From bolt cutters to the Bible

Good morning everyone. Today is Wednesday so I’m handing over to my guest blogger for a recap on his Bank Holiday activities…

 

I’m writing this week’s post at the end of a brilliantly sunny Bank Holiday Monday here in the UK. These holidays have a reputation for two things: getting bad weather and long traffic jams. The latter because so many people decide it would be a good idea to go out for the day. They do seem to decide this en masse and so end up travelling out in queues of traffic and then, as if by mass telepathy, they travel home at the same time as everyone else causing big queues on the return journey. Our day was good but will fill you in on that next week.

I checked to see what happened on the day I am writing this (6^th May) back in history. It seems to have been quite an eventful date. Thanks to Chambers Book of Days for the following info:

In 1954 Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under 4 minutes – his time was 3m 59.4s.

A number of important people were born on this date (6^th May):

French Revolutionary politician Maximillian Robespierre (1758), Psychoanalyst (& neurologist) Sigmund Freud (1856), Film actor Rudolph Valentino (1895), former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair (1953), American actor George Clooney (1961)

Other May 6^th events:

In 1642 the Canadian city of Montreal was founded (as Ville Marie)

In 1937 the Hindenburg airship crashed while it was attempting to dock with its mooring mast at Lakehurst, New Jersey. 97 were on board and 35 were killed.

In 1994 the Channel Tunnel (between the UK & France) was opened.

So you can see it has been quite a date for important things to happen.

Interestingly on this date, in 1536, Henry VIII ordered that a copy of the Bible was to be placed in every English church and what I did last Saturday relates to this indirectly.

However, before I tell you about Saturday, Friday kicked off my week-end with something rather bizarre. It was time to give the grass its first cut this year. Out I went to the shed which had been padlocked through the winter. This year our winter seems to have dragged on rather along time and everyone (here in the UK) has commented on how long the cold weather has continued for. (Up to last week our nights were still hitting temps close to freezing!) Anyway I thought I could do a whizz round with the mower before Saturday which was going to be a really busy day (which we’ll come to).

I put the key in the lock and tried to turn it – nothing. I waggled it about and bashed it with a hammer a bit – still nothing. It seems that I’d now found out the reason why the lock I’d bought last summer had been such a bargain – it was rubbishy and just one winter had caused it to rust up. I now felt like a contestant on a new game show – no, not Who Wants To Be A Millionaire – but Who Wants To Be A Grasscutter!

Question 1: You have come to get your mower out of the shed but the lock is rusted up. What do you do?

A – Sit down & cry

B – Try some 3-in-1 oil

C – Use a sledgehammer

D – Use bolt cutters

I was struggling at this point so I decided to phone a friend. “I think it’s D he said.” He also said he had some bolt cutters. Well that was good enough for me. I leapt out of the chair and drove to his place and picked them up. Now I have used bolt cutters in my work on occasion so when he said his were big I’d said not to worry I could handle them.

Here’s the picture of them

They weigh 21lbs (1 stone & a half); they are nearly 43” (109 cm) long. I managed to get them home but trying to lift them into a horizontal position so I could snip the lock off was quite a feat. Anyway I managed it. Now you’re probably wondering just how big the padlock was. Well take a look at this next picture. It shows the cutters, the padlock – it’s that tiny thing up at the top left of the cutters, and as an indication of size I put a wooden broom handle (without the brush head) alongside the cutters.

Oh well they did the job even if a slight case of overkill.

Saturday dawned. I was booked for a whole day of lectures at one of the halls in the University in Liverpool city centre. I had planned the journey starting with a mere 10 min train journey a couple of stops along the line towards the city centre. How hard could that be? I knew the time of the train as it was from my local station; they’re every half hour. I just needed to make sure I wasn’t late as the next one would get me there too late. I walked and got to the station with about 7 mins to spare to be greeted by a notice: “Due to engineering work on the line a bus replacement service is in operation”. I went outside – no bus. I went back inside and asked when the bus replacement service was due. “It’s already left”, the man said. When I pointed out that the train was scheduled to leave at 8.50 and it was still only 8.47 how could it be a replacement. It was then he told me that the buses don’t keep the same time as the trains. That meant that if I waited for the next one it would get me there too late for the start time. So off back home I walked and then drove to a station on a different train line; this line has a 15 min service and more importantly they weren’t digging it up on a Bank Holiday week-end! I parked the car and sped in. The train arrived a couple of mins later and when I got out in the town centre and walked to the lecture hall I actually arrived 30 mins early!

The lectures were on the subject of Archaeology & the Bible. There are many who believe the Bible stories and accounts of past events are a kind of made up mythology. This view is easy to understand when you see the way the popular press and the film industry have treated certain areas: think of the recent series (1981-2008) of Indiana Jones and the ark (as in a chest, not Noah’s Ark), the Temple of Doom, the Last Crusade, etc as well as many down the years that have not followed the Bible’s version of a particular event.

The first speaker highlighted just how many books had been written on the sensationalising of various “Quests” to find articles related to ancient Israel & Egypt. He also drew attention to the fact that they were thin on factual detail themselves while criticising traditional views for the same thing.

The main speaker was from Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois and he tackled two other contentious areas: that of the time the Israelites spent in Egypt and then their route back to their home, which we call “The Exodus”. Again a fascinating look at the facts and how to interpret them.

The day was closed by a look at the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible which has been dated to the reign of the Greek speaking Egyptian king Ptolemy II in the early 3^rd C BC. Its Egyptian features were analysed and briefly its impact on the New Testament.

When you listen to guys who have studied in their field for a long time (one guy over 40 years) you need to give their views a fair hearing and there was a lot to take away and ponder.

And finally, on a more light-hearted note:

On a recent visit to a bird sanctuary, I was in the part where they keep the kestrels. It was late and the sun had gone down. I thought I could hear one of the keepers singing these words:

“Enola gay, you should have stayed at home yesterday
Aha words can’t describe the feeling and the way you lied.”

There was a lot of noise like a vacuum cleaner also as he sang. I asked the receptionist about it and she said,

“Oh, that’s our kestrel man – hoovers in the dark” (say it quickly!)

HaHaHa!

W is for…

WHERE ARE THE PEOPLE?

…my constant request whilst in Pompeii earlier this week. I had seen a programme about Pompeii a few weeks before going and the historian lady, strolling around looking at things, stopped behind some of the now-famous plaster casts of Pompeian people who were found when excavating the town. She said something like “This is the first thing that greets you when you enter Pompeii.”

Well, thought I, this will be excellent. I shall see the actual people. I will see their faces and can imagine what their lives must have been like and imagine them in these grand homes.

I find it fascinating, imagining the people going about their daily lives. It suddenly makes history a really alive subject that I can connect with because I can start to imagine myself in the past and how different my life would have been from the one I am now leading.

So we entered Pompeii, my eyes scanned for the Pompeians lying on the ground….

Eventually, walking into the Stabian Baths, we saw a few in glass boxes…

…and it was so strange. On the TV programme, they had talked about pyroclastic flows and ash falling and four different flows of something, which had meant that people had died almost immediately. There was no long drawn-out choking to death or disease or anything. They had been caught unawares and had barely any time to try and escape. So when I looked at the man in the top case, I imagined him seeing the ash falling and lying down and covering his face and being immortalised that way, forever. How strange, that the smallest action has defined his life forever. Of all the other things he did in his life here at Pompeii, he is forever defined by covering his face from the approaching disaster.

We kept walking but it was a long time before we saw any more people, which had become my obsession at Pompeii, a little bit.

Danda walking across the stones set high up in the road so people could still cross the road when it was raining.

Me ‘working’ in the Pompeian version of a deli.

Wall paintings

Floor mosaics

More people! The lady on the programme said that this position with the arms is typical of someone going into rigor mortis after a shock.

This one is strange in a totally different way. His exposed skull and two thousand year old teeth poking out from the plaster made me feel odd, like I’d accidentally seen someone undressing.

You can even see the shape of the belt he was wearing when Vesuvius decimated the town.

We found some more people in an area which seemed to be blocked off for archaeologists to work in, although there were none there at the time. In between all the wine jars and other artefacts, there were some more people.

The lady on the programme talked about how this person had probably crouched down and put their hands to their face to stop the ash going on it.

This person, it seems, dived on the floor and hid their face.

O and here’s one we found. Just in amongst the wine jugs on the shelf. Have you spotted him yet?

After looking at loads more buildings and reading in my little guidebook about what it used to be and who used to live there, we were back near the entrance, we had been there for five hours and were both knackered.

“But I didn’t see the people from the programme…” I said sadly.

Danda insisted we go and find them, even though I was tired and said it was ok. He reminded me that we don’t know if we’ll ever come back here so we mustn’t go home disappointed. So off we went, back into Pompeii, not much time to spare before closing, the tourists almost all gone, to find “the people.”

We trekked right back to the other end, near to the vineyards which, by the way, they have replanted and turned back into working vineyards (the wine produced there is called Villa dei Misteri) and eventually we found them! The people! The people lying on the floor! Hurrah!

And it was so interesting. I was enthralled, standing up against the glass case imagining who’s children they were, which house had been theirs, whether they had worked in the vineyards, as that is where these 13 were found during excavations or whether they had lived close by and just run there together to shelter.

Eventually, time and daylight were running out so we made our way back to the entrance, having added an hour on for “the people” and left, among the last few.

What a brilliant brilliant day. Damn planes and trains and the history of the automobile, give me some real people’s faces and clothes and lives to look at and I’m planning my future as an archaeologist/historian.

That’s inbetween my full time job as a farmer, my part time job as the world’s best baker, my hobby as an internationally renowned pianist and my ongoing project as a human rights lawyer.

I can fit it all in, don’t you worry.

Walking into history

It’s Wednesday again and time for Rambler5319, my guest blogger, to take over….

Last week’s pics from my holiday were really mostly about signs. I did take some others (and a few more signs). These are from the walks I did in an area which is steeped in history. Parts of it go back to the time of the Romans and beyond.
As you approach the village from one direction, you see this magnificent hand-crafted sign. (It took over 8 months to make.)

Each element in the sign has some local significance and I was curious to find out what they all represented. Local village history gave me the answer:
The cross-keys representing St Peter’s Church (now ruined).
The white cross (blue background) represents the existing St Andrew’s Church.
The beige area represents the main cereal crop – barley.
The green area represents the other main crop – sugar beet.
The white pathway between them represents an old footpath called Peddars Way which passes through the village.
The black symbols on the left middle represent churches & chapel. To the right middle, the tree is Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee Tree and the windmill is also local to the area. A lot of thought definitely went into this impressive creation.
As you approach from another side of the village you are greeted by this one

They definitely like you to feel welcome.
I found this next structure in a garden in the main street of the village. Talk about plush multi-storey avian apartments!! Ever seen one of these before?

 

WALK NO.1
This was about 6 miles round, mostly on paths away from the roads. The route I travelled, to the next village (Sedgeford), is a small part of what is a much longer (46 miles!) ancient path called Peddars Way. Some believe its existence actually pre-dates the Romans and that they just extended and improved it. So here I was walking on a path that Roman soldiers probably marched along almost 2,000 years ago! I’m glad I wasn’t wearing armour and carrying a heavy shield as the sun was very warm and my brow was wiped many times on this walk. Here’s a section of it but can you tell which direction my compass needle was pointing if I tell you it was about 11.00am?

I came across this notice just half a mile along the path.

In case text in pic too small to read, at the bottom it says: “This roadside verge is being positively managed to conserve wild plants and animals in a joint project between Norfolk County Council and Norfolk Wildlife Trust. Note it’s just the “verge”; it was only a metre or so wide.
Just before joining the main road, leading into Sedgeford, the path emerged from its agrarian setting into a narrow road called Magazine Lane; also nearby were Magazine Farm & Magazine Wood. Seemed to me like an odd name to find out in the countryside. The mystery was solved a bit further along when I found this building

It is called Magazine Cottage and is believed to have been used as a store for gunpowder during the Civil War. It was built by the LeStrange family who we will find out more about next week. As I walked past the village pub (King William IV), and down a side road, I saw a sign for a local archaeological project:

I was intrigued. I decided to visit. As well as the actual dig site there were a number of displays and talks about the finds and other general info about life in Anglo Saxon times. Volunteer diggers camp in the next field to the excavation site:

And some site facilities are what might be termed primitive. Note, in the pic below, only one tap can be used for drinking water:

Here are some of the displays, starting with the skulls:

And here are three Action Men but each item they are wearing has been hand made by a guy who is very interested in the period. He’d also made models of some of the “machines” (e.g. boulder launching catapults) the Romans used in sieges and attacks in battle.

Next was a display of what they believe may have been types of food from Anglo Saxon times. The front page of the booklet to the right of pic (sorry chopped off due to trying to get all the food dishes in) says “Dishes made on the day course – Cooking up an Anglo-Saxon feast”:

I also attended one of the 20 minute talks in a side tent. Time to put thinking cap on! Amongst other things, I learnt that an analysis of the chemicals in bones can suggest an area of the country where the individual lived. How? This is because the mix of certain elements in the water in different parts of the country can be quite specific to that area. Apparently, if you live in an area for 10 years or more, your bones will have levels of certain chemicals that have been absorbed from drinking the water in that area that will be the same as the water itself. The archaeologists compare the levels of two particular chemicals, strontium & oxygen, in the water, with the levels in the bones they find. They can then tell whether the people had lived in that area for about 10 years before their death or had moved to it from another part of the country.
Soon it was off to retrace the 3 miles back to the cottage and give my brain, as well as my legs, a rest; it had been a fascinating and very instructive time at the site. As I made my way across the field behind the site, to begin the trek home, I came across this unusual sight:

Starting with the standing white horse look left to the brown standing horse and then to, what seems to be, a brown “blob” on the floor. This “blob” really was a horse lying on its side. Every so often its tail would flick up and down but it remained in this position the whole time I was crossing the field. Was it tired or maybe sunbathing? Do horses lie down if they’re tired? Do horses sunbathe?
The following day I did a short walk, along the sea front, in the nearby town of Hunstanton. Apparently it is the only resort on the East Coast of England which actually faces west! (You’d have to look at a map to see why.) The town motto (in Latin of course) is Alios delectare iuvat, which translates to “It is our pleasure to please”. I was pleased after my visit so I suppose they succeeded. I sat down on a bench for a quick sandwich and drink. I found it was one of those which had been erected in memory of someone who’d died. Here’s the plaque:

Paul Richard Moore was not famous; I, you and lots of other people, will have never heard of him but clearly he was, and still is, VERY special to those who’d put the bench there in his memory. We don’t know how he died but look at his age – just under 30 years old. Now pause for a moment and think about that. Perhaps many readers of this post are younger or just coming up to it or some maybe past that age. Imagine if that was to be all time you would have. It’s always a great sadness when parents outlive their children as it’s one of those things, like this lad’s parents, you just don’t expect to happen. I spent a few minutes in quiet reflection: each moment we’re alive we’re making withdrawals from “The Bank of Time” but without knowing the balance left in our account! Of course, no deposits are possible and you can’t be overdrawn – but your account will be closed at some point! How we “spend” our time is important.
Walking just a short distance from the bench, I saw this. It was time to put that thinking cap on again.

Closer inspection of the info board revealed some interesting stuff.
The wall in the pic is what is left of a chapel built in 1272AD in memory of King Edmund. Apparently he’d landed, from Germany, in 855AD and, a few years later, was crowned King of East Anglia whilst still only a boy. There was peace for a while but then invaders came from Denmark. The king was captured and, when pressed, refused to give up his Christian faith. He was tied to a tree and shot by Danish archers in 870AD aged about 29. He was interred at a place called Beodericsworth which later became known as St Edmunds Bury and finally the town we know today as Bury St Edmunds. He became the first patron saint of England and remained so for about 400 years. The current patron saint (George) was not adopted until the end of the 14th cent. Not a lot of people know that!
I came across this (Latin) motto: Alis Aptar Scientis. It means “Ready for the wings of knowing”. Well are you?