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These stories contain far too many references to the distasteful weather, and I probably sound more obsessive and fixated than usual, but rain has fallen every day I arrived in this sunshine-deprived land of incessant precipitation, and I’m beginning to crack. Some permanent images from my current life include:

Falling water from the sky, spraying, spitting, hissing. Prolonged vitriolic cries of disgruntled seagulls. Outrageously frigid wind in the summer. Settling cold infiltrating the tender marrow. A mere four channels of televised crap

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Wednesday and Thursday slipped away swiftly at the Arbeia fort in South Shields, where the weather persisted in remarkably wretched fashion. Though I mentioned my earlier intentions to sojourn today (Thursday, my dad’s birthday) in Edinburgh, plans changed Wednesday morning when we learned that the much-anticipated pottery lecture would occur at the fort on Thursday night, and the Saturday planned outing (a trip to York) was something we needed to pay for on our own. I enjoy labor on the site more than my down time, so I decided to stay and toil on Thursday. Additionally, though I spent a lot of time in lectures here (and I’m not always a tremendous fan of the lecture), the pottery talk holds significance for my Archaeology Colloquium (it’s a class I plan to teach) next year, so it could not be missed. The problem: my purchase of train tickets to Edinburgh needed immediate changing, something impossible to accomplish in South Shields. The plan: Katherine and I would sneak out of work as early as possible and go to Newcastle to change the tickets.

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Despite the dreadful forecasts, the weather did not approach yesterday’s appalling misery, and when half of us deconstructed a layer of clay that was bursting with finds, the previous day’s suffering seemed worthwhile. Katherine commenced the day of discoveries from the 2nd century with a tremendous Roman nail, something that is fairly common (I think all of us uncovered a few of them today), but this one enlivened the entire group. Fashioned from iron, Roman nails appear somewhat square shaped, and they are easily spotted because they are habitually encrusted with rusty-looking dirt. The metal alters the color of the soil, so rusty patches of earth often generate careful excavation.

Working on the excavation site.

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Merciless cold, relentless drizzle, unremitting wind: welcome to your South Shields holiday! Assuming that the atrocious weather precluded any outside activity at the site was my primary mistake today. Since warmth is infrequent for me in England, I sported three layers of clothing (long-sleeved t-shirt, short sleeved t-shirt, zip up cardigan) under my waterproof jacket, but I left my hair loose and flowing. I spent the day attempting to heat my frozen ears with arctic fingers, removing unruly hair from my mouth and struggling to contain the contents of my runny nose with a pitiful pocketful of toilet paper.