It was a moment of teenage rebellion that caused me to become an archaeologist. Dad had wanted me to join his old RAF squadron so that I could travel overseas and, as the old slogan went, “meet new and exotic people, then drop bombs on them” but I had other ideas. Despite my military obsessed childhood I was not quite ready to hurtle round the skies like Tom Cruise with a bloody silly nickname like ‘Mongoose’ or ‘Chinchilla’. It was possibly down to a bit of an incident with a training aircraft in my cadet days and the probability that the RAF would not let me anywhere near anything expensive ever again that did it. Thus it was to my dads eternal disgust that I became an archaeologist or as he put it “a bloody gypsy”.
Now those of you that have watched ‘Time Team’ will know all about archaeology or at least the sanitised version of it. Archaeology is all about digging holes in the most disgusting conditions known to man. Invariably it is cold and wet, warm and wet or if you are really lucky the hottest summer in living memory where you can fry eggs on the environmental team and people are dying of sunstroke just by thinking of being outdoors. The ground is either so hard you need a drill to get through it, or as one former colleague had experienced, dynamite or is so wet entire surveying teams have vanished into the quagmire never to be seen again. No excavation can call itself a success unless at least three of the excavators have been lost to drowning or heat stroke. Most digs were out in the arse end of nowhere although there was usually a pub nearby, odd that, and free time was either spent in tents that were trying to launch themselves skyward in a force 8 gale or getting steadily rat-arsed in the pub on the pokiest real ale you could find. If you were lucky the group you were working for had a ‘diggers hostel’, which is a bit like a student hall but with a constant aroma of week old cabbage, last nights curry, stale farts and damp dungeons and dragons player. Far too many archaeologists either played D&D or were involved in live action role playing or historical battle re-enactment societies so there was also a high risk of death by tripping over someone’s battle axe or flintlock when heading to the toilet to get rid of the copious amounts of real ale everyone consumed to help aid in forgetting the positively grim conditions we lived in. Then there were the Portaloos…
Even out in the middle of nowhere we had to have a Portaloo, probably to stop bearded, real ale drinking wannabe orc slayers peeing in the bushes or vanishing into copses with a wad of leaves and scaring the local wildlife. However, without fail the Portaloos were absolutely foul. Those of you reading this that have ever been to a festival should imagine the worst toilets there, multiply it by ten then plonk the whole lot in the middle of the Somme circa 1916 on a wet Sunday and you probably wouldn’t be close even then. They went far beyond the word ‘minging’ and well into the territory of banned by several biological warfare treaties. That however did not stop Rick our finds supervisor from disappearing into one for several hours at a time with a copy of the Guardian that cunningly concealed a gentlemen’s periodical of the kind where young ladies were displayed artistically and requests were made of gentlemen readers to provide photographic illustrations of their nearest and dearest. Okay, why beat about the bush, it was a copy of ‘Razzle’ or some similar top shelf fare and Rick would vanish for several hours to read the paper and have what was known as a “leisurely J. Arthur” over Deirdre (44-28-32) from Bolton.
We had been excavating one particular site for several weeks. It lay at the top of a hill and as we expanded ever outward in our search for bits of grubby pottery and stains on the ground that might indicate an iron age settlement the Portaloos were steadily pushed back towards the edge of the site until they were precariously close to the steep side of the hill. That however, did not bother us, they were perfectly safe, after all, our resident ‘engineer’ John had shored them up with some old railway sleepers from a nearby farm and a bit of drystone walling. As long as you did not practice tap dancing in one then you were perfectly safe and to be honest there were not a lot of tap dancers on site and nor could you swing a broadsword in one either. Thus, most of us were pretty safe.
Perhaps the couple of days of almost continuous rain played its part but that will never be known, what is known is that Rick would probably not have visited the Portaloos, Guardian tucked under his arm had he known what was about to happen.
It was a site joke that if you saw a gently swaying Portaloo you knew that Rick was in residence and this morning was no different. About half an hour after he had vanished, just enough time to scan through the paper the toilet began to shake ever so slightly, then over the course of the next half hour it began to wobble a bit more and a bit more as the delights of Deirdre and her fellow readers wives had an effect. Suddenly the stones and railway sleepers began to shift. A few of us spotted it and were dashing to warn Rick when the Portaloo slowly toppled backwards as the ‘engineering’ supporting it gave way. From within came a strangled howl as the whole lot vanished from view over the edge of the hill. As we reached the edge of the hill we were rewarded with the sight of the runaway toilet crashing into a bramble patch and coming to rest against the fence that ran along the base of the hill. About five seconds after it did, the door flew open and with a blood curdling “AAARRGGH!” Rick popped up like a demented Jack in the box, or would have if Jack in the boxes popped up with their jeans and underpants round their ankles, a rapidly fading erection and were covered in the assorted waste products donated by forty or so real ale swilling, bearded, battle re-enacting archaeologists who had not crapped in a hedgerow for weeks.
Naturally, being the kind concerned lot we were we did not stand at the top of the hill almost bent double with laughter at the sight of Rick, covered in shit, ‘Mr Floppy’ out for all to see standing in a crashed Portaloo in the middle of a bramble patch with a look of mortal terror on his face and clutching a soggy, toilet roll festooned copy of ‘Fiesta’. Of course we did not, we were far too mature to do such a thing. Well, maybe we laughed just a bit and one of our number having an asthma attack because she was laughing so much was nothing to do with it. Honestly!
Funnily enough after that the Portaloos were kept well away from the edge of the site and Rick, well, let’s just say he did not spend half as much time in them, perhaps just enough time to read the paper without the distractions of the ample charms of Deirdre causing him any further woe.
Now those of you that have watched ‘Time Team’ will know all about archaeology or at least the sanitised version of it. Archaeology is all about digging holes in the most disgusting conditions known to man. Invariably it is cold and wet, warm and wet or if you are really lucky the hottest summer in living memory where you can fry eggs on the environmental team and people are dying of sunstroke just by thinking of being outdoors. The ground is either so hard you need a drill to get through it, or as one former colleague had experienced, dynamite or is so wet entire surveying teams have vanished into the quagmire never to be seen again. No excavation can call itself a success unless at least three of the excavators have been lost to drowning or heat stroke. Most digs were out in the arse end of nowhere although there was usually a pub nearby, odd that, and free time was either spent in tents that were trying to launch themselves skyward in a force 8 gale or getting steadily rat-arsed in the pub on the pokiest real ale you could find. If you were lucky the group you were working for had a ‘diggers hostel’, which is a bit like a student hall but with a constant aroma of week old cabbage, last nights curry, stale farts and damp dungeons and dragons player. Far too many archaeologists either played D&D or were involved in live action role playing or historical battle re-enactment societies so there was also a high risk of death by tripping over someone’s battle axe or flintlock when heading to the toilet to get rid of the copious amounts of real ale everyone consumed to help aid in forgetting the positively grim conditions we lived in. Then there were the Portaloos…
Even out in the middle of nowhere we had to have a Portaloo, probably to stop bearded, real ale drinking wannabe orc slayers peeing in the bushes or vanishing into copses with a wad of leaves and scaring the local wildlife. However, without fail the Portaloos were absolutely foul. Those of you reading this that have ever been to a festival should imagine the worst toilets there, multiply it by ten then plonk the whole lot in the middle of the Somme circa 1916 on a wet Sunday and you probably wouldn’t be close even then. They went far beyond the word ‘minging’ and well into the territory of banned by several biological warfare treaties. That however did not stop Rick our finds supervisor from disappearing into one for several hours at a time with a copy of the Guardian that cunningly concealed a gentlemen’s periodical of the kind where young ladies were displayed artistically and requests were made of gentlemen readers to provide photographic illustrations of their nearest and dearest. Okay, why beat about the bush, it was a copy of ‘Razzle’ or some similar top shelf fare and Rick would vanish for several hours to read the paper and have what was known as a “leisurely J. Arthur” over Deirdre (44-28-32) from Bolton.
We had been excavating one particular site for several weeks. It lay at the top of a hill and as we expanded ever outward in our search for bits of grubby pottery and stains on the ground that might indicate an iron age settlement the Portaloos were steadily pushed back towards the edge of the site until they were precariously close to the steep side of the hill. That however, did not bother us, they were perfectly safe, after all, our resident ‘engineer’ John had shored them up with some old railway sleepers from a nearby farm and a bit of drystone walling. As long as you did not practice tap dancing in one then you were perfectly safe and to be honest there were not a lot of tap dancers on site and nor could you swing a broadsword in one either. Thus, most of us were pretty safe.
Perhaps the couple of days of almost continuous rain played its part but that will never be known, what is known is that Rick would probably not have visited the Portaloos, Guardian tucked under his arm had he known what was about to happen.
It was a site joke that if you saw a gently swaying Portaloo you knew that Rick was in residence and this morning was no different. About half an hour after he had vanished, just enough time to scan through the paper the toilet began to shake ever so slightly, then over the course of the next half hour it began to wobble a bit more and a bit more as the delights of Deirdre and her fellow readers wives had an effect. Suddenly the stones and railway sleepers began to shift. A few of us spotted it and were dashing to warn Rick when the Portaloo slowly toppled backwards as the ‘engineering’ supporting it gave way. From within came a strangled howl as the whole lot vanished from view over the edge of the hill. As we reached the edge of the hill we were rewarded with the sight of the runaway toilet crashing into a bramble patch and coming to rest against the fence that ran along the base of the hill. About five seconds after it did, the door flew open and with a blood curdling “AAARRGGH!” Rick popped up like a demented Jack in the box, or would have if Jack in the boxes popped up with their jeans and underpants round their ankles, a rapidly fading erection and were covered in the assorted waste products donated by forty or so real ale swilling, bearded, battle re-enacting archaeologists who had not crapped in a hedgerow for weeks.
Naturally, being the kind concerned lot we were we did not stand at the top of the hill almost bent double with laughter at the sight of Rick, covered in shit, ‘Mr Floppy’ out for all to see standing in a crashed Portaloo in the middle of a bramble patch with a look of mortal terror on his face and clutching a soggy, toilet roll festooned copy of ‘Fiesta’. Of course we did not, we were far too mature to do such a thing. Well, maybe we laughed just a bit and one of our number having an asthma attack because she was laughing so much was nothing to do with it. Honestly!
Funnily enough after that the Portaloos were kept well away from the edge of the site and Rick, well, let’s just say he did not spend half as much time in them, perhaps just enough time to read the paper without the distractions of the ample charms of Deirdre causing him any further woe.
3 comments:
Great story, I hope they weren't mine. Love the phrase J. Arthur.
Oh and to the anonymous spammer.. Beds and air matresses! what a crap bit of spam.
I have watched Time Team but know little of archaeology; I think I was distracted by Alice Roberts bending over in a vest! MMMmmmm Alice! :)
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