A Perfect Vision of the Rising Northlands

You may be wondering what that is on the right hand side of the page. Well, gentle readers, it's an award from The Daily Reviewer, a blog review site and '[t]o be included in The Daily Reviewer is a mark of excellence.' Apparently this shite that I pour out has been rated as being in the top 100 Icelandic Blogs. What they don't tell you is there is only one hundred and one blogs in Iceland. I was also wondering why I got an award for an Icelandic Blog, as I haven't lived there since May, but never mind. At the end of the day I got an award and Herr Docktor Clay didn't. so:

IN YOUR FUCKING FACE CLAY!!!!

Back in my world, the titanic struggle with Tim goes on from the Summer House Plantation Trench 3. All the while the trench was being dug was an on going battle about the age of the ditch we found in the trench. It's quite obviously Roman. About halfway down the fills of the ditch was a mass of Roman pottery. Squashed pots, made from Grey Ware were coming out in handfuls. It was the same as having an inscribed stone in the base of the trench saying 'Romulus and Remus were here'. But one day, as I was walking up the field to see Tim's progress, I could hear him a whoopin' and a hollerin'. 'Flint! Flint!' he was crying. As I got to the trench, I asked him what the fuss was all about, he held up the world's smallest piece of flint and started discoursing on how the ditch was obviously prehistoric due to this empirical dating evidence. I argued it could quite easily have been dropped at any time the ditch was open, nothing more than what we call 'background flint'. He told me I was talking bollocks and ignoring the truth. The fact that he will be starting a PhD on Prehistoric South Yorkshire soon apparently has no bearing on his desperation to find evidence for prehistoric activity in an area where there is very little anyway.

The Black Hole of prehistoric activity in England

I was going over Tim's context sheets a few days later and found this little gem. It was written in the comments box of the context sheet for the ditch fill where the flint came from. I reproduce it verbatim here (the emphasises are mine):

'Also recovered were a small lump of flint, a flake of flint with a blade like edge, but unworked, a bone implement in the form of a point (the tip was intact when recovered, but broke off. The end however still shows where the point was worked), two pieces of black cylindrical material (jewelry?) and crucially, a small stone rubber of the kind that might have been used by a specialist crafts person'

These crucial pieces of archaeological dating firmly put the ditch in the Bronze Age, according to Tim's preliminary dating box on the same context sheet. I'm not sure if he's just breaking my balls at the stage or has really fallen hook, line and sinker into his own little fantasy world.

Roman Pottery in situ in SHP Trench 4: It must be Prehistoric!!!

In other work related news, Tom fell over in the night during the weekly barbecue. He was trying to move Danny's tent and paid for his horse play with a dislocated knee cap and a trip to Doncaster Accident and Emergency. He was back on site the next day, with his leg strapped up and orders not to walk on it for about six weeks. So this year's season we have seen two firsts: a human burial and an ambulance at the camp site. I also was 'arrested' by PC Pell, when he turned up to have a chat, the first time I've seen him in twenty years. Emma also showed up at the barbeque, she asked me not to slag her off in this blog, so here goes: Manowar are not Goth, you fucking ape. And finally I went for a massive Chinese meal with the extended family last night, the funniest thing was that Ian was watching in dismay from his table (who had finished their food early) as our table was served course after course of delicious grub.

Our table at Modern China, Rotherham, last night...

Skirnir

There is an Asian girl who works in the local supermarket, and it has thrown open a whole can of worms to do with communication. When I buy my produce and ask for a plastic bag I do it in English and she replies in English. Now, I am trying to integrate myself as much as possible into Icelandic culture, but far from being able to speak Icelandic I at least manage to say Hello and Thank You to shop assistants. It's not much but it's better than assuming everyone else speaks English (Which they do, by the way, but one must never assume). Turning back to this girl do I say Thank You in English, Icelandic or Chinese? Now again I'm only assuming she's Chinese, for all I know she could be Korean or Japanese although the Japanese are not generally known for being economic migrates. I would hate her to be Korean because I don't know what Thank You is in Korean. I learnt how to say Thank You in Chinese whilst in Singapore, but I don't want to come across as a patronising bastard who is assuming she's Chinese when she could, in fact, be Korean or Japanese. I know Thank You in Japanese, again learnt whilst in the country, but this really is hedging my bets with her background. I really could end up with egg on my face over that one. I also am not keen on saying Thank You in Icelandic, this is again an assumption, but I'm fairly sure she wasn't born in Iceland. She has an accent that isn't Icelandic, before you start calling me a racist. What do I do? This is a political nightmare!

China, Yesterday

Holy Shit, what a week. We have an impending 'enforced fun day' coming up. You know what I mean, everybody gets together to do some team building activities for the day then retires for a meal and gets drunk and it ends up with everybody telling everybody else what they actually think of them. I was OK with this idea if it was only happening on one day. Yesterday Bjarki unleashed a shit storm by telling us that they (The Fun Day Committee) had decided that we would all be going to a Summer House and staying over the weekend. I immediately refused. One day is fine, but an overnight stay means I have lost a weekend. We then got into a very bad tempered argument where I had to end defending my personal reasons for not wanting to spend a weekend with the people I have just spent the preceding and following five days (a total of twelve days straight) working with in an 8m by 15m tent (We measured it today). I like everyone on site with the exception of one person, (having said that I can tolerate them as long as we don't spend too much time in each others company) but the idea of spending my weekend in the middle of nowhere with the same people is my idea of Hell. I have been working in this career for the better part of ten years. Between ten and about six years ago I would have been the first to be up for this kind of activity. Now I am tired of the this hobo lifestyle that I lead, I am not happy with my particular situation but I have to put up with it. This is like an away job where I am not allowed to go home at weekends. Everyone else on site (With the exception of the foreign workers) can go back to their homes and other friends each and every night. I go home to someone else's house where my only possessions are what I can carry in a suitcase. My friends are ones I work with everyday and as good and nice as all these people are it is bliss when the weekend rolls around and I am allowed my own personal space. I am continually surrounded by and reminded of work so to slightly escape it for even two days is heaven. Maybe I'm a grumpy old man, I don't care, I know what I like and I don't like being forced to have 'fun' in the middle of nowhere with no escape routes. It turned out in the end that the committee had decided no such thing but had simply put the idea of a summer house on the table. Bjarki and I made our peace, so it was OK in the end.

Where I would prefer to be rather than at Fun Day

Thingtak played on Thursday night, they were playing with about four other bands of which the best was a group of fifteen year old lads, who played old bluesy rock covers but finished by playing the Dwarves 'I Wanna Be Your Pimp'. I ran into Ragnar from Skorpulifur who Sudoku supported the other week. He had a copy of the Icelandic glossy Celebrity gossip magazine 'Séđ Og Heyrt' (I have no idea what this means, any Icelandics reading, please let me know). There had been a photographer from the magazine at the gig and they had run an article on Skorpulifur in which Hannes, the singer, mentioned Sudoku. It went along the lines of; we played a few times with Sudoku a Ninja Metal band from Britain who wear Ninja outfits on stage.. Brilliant, thanks lads.

Skorpulifur Yesterday (Photo copyright Jo Taylor 2009)

One final thing before I finish and this gets too long. We moved offices this week, we are now underneath the Green Party's headquarters in a basement. We have to use their toilets, upstairs from our HQ, but because they are clean and we are not we have to practically strip out of our site gear and get hosed down in the yard. Not only that but you have to sneak past reception and through their coffee room looking for the toilet. What was once a three minute trip to the toilet has turned into an Odyssey for a piss. It's like Jason and the Argonaut's quest, except it's not a Golden Fleece waiting at the end but a Golden Stream.