Monthly Archives: April 2012

Giles, the Cartoon Museum and a Cracking Night Out in 1967, Gromit…

The last few weeks have been a bit much: first there was lambing, then, hot on its heels, my first Time Team of the 20th series. While I was away filming, Maisie had the running of the farm to cope … Continue reading

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Back to Reality: April Showers and Cowslips

Don’t get me wrong: I love whizzing off and filming with Time Team, but I also have a life of my own and not just as an archaeologist – or indeed, a farmer. No, the other great interest in my … Continue reading

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Time Team Series 20: My First Episode – Day 3

I must admit I wasn’t feeling one hundred percent optimistic at the start of Day 3. The weather forecast looked grim in the afternoon, so I was aware we’d have to get a great deal completed by lunchtime. With the … Continue reading

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Time Team Series 20: My First Episode – Day 2

One of the reasons I love archaeology is that so often it reflects life. Now I don’t know about you, but the first 67 years of my life have been fairly chaotic: some plans have gone wrong, other have succeeded, … Continue reading

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Time Team Series 20: My First Episode – Day 1

It was raining hard as we drove to site from our hotel, a short but miraculous journey. While we were on the road, the rain stopped, the grey overcast gave way to a shy sun peeping out from behind cotton … Continue reading

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Time Team Series 20: My First episode – Rig Day: the Recce

That first post should have been about what I encountered when I first visited the site, which was around two in the afternoon. So forgive me for sneaking in another quickie. It was fantastic: an intact Iron Age hillfort – … Continue reading

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Time Team Series 20: My First episode – Rig Day

This is going to be an experiment. As some followers might know by now, for the 20th series (yes, Time Team has been going for twenty years!!), I’m going to be the lead archaeological director for the series, And by … Continue reading

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Pea Sticks: My favourite Job of the Year

I‘ve always been a keen vegetable gardener. As I boy I would grow lettuces and radishes, then around ten or eleven I used to ‘help’ our gardener, Joe Aylott. Joe was a member of a rapidly vanishing species: Hertfordshire countrymen. … Continue reading

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New Heights, New Conquests: now it’s Radio 3…

Word has it that some younger people don’t know that Radio 3 exists! I ask you, he sniffed, whatever next? In my youth, of course, they’d have been laughed to derision – and besides in those far-off days it was … Continue reading

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Welcome Daffodils, Signs of Hope

I used to see snowdrops as the first sign that the icy grasp of winter might be slackening its grip on my throat, but sadly, over the past few years they’ve proved to be fickle friends: yes, they poke their … Continue reading

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