Vindolanda 2022 Day Twelve - Also Ghosts

A mixed menu of tasks today.  As you often, but not always, work the two weeks in the same small group here's a picture of the four of us at start of day.

Bright sun, driving rain, winds strong enough to move you slightly (plus side, the site stays dry), the usual Northumbrian forecast.  We have by the way a retired meteorologist excavating this week.  When it rains he sits alone, friendless at lunch break.

We did some clearing of fill from a prior excavation season for most of the morning.  Then we got a new assignment.  Under some big paving slabs was an area of burning that might give clues to a demolition phase at the end of the Severan period.  First those slabs have to go.  Everyone seemed to enjoy taking the sledge out and bashing a few stones to moveable size.

Then it was finer work.  Isolating a promising area of charcoal and such for environmental sampling.  

We had a couple of small finds.  One might be a coin fashioned into a bit of jewelry.  So overall a fun day with no time actually lost to weather.

At the end of the day I took a sentimental journey.  I was getting a lift (in the UK don't say getting a ride, its a bit naughty) but had a wait.  So I trekked up the hill to our former diggers HQ at the Twice Brewed Inn.  Once a quirky, low tech, inexpensive hostel it has gone full posh.  There is an automatic plate detector in the parking lot so you have to pay.  I remember when hot water for the showers was beyond their capability.

I had well earned a pint for my day's exertions and my 2 mile hike at the end of same.  But there is a very odd sensation being in a place you know well, once loved , but have seen radically change.  You look around and at first get a pleasant sense of nostalgia.  Not everything has changed after all.  I remember leaning against that wall after my fourth pint.  The view out the window has not changed in a thousand years.  But when you stay a bit longer.....ghosts start to whisper.  Not angry or unfriendly ones, but memories of times gone by, of Absent Friends, of meals enjoyed in good company and served by people you know who are both friendly and sarcastic.

I found myself becoming a detached observer, a sort of archive of the memories.  It would be the sort of thing my alter ego Badger Trowelsworthy would do regularly.  I felt myself slipping into the Trowelsworthy persona.....

Ok, enough of that nonsense.  I took my last swig, assured the ridiculously young waitress that I needed nothing more and waited for my lift outside in the brilliant sunshine and brisk wind.  The ghosts retreated into the far corners of the Twicey where they belong.