Roman bacon sandwiches

Dr. Andrew Birley and Justin Blake, the two main archaeologists, at Vindolanda.

Dr. Birley is discussing the Roman bacon sandwich and a typical diet for a soldier based at Vindolanda.

The "Y" shaped drain which is shown at one point...is on the floor of one of the "corridor" or "strip" houses (shops) which form part of the Roman vicus or village. This would have been the floor of the butcher's shop where the blood was collected to make black pudding. Both cooked produce (hence the bacon sarnie) and livestock would have been sold from here. No health and safety rules in those times!

What did the Romans ever do for us?

One of my favourite clips from Monty Python's " The Life of Brian". The way in which John Cleese plays this scene is just pure brilliance!

The Concrete Power of Roman Aqueducts

Quite a few people on my tours at Vindolanda ask me about Roman concrete. I've tried to find out about it as best I could. (Click on the "concrete link" for more information.) The video clip above describes the process briefly.

I got into discussion with one chap, a civil engineer, the other day, who has worked on a variety of civil engineering projects past and present. He is currently working on a project - something to do with the spire at Westminster Abbey. We had a chat about Roman methods of making concrete. I naturally talk about "opus signinum" which is a special waterproof concrete (broken up tiles mixed with lime mortar) which are still in evidence in the floors of the bathhouses. There is also the traditional Roman lime mortar concrete (the Romans were the first to invent concrete...which aided their imperial expansion plans massively). This film here shows that even their normal concrete, itself, is waterproof and goes on to show how the Romans built aqueducts and how they could bring in loads of water - 300 gallons per head per day in ancient Rome which is more than five or six times what modern day cities manage. So "what have the Romans ever done for us?" They gave us: concrete!

There are two bathhouses at Vindolanda. I show the visitors the more modern one (built c. AD213 for the Fourth Cohort of Gauls) and it is very near Stone Fort II...quite near part of an exposed aqueduct. So far so easy as to how they got the water to it. The big conundrum (maybe) is the older bath house at the far end of the site built for double the number of men (1000) c.AD100. It is not near a visible water source. It was demolished by the Romans themselves a bit later on. It had become outmoded and was too big for later garrisons. How did they get their water there? Well, having looked at this film where it talks about transporting water from 40/50 miles away, via aqueducts, into the heart of Rome.....then a few extra yards at Vindolanda isn't going to make a lot of difference quite frankly. Case closed. In fairness the archaeologists did find long alder pipes in 2003, fitted with oak pegs, where the water was still running through them almost two thousand years later. Maybe the water got to the bath house via a mixture of pipes and aqueducts. It definitely got there somehow as 100 men got to be clean all in one go!

A couple of years ago I read Robert Harris's superb novel, Pompeii, and its link is here. The whole premise of the book is built around the magnificent engineering of Roman aqueducts. The link, I've highlighted, is well worth the read as it is designed for book clubs. So now when I think of aqueducts I think of his book and the breath taking aqueduct at Segovia, Northern Spain. I can't remember whether I got my photo snapped there. I'll have to rootle around my old photo books. (Strawberry Jam Ann has just reminded me of a marvellous, world famous restaurant there where I was lucky enough to dine once - el meson de candido...The roast suckling pig is famed across Spain!)

I'm away from my computer over the next few weeks for a variety of reasons. I'll continue posting but may not be able to get back to you/your comments for a wee while. Happy Summer Hols everyone!

P.S.: Looks like an interesting programme on archaeology will be shown over the next month or so. It's called "Digging for Britain" and starts 9pm on Thursday 19th August on BBC2. It is shown at 10pm the same day on BBC HD for those of you with programme clashes! (Must admit that the silly but fab "Mistresses" is on at 9pm. !!)

Hadriana filmed near Walltown Crags

This is me up near Walltown crags. It's something I've been meaning to do for ages - show you this hidden treasure. Not many people know about it. It's off the beaten track and I only noticed it, myself, last summer when I was driving along a tiny road near Hadrian's Wall.

I'd like to do more short films about different features in/around the area. They won't always be about Roman things. Although my obsession is primarily the Romans I am still captivated by the sheer diversity of the North East and West regions. There is so much here. It is all inter-related.

One of the things which I point out in the short video (which is about 2 minutes long) is a feature of Roman stonework called diamond (or feather or herringbone) broaching. These carvings on the stonework, created by the Roman legionary masons, provide a rough surface for plaster in many cases. One of the lesser known things about Hadrian's Wall was that it was whitewashed from tip to toe - each side along its entire 80 Roman miles.......it must have stood out like a beacon, especially up along the crags, in its heyday.

There is a little more on this broaching here (re: Corbridge Roman Bridge Stonework) which comes from this website: TWM Archaeology. This whole website is a mine of information covering different time periods in the North East. Absolutely fascinating!

Sometimes I get a bit depressed that no-one is reading my blog (I've just re-read that and thought that's not fair on your loyal band of followers and readers but you know what I mean...) but I have been fiddling around looking at a few things on Facebook and have seen that people have linked to some of my posts. I know that this short video is nowhere near perfect (I hold the camera too close, at times, to my face for example) but I am determined to just bash away at things and get something blogged up. The amount of stuff which I have lost from the last couple of years (photowise is a bit galling) but it also provides me with the excuse to go round all the sites and photo them again. If I can get permission to film at certain places then that might be an easier and quicker way to show you what I find amazing rather than leaving it all to write up one day! My new motto is: "Good Enough!" "Bona Res Satis!" or "Bene Satis!"

Sorry too for not visiting all your blogs. I've not allowed myself to do this for ages because once I start to do it I find that hours have whizzed by. As usual, with me, it's all or nothing. My new resolution is to try and visit about 3 blogs per day (perhaps more) and leave a comment. I managed it Thursday and Friday but not yesterday or today. Must try harder!

P.S.: Hope to soon get back to reminiscing about my banking days...I know I keep promising to do it but I always keep my promises! ;)

Peace and Acceptance at Long Last.

It's just over a year now since my beloved godfather, Jim Blance, died. There's not a day that goes by when I do not think of him and what he brought into my life.

Jim was a fabulous friend and godfather. He was the best godfather anyone could ever have. He was very fond of us all alongside his family, friends, racing horses, music, film, books, funny stories (repeated ad infinitum!), cigarettes, countryside, history, golf, allotment gardening, plus many other things and people.

I remember him part owning at least one race horse when I was little. He used to ask me to design racing colours for his horse.

He was always around. Even when he wasn't in our lives for a few years I still felt that he was there. He was in our heads and hearts.

He was my father's best friend. "Brunna" he called my Dad affectionately. He seemed to be the one who could cope with my father. Jim thoroughly understood him - a complex man who can be a heavyweight intellectual at times. Every Sunday morning they would get together to put the world to rights.

Jim was a simple man. Simple as in tastes and wants only. He too had a fantastic mind. He got into Oxford University from South Shields Grammar School where he and my father first met. My father found out (much later from Jim) that he'd missed getting in to the same college by a cat's whisker. Brunna had been ousted in favour of a chap who'd done his military service (which had been abolished before my father could get anywhere near it).

But I digress. Jim was happiest when he had his boys, John and Ben, his cigarettes, his newspaper, his racing form and latterly, Marj, near him and in his life. Some years after his first marriage floundered Marj (or Marjorie) and he had literally bumped into one another on Hexham High Street around 2001. Marj, Jim's former South Shields flame, was known to my parents too. By amazing co-incidence she and my husband had sat at the same desk in Fairfields Halls Art Centre in Croydon, at different periods but not at the same time. They found they had lots of work acquaintances in common.

And so it all came together for Jim.

Jim was one of the main reasons that I wanted to settle in this region. He had a hugely calming effect on me. You knew you could turn up at any time and he'd make you feel welcome. You knew where you were with Jim.

Masses of people turned up for his humanist funeral. Lots of familiar faces. In fact it turns out that he'd probably taught most people I know, of my own age group, in this neck of the woods. Even more people turned up for his final send-off at Hexham Race Course.

Jim, despite his placability, was a deep pool which revealed the occasional odd ripple. On his deathbed he revealed to me that he'd also taught Dr. Andrew Birley and Justin Blake, the two main archaeologists, at Vindolanda. He'd taught them both at Haydon Bridge High School.

His sudden death coincided with the end of the Northumbrian School Term. Very apt. By all accounts he was a brilliant teacher. He cherished each one of his pupils and lauded their talents and abilities whatever they happened to be. And so it was with me and my sisters and my children.

I visited his grave for the first time last Saturday - the anniversary of his death. We, Jim, and the children, were all alone. The sun shone and I was relieved to know that he lies in a beautifully tranquil spot not far from Hexham Golf Course. A tree is planted beside his gravestone just as it is for each humanist burial. It is all unfussy and straightforward just like Jim. He seems at peace and despite the onset of the terrible pancreatic cancer he had a peaceful and loving death surrounded by his immediate family. Ben, his musician son, sang his favourite song to him as he passed away.

I talk of peace and acceptance because this is where my head and heart are: finally.

We too have undergone many trials and tribulations which are too numerous to recount here. The latest being this data loss. I now realise that starting a business from scratch in the countryside, dealing with the worst economic conditions for the last eighty years whilst bringing up two young children in two properties (!) was never going to be a pushover. Small wonder that at many times I feared for my own sanity.

We weren't sure we wanted to stay here but at the end of 2008 the penny or denarius dropped. We live in an amazing part of the country. The landscape, history and people are mind blowingly mind blowing. We've become part of the community, which is extremely close knit, and have been warmly welcomed into its heart. We've had our ups and downs just like the Nine Nicks of Hadrian's Wall. We've had the very best support from all those around us during our various trials and tribulations. All this has been done in a simple, unfussy and straightforward way. In short, just as Jim would have wanted.

Attention all computer users!

Our PC computer obviously got to the stage of this overloaded lorry...tooo fulllllllllllll!

I've learned a lot about computers these last couple of days so I'd like to pass on the jewels of my crash course in our crashed disk.

Here's the story...over the last two/three years....we saved a lot of data, work and personal, to our lovable PC. We also had to download a booking package - online booking system - onto it as well. This allows our guests to book and pay (if they wish) remotely using a computer. It obviously took up more valuable space.

To cut a long story short our computer was taking longer and longer to access data, photos and the like. I now realise that this is a sign of the computer "having trouble". As our hard disk was split into two drives C&D Mr. H. thought that by freeing up one of those drives we would then have more space for the computer to do what it does more efficiently. We did try to back up (a few times) but the computer wouldn't let us. We used a third party to help remove the partition in the hard disk side of the computer. I do not want go into details but we have ended up with a major loss of data.

I've now spoken to three data retrieval firms and another computer specialist and here are some helpful hints from them:

1. Always back up your data...to an online service if possible. Also back up to other computers, pens, disks..anything which gives you other options. But beware that all of these can fail at any time. PC hard drives are very temperamental these days and can decide not to work at a moment's notice. Portable hard disk drives are frequently dropped, pushed over by cats and dogs and children and adults. Coffee, ice cream, lipstick, lightening, fire, water, power failures, tea, smoothies....you name it...can spice up the non-workings of a computer! CDs can get scratched, pens can be lost or stolen. The online data companies are supposed to take backups of backups. That's what they are there for!

2. Once your computer starts to feel like a heavy smoker panting for dear life up a steep hill...STOP USING IT! Once you start to switch it on/off, open/close files etc. etc. you are overwriting the original files. Send it off to the experts in data retrieval. I know I sound like a sales person for them but many often will give you a free estimate of what they can and can't retrieve.

3. Keep your business and your personal stuff separate on separate computers if at all possible.

4. Back up often. Ideally once a week. More often if you feel like it! If you download some precious photos or files which you really don't want to lose...back them up straightaway...prefably on the internet.

5. Erm. What else? Just keep an eye on your precious PC or laptop. Any signs of distress or failure or "hanging" - where it takes ages to open files...that's when things aren't going so well. Blog more often and/or Facebook it! Anywhere you can put your stuff. (Just remember the privacy settings if it really private.)

6. Treat your computers as you would your family, pets and friends.....with care, love and affection! (Don't take them for granted!!!) But remember that they are basically mechanical things which can and do break down frequently. (Maybe we should get them serviced annually? How about computers with MOT stickers?)

7. My fingers are crossed that I'll be able to report on a happy ending.

8. If not...I'll have learned a lot.

9. After all things could be worse...we still have a lot of photos and data. Luckily we haven't lost everything.

10. We don't do it right now but maybe I will think about it again in a fresh light: Take a selection of photos to get printed every so often! If the worst comes to the worst.....you'll have something.

11. Use the online photo companies for storage. We have used them some of the time...thank goodness!

12. Perhaps we need to be realistic about what we can and cannot keep. After all we still have the memories....

13. You know about those people (in Selfridges) who go out and choose colours/clothes for others (I know they exist but not in my little circle in good 'ol Haltwhistle).... Maybe we need personal [personal] data storage experts?

14. Have I just invented a profession?

15. And finally just to remind you of my tried and tested favourite: "Always look on the bright side of life?".................Tee hee. Can't help but seeing the funny side of everything, hinny pets...Let's face it - I do get myself into all sorts of pickles. ;)

16. If the "forensic team" over in Middlesbrough write it off I will give the hard disk a decent burial. Any one up for a pixel wake?

Back Up/Pack Up!!!!

"To a rising young screen poet this might have been a crushing blow but Pat was made of sterner stuff." (Quoted from "Pat Hobby's Preview by F. Scott Fitzgerald".) In my mind's eye I take out "Pat" and insert "Hade" (short for Hadriana). In other words - me! I think we all do that. Don't we?

"Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and bury them beneath the sea!.....Don't worry about the cavalry!" (Quoted from Eliza Doolittle's very hummable tune [video of which is above] which keeps running around my head, ta da, running around my head, running around my head...to the delightful lilt of the song....)

"And Why? Pray?" I hear you all ask nicely and politely.

Due to some basic schoolboy errors (we each thought the other had backed up) we have lost two to three years worth of documents, data, work photos, personal photos  et cetera et cetera. Won't bore you with the teensy weensy details but my mantra or chorus has now become............

Back up your data in your old kit pen and bury them in every conceivable place! Every conceivable place, every conceivable place! Back up your data in your old kit pen and bury them in every conceivable place! Every conceivable place, every conceivable place! Don't tarry with the USB! Don't tarry with the USB! (To the tune of Pack Up!)




And so...."In the office assigned him Pat looked at the script of True to Two Flags. The first scene showed General Fitzhugh Lee at the head of his cavalry receiving word that Petersburg had been evacuated. In the script Lee took the blow in the pantomime, but Pat was getting two-fifty a week - so casually and without effort, he wrote in one of his favourite lines:

Lee (to his officers)

Well, what are you standing here gawking for? DO something!*

6. Medium shot Officers pepping up, slapping each other on back, etc.

Dissolve to:

To what? Pat's mind dissolved once more into the glamorous past."

(An excerpt from The Pat Hobby Stories, A Patriotic Short, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.)
* i.e. Back up and remember to back up as often as you want/need!!!!!

Even the data retrieval company has written off our hard disk as the data has got (or gotten) overwritten. There may be a 0.00000000001% chance that we can send them another hard disk which had an "image" of our computer written to it. But even that might not work.

So farewell then to...............

...................past deleted blog posts (unless they turn up on the internet at some point); photos of (and these are the ones I can remember. I'm sure there must be more): Center Parc holidays, Christmas trees at Lanercost, trip to Chesters last Summer with the friends of Segedunum, Senhouse and Maryport, Chill on Sill photos, Christmas at Bocketts, Desert Island Drive Photos, Lanercost again and again, Great Chesters, children at Great Chesters, photos along the Wall, Willowford in the rain with children, Whitfield Steam engines, Birdoswald, Mr.H.'s parents with children, Askerton Castle photos, Whitley Castle, friends in Newbury photos, Vindolanda, Walltown, Thirlwall castle, Solway photos and Edward I statue photos, Penrith, Salkeld, children in Surrey, Whitstable, Granda's 90th celebration photos, medieval Newcastle wall photos, Jim and Marj - Wall show photos, face painting, K's paintbox artwork, Cawfields, Alnwick castle and Gardens, White House Farm (Morpeth), zoo photos, santa photos, Carlisle castle, Hutton in the Forest. Lots and lots of documents relating to work we were doing for the B&B website. (We are writing the War and Peace version of it!) Serves me right for not writing stuff up to the blog quicker. Ah well. Ah well. She sighed.

These are just a sample.

Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!

Maybe in thousands of years to come in the scrapheap, midden of life future archaeologists will find a way to read our corrupted, beaten up, mashed up,chewed up, overwritten hard disk and take pleasure in those much, much, much cherished words and images.

I do hope so.

And I would say to them:

"Enjoy!" "Gaudete!" "Euge!"



Post Script: We do have other words, documents, photos in other locations. So we haven't lost completely everything. This allows me to keep my sanity. One minor advantage of living in two houses is that we have e-mailed a great deal of stuff to each other. So bits and pieces are out there in the internet ether. We'll also e-mail friends to make a photo appeal as well. Luckily my parents have taken masses of photos of the children. This piece has been cathartic for me. I have been having a few nightmares about this lately. So many thanks for reading this. Please do take it to heart and act on it. Don't assume that computers are foolproof. That they most surely ain't! I know we cannot keep everything in life and we cannot take pixels to the grave but I would say....try and save it for future generations. Don't keep putting it off! Say a very firm, stern NO! to procrastination!!!!