King Kong merrily on high

I was at the pub quiz last night and as it is close to Christ's Mass, it was a Christ's Mass themed spectacular. I'm normally above such base degradation, but in this instance each team had to sing Christ's Mass carols at the interval of every two questions. We were all given a song sheet with the lyrics on and we ended up with Once in Royal David's City. 'Fuck that!' we three said as one 'We'll do Tannenbaum. We'll do Tannenbaum, in German.' Nathan wrote out the words, since he'd spent the week learning them and when it was our turn we belted out the ditty.

We do what we want, and we do it with style...

It went rather well, except of the three of us, two had shaven Neo-Nazi style skinheads and I was wearing my Tiger Tank t-shirt. Added to this Nathan's Seig Heiling posturing and also adding the last line' The Fatherland will rise again!' to the song and it was like the Bürgerbräukeller Putsch and Kristalnacht all rolled into one!

 C'mon Adolf! Sing louder!!

The night ended with each of the teams having to sing a line from the Twelve Days of Christ's Mass. We had Twelve Drummer Drumming. I like this song as it has nothing to do with religion and you can belt out
Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive Gold Rings!! 
As the the entire pub did, every time it came round...

I spent today in a blasting icy wind on a hill in Huddersfield trying to hold onto the archive, directing Nick where to put his survey rod and fighting off a hangover caused by too many Roosters.

Eyes Like Piss Holes In Snow

I have been working up in Masham for the better part of the last week. The job is good for several reasons, one that there isn't actually much work for me to do, so I sit about reading the paper and books about the Great War until I am called out of the car to watch them machine through made ground. Another thing is that the lads on the site are good fun. The dumper driver has 'Tab the Muffer' written on the back of his helmet. He has teeth like a row of burnt fence posts and is the approximate size of a pregnant elephant. He's a good lad. The digger driver has that look of the village simpleton, but as he is in charge of a three ton machine, I guess he must have something about him. The banksman stands about three foot high. He's like a midget, but with a normal sized head. He looks a bit like a Beavis Bobblehead toy. They have a good banter between them and most of the time I stand just laughing at them calling each other cunts.

'You cunt!' 

'You cunt!' 

'You cunt!'

The third and best thing about working in Masham is the butcher's shop just around the corner from site. I found it when I walked around town on the first day looking for somewhere to buy a paper. It seems that knowledge is not needed in Masham. There is only one paper shop in this mid-sized town. One paper shop, but approximately four thousand six hundred and twelve sandwich shops. I guess people get their outside information in Masham from the farmers coming in for the Wednesday market. They bring stories from the greater world that they picked up during their Sunday visits to church. News of Germany's defeat in the First World War only made it to Masham three weeks ago.  But then why would a place need news when it is home to two of the countries finest breweries, Black Sheep and Theakston's? Just get arseholed and forget the outside world! Anyhoo, this butcher's shop is probably the best I've been in for a long while. I have made it my duty to buy a pork pie every day so far. And good God, are they good pork pies. The butcher now knows a bit about me, he knows I'm there as an archaeologist and he knows I like pork pies. What more does he need to know? My name, nar, he just calls me 'boss'. So I sit in the car watching the rain teem down, listening to Jeremy Vine patronise his listeners and eating Pork Pies. What's not to like about Masham?

Pie: Pork

 Pie: Chicken

There was another 'gathering' of On-site staff on Saturday night. I thought to myself, I'll just have a couple, save a bit of money. Stanners had organised it, and told me that 'pretty much' everyone was going to be there. In the end only myself, Kate, Ryan, Sir Stanners and G-funk came out. Fuck the rest of them. Who needs those bellends when we've got the cream of the crop? Anyway, I threw a load of beer all over Kate's feet, told G-Funk what I really thought of someone, that I probably shouldn't have and ended up incredibly wankered and penniless in the Lowther at 2AM.  Sunday has been lost in a day of recovery.

OK, this is a bit awkward. I was a little drunk last night and I really can't remember your name... But would you like some breakfast?

I was chatting to someone t'other day about what makes me happy. I couldn't really think of a list, but I was also thinking of it when I was driving up from London the other day. I like it when lorry drivers flash their lights me when I allow them to pull out in front of me on the motorway. It feels like you've done a nice little deed for your fellow man. In fact I go out of my way to allow lorries to pull out in front of me, just to get that little hit of the light flash. I also like it when the butcher in Masham calls me 'boss', so I'm not going to tell him my real name.

On Martson Moor Baht'at

The esteemed Mr McKibbin and He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named rolled into town this weekend, demanding that they stay at my house. What could I do to refuse? HWCBN gave me such a thrashing that I lost consciousness three times and the sight in my right eye due to the crushing of my orbit as the blows rained down on me from his billy club. When I finally came round the two were ensconced on my sofa braying at my predilection like crows. It will take weeks to remove the blood from the carpet. The reason they were in town was because Pragya was having the final of three marriages, all to the same bloke, go figure. Three marriages and I had not been invited to a single one. Not only that, but I was expected to put up these two, who had been invited. Talk about rubbing my face in it. What am I?  A fucking hotel? I took umbrage at this turn up of events and went to Nathan's housewarming party instead. But before I did, the three of us went out for a drive at HWCBN's insistence. He broke my ulna as a warning. First stop was to Marston Moor to have a good look at where King Cromwell had smashed the Frenchies in 1389 or something, then it was off to Spofforth Castle to have a good look at some ruins where King Cromwell had smashed the Frenchies in 1389 or something. Here are two photos taken by the amazing talents of McKibbin:

Marston Moor

Me

As I said, that evening I took myself off to Nathan's housewarming party where he had dug a ten foot deep fire pit and stuffed an entire reindeer down there to cook. Later all Hell broke loose involving blue cheese. The less said about that incident, the better. In other news, I have mostly been hopping back and forth between sites and have spent a bit of time at Hes East helping Becky finish off the Roman well she's been hacking out. I present a series of photos for your delight and to give you some idea of the conditions we have to work in:

Troll Piss

I went to see the Norwegian Documentary 'The Troll Hunter' last night. It served to cement my idea that Trolls do in fact exist. When I was in Iceland I saw enough evidence to point to Trolls and this documentary has only confirmed my suspicions that we are not alone in the world, but in fact are continually at the mercy of 100ft giants. Imagine being a poor Norwegian farmer and having trolls run across your land smashing the crap out of everything, just for shits and giggles. I for one am glad they use power lines to fence them in.

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

That was the weekend that was

Wow, that was a fucking busy weekend. I'd wanted a nice quiet Friday night in, watching Kagemusha and stuffing my face with pistachio nuts and bottles of beer. My plans were thwarted when I got the following text off of Denise 'Me and my friend are coming down from Edinburgh and will be stopping at your place. Not only that, but I've told her you are wild and will show us a good time in York.' What was I to do? The pressure was enormous. I hadn't seen Denise for two years and had never met her mate before. The last time I'd seen her was in Sligo when everyone was coming down from a mountain of pills taken at a beach party. It was time to pull out the big guns and no mistake. I took them to the House of Trembling Madness to meet up with some archaeologists. Despite this, they did seem to enjoy themselves, with the exception of one guy who was an absolute cunt and trying to make an argument with everyone he came across. He was so much of a cunt that Kirk actually told him to his face that he was a cunt. Surprisingly, he was offended by the idea that he might be a cunt. You'd think if you were a cunt and someone told you that you were, it would only serve to confirm your suspicions that you were, after all, a cunt and should start thinking about changing your cuntish ways. Let's just hope that Kirk's newsflash worked in his favour and he has stopped being a cunt now.

Just stop already.

All that besides, Dervla had not only grown up in the last two years (she was able to give and receive hugs now...), but she had been inked upon. She lives in Andover where Chinooks are a common sight overhead and it has now become her lifelong dream to get a ride in one (this dream surpasses her earlier lifelong dream of holding a lamb. Unfortunately this dream has never been realised, so she has had to make do with another one). In an attempt to get a ride in a Chinook she befriended a soldier, who promised her the world (and a ride in a Chinook), all she had to do was endure endless mind numbing phone calls where he asked her what her favourite colour was. Quickly tiring of this she never got the ride she was promised, but then neither did she have to ride the sentry, so all's fair in love and war, I guess. Anyway, I suppose she thought the next best thing to riding in a Chinook was to have one tattooed on herself. Which she did and is without a shadow of a doubt the single best tattoo I have ever seen:

Womp womp womp

No sooner had I waved Dervla and Kristy (as was her friend's name) off, than I was off to pick up Gilbert and Kirky and whisk them away to Posh Bastard's country pile. For nearly a year he had been promising to host a barbecue for us survivors of Engaruka. It was complete coincidence that Gilbert was in town from Kenya for a week, but the barbecue was more spurred on by the fact that Mrs Posh Bastard was having a clear out of her old records and had promised me some Slayer vinyl. Now, I have a passing interest in both Slayer and vinyl, so this was great news indeed and any opportunity like that should be seized upon with great gusto. It took half an hour to drive down PB's drive and we were greeted by a butler upon arrival. PB and Mrs PB arrived moments later on horseback, covered in the blood of the hunt and surrounded by foxhounds that yapped at our ankles. PB seated us outside (an ancient law he quoted; something about proles not being allowed under the roof) until the weather took an inclement turn and he grudgingly allowed us into the West Wing. The food didn't stop coming and I was gripped with meat stroke yet again, for about the sixth time this summer. Not only that but our munching was drowned out with the dulcet tones of Slayer, Metallica, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. Gilbert was taken away by the funniest taxi driver that North Yorkshire has to offer and the rest of us were free to continue drinking like fish and playing shithead, only interrupted by the occasional bellowing of SLAYEEEEERRRRRR!!!!

Posh bastards...

Mrs PB suddenly decided that it was time for everyone to go to bed and Kirky and I were shown our respective rooms, mine was up in the garret of the North Tower, his, a fourth floor lodging overlooking the gardens and the fountains. PB dressed in his finest tweed for breakfast the following morning and piled more bacon on us than the local pig farms could handle. I spent the afternoon lying on my couch in the recovery position watching The Redemption of General Butt Naked until Pins texted me about meeting up for a drink in the evening. She and Dermo were over from Northern Ireland for various weddings and such and were camping close to York. I met the two of them and we ended up in the Punch Bowl waiting for an hour for clap cold food whilst a Brazilian couple on the table besides us beat the shit out of their six year old son. Refusing the food and demanding a refund we eventually ensconced ourselves in the Bombay Spice and had a feast of curry that was only two hours after we had originally decided to eat...

Time, Gentlemen

Friday night was the bi-millennial On-Site drinks do. About three years ago Kate had cast the Runes and they had indicated this date and as fortune would have it, the stars were also in alignment (for the first time in 10,500 years). So it was decided that we lowly few, we band of bastards, should gather on the field of conflict and drink as much as humanely possible. Getting the crew from On-Site together to drink is such a painful task that it only occurs rarely and even then the full compliment of twits is not realised. Berny needs to get a babysitter (for himself), Brucey is off dropping children all over town at various Rainbow Brownie meetings, Ryan is up to his nuts in guts, Kate has been told the wrong fucking time, Logan Josh is off at some non-existent 'gig'. It's just too hard for one person to handle from an organisational point of view. It's akin to handling the logistics of the Afrika Korps and their landings at Tripoli. We had a date, as decided by the Gods and held on to it for our lives, come what may. So it was with certain trepidation that I approached the Maltings wondering who would be in there, or who would even turn up at all.

You sure we got the right day?

I shouldn't have worried, approach to the Maltings netted us Kamil and Berny, lurking in the streets like Burke and Hare. Upon arrival, I immediately saw Sir Stanners setting about a ruffian with his swagger stick. After clubbing said hooligan to the floor, Stanners (half cut from three days binge drinking) greeted us (Myself, Lauren and Steve, making a guest appearance. That's Lauren and Steve making a guest appearance, not me. I'm not a guest, I'm an employee. Oh, never mind) and the rest of the cunts duly filed in. We drank, we swore, we drank some more and by and by Logan Josh appeared as if out of nowhere. The bouncers wouldn't let him in due to his appearance and we made plans to meet him at the Akhorne. In the Akhorne were various people I'd met at Josh's birthday party, albeit not in military uniform this time. I spent my time there braying at Barry's muscle shirt and talking to Mrs Josh about buying cats. Despite a protracted argument with Josh about the logistics of 'all coming back to mine' rather than 'all getting a fucking taxi into the middle of nowhere (Huntington), getting pastis forced down our throats and then having to get another fucking taxi back on ourselves back to mine', myself, Lauren and Steve crashed out at some ungodly hour, drunk as cunts. Meanwhile, Stanners followed some young doris back to hers waiting for the rohypnol to kick in. A good night was had by all.

Thank fuck that's over for another forty years...

I was also on Telly again the other night, only as a photo though. Blink and you'd miss it, but follow this link below and I appear in the first fifteen minutes. I wouldn't bother with the rest of the show. It's shit and I'm not in it.

HISTORY COLD CASE: THE YORK 113

Dead Skin Mask

As promised I have uploaded some photos of last week's trip out to Bridlington.

OK, not Bridlington, but York. The RA were brought in to help reduce the pockets of resistance left in Tang Hall

The most exciting thing to happen all week:  a Sea King went over site.

How site looked when I arrived...

Dave Rhodes rocks, but gently...

Carolyn, the finest stripper the East Coast has to offer...

Coming attractions...

HELP! HELP! I'M TRAPPED! CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?

Bridlington knows its audience

 

'I'll take the Daniel O'Donnell pepper pot (I've already got a salt shaker...) and the Meercat figurine, please..'

A fitting tribute to the Hero of Damascus, a sun dial...

...overlooked by a council flat.

When I first saw this, I thought it said 'Wayward Ho'. Promising so much. Then I reread it and wondered what the fuck they were trying to say?
'Go West! It's better than this shithole in the east!'

The bright shopping experiences of Bridlington, just like Milan

Wide European style boulevards packed with cafes serving coffee twenty four hours of the day...

A bustling and lively seafront awaits...

'What year is this? Who's the President?'

Bridlington battles racism

Shadows over Bridlington, Cthulhu is risen...

Children of the corn...

After a week of fucking the site

This weekend I bought a metric fuckload of meat and beer (costing exactly £66.60p!!) for a small gathering in order to celebrate Cap'n Blighty's return from the colonies. Since marrying Pocahontas he has been working as a missionary bringing the Good Word to the Oneida. The news of his arrival drew in Mithras from Middle Earth and Tarquin Sheen from the frozen wastes of Ultima Thule. Moogdroog's highly developed sense of smell sniffed the whiff of burnt meat on the wind and also turned up, banging on the door, demanding food.

With a lack of garden furniture Moogdroog forced me to move the settee out of the house into the garden whilst raining blows down on me. It later lashed it down and my settee is still damp.

Stop hitting me!

Tarquin demonstrated his style of self defence that seems to centre around stabbing everyone before they get you.

I'm gonna fucking cut you!

And as usual with all my friend's gatherings the evening progressed into a drunken orgy of violence and comics.

And I finally brought the evening to a head by demonstrating the Manowar power fist to Cap'n Blighty at 3.00am whilst playing Sons of Odin at full blast.

The following day, we ditched Cap'n Blighty and the rest of us headed out to Wharram Percy to find the deserted medieval village. We searched and searched all afternoon in the lashing rain but we couldn't see no fucking village. The only thing we saw was a bunch of lumps in the ground. There were a few information boards scattered around indicating where the ploughs and sackbuts were kept, but beyond that, there was no sign of a Medieval village at all. It was a right fucking rip off. Well, it would have been if we'd have had to pay to get in.

'Where's the fucking village?!'

I finished the weekend off watching Hidden Fortress again with Tarquin, we both failed to spot Darth Vader in it.

Which ones are the gay robots?

And finally, Captain  Hindsight says 'The last post was NSFW, so don't look at it in a public space.'