few years work has been done to revet and sandbag the trenches and this trip was another one of similar repair work. The trench which I had worked on for the most time was a second line trench system which had an associated dugout. The trench had cut through an early dugout, which had collapsed, possibly due to shell damage. We had quite a difficult time working out the sequence of events but a small amount of archaeology conducted on the end of the trench cleared up our confusion. I had small but crack (head) team under my supervision: Black Shining Heather, Dog Bummer Jenkins and Mo-Jo, we were augmented by the demonic sandbagging abilities of Douchebag Philips:

Area 8 team, left to right: Dog Bummer, Mo-Jo, Douchebag, Black Shining and self

We were so fucking great we had all our work done by Thursday morning a full day earlier than expected. The trenches looked fucking amazing and it was testament to everyone's hard work that we got it all completed so quickly.

Area 8 before

Area 8 after!

The rest of the week between work was taken up with drinking and playing Wings of War. The other highlight included Dr David Kenyon eating a plate of shredded carrots without using his hands for three euros. Like a fucking horse.

Go on Dobbin, get it in you..

As ever with trips to France, I come back with more things than I left with. I try to travel light but the return trip always has an increased weight bag. This time I returned with a hat that had been sitting in David's car for two years, a fake Iron Cross from the turfed out collection at the Waltham Gunpowder Mills, a pair of moleskin trousers from Steve and a pair of Army boots from Major Carling. All in all it was a great trip, especially since I haven't been out to France for eighteen months and haven't seen the Irish lot for even longer. I miss them all and it is the proof a of a great friendship that we can all get along as though no time has passed between our last meetings!

Proudly eating shit for NML since 2003

Last night was a night of something slightly different, Dave, Ross, Amy and I drove over to Leeds to spend the evening in the company of about a thousand social misfits and chronic masterbaters at the Damnation Metal Festival. We saw some great bands although the venue seemed to suffer from bad sound all the way through. I was gutted that the Romanian Negura Bunget didn't play, the singer had laryngitis apparently. I would have thought that should have only improved the performance... Rotting Christ were my overall highlight, their set was fucking great. I've been into them for over fifteen years, so to finally see them play live was great. They were full of energy as well and put on a blistering performance.

Rotting Christ, the angriest Greeks around...

The other highlight of the festival was the last ever performance by Mistress. I'd never heard them before but their set was fucking brilliant, with stage diving galore, just like it was 1991 again. The lowlight of the day was by far Akercocke, a British Black Metal band, a poor man's Emperor in their shit days. Dave said the singer and keyboardist looked like they worked in a call centre and the bassist was a homeless.

Akercocke? Shit Cock, more like

The other band I was really wanting to see was Jesu, the project Justin Broadrick formed following the split of Godflesh, as you no doubt already know. This performance was completely ruined by the sound engineer fucking everything up and playing the vocals and drums too loud in the mix. Jesu perform a delicately balanced soundscape of beautiful low-fi music and it needs to be mixed correctly to be able to appreciate Justin's incredible song writing abilities. The sound engineer should have been dragged out and shot. In the event I dragged myself out to go and watch Lock-Up, who's cover of Fear of Napalm was the highlight of their set.

Jesu: it could have been brilliant...