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Superpowers of the Ancient World

I’m doing another online course on the FutureLearn platform, this one on the Ancient Near East (Egyptians, Hittites and so on) in the Late Bronze Age. It’s run by the University of Liverpool, and I chose it because it’s a subject I’m interested in and already know a bit about. I’ve found bits of it quite interesting, particularly reading the accounts of some of the ancient battles.  Unfortunately, the lecturers are not sticking strictly to the well-attested archaeological and historical sources. Instead they’re rather trendily asking the participants to draw parallels with events happening now and in the very recent past.

Syria-Palestine fragmenting and being fought over by surrounding powers? Expansionist empires in the Near East? Desperate migrants and displaced persons causing instability in the lands they settle in? It’s too easy for the Daily Mail-reading tendency to hijack the comments and dialogue that’s meant to be a large part of the course, and rant about the rather obvious (but not entirely accurate) parallels.

I really feel uncomfortable with the hypothesising, over-interpreting, and the stretching of small amounts of historical data and evidence to breaking point – and in my view well beyond it. It’s all so non-factual and downright wrong to someone with a scientific training. The course is very much at the arts and humanities end of ancient history, rather than the factual and scientific end that I much prefer. Nevertheless, I’m going to try to stick with it, and just grit my teeth and refuse to engage when I get asked to speculate wildly about something with absolutely no evidence to back it up!

06 10 2015 Gillian invective Comments (2) Permalink

Ambushed Again

I’ve been so busy lately at work, that I’ve simply not had time to sort out the usual list of domestic chores, which have therefore been piling up. Now that the equipment trial is finally over, bar writing up the final report, I’ve got some breathing space at last. So I took today off as leave to sort out some admin. First job was to get the boiler serviced – I like to get some preventative maintenance done annually before the weather closes in, as it’s really grim if the boiler seizes up when there’s snow on the ground! My usual reliable chap came round first thing Monday morning and gave it a thorough going-over, leaving me the rest of the day free. 

I went into Worcester for the rest of the day, and had lunch at my current-favourite little brasserie, Saffrons. The prix fixe menu was particularly good value, and I had a delicious starter of baked figs with walnuts and feta, followed by faggots and mash with peas. I decided that I then felt fortified enough to face sorting out my mobile phone. If I’d known what was coming, I’d have had a glass of wine with my lunch as well!

I have a very old Nokia on a pay as you go contract. It has a battery that lasts for weeks, and is good for texts and phone calls, but that’s about it. When I was stranded in Durham a few weeks back I really felt the need for a smart phone to try to find out what was going on. So I thought I’d upgrade my (very) old phone and finally “go smart”. My pay as you go contract is with Orange/EE, so I went first to their shop in Worcester and waited about half an hour to be served. I wanted to keep my old number, if possible, and transfer it to a new smart phone. But there was a problem. When the chap looked up the number on his computer, it was still registered to Christopher! After over five years, when I’ve told them three times that he’s dead and even sent them a copy of the death certificate! To give the man some credit, he was very embarrassed. But that didn’t mean he could actually do anything about it. There would be a horrendous paper mountain to go through to get the SIM card transferred into my name, given that Christopher wasn’t actually around to physically sign anything! It absolutely beggars belief that they don’t have more streamlined processes to deal with customers dying – after all, it happens to all of us sooner or later! And it was really unexpected and unpleasant to have to go through the “He’s DEAD” conversation yet again so many years down the line.

I decided that I’d given Orange/EE plenty of second chances to sort out Christopher’s account over the past five years, and that they clearly were too incompetent to deal with. So I went down the road to the O2 shop instead, and set up a completely new contract, with a new number, in my own name. They were 15% cheaper too, and have better network coverage up where I live. I just hope that their customer service department is at least marginally more competent.

30 09 2015 Gillian invective
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Back to the Pottery again

I’ve been extremely busy at work recently, running an equipment trial that’s been the culmination of a two-year research project. It’s taken a huge amount of time to prepare and rehearse, and I’ve been working lots of overtime, with very little time or energy to do anything else for the past few weeks. It all came to a head this week with a two-day “capability demonstration” to my customers, which went very well. 

After all that effort, it was really good to spend some time at Eastnor Pottery this weekend to de-stress and relax. I threw a load of pots last time I was there several months ago, but couldn’t remember what I’d decided to keep to finish off this time. So it was a pleasant surprise to find five bowls waiting for me to turn and decorate, ranging in size from a cereal bowl to a serving bowl. They were a bit too firm and dry, and covered in mould after spending months wrapped in plastic. The former I could easily fix by dunking the pots briefly in a bucket of water, partially rehydrating the clay to make it easier to handle. The mould looked off-putting, but isn’t a serious problem as it will burn off in the kiln. 

I’m not very artistic, so I’ve decorated the bowls very simply, with a blue outside and a white disc in the bottom of the inside, on a background of terracotta. The pots now need to be dried out thoroughly for several weeks until there is no moisture left in them at all (otherwise they will explode in the kiln). Then they will be given a first firing, then dipped in glaze and fired again. I’ll be able to collect them from the pottery in a month or so. 

27 09 2015 Gillian Day out Comments Off on Back to the Pottery again Permalink

Tracked Down

I am quite used to getting regular correspondence from the Development Office of my Oxford college, which is essentially a plea for money thinly disguised as a news update. It’s becoming an accepted part of “giving back” for the education I received – and seeing that I was at University before the days of student loans, let alone course fees, I reckon I got a very good deal. I do feel sorry for today’s students who will graduate with a huge amount of debt, and I fully understand why the college is so keen to milk its alumni for all it can get.

Today though there was a surprising addition to the genre. I received a full-colour newsletter from the Development Office of the Royal Grammar School, Worcester. But I didn’t even go there! In my day, the RGS was a boys-only grammar school, and I attended the girls’ school next door. Literally next door, in that there was a high wall between the two schools and fraternisation was completely forbidden! But in 2007 the schools merged and the wall came down. Well, I say merged, and that’s the official story. From what I heard at the time, it was more of a hostile take-over, made inevitable by the RGS going fully co-educational and attracting many of the pupils who would naturally otherwise have gone to the girls’ school.

I have had very little to do with the school since I left thirty years ago. I most certainly didn’t join the Old Girls’ Association, and as far as I know have never given them my contact details. So I was somewhat surprised to have been tracked down! I suppose it helps that I’m still fairly local, and that I didn’t change my name when I got married. There was a covering letter from the Development Manager saying that he hoped that his detective work had been successful, and that I was indeed connected with the school. To date, apparently, he’s tracked down over 1500 Old Boys and Girls from the two schools, and of course sent them pleas for money in the guise of a newsletter!….. Note to self – make sure to tick the box on the Electoral Roll form this year to get myself removed from the open register! I’m not sure I like being tracked down so easily! And I won’t be availing myself of the opportunity provided to “shop” those of my school-friends with whom I’m still in touch, and get them put onto the ever-expanding database!

Having said that, it was moderately interesting hearing about how the school is getting on, and seeing photos of the Hole in the Wall between the two school campuses, situated next to what in my day was the gym hall and science labs. Even if the final eight pages of the newsletter were devoted to ways you can donate to the school!

17 09 2015 Gillian status Comments (1) Permalink

Bones on the Palace Green

Whilst I was in Durham, a news story was prominent on the local TV about some human bones which had been found in an archaeological dig on Durham’s Palace Green. Seeing as it was so topical, I wondered what the local historians – both in the World Heritage Site visitors’ centre, and the guides in the cathedral – had to say about the find. So I asked them. It turned out to be rather a fascinating story.

Two years ago, the University library, which is in a rather sumptuous old building on Palace Green, half way between the cathedral and the castle, decided it wanted to capture even more tourist pounds than it did already. So they decided to convert a disused courtyard into a café, which gave an opportunity for an archaeological dig. To the archaeologists’ surprise, they uncovered a mass grave of hastily-buried bodies. They’ve spent the last two years studying the bones in detail, and it was the results of those investigations that were announced while I was there.

It turned out that they most convincing explanation was that these were the remains of prisoners of war from the Battle of Dunbar of September 1650. An inexperienced army of Scots and European mercenaries was comprehensively trounced by the English forces, and several thousand soldiers captured. The prisoners of war were marched South, and over-wintered in Durham cathedral, which was not in use as a place of worship at the time (presumably, Oliver Cromwell had a downer on cathedrals, as he did on so much else). Although the prisoners were sheltered and fed (the guide in the cathedral was absolutely adamant that they weren’t mistreated in any way – he was very protective of the reputation of the long-dead bishop in charge at the time!), many of them didn’t make it through the winter, but died of disease in the insanitary conditions. Their remains were then hastily mass-buried on the palace green, and the location of the grave was then forgotten. The archaeologists apparently suspect that the grave(s) extend well beyond the area they were able to excavate. The survivors were apparently marched further south in the Spring, and forced to become indentured workers, with some put to use draining the fens and many others shipped off to the colonies in America to work in stone quarries in Maine.

The guide at the World Heritage Site visitors’ centre shared an interesting insight into the insanitary living conditions that led to the outbreak of disease. He said that the prisoners used the east end of the cathedral, behind the High Altar, as their latrine. When the paving slabs at the east end were lifted a few years ago to install underfloor heating, the builders found a thick deposit layer of solidified urine and excrement. Apparently, the cathedral cleaners subsequently complained vociferously that every morning they would come in to find a new slimy stain on their nice clean paving slabs, caused by the underfloor heating gradually evaporating the “deposit”! However, he was at pains to assure me that the problem had been fixed now!

13 09 2015 Gillian Day out Comments Off on Bones on the Palace Green Permalink

A morning of sightseeing in Durham

I checked with National Rail first thing on Saturday morning, and it was clear that the signalling problem had been fixed overnight, and that the train companies had managed to sort out the ensuing knock-on effects of having their trains in the wrong place. At any rate, trains were now advertised as running to time once more. That was a big relief.

I decided that, since I had already been so massively inconvenienced and was going to lose much of my Saturday to travelling anyway, I may as well spend the morning having a quick look around the centre of Durham. I’d never been there before, and it is a World Heritage Site. It’s also suffered massively from Planning Blight – some of the modern buildings on the edge of the city centre were absolute monstrosities, and I wondered how on earth they had been approved. Government buildings were the worst offenders – the Passport and Identity Office, and the National Savings building were particularly horrendous!

The city centre itself was very steep and hilly. I thought Malvern was bad, but the town is only built on one hill. Durham has several, with a river running in quite a deep gorge right through the middle. The upshot was that there were steep hills and flights of steps everywhere. Even the “wheelchair accessible” spiral ramp from the station down to the town centre had steps! There were steps from my hotel at river level up to the centre, and really steep steps back up to the station. It did make me think that this was really was no place to be a wheelchair user.

It was however worth the steep walk up the hill to the centre of the city, where the Cathedral and the Castle face each other across the cathedral green. I didn’t manage to get around the castle – it’s an integral part of the university, and was only open to visitors on guided tours at set times, which I didn’t have enough time to squeeze in. But I did get to have a good look around the cathedral. It is uncompromisingly Norman in appearance, with semi-circular arches over the doors and windows, and some rather solid and squat-looking towers. Inside, it was much lighter and airier than it looked from the outside. It was originally a monastic church, and somehow managed to survive the Dissolution of the Monasteries remarkably intact, and still has a full range of monastic buildings around the cloisters. 

The cathedral is in the middle of a big redevelopment of the cloister range, which will be used as a big exhibition space from next year, opening up currently closed buildings to visitors and telling the story of the cathedral and its treasures. As part of the fund-raising towards this, they are building a scale model of the Cathedral in Lego. For just £1 you can buy a Lego brick and personally place it on the model, which was  several metres long and extremely impressive and detailed. So far they’ve been building it for about two years, and it looked to me that they were nearly 2/3 of the way through. I thought it was very clever how the designer had worked within the limitations of Lego bricks (including admittedly lots of the more technical bricks that weren’t around when I was a Lego-mad child) to build details such as the Norman arches and the high altar. That was an unexpected bonus which I found very interesting. 

I think I’ll have to see if I can come up with project extension to enable me to continue working with Durham University into next year, as I wouldn’t mind returning to Durham and seeing how the redevelopment of the cathedral cloisters turns out…..

09 09 2015 Gillian status Comments Off on A morning of sightseeing in Durham Permalink

Unexpected Overnight in Durham

I’ve spent a few days this week working on an equipment trial hosted by the engineering department of Durham University. The original plan was that I’d go up there by train (a 4.5 hour journey north, changing at Birmingham) after lunch on Wednesday, arriving in time for dinner, spend all day Thursday and Friday it the university, then catch a train home just before 5pm on Friday, arriving in Malvern sometime after 9pm. That meant that I’d get no time to see anything of the city of Durham, which was a shame as it looked interesting and it’s not somewhere I’ve been before.

The equipment trial went pretty well, though it was really hard work and surprisingly tiring. I got to the station in good time for my train home, and sat myself down in the waiting room next to the information board. It soon became apparent that there was a problem. No trains were arriving from either direction, and the ominous words “delayed” and worse still “cancelled” started peppering the board. Finally we got an announcement over the tannoy. There was a major signals failure at Darlington, the next major station to the south, and all lines in both directions were impassable. Everyone on the station was to wait for further information which would be provided as soon as possible.

Well, I waited for half an hour in an information vacuum, in which time my train via Birmingham changed status from “delayed” to “cancelled”, with trains for the following two hours all marked as “delayed”. I decided I’d had enough. It looked ominously like there would be no trains South until very late that evening, which would mean that at best I’d get stranded at Birmingham as I would miss the last onward connection to Malvern. At worst I wouldn’t get even that far.  And I was so tired that I didn’t want to face a a very long late journey with no guarantee as to how far I’d manage to get before being stranded. It seemed a much better option to cut my losses and stay an extra night in Durham.

I knew that the Premier Inn that I’d been staying at for the past few days was fully booked, as I’d heard the receptionist say so. And I don’t have a smart phone and didn’t have any other hotel phone numbers to hand. Fortunately, my company uses a travel agent to manage all our hotel bookings which has an efficient out-of-hours service. So I rang them up and spun them a sob story – I was stuck in Durham with no means of getting home that night, but I had a spare pair of knickers in my suitcase and their phone number and trusted that would be enough to save the day! Could she please find me somewhere – anywhere – to stay in Durham that night? The woman on the end of the phone burst out laughing and said that of course she’d help.

In fact, she had trouble finding a spare hotel room. I think that lots of people were also abandoning their train journeys and snapping up rooms. Certainly, several of the hotels she tried first were full. But she did manage to book me into the Radisson, just over the river from the town centre. I think I must have looked particularly stressed when I checked in there, as the receptionist handed me a voucher for a free glass of wine at the bar! It was certainly the right call to abandon my journey – although the signals were eventually fixed, the knock on disruption was such that there was only one train to Birmingham that night, which left Durham after 9pm and wasn’t scheduled to get into New Street until well after midnight. It would have been absolutely packed with no hope of a seat, and I would have missed the last train home to Malvern by several hours. It was much better to be safe and warm in Durham where I could have an early night and try to relax.

07 09 2015 Gillian Day out Comments Off on Unexpected Overnight in Durham Permalink

Isis or Juno?

There is a women’s clothes shop in town that gained national notoriety last year due to its name – Isis. Some rather stupid trolls on social media accused the shop, and by association the owner, with having links with Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East. The idea is completely absurd – the boutique was clearly named after the Egyptian goddess, and has been there for a number of years, since well before the rise of ISIS, IS, ISIL, Daesh, or whatever the papers have decided to call them this week. 

I think the owner quite liked the publicity at first- it’s not often that a small clothes shop in Malvern gets into the national press, and I’m sure it got increased footfall for a while as a result. However, she seems to have caved in to the pressure and decided to distance herself from the unfortunate associations. I suppose that some people are just so stupid they can’t or won’t distinguish between innocent uses of the word and ones with more sinister overtones. Anyway, I went past the shop today and it’s been renamed Juno, after another ancient goddess, Roman this time. I wouldn’t have said that they were entirely equivalent goddesses, and indeed the later Romans worshipped both of them, clearly seeing them as distinct. However, I expect that they’re similar enough for the purpose of lending their name to a clothes shop.

I imagine that the owner is now fervently hoping that no fundamentalist group springs up calling itself JUNO.

01 09 2015 Gillian Uncategorized Comments Off on Isis or Juno? Permalink

Talking Heads

This week at Malvern Theatres they’ve been showing Talking Heads by Alan Bennett. I remember these monologues from when they were originally shown on the TV in the late eighties, so thought it was worth a punt for a standby ticket for the Saturday Matinée. The stalls were less than half full, so I was able to get a good seat at about half price.

The monologues are billed as comedies, but of a particularly black and twisted nature. There is an underlying theme of loneliness and alienation, with very cleverly observed characterisation. There were three acts, each a monologue with a single actor on stage. All three were excellent, really holding the audience’s interest. The sets were very sparse and simple, so there was very little to distract from the Talking Heads of the title.

The first act, A Lady of Letters, was the funniest. Siobhan Redmond was excellent as a nosy spinster with a penchant for writing letters of complaint, which gets her deeper and deeper into trouble. That one had quite an uplifting ending. The second act was A Chip in the Sugar, starring Karl Theobald whom I remember best as the hapless junior doctor on the Channel 4 comedy Green Wing. He played a devoted but mentally-ill son whose life unravelled when his mother met an old flame. That one was a bit circular, and ended up largely where it started. The final act starred Stephanie Cole in A Cream Cracker Under the Settee, in which she played a 75 year old widow who was obsessive about cleanliness and wanted to stay in her own home and not be shunted off into a residential home where everyone smells of pee. That one had a really sad ending which for me put a bit of a damper on the whole show. I’d have rather they were put on the the reverse order, starting with the saddest one and ending with the most uplifting. 

29 08 2015 Gillian Day out
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Behind the scenes at the Staffordshire Hoard

I’ve been fascinated by the Staffordshire Hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold weapon mounts since its discovery by a metal detectorist was publicised in 2009. Christopher and I went to see it at a temporary exhibition in Stoke mid-way through his chemotherapy treatment in 2010, and had a thoroughly interesting time looking at it. That weekend ended unfortunately, with Christopher projectile-vomiting on Stoke station, and an unscheduled trip to hospital. Despite that, it was well worth making the effort to see the gold in its original state, just as it had been found. Many of the pieces were still covered in mud – they hadn’t been cleaned, much less conserved, but we knew that Christopher didn’t have enough time left to wait for the conservation process to run its course and for the gold to go on permanent display.

So I was really interested when I saw that my favourite archaeological travel company, Andante, were running a one-day “Study Day” to Birmingham Museum to see the Staffordshire Hoard, and go behind the scenes to the conservation laboratories to see how the treasure is being cleaned, conserved, and the pieces fitted back together again. I thought that was an opportunity not to be missed, and I certainly wasn’t disappointed.

The day started with an early train from Malvern to meet the group on the steps of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery before it officially opened to the public. We were met by a tour manager from Andante, plus the Andante office manager who had come along for the ride as it was a topic she was particularly interested in. Alongside them were three members of the museum’s Hoard Conservation Team, who were our hosts for the day. 

We started with an illustrated lecture about the discovery, excavation and contents of the Hoard. I knew most of it already, through having seen it before, but it was interesting hearing about the latest research. The Hoard consists almost entirely of precious metal mounts stripped from weapons – golden sword pommels and hilts, a helmet, decorative gold and garnet fittings from sword-belts and scabbards, and the like. All had been violently torn from their original weaponry back in the 7th Century, with no care whatsoever, and ended up buried in a field that was then, and still is now, pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

The second lecture was from a materials scientist who has been examining the metallurgical content of the hoard, originally with a view to trying to identify where it was made. That didn’t prove possible – the gold content seems to be a right mixture, made from melting down and recycling old Roman and Byzantine gold coins. However, she came up instead with what I thought was a really interesting discovery – the Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths had treated the surface of many of the gold pieces to make them look a purer gold than they actually were. It’s still not clear exactly how they did so, as the “recipe” has been lost in the mists of time, but it was clearly deliberate and selective.

After lunch we went into the museum gallery to see the Hoard display. The original find was declared Treasure Trove, and jointly acquired by Birmingham and Stoke museums, with the objects divided between them on a rotating basis. I found it very interesting to compare them with how they’d looked when I’d last seen them – all the mud has now been cleaned off, and they look even more magnificent than they did before.  

We then went down into the bowels of the museum, behind several locked doors, to the conservation laboratory, where large parts of the Hoard were still being examined and dealt with. There was a little pot on the conservator’s desk full of thorns from the Berberis shrub, which seemed somewhat incongruous. It turns out that she had discovered this was the best thing to use to clean the mud off the delicate jewellery – the thorns are as sharp as a scalpel, but softer than gold so they don’t leave any scratches. And they’re easily and freely available from supporters’ back gardens, so don’t eat into the conservation budget! We then looked at a number of pieces from the Hoard under a high-powered microscope. Some of the gold filigree work was just exquisite, and extremely detailed. Apparently modern goldsmiths struggle to replicate the work, and that’s with the benefit of modern tools – the original smiths were clearly very highly skilled indeed.

All in all, it was an absolutely fascinating day. I felt very privileged to be able to go down into the labs and see parts of the hoard without the protection of glass display cases. It was really good to be able to catch up on what has happened to it since I last saw it, and to see it now it’s been cleaned and conserved. 

26 08 2015 Gillian Day out Comments Off on Behind the scenes at the Staffordshire Hoard Permalink