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Friday 17 March 2017

Archaeo-terrors (no. 1): a fear of landing

Moments before I got into the plane I remembered just how just much I disliked landing. Flying, as I think I've noted before, is actually alright (once you get past the stomach-churning, underwear-soiling terror of taking off). Yes, flying is ok; it's the hurtling back down to earth at high speed with no clear evidence that your flimsy plane can fool gravity sufficiently long enough to allow you to land safely that can be officially classed as mega squeaky-bum-time. 




As I sat in Old Sarum Airfield cafe, patiently waiting for the plane to be made ready, I was reminded of Douglas Adam's description of the Vogon Constructor Fleet: a series of alien vessels which hung in the sky above Earth "in much the same way that bricks don't".

I finished my ploughman's lunch, took a deep breath and visited the loo one last time just to be on the safe side. 

Today I was going to be travelling across the air-space of Wiltshire and Dorset in order to peer down at some rather impressive ancient monuments. The route (and, indeed, entire journey) was completely my fault, having been asked by a TV company to describe which prehistoric earthworks best reflected the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age of southern England. Having provided a lengthy list, and assuming we might be visiting, at least of few of them on foot, I was now facing a 3 hour flight in order to get them all in.





This time, aside from the fear of landing, there were added feelings of claustrophobia to contend with for I was crammed into the back seat of a (very) small plane with the sound recordist (and all of his kit), whilst the documentary director sat in the front leaning across the pilot, buttocks pressed firmly against the windscreen, camera pointing up my nostrils. "Remember, don't look directly at the lens" he said, though I confess my line of sight was more than slightly restricted as it was. Eventually I settled on an uncomfortable position, head turned 90 degrees to my body, nose touching the side window. With a set of headphones now encasing much of my face, I could no longer see the pilot (which was probably just as well as I suspected that, what with the camera, sound kit, director's backside, sound-recorder and myself, he actually had very little room to do any serious flying). 

Hod Hill appeared below us and it was time to discuss the Roman Invasion of Britain




Swooping over the hillfort (several times) I began to wonder how much easier the Roman invasion of Britain would have been had the legions of Claudius been in possession of a Stuka dive-bomber. Certainly our current flight over the hill seemed to have a dramatic effect on those engaged in walking / picnicking / dog-walking / romancing across the upper slopes, sending many of them scurrying for cover.




After 20 minutes we were ready to move on.




Oh look Maiden Castle. We strafed the hillfort whilst I tried to enthuse about the excavations of Tessa and Mortimer Wheeler. This was beginning to feel a bit like trying to read a book, sing and remember all the lines to the poetry of William Wordsworth whilst sitting on a rollercoaster.




Next up Avebury.




Then Silbury Hill




By now I was starting to feel decidedly ill. I've never really experienced air-sickness before, but I was learning quick. "Keep talking", the director enthused "you're doing great", but I was now uncomfortably aware of a major disconnect between brain (which was urging the contents of my stomach to say exactly where they were) and my mouth (which was gibbering incoherently).

Then, as we lurched suddenly downwards and to the left without warning, I glimpsed the earthworks of Old Sarum, whizzing by at high speed, and I knew, with some satisfaction, that we would soon be coming in to land.




All the terror that normally surrounded the act of landing had evaporated (together with my appetite); now I was only too glad to see the ground rearing up at us like a half-starved lion about to devour a particularly plump wildebeest. 

We were home.

Tuesday 7 March 2017

Richard III strikes-back?



Last year, in what the American satellite news channel CNN described as "the fairy tale that gripped the world", Leicester City (Football Club) won the English Premiership (football) trophy. As long term readers of this blog know, my love of football is not quite as great as my love of Venezuelan goat throttling and so, as a consequence, I was more or less completely 'ungripped' by the aforementioned tale from the world of fairydom. What did intrigue me, however, was the way in which an archaeological discovery was taken by many in the media to explain the success of  the Leicester team. 

Apparently it was all the fault of Richard III


  
The discovery, exhumation and final reburial of Dickie 3 was, as even the more sober sports journalists at the BBC felt obliged to comment, surely the main reason why the fortunes of the club changed so dramatically, bringing them glory, riches, unparalleled success and international fame.


That's all well and good; you can believe what you like (honestly) - at the end of the day, I just have to say that it's nice to see that the archaeological disturbance of a Medieval monarch didn't unleash the usual round of plague, pestilence and shuffling armies of the undead.



All in all, the good people of Leicester seem to have escaped rather lightly.

But, of course, they haven't. Today, in 2017, with Leicester FC close to relegation (so the same journalists keep telling me), the team in utter disarray, the fans upset and the manager ignominiously dumped, it all looks so very different.



What could possibly be the reason?

Well, given the universally-held belief that the triumph in 2016 was solely "down to the big famous King Richard", there can only be one explanation: pleased though he was to be freed from beneath the municipal car park of Leicester, King Richard ultimately did not want to be reburied in, or anywhere near, the town.

Big mistake.

What's worse, I fear, is the fact that new caretaker manager for Leicester FC is the inappropriately named Craig Shakespeare


Given the totally positive spin that the playwright Shakespeare gave to Richard III in his eponymous play, what could possibly go wrong?