If you know of a better 'ole... then go to it pt2

Welcome to the second part of my archaeological memories, if you missed part one, find it here. Before I begin, you are cordially invited to leave your own comments and memories of lunatics you have met working in archaeology, c'mon, let's get a database gong here! After working at Castell Henllys for six weeks I only managed to get a job tour guiding for York Archaeological Trust at their St Leonard's Hospice site in the centre of York. Some may remember this site when Time Team dug there expecting Medieval hospital remains. The only Medieval period remains they found was a single column base. The rest had been fucked out by a Second World War Air raid shelter. The fact that the older residents of York repeatedly came along and said 'Oh yes, that's where the air raid shelter was, you'll never find anything there...' didn't stop them from digging. A little local knowledge goes a long way...

'Is it Roman, Tony?'
'No you daft cunt it's an air raid shelter and drop that fucking stupid accent, isn't it strange you don't have it when you're in the pub when filming has finished? And another fucking thing, get that fucking hat cleaned, there's more sweat on it than a whore's mattress.'

I digress... I could find no digging work in the UK. The country was recovering from the foot and mouth crisis and there was scant employment opportunities. Ireland on the other hand, was still running at full tilt with the Celtic Tiger boom and it needed roads and needed them fast. The EU was pouring money into the country like it was going out of fashion. Well, toothless simpletons riding bareback on horses, travelling on dirt roads weren't going to give Ireland the infrastructure it needed to compete with the Robotic Germans was it? In order to build the roads, the developers needed to sort out the archaeology before building could begin. On the back of this EU money several million Irish archaeological companies set up shop and had a piece of the Euro pie. I got work with ADS (Archaeological Development Services ltd), from here on in you will notice there is an awful lot of Acronyms in Archaeology, most have the letter A in them somewhere. The worst, in every possible sense of the word, and I shit you not this is the real name of a company, is ARS. Anyhoo, having applied by email one evening and then getting a reply the first thing the following morning desperately asking when I could start work (I should have noticed something was up at this point. A company with so much turnover of staff must be a good one right? Wrong...) I found myself in the Hostel at Wicklow town awaiting work here:


The Cullenmore bends. You will notice this looks more like a motorway interchange than an archaeological site. That's because it is. Please, do try catch up at the back. As I've explained most of the Irish sites we were working on were ahead of road building schemes, so most of the satellite images show roads now rather than the fields I knew them as. Now this was a baptism of fire and it was only the sheer brilliance of the digging staff (Bennen, Rupert, Angelos, Ger, Jonny, Charlotte, Jo, Pins and Cillian, to name but a few of whom I am still good friends with) that kept me going for the three months I was on this site. What was up with this site? First off, the Director Catherine was the biggest cunt I have ever come across, I have worked for many other people since and not one has come anywhere close to be such a colossal worthless piece of shit of a human being as Catherine. She was a complete control freak, she hated me with a passion, not only was I English, but male and also had an opinion. Secondly, we were not allowed to talk on site, one of the few things that gets you through the day in archaeology is chatting with your co-workers. With this basic human right thrown out of the window we were nothing more than slaves. I broke this rule so much that I was actually sent about 100 meters away to work alone from the rest of the crew.

'Guys! Guys! Where are you! Is it tea break yet? Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?'

Amongst other luminaries of the Irish Archaeological world that populated this site were the brothers Jimmy and Mick, every fortnight on the Thursday payday they would disappear off from work and not return for about four days until their wallets were empty and their skins full. We had Lenny, who would eat only mustard sandwiches. We had the fat Scottish Lisa who would eat only Nutella out of a jar with a spoon. We had that prematurely bald cunt Dan who had his tongue so far up anyone in charge's arse he couldn't talk properly. At the time I didn't realise how easy it was to get other work otherwise I would have got out of there quicker. It took me three months in Hell to call up another company and get work, It was for VJK (Valerie J. Keeley) and the controversial Carrickmines site...


This was the biggest site I've ever worked on, there were about 120 people on site at it's peak. The site was being excavated for no less than two years... The site huts resembled a refugee camp that had become semi permanent and at least one person was camping in the grounds of the excavation.

Soweto or Carrickmines? The difference is there is running water in Soweto...

I can't even begin to scratch the surface of the amount of freaks that were at Carrickmines. It was like one massive Care in the Community program. We had Cedric the Bretonian Bagpipe playing Frenchman, Eoghin the Space Cadet (his mother would make his sandwiches every day, when she went away on holiday she would put them in the freezer for him with the day written on the bag...), Timo the Finnish Sex Pest who went off on European sex jaunts and would text people on site with his successes, often actually during the act, Jim '18' Wheeler, who managed to write up his area of the site from inside the cabins, these are just four that spring to mind. There was a three legged dog called 'Stumpy', there was another one with all four legs intact and to tell them apart this one was called 'Not Stumpy'. As Frisbee and dope were the order for the day at Carrickmines, there's little wonder it took so long to excavate. It truly was as if the circus had come to town. There were mud fights, worm eating contests and moat swimming episodes, all of which invariably ended up in the Magic Carpet pub...

Cath probably only got 20 Euros for swimming the moat, this shows how depserate for money we archaeologists are...

The madness had to come to an end and Carrickmines finally did finish and I had to find another job. I threw my lot in with IAC (Irish Archaeological Consultancy (are you keeping up?)) at Kilkock (no, not a town full of Lesbians):


As you can see on the picture I have marked the entire length of the road as I can't locate the actual field we were in. Most of the landscape was ripped out so the recognisable features have disappeared. So sue me. I do remember we had to walk over several fields to get to site, some of which were full of Rams. Gerry 'Magic-these-gloves-smell-like-balloons' Carty would always stop and admire them. 'That's a fine head o' Rams there' he would say. IAC were always 'saving' money and this site was not exempt from this, the site furniture had to be made by one of the crew out of the surrounding fence posts and whatever else could be scavenged, we archaeologists are nothing if not resourceful... I worked at the Kilkock site from September to December, in the deepest winter. We only had two gas rings to heat ourselves with. The crew would spend the breaks huddled together for warmth, given that we were all covered in filth from the disgusting conditions outside it was like we were fighting at Stalingrad. I tried to find a photo that I have that shows the conditions we worked in, I couldn't find it so the following picture gives some idea of how we were working:

Imagine this with more mud and you have Kilkock...

There weren't so many freaks on the site at Kilkock, there was the Frodo Baggins look-a-like Niall, but beyond Emma eating teabags for a bet one break there wasn't much else. The madness happened off site, like when we were evicted from our house for having a party during which another certifiable nutter, Belgian Paul was caught pissing up against the wall in the kitchen. A day after the eviction I left to go on a holiday in Romania for a few weeks and came back to find the site finishing, so looking around for work I made the fine choice of working for CRDS (Cultural Resource Development Systems, say What!?). We had the honour of working before the car park went in at the high class Golf course on the K Club in Straffan, County Kildare:


Again, identifying the actual location of the site is impossible given that it has all changed since the Winter of 2002/2003. This was a great site, I was working with good people: Aaron, Laura, Denis and Donal, the archaeology was nothing to write home about and we were still in the depth of winter, one morning we were mattocking the frozen ground, we didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I tell you there is nothing like breaking the ice covering your feature before bailing out the freezing water below at 8.00am to make you feel ALIVE! This was also the time Aaron was sleeping on my floor in the Dublin Dungeon. 'I'll only be about two weeks' he promised me. Three months later he was still feeding me Chinese takeaways and walking through my bedroom to take a shit every morning at 6.00am on the dot (the toilet wasn't in my room, you just had to pass through it to get there...). CRDS were at their best during this time. They were small, I knew all the permanent staff and management and they did their best to look after Laura and I, giving us post-ex work when they could have laid us off. I have always maintained CRDS were the best company I ever worked for in Ireland. During this time at CRDS I managed to sly my way onto No Man's Land excavations at Ocean Villas, in France.


I'm afraid this was the best resolution picture I could find of Auchonvillers, so it will have to do. This was the first taste of Battlefield archaeology I got and I had a great time and met many good friends through this project. I still remember the thrill when mattocking a section to straighten it and about one hundred British .303 rifle bullets fell out...

After this short excusion to France, I flew back to Ireland and went back with CRDS, but that will have to wait until part three...

If you know of a better 'ole... then go to it pt1

In lieu of anything really funny or exciting happening on site (unless you call Robot the Bruce's cruel and unusual punishments funny or exciting, like making me trowel natural bedrock for three days solid...) I was thinking about all the places I'd worked on over the years. I've already done three posts previously that was similar with some moderate success. This one will be longer as I have worked on more sites that I have lived in houses, but as before I will break it down into parts so you at the back don't get too bored. I'm going to give a brief overview of the sites and the archaeology therein, but don't worry there should be a few funny stories about some of the personalities that worked on these sites.

I was going to start right at the very beginning but I couldn't find the location of the site at Thundercliffe Grange, where I worked for one day as a fifteen year old lad. I had a trowel and I found some 19th century pottery so it counts as archaeology in my book... I also did a bit of work on Stanton Moor and Beauchief Abbey during my GCSE Archaeology night class years, but again memory escapes me as to which field work we planned and which bit of the grounds we ran a geophysical survey over, respectively... So I'll have to start with my University excavations:


Ingleby, Derbyshire. This is Heath Wood where we excavated two Viking Cremation mounds and two Landrover wheel ruts. This was my very first excavation proper, it was Summer 1999, I was an enthusiastic young pup. An eager digger, trowel at the ready, searching for the past. Boy, how times have changed... It was on this site that I first made contact with the Evil Nazi Dr John Clay, I think it was the first human contact he'd ever had, as he had been hatched from an egg in a laboratory and kept in a cage for the better part of his life until this point. We also had on the team, the extremely weird Stuart Wilson. He had been told by his dentist that sugar was actually good for his teeth, that the crystals in the sugar filled in the gaps in his teeth. When there was a run to the local shop Stuart would request a 2kilo bag of sugar. He ate it straight out of the bag with a spoon...

The following Easter found me in Abingdon, back at school, well the back yard of Abingdon School. As one of Britain's premier boarding schools my working class roots felt a little out of sorts there. And that was even during half term where the pupils had gone home to Mater and Pater and the 500 acres they owned just outside of Epsom. I was there to learn how to use the floatation sieves, in preparation of working at Castell Henlys, more of which later... I remember very little about this excavation, I'm sorry, but here it is...


A year later I went back to Ingleby and then over to Japan for three weeks work at Toyama University's site up in the Aomori prefecture in Northern Japan. Now I can't for the life of me find a picture of the site as it was under a tree canopy and there are lot of tree canopies in the Aomori Prefecture, so instead I've found the community hall where we all stayed in the tiny village of Siura:


Rob and I were housed in this community centre, whilst Pins, Stan and Wendy were all housed with the other girls in the Cat Killer Cell. One of the first nights we were there Rob and I were drinking together whilst waiting for the girls to come over. We were saying 'Chin Chin' before each drink, Withnail and I style, and noticed some of the Japanese Students had a taken an amused interest in what we were doing... We saluted them with 'Chin Chin' rather loudly several times and they seemed to take great delight in this. We found out a couple of days later we'd been shouting 'Cock' at the top of our voices... Here are some more Japanese words that we learned in our time there...

Curimundi = Arrested
Saru ga Shinda = the monkey is dead
Unabe = Lesbian
Chikusho = Shit
Uchujin = Spaceman
Dame Da Korya = Aye Caramba

As you can tell it was a very cultural visit.

What was less of a cultural visit was six weeks spent in South Wales at Castell Henlys, where I was in charge of the afore mentioned Flotation device... I spent the first couple of weeks up to my elbows in freezing water. After a while I realised I could get the students to do the shit work and spent the remaining time laid down sorting through the floated samples. This in turn led onto what became known as 'Lazy Bastarditis' or Housemaids knee on my elbow. My elbow swelled up to three times the size of my head and I was packed off back to York, much to my own relief, mainly at getting out of Wales.


The main site is to the right of the red circled area, but it was under the circle where the floatation tank was set up, so that is where I spent six weeks of my life one summer. This was a student excavation so we had a fair run of lunatics. One of whom, Sam, was a caught on the edge of a 6ft sheer drop mattocking the ground away from under him. I had him for a day and sent him off for a 'long stand', he didn't come back for an hour or so. I believe is still working in archaeology, for Oxford North at last count. Jesus if they'll take him they'll take anyone...

OK, that wraps up part one, the next part will deal with some of the sites in Ireland that I worked on, and if you think I'd already met a few lunatics then these lads were nothing on the madness that awaited in the Green Isle...

Fucking stupid Brain

How come you don't see someone for nine months, hear hardly a word from them for six months, talk to them for an hour and spend the next two weeks thinking about them? Stupid fucking human emotions, I wish I was a German Robot, like Kraftwerk...

Table Cop 2

I asked Herr Docktor Clay if he had any Table Cop material hiding in the dark recesses of his computer. Apparently the stupid bastard must have deleted it all, as he said he didn't but I definitely remember him writing at least one script that had a great scene between Manners and his arch Nemesis the Phantom Whittler. I didn't mention the Whittler before, but he was another important character in the show. The Whittler would have been Manners' enemy throughout the series, a mysterious figure of whom only Manners could see the clues, the wood shavings at every crime scene, the bottle of wood polish in the darkened alleyway. I always imagined the Whittler to look a bit like the Phantom Flan Flinger from Tiswas, but with wood tools instead of the pies...

Take that Manners! Oh sorry, wrong show...

Anyway, the scene that Herr Docktor Clay had written involved a battle between Manners and the Whittler atop a miniature train in a park. I don't remember much of it except that Manners would have been foiled again and ousted from the roof of the last carriage. The final shot was the Whittler disappearing around the corner on the train laughing while Manners stood and shook his fist in rage.

Imagine a titanic battle between two opposing but unmovable forces across the carriages of this train and you have an idea of the 'missing' Table Cop scene...

The Docktor and I also had an idea about getting the program commissioned. We reckoned if there was enough public demand to see the show then the BBC would be forced to make it. With this in mind, John produced a teaser poster for the show, to be liberally displayed across the country. Obviously we hadn't made the program but this would lend weight to our pitch when we approached the Beeb with the idea.

Feel free to print out this poster and display it in the shitty office you invariably work in. Get your fellow workers excited about the possibility of a wood themed cop show...

On the subject of the Evil Nazi Herr Docktor Clay, he also sent me a poster he made for his new Political party he tried to set up in York. The Christo-Fascist Party. I'm not sure what his policies were, but I guess it involved not joining Europe and mandatory church for everyone. His main campaign was directed at Heartbeat Candy, a street entertainer in York. Heartbeat Candy is a York institution, he has an array of artifacts surrounding him, a store dummy dressed in Seventies style, various toys and best of all two Border Collies. The dogs help him on songs, like when he plays 'How much is that doggy in the window'. On the last note he plays his harmonica at a pitch that obviously causes the dogs some discomfort and they howl along with the music. Anyway, Clay got it into his head that this harmless old man is an evil paedophile and directed his vengeance against him with this poster campaign:

Communication Breakdown

On the way home tonight Lauren and I had a spot of car trouble. Nick refuses to buy good cars for his fleet so we end up with terrible bags of shit mounted on wheels to run about in. Most of these 'cars' would be of better service if they were set on fire and shoved off a cliff. The cost of keeping them running must be astronomical compared to the original layout cost (about £100 by the look of the things...). When I worked in Lichfield a year or so ago there were at least two instances of the big white Passat breaking down, once on the way to Lichfield and once on the way back home. Both times we ended up getting to the destination about seven hours after we had set off. What was particularly galling was the fact that when we were driving home we broke down only twenty minutes outside Lichfield, I was listening to a program about Kraftwerk on the radio and the breakdown also interrupted that. I then finally got home about eight o'clock in the evening after we'd set off for the two hour journey at about 1.00 pm. It seems to be a trait programmed into these vehicles that they break down on the way home from work rather on the way to work. Anyway, the arse fell out of the VW Golf that Lauren and I were travelling home in tonight. True to form. Twenty minutes away from site and forty minutes left to go on the journey the engine gave up the ghost and we pulled up on the side of a very deserted country road outside of Hooton Pagnell.

I think it might be the clutch

This event further depressed Lauren as she had spent the entire day being told by Robot the Bruce about his 43 inch chest and 23 inch waist. (She was unable to break free of his droning because Stanners, Alice and myself were behind the spoilheap down the bottom of the hill. I think this was done to keep the three of us out of view of the public who had come for the site tour. I think it's no coincidence that we had also been sent 'down there' on Friday when there was another tour on.) I tried to cheer her up by playing MANOWAR really FUCKING LOUD. It worked for me anyway. The RAC man eventually turned up, condemned the car and dragged it back to Rotherham.Two and a half hours after I was supposed to get in.

No it's not the clutch, it could be something to do with the electronics...

Not only that, but today Sir Stanners found a fucking Roman Trumpet Brooch in the 'kiln' he was digging. I had been excavating a similar feature last week and only found crappy cooking wares. He started his kiln last Friday and immediately found Samian pottery. Decorated Samian pottery at that... Mind you, in the ditch I had been digging for the past two days I have found more pottery than I have found in the past three years combined. I think I have found more pottery than has been found in all of West Yorkshire, ever. I tried shoving it in Stanner's face but he retorted it was a question of Quality over Quantity.

My load of crappy broken olden-days shit is much better than yours!

It was the ARCUS Carcass rats-from-a-stinking-ship party on Saturday, I wasn't going to go, then I went and I'm glad I did. Although it was good to see all the old faces there was only really one person I wanted to see there and I saw her and that's all I'll say on that subject.

Table Cop

I was recently going through my documents and I came across these two scripts that I had begun but hadn't finished. I'm publishing them both here for the first time, unedited. A bit of background first. The Evil Nazi Herr Doktor John Clay and I (I think maybe also Craig and Ross, but memory fades...) came up with an idea for a TV show called Table Cop. It was a detective show based around the Wood Division of the Police force. Actually, John, if you have any further scripts you'd like me to put up here, email them to me and I'll post them. The main character was Pledge Manners, a fiftyish year old career cop. He was an unorthodox, pushy angry man. Early ideas for the show name was 'Against the Grain'. Manners had joined the wood Division due to him needing to get closure on a personal tragedy. His entire family had been wiped out in a yachting accident and he had only survived by clinging onto a table which washed him to shore. He felt he owed something to wood, so vowed to work only on cases involving wood and wooden objects. We'd fleshed the character out pretty well, he even had a girlfriend who was a table dancer in a lap dancing club. He was torn between his need for human contact and the abuse she was dealing out to the wooden tables with her high heels every night. We even had an actor pencilled in for the role, Michael Sheard. You'd know him best as Admiral Ozzel from The Empire Strikes Back and Mr Bronson from Grange Hill. His gravitas and acting ability would have brought a certain 'j'nais c'est qua' to the role. Only the stupid fucker went and died in 2005.

You ruined my chance for BBC light drama you stupid fucking bastard. RIP Michael

Pledge Manners wasn't the only character, he was helped by another wood detective (there were only two in the Wood Division, and they were fighting a losing battle against being closed down due to cut backs in the Police Force as a whole), named Tarquin Sheen. Again, we already had someone pencilled in. Dexter Fletcher was perfect. I remain fairly certain had we got off our arses and actually wrote a full episode and then sent it to Fletcher's agent and the agent hadn't rejected it out of hand and given it over to Fletcher to actually read, he would have been behind the project 100%. Sheen was a Detective Bobby Crocker to Manners' Kojak. A thrusting upstart, Sheen would be ever present on the Wood Scene of Crime.

Never mind Press Gang, Dexter, we'll make you a big star with Table Cop...

A final third character was included, a Female Beat Officer, WPC Ashley Beech. She was to be played by Heather-Jay Jones, who you will undoubtedly remember as the older sister, Melody Parker, in the TV show The Queen's Nose. Not too pretty to be distracting but not too shabby either. Beech would have been continually ignored by Manners, who saw women's roles as being in the kitchen rather than on the beat.

In lieu of finding any decent pictures of Heather-Jay Jones, here is a picture of her younger co-star in the Queen's Nose: Victoria Shalet, who has certainly grown up well...

OK, enough waffling about the background of the show, let's take a look at the scripts and see what brilliance could have made it's way onto our screens. As I said both are unfinished and I was unsure as to were they fit into an episode, you'll have to work that out yourself. let you fucking imagination run away with you.

Table Cop Script Fragment One

Ext: Wooded area in mist, several Police Forensic Officers are working on what is obviously a crime scene. Close up on a body wrapped in a plastic bin bag, the arm is sticking out. It has been bothered by animals. Photographs are taken, samples sampled, etc.

Enter Pledge Manners and Tarquin Sheen. Manners strides ahead, Sheen trying to catch him.

Sheen: No, Pledge, please, for your own sake.

Manners: DI Albridge? Albridge?

Detective Inspector Albridge looks up from the body. He has a Yellow High Visibility Jacket on and PC’s Helmet. He is fortyish, stout, life long cop. There is tension between Manners and Albridge.

Albridge: (quietly) Christ, who let him in? (To Manners) Pledge, ah, how good to see you. Is this business or pleasure?

Manners: Business, always business. Listen Albridge, you’re searching for the wrong clues.

Albridge: Pledge, how can we be looking for the wrong clues at the scene of the crime? (Loudly to all in earshot) Has the Wood Department increased its arrest quota sufficiently to start telling us Forensics how to do our job? (The Forensic officers titter among themselves at Albridge’s put-downs) Do you think you two jokers can solve this murder with wood? (More laughter) (Mockingly) Oh look at me, I’m in the Wood Division, this murder was committed with a… WOODEN STICK! (Uproarious laughter) in a… WOOD! (Laughter, shouts of ‘Oh Yeah!’, ‘you d’Man!’ etc) by Pinocchio!! (Lots of ‘ooh ooh ooh ooh’ like in the Jerry Springer Show) Get out of here you clowns!

Manners: This time I know what I’m talking about Albridge, you are looking in the wrong area. You Forensic boys have your noses so far up a corpse’s arse you can’t see what’s in front of you.

Albridge: (Angrily) I’ll tell you what’s in front of you if you don’t get out of here, the fucking Police Commission Complaints board. Now take Marionette here and fuck off back behind your plastic desk.

Manners: (slowly and quietly) we’ve found paint chippings from the murderer’s car on some of the trees back there. (Indicating into the woods)

Albridge is momentarily shocked, but quickly recovers his composure. He moves in close to Manners.

Albridge: (almost whispered, barely contained rage) Listen, you fir fucker. I’m running this show. What I say goes. There is no paint on those trees, in fact there isn’t even any trees. If we haven’t found it, it doesn’t exist. And if someone goes around flapping his big mouth about things we may or may not have missed then they are going to find themselves in a world of pain. Do I make myself clear, monkey puzzle?

Manners and Albridge have a stare off for a few seconds.

Manners: C’mon Sheen, let’s get back to the office, I think I left the cap off that tin of wood polish.

Manners and Sheen walk off, leaving Albridge fuming.

Table Cop Script Fragment Two

Int: Backstage at the Cock and Balls Public house. A small time rock band, Bloodgoat, are readying themselves for a gig. The band is Ian; Keyboards, Nigel; Vocals, Ray; guitar, Roger; bass and Neville; drums. Ian is sitting in the corner with his hands down his jogging bottoms.

Nigel: For Christ’s sake Ian, give it a rest.

Ian: I’ve told you, me name’s not Ian, use me stage name, it helps me get in character.

Nigel: Alright Axe-lord, but will you stop playing with yourself. We’re meant to be a serious fucking band here.

Ian: That shows how much you know about rock and roll, man. I’m only doing what Iggy does before every show.

Nigel: Iggy doesn’t fucking tug himself off before a gig, you nobhead.

Ian: No but he makes his cock look bigger for the birds, you’d know if you’d ever seen him play live.

Nigel: I would do, but you never told me the fucking Stooges had reformed and were playing did you? You twat.

Ian: Don’t get bitter about it man, that’s history anyway.

Int: Bloodgoat are on stage, finishing the set. Ian is almost bent double over his keyboard his erection making it difficult for him to play. Nigel comes over to him after the last song.

Nigel: You idiot, you ruined the whole show. You’re on thin ice Axe-Lord.

Manners: Bellingham? Ian Bellingham?

Ian: (bent over) yeah, who wants to know?

Manners: (holding up his plastic badge) Pledge Manners, Wood Division. I want to ask you a few questions.

Ian: (still bent over) What about, is this about Shirley? I’ve already been through this with the cops. I thought you lot had finished with me.

Manners: Not us. I still have a few questions about the sawdust found on your trousers. We’ve run some tests…

Ian: (still bent over) I had nothing to do with the murder, I wasn’t even in the fucking country.

Manners: (shouting) Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking!

Ian: (still bent over but shouting) I could sue for Police harassment, you know

Manners: (shouting) you’re still a prime suspect Bellingham! You don’t have a leg to stand on!

Ian: (Stands up to reveal the erection poking obviously in his jogging trousers) This case has nothing to do with you Manners!

Manners: (shouting) We deal with any case involving wood!

The two are faced off close together, the only thing between them is Ian’s erection.

Fin

Arc Light (Sonar)

I finally got hold of the Finding the Fallen Series Two DVDs on Friday. I'd been pestering Dr DK for ages to send them up to me and he eventually relented and posted them. It's great to see the finished version that you spent so much time and effort working on. It brought back lots of good memories, drunken nights in France and Belgium, great archaeology and good company. I feature on one episode in particular where I had to go out to Germany for the filming. I ended up spending a few hours freezing my balls off in a swimming pool in Rastatt in the South West of Germany. I suffer for my art, I tell you.

Look! It's me! On the fucking Telly!!

Over this past weekend I went to see District 9 with Mark, Sarah, Lauren and Steve. Beforehand we went for a meal, it was quite an adult evening really. The waitress was taking her sweet ass time over clearing the table, however, and I got to wondering what would happen if I was to just sweep the entire table top onto the floor. If you had every intention of paying, could they throw you out? I mean, it's not like you would be causing trouble, just clearing your table. One quick sweep and it would all be over and in a way you'd be helping the waiting staff, especially during busy times. In the end I didn't do it anyway, we paid the bill and left meekly. Like good customers should. Even with Lauren's heel coming off her shoe.

Waiter! Bill Please!

District 9 is great, I won't tell you anymore about it, except go and see it. On Sunday I drove up to Bolsterstone to drop in on Tim and his excavation there. I had heard he was having a cake and arse party up there and everyone was invited. I wasn't disappointed, the first thing I saw was that his main trench was butted up against a house wall. Now, call me stupid, but the last thing I would want to do is undermine a house side. Luckily his other trench was in a better position, health and safety wise, but he had decided to excavate around the roots of a tree. Again, my reasoning would be: gauge the size of the tree roots by the size of it's crown and dig in an area where the roots were likely NOT to be... I suggested both of these points to Tim, but as usual my recommendations fell on deaf ears. I then pressed him on his record keeping and he started shuffling his feet like a scolded schoolboy. In all actuality I wasn't interested in the Bolsterstone's dig records or even the archaeology there. It was Sunday for Christ's sake and I wasn't at work. I really called up to see Tim and whoever else happened to be there that day. I gave Tim a lift back to his house and Yuki, his wife, gave me some Japanese Cakes, which were lovely. I also was given a tour of the lair of the beast, where Tim paints his toy soldiers. After Amelia had ripped my hoody to shreds I left for home.

Far more interesting than some crappy archaeology...