Dad's Army

61 visitors since I posted the last entry and only 16 comments? Thank you for those that commented and fuck you for those that didn't. You shower of shit. I work my fingers to the bone writing this for nothing and you don't even bother commenting. And to answer Herr Docktor Clay, I imply you are an Evil Nazi Doctor, simply because you are an Evil Nazi Doctor.

The Evil Nazi Herr Docktor Clay explains his 'Doomsday Device MKII' to head Evil Nazis

With Brodsworth now finished for another year, I began work with Onsite again on Monday. I worked out it is almost exactly two years since I first worked for them on the Barbican site in York. All the old familiar faces were there: Lauren, Lord Sir Stanners, Alice and Wincey Willis. We are working at Nostell Priory outside Wakefield, it's Sir Stanner's country pile, he uses it as a summer house for siring himself upon the local wenches and virgins. Mind you, trying to find a virgin over the age of twelve in Wakefield is pretty tricky. He was showing me the front of the building today and I asked him which window was his bedroom, he said 'Second floor'. I asked which room on the second floor. He said 'No, all of the second floor.' In all seriousness, we were chatting about the house and Stanners said that it was too big to live in and he'd get paranoid that someone was having a party somewhere else in the house that he wouldn't be able to hear it.

Dudes! Where's the party at? No, Seriously, which room are you guys in?

In other unrelated chats, Wincey was telling us how to get a seat on a train. The method is to carry a bottle of piss with you and sprinkle it on yourself as you enter the carriage, this way no one will want to sit next to you for the duration of your journey. Whether he'd actually tried this out or not, he didn't say. Other funny things that happened over the last two days included a man with a 20 ton truck full of Aggregate who pulled up at the side of the site and asked me if we'd ordered it, I told him no, we were taking the stuff out rather than putting it back in. In sadder news I did something today that I never done in eight years of being a field archaeologist: I broke my trowel. That's right. It was a sad day for the 4" WHS that had accompanied me to Iceland. Like all archaeologists, I'm rather attached to my trowel and wept buckets for its demise. Actually, I didn't I just said some thing like 'bollocks' and used Wincey's instead.

The all new WHS 4" for excavating around corners!

1st Birthday 100th Posting Special in HD (Selected Areas Only)

Good Evening and welcome to this the 100th edition of this blog. Not only do we have that milestone, but it is exactly a year since I started writing this rubbish. So because it is worthy of a double celebration what I'd thought I'd do was, rather than spewing shit out about what I've been up to since the last posting (mainly shouting at Tim, if you were wondering...), I'm going to take stock of the last years postings and have a look at you. Yes you. The reader. You over there. Stand up, come on, let's have a look at you. You can wipe that smile off your face as well.

Stand up and be counted my adoring readers!

I've asked this before and I'm going to ask it again. I would like it, if you get the end of this post, that you could leave me a comment. You can leave it anonymously if you like, but I'd rather know the names of my readers. I have stalker software installed on this blog anyway so I know how many people are visiting it. Do me a favour. I write this for free and you read it, so do something for me. Thanks.

This blog started with Craig asking me to write about my time in Iceland and since it's start up to today I have had 2,114 unique visitors. Now, far be it for me to say that each one has returned to read more, but I'm sure some of those people have. The other none-returners have probably seen the subject matter is mainly archaeology and fled in terror. Like any right-minded person would... Be that as it may, lets have a look at the kind of people who are coming across this blog. A large portion of you are coming through Facebook; actually 38.88% are using the social networking site to get here, so that means that you know me personally. I only add people on Facebook whom I have met face to face, except for a couple of exceptions, so you know me and I know you. Actually this isn't a surprise as I update my status on Facebook with the new postings. It's the only thing that Facebook is useful for. I am actually only on Facebook because of a woman I knew, who has now deleted me as a 'friend', invited me to join it and now, like a mobile phone, it's impossible to get rid of (Facebook, not the woman...). Enough of my personal life, let's get to analyzing the people who are literally queuing up to get into this blog...

'So what's all the fuss about this here blog then?'
'Well I heard it was a witty look at the world of archaeology'
'Really? Archaeology? What the fuck have I been doing wasting my time waiting here for? I'm off to read something far more funny like Metal Inquisition!'

The more 'interesting' people are dropping in from Search Engines. Obviously the largest amounts of hits I am getting are coming through the keyword search ' In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni'. Again, pretty obvious, as are the keyword searches 'alex sotheran', ' alexsotheran iceland', 'alex sotheran york' and 'alex sotheran blogspot' (all of which are in the top ten of the most searched for phrase). But these searches are far more 'me' specific and whoever is doing it knows who they are and what (or who) they are after. Now, I'm not trying to say you're stalking me or anything, but I'm on to you...

Is this you? Are you stalking me?

These stalker weirdos are not the only ones dropping on this blog, there are some decidedly odd people searching the Internet. I mean, really, who types 'i want to teach zulu kids something about metals you idiots' into a search engine and expects to get a decent result? It's really there, in at number 94:

alexsotheran.blogspot.com: Proudly helping teach Zulu kids about Metals since 2008

Even stranger, my records read that somebody did a search for 'indin big ticky' and found my blog. Whatever an indin big ticky is, they were obviously unsatisfied with the results they went back and further refined their search to 'indin big ticky womens sex'. Mind you, this yielded the same results and they were equally unimpressed as they didn't stay long according to the time of visit result.

I want indin big ticky and I want it now!

Even further out on the edge of human society are the people that found my blog with the following searches: 'clowns fucking', 'women fucking clowns', 'grandfather shagging' and far more specific and ominous, 'russian father fucking son'. I don't remember that particular patriarchal incestuous pederast posting that I wrote, but I hope they enjoyed it.

What someone was searching for, but not what they got...

OK, lets turn our attention to where you folks are all coming from. This truly is a global affair and the stalker software tells me that people in 69 separate countries have visited my blog:

The level of green shows how bored by my blog people are...

Given that there are considered to be 195 countries in the world at the moment, I have been visited by someone in 35% of the world. The UK is obviously the top one here, closely followed by the USA and Iceland. In Ireland, Canada and Italy I also seem to have a following. There is a lot of hits from Germany, but that is because it is currently the lair of Herr Docktor Clay, my Nemesis. None of these are surprising as I know someone living in each of the afore mentioned countries, but places like Hong Kong, the Philippines, Ecuador, the Faeroe Islands, Japan, Venezuela, Macau SAR China and a whole rake of other places leave me stumped to who is actually reading this. Do I know you, or am I being monitored by Venezuelan Death Squads in case I say something untoward about Chavez? If it's you, please let me know by leaving a comment below. Something I find difficult to picture is a group of peasants sitting on an collectivised farm in Novosibirsk the middle of Russia reading my blog, but according to my records it appears to have happened, at least once...

Sergei! come quick! There's a new post about how Tim has fucked up another register! ЛОЛ!

I don't think there's much more I can say about my blog visitors (except you must be crazy to keep coming back to read this shit...) so I've come to the end of my navel gazing (thank God, I hear you collectively sigh...), thanks for getting this far. For once this post was about you and not me so I will again ask you to leave a comment, anything, even if just to slag what you just read. Let me know you are here and reading...

Don't leave me hanging on the telephone...

A quick one this. I was siting int he office today at about midday and I received a call from Tim. It went along these lines:

Him: Fuhrer, there's a problem with the cameras...

Me: Yeees, what is it?

Him: We've reached the end of the films and changed them, but the colour one seems not to rewind.(despite me telling him I would come and change all the camera film in order to reduce the possibility of fucking the films up)

Me: OK, do you need to take photos? I'll come out and sort it out.

Him: It's OK, I took two shots with the black and white film and some with the digital.

An interlude: four and a half weeks ago I told all the other supervisors to take at least two shots of every archaeological feature with both the colour slide and black and white film cameras. Also back up shots would be taken with the digital camera. This is standard practise through the archaeological world.

Me: OK, but you need to take some with the colour slide as well. I've told you that before.

Him: But why? I got some with the black and white.

Me: But you need to take some with all the cameras or you will fuck the registers up.

Interlude: This has happened before. People take different amount of photos with the different cameras and the photo registers don't match up. I don't understand how such a simple operation can get cocked up, especially after I told the others and even wrote this information on the photo register, but there you go.

Him: But for what reason? You've already got the pictures.

Me: We haven't got colour slide pictures and because this is how it is done in archaeology.

Him: That's not a reason. You're just telling me what's happened before!

Me: OK the reasons are, what if one photo is blurred or out of focus? What if the light changes? You need black and white and colour pictures to be able to detect soil differences. That's why we take two pictures with each camera. That's why you have to take two picture with each camera.

Him: But they're not proper reasons, you should start asking why you are doing these things instead of blindly following traditional thinking!

Me: I've just fucking explained to you why things are done as they are. Are you saying we should throw away the 40year old rule book, just becasue you don't agree with it? Is today going to become the start of a new archaeological era, because you don't agree with how things have been done for the better part of half a century? Is this how Tim Cockrell advances archaeology? By rubbishing established fact and creating a new archaeological epoch where recording becomes the 'land of do as you please'?

I was waiting for him to get back to the office with a sharpened ranging pole in my hand...

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...

A Confederacy of Dunces

Since my last posting I have been working every day God sends. I may as well, these opportunities don't come around often so I may as well make as much out of it as possible. Brodsworth is quite a laugh anyway. Especially when I'm doing everybody else's paperwork. I have been going over Kyle's records. I was quite dreading it, given the struggle I had with Tim's paperwork, but it was surprisingly easy to clean up. The best thing I found was on one of the context sheets, the sheet for context 4018 in fact. In the relationship box, where one describes the context and it's place in archaeological space and time, Kyle had written '4018 was the context below 4018'. I was scratching my head for a while wondering how an archaeological layer can be below the same archaeological layer? Then today I was going over the paperwork for the testpits and I found one of Ryan's context sheets. On the reverse is a box for the interpretation of the context. There is a 'preliminary date' box in which one writes the date one assumes the context is, i.e. Roman, Medieval, Prehistoric, etc. Ryan had put '18/08/09'; the date he'd filled in the context sheet. I told him would have worked had he prefixed '18/08/09' with 'pre-', but that's just semantics.

Meanwhile, back at Trench 3...

In other news, back at Summer House Plantation Trench 3, the battle to win the hearts and minds of Tim goes on... The trench was supposed to have been finished last week, but Tim was allowing the students excavate mouse skeletons. I stood on the side of the trench and asked why they were excavating mouse skeletons when we had deadlines and was told 'the Romans ate mice, so it could be an important find.' Arthur the Farmer who owns the land was also there and was also berating Tim for this stupidity. We got into a discussion about whether the Romans had farms to raise mice, before they realised that cows and pigs have more meat on them...

A Roman Mouse Farm, before the culinary revolution that introduced beef and pork to the Roman diet...

Today I was, again, breathing down Tim's neck to finish Trench 3 when the following happened. One of the girls was excavating the bottom of the ditch and Tim shouted her in a humorous fashion about her trowelling. She didn't hear him properly, because she is hearing impaired, and she told him so. Tim responded with 'Oh that's a very convenient excuse isn't it?' To which I was desperately trying to get his attention, saying 'No Tim, it's true, she really is hearing impaired.' To which Tim's completely monstrous reply was 'If you don't want to do something I tell you to do, you can just say that your battery died!' I think he outdid anything I could ever come up with with the crassness of this remark...

Striving for Mediocrity!!

Tonight U2 are playing in Sheffield Arena. Normally this wouldn't be a problem. At least all the fucking Moronic U2 fans are enclosed in one place, getting them off the streets. The problem is I was going to go to a site visit and introduction to the Redmires POW camp community archaeology project. I have an active interest in Battlefield Archaeology and, more recently, community projects along these lines, so this would have been a great opportunity for me. The fact the U2 are playing tonight means that I can't get across Sheffield for the meeting as the roads will be packed with brainless oafs clamoring to sycophant in front of their idols. This is just one of another of a long list of reasons why I hate U2. Not that I needed many more anyway. I have always hated them to such a degree that I am unable to physically listen to their music in any form or another. Johnny Cash did a cover of the U2 track 'One' on his American III Solitary Man album. I immediately reach for the FWD button on my CD player when the first few notes begin, this is the only song that I ever do this with. It's like an OCD reaction to it. A Pavlovian response that has been drilled into me by a reaction against mediocrity. Because that's what U2 are, they are mediocre. No nonsense, straight line, stand up BORING. Not only is Boner a massive fucking hypocrite, what with preaching we should all be giving our hard earned money to the poor of the world, but then flying his FUCKING HAT around the world in First class to the tune of a thousand pounds, but he has no talent or originality. The band have found their rut and are staying in it. They haven't developed a single bit in the 33 long years they've been going. The shit they first recorded sounds the same as the garbage they are dragging out now. I hate them and their lack of artistic movement with every inch of my being, if my rage were a gun I'd shove it down Boner's fucking throat and pull the trigger until it goes click! Music is about dynamism, creativity, breaking barriers, just look at the brilliant Faust for Christ's Sake! U2 fans wouldn't even know bands like this exist because they're happy with their safe, inoffensive idols. U2 make music for people who don't like music. U2 are a crime against humanity, act now! It's time to make Boner History!

Stop the madness, say NO to U2!

I had the weekend off after almost collapsing on Friday and didn't return to work until Monday. Happily the site hadn't been reduced to a burning pile of rubble by Tim. He had managed to fuck up some registers in the two days I was absent however, so no change there then. The rest of the week has passed pretty quietly, except that we lost Dane through a BMX related injury and although he came close to having his leg amputated he should pull through. We all miss him on site and his lack of presence is very noticeable.

Get well soon, big man!!

Sucking the Sour Vine

Now that all the holiday and guest blogs are out of the way I can get back to telling you about the mundanity of my life. For the past two weeks I've been back working at the Brodsworth Archaeology Project for Sheffield and Hull universities. As ever with student excavations most days are as chaotic as a Chinese Fire Drill. This season I have taken on a larger role than I did last year in controlling things. Not only am I sorting out the roster for the students everyday, I am checking up all the records that are coming in from the other supervisors and running around like a blue arsed fly dropping off various bits of equipment for the other supervisors when they invariably forget to take them with them onto site. Added to that I am also giving advice on the archaeological excavations as they happen. Given the fact I haven't had a day off since returning from Italy there is little wonder that I nearly collapsed with a combination of sunstroke, exhaustion and dehydration on Friday and have taken the past two days off. As luck would have it I was going to take the weekend off anyway and head down to the World War One nerd fest at the Royal Gunpowder Mills, being run by my mate Dr David Kenyon. As luck wouldn't have it, I was too fucked to drive the two hours to London, so I missed that event as well, something I'd been looking forward to for ages.

Although this probably isn't actually happening at the Royal Gunpowder Mills WW1 Event, it's my impression of what I'm missing out on...

Also added to the piles of stress that I have had I have been having a running battle with Tim, one of the other supervisors, about his record keeping. Now, Tim may be fucking brilliant at painting Wargaming Miniatures, but his context sheets and registers could do with a little more work. Archaeology is by no means Brain Science, neither is it Rocket Surgery, but it seems to baffle Tim. As I have explained to him, at the most basic level is the importance of keeping good records. When the site is finished it is destroyed, we have no way of ever looking back at what we have done except through the records we keep as we go along. The very foundation of this record keeping are the registers. They help enormously during the post-excavation phase of the job but also they help so that we don't double up numbers during the actual site work. Every archaeological context we excavate has to have a number, it goes in the context register. Every drawing we do has to be given a number in the drawing register. Every sheet that every drawing is on also has to have a number which is put in the sheet register. Every photograph we take has to be entered into the photographic register. Do you see a pattern emerging here? Tim doesn't.

'Hmmm, which register is this? The one that counts how many mistakes Tim has made today?'

In Tim's world, I am a fucking mind reader who can second guess the work he is doing when I am not there on site. Usually I'm busy correcting his mistakes in the office. If I had a pound for each time I have had to rub out numbers or void them from the sheets and drawings, I would have about £3,987,456 and could retire from archaeology once and for all. Most basic of all, the registers are all sequential, i.e. 1001, 1002, 1003, etc (the thousand number indicates which trench is being excavated at the time, again so you know instantly where the number has come from). The most basic of basic maths. After nearly a week of beating this into him, Tim produced his context register for me to look at. It ran, I shit you not, like this:

3002
4001
3001

I think he must have set up some random number generator to get the numbers, either that or he just PULLED THEM OUT OF HIS ASS!!! Without my calm and reassuring presence, God alone knows what state the site will be in tomorrow when I return to work, I'm half expecting it to be a smouldering pile of ruins with Tim standing over it shouting 'What the fuck is going on?!'

'And the next context number is...'

I was trying, in vain, to find a picture of Myleene Klass presenting the Lottery for the above illustration, so to finish up here is one of her in just her pants instead. Don't say I never do anything for you.

'Calm down Alex, everything's OK, forget about the context registers. Look, I'm in just my pants.'