Falling

Posted on December 14, 2017 by memoirsofahusk

First came hail. Then stinging sleet, whipping my cheeks like an angry weather monster.

Later, lonely white flakes fell – dawdling down in isolation. Mere afterthoughts. Certainly not a snowfall.

The clouds passed, their smoke-grey curtain drawn back, revealing a bright blue sky and sunshine.

But it was cold.

A pretty dance of frost filigreed our car’s windows. Icing sugar dusted the golf course greens. The sandhills, pines and holly glistened.

It was a day ripe for returning. It had been a while since I  visited my sanctuary-place.

Two months ago, we had a date to see a comedian, Rich Hall. Hurrying to catch a train, fumbling for coins in my purse, I tripped, in my headlong haste, over a paving stone.

The Prof grabbed my left arm but couldn’t stop the descent onto my finger – third finger, right hand – and wrist.

Vanity overriding the shock, I rapidly assumed a sitting position, aware of traffic passing by.

My finger wasn’t at a good angle.

I took the Prof’s proffered hand with my undamaged one. Climbed to my feet feeling slightly sick.

Blanking any questions, I went straight to the station platform without a word, leaving him to buy tickets. And when at last I spoke it was to ask the most important of questions.

‘Have I scratched my jacket?’

Second time of wearing. Soft, supple Italian leather. Black and biker-chick style. But sophisticated for all that.

The meal – Sardinian – was probably good, but mostly I recall the ice wrapped in a napkin on my side plate, where I rested my ballooning hand.

Red wine helped. And Rich Hall was diverting, but I couldn’t clap.

Next day, with my hand bruised and swollen, I found it hard to type. To work, cook, dress – do anything.

Five days later I was longlisted for a first novel award. I had two weeks to lick 99,000 words into better shape.

Another five days passed (and 11,000 words were cut) before I resorted to A&E. Five hours later, an X-ray and turquoise-blue cast had shattered my illusions of being badly-bruised.

Six weeks dragged. Finally, the cast came off and dandruff of the arm descended upon my world like the snow that didn’t fall.

I could drive again, hooray!

But my burst of joy was clouded by the news I’d not been shortlisted.

The editing had been painful and inadequate, I knew. I was prepared for the decision. Still, it was another falling. Another bruising. And another attempt by me to dismiss it as trivial ensued.

But fall I did.

‘Don’t let that black dog in,’ warned my sis-in-law, nagmailing from Texas.

He growled, that dog. He prowled, whined and poked his head through the door.

Then came Monday.

Jack the Frost had danced his jig on the golf course overnight. The sun shone in a sky so blue the Virgin Mary could have worn it.

And a door opened in my head. I could drive to my special place.

I scraped the windscreen till my wrist ached and my fingers burned. Then I drove.

Seven miles later I stepped from the car and the cares of the world fell noiselessly, to the ground.

From behind a bird hide the sun casts shadows on reeds at the frozen edge of one of the lakes

Ducks laughed and birds on the ponds whistled.

Geese honked and wheezed as they flapped in straggling v-formations.

I walked along the riverbank and something undiscernible made me look up. As I turned my eyes to the heavens a swan flew by, low in the sky, then glided to land by its friends on an icy lake.

One of the three swans in the distance had flown over me earlier

I stopped at all my usual places. Spied on my old summer sights in their winter déshabillées.

I entered the young woods, through shaded sentinel posts.

Blades of grass and edges of fallen leaves were frost-touched. Spiny arching brambles, clouds of decaying nettles were delicate white traceries.

Tree tips yearning for heaven burned orange in the sunlight.

Standing among the trees, luxuriating in the peace that is not silence, I saw a sight and heard a sound.

A leaf fell.

And I heard its falling.

The leaf with spherical hitchhikers wasn’t the first I heard, which I couldn’t see landing among the trees, but I saw this and heard it fall

There, in the wood, amid falling leaves and dancing frost my spirits rose from the icy ground.

With the gift of a beautiful winter’s day, I was one with Mother Nature, in her shape-shifting, ever-changing, transformational glory.

As Leonard Cohen (in a different context) sang, ‘for something like a second, I’m cured and my heart is at ease.’

Pride – and many other things – may come before a fall. But resurgence, like spring after winter, can surely follow.

Posted in Art, jaunts & going out, Britain now & then, Lancashire & the golf coast, Nature notes | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Relative

Posted on November 17, 2017 by memoirsofahusk

I’m thinking about time. A subject about which I am very dubious.

I’m not sure I really believe in it.

But earthly time, as measured in hours and days and weeks, does have its practical impacts.

I now have a date for the removal of the pot – or cast, or whatever you like to call it – from my right (writing) arm. November 30th: an earthly day that cannot come too soon.

Thus, whether or not I believe in it, time seems to be relative.

A theory supported by the evidence in this picture, taken at one of my favourite places,  Jodrell Bank. Where it’s either time – or not time – for a nice cup of tea and a sit down. A chance to ponder the meaning of signals from outer space – and the probable dearth of leaf tea in a black hole.

Some final words now – if it is now as you read this – on time past, present and future, taken from the Four Quartets. Because TS Eliot describes how I feel (fleetingly) about time better than I ever could.

For this I forgive him for measuring out life with coffee spoons (The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock), when it should, plainly, have been teaspoons.

And he was, after all, born American.

[I didn’t scrawl on my copy, that’s Microsoft Photo pencil]

Speed is also relative, at Jodrell Bank

Listening…

 

Posted in Britain now & then, Thinking, or ranting, or both | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

What lies beneath

Posted on November 10, 2017 by memoirsofahusk

I asked permission to take a picture at the fracture clinic in our local hospital yesterday.

At first I couldn’t decide how I felt about the poppy, the symbol of remembrance for those who died in conflict, serving their country.  But then I thought, it’s a pretty stark reminder of what ‘the ultimate sacrifice’ means.

Tomorrow, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, some of the Saturday hustle and bustle will stop for one minute. On Sunday, services of remembrance will be held at war memorials around Britain and, in our local town’s case, around the peace memorial.

One side of Southport’s majestic peace memorial

The names carved in stone on these memorials, or engraved in metal, are predominantly of  those who died in the two world wars of the twentieth century.

Every small village seems to have its own tragic reminder of families who gave lives to the nation’s cause. And I believe it is fitting to honour their sacrifices.

Whether the cause is judged, with benefit of hindsight, to be worthwhile, mistaken or futile is not the point. They fought, they died, they served their fellow citizens to their last breaths.

But it is always a sad reminder of how easy it is for humans to choose to go to war. As they continue to do – and as more threaten to do, as I write.

As we slip further into the twenty-first century, thanks to certain men in power,  the threat of a nuclear conflagration rears its horrific, mushroom cloud of a head again.

For some of us it has never, of course, gone away.

When will we ever learn?

Why can’t we humans give peace a chance, as a boy from Liverpool, who would later be shot dead in New York, sang long, long ago.

Posted in Britain now & then, Lancashire & the golf coast, Thinking, or ranting, or both | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

A graveyard’s cure

Posted on October 31, 2017 by memoirsofahusk

Our local cemetery is about a third of the way between our house and the nearest shops. It’s a beautiful place. Serene.

Full of love and grief, of stories barely told.

Today, of necessity walking to the shops, thanks to my broken wrist (I’ve been advised not to drive) I took the slight diversion it affords from the main road.

Just a few feet through a gate, one of the cemetery paths parallels the road. As you pass through the gate the traffic noise is hushed, as if by divine decree.

Actually, it’s because of a slight bank and newly planted monkey puzzle trees that lie between the graves and the outer pavement.

I usually find myself distracted by the angels, the weeping women, the carved books and inscriptions.

But today I stopped before a glossy, reddish-brown marble memorial. Obelisk-style, with a pedestal and stone border. There were three names on it.

Mary’s name was nearest the top. She died in her 59th year in 1926.

George, her husband, died in his 60th year, in 1927.

A large gap led my eyes to the base of the obelisk.

There hid little Norman, ‘interred’ elsewhere. He died, aged 13 months, in 1906.

We can fill in those blank details in whatever way we choose. Or choose not to think about the three human beings who are no more. Their loves, their lives, their sorrows. And, in the case of Norman, the unfairness of that abruptly terminated existence.

Beneath the obelisk, on the pedestal, are inscribed the words:

‘Peace, perfect peace’

Which rewrote the story I had written in my head.

Well, that’s all I want to say, today, this eve of all the hallowed, the departed souls who are – if you are a believer – now in heaven. Saints, in other words.

When garish orange is everywhere and a witch in nylon robes serves me in my local bakery, the departed souls in the graveyard were a rather effective antidote to cynicism.

Now I must return to work.

May they rest in peace.

Posted in Lancashire & the golf coast, Thinking, or ranting, or both | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Me too? This must stop

Posted on October 20, 2017 by memoirsofahusk

Please forgive this deeply personal post – it’s been fermenting a long time and now is the time to post it, if ever. It’s longer than my usual pieces – but shorter than it could have been by many miles.

I was 17 when my then boyfriend, a year older than me, went off to college in London.

As a good Catholic girl with a strict upbringing, I wasn’t allowed to visit him for fear of – well, you know what.

At Christmas, or on one of his trips home – I can’t honestly remember – he told me about some ‘friends’ who’d been refilling the condom machine in the student union.

Male friends.

They’d decided, for fun, to stick a pin through them before filling the machine.

I was horrified. And so, I like to think, was he.

We are talking about a time when to become pregnant, if unmarried, was likely to ruin a female’s life.

Just a year or two later a girl from my school, who had gone to university, became pregnant. Her father – a doctor – disowned her.

But back to me.

I had my first wolf whistle when I was 16, in Norwich, volunteering on a dig. I was walking to work, wearing a yellow vest-top and jeans. And I was shocked.

My first thought was, I’d better wear a shirt over it tomorrow.

OK, so when you’re in your forties (those were the days) and still get occasional catcalls it’s kind of reassuring, but I can’t say it’s welcome.

Moving on. Me in my early twenties. New graduate, working in a library.

I have a ‘serious’ boyfriend who thinks it’s fine to rape me as I sleep.

‘Asleep?’ you may wonder. ‘In the same bed? Is that really rape? Hmm, not sure about that. And anyway, surely because she was there it implied…’

Let us be clear. I did not give my consent.

I was not drunk, nor was I drugged. I was asleep.

He used me. Without my permission.

What about that is not rape?

There was no violence, but that’s not a prerequisite for rape.

I found out when I awoke next morning. I had to get on my bike and go to work, knowing that he had used me. Abused me.

I felt ashamed – yes, ashamed. I felt dirty, upset, disgusted. But I was supposed to be flattered. Oh, yes, I was just so irresistible he couldn’t resist pleasuring himself in my sleep.

At least I didn’t become pregnant.

I’ve tried to write about this so many times now I’ve lost count.

I’ve tried to set it in various wider contexts which outrage me.

The general shrugging off of the horrendous statistics for rape in this country, for example.

In the year to June reported rapes have gone up in England and Wales by 22% to 45,100. Bad enough – but it’s well known that rape is a hugely under-reported crime.

The annual Crime Survey of England and Wales arguably paints a more accurate picture, suggesting around 85,000 women and 12,000 men are raped in England and Wales every year. Figures which don’t include children.

Now, if 7000 or more armed robberies or murders were happening every month, instead of rapes, what do you suppose would happen? Outrage?

But, back to younger me. And skip forward to London. My first serious job.

Walking home one night, I stopped at a phone box in a nice neighbourhood, in the north of the city, to make a call.

There were no mobile phones. And no phone in the room I rented.

As I listened to ringing at the other end of the line the door behind me opened.

A man pushed into the box and the door swung shut.

Luckily for me a couple walking a dog came to the rescue and my attacker ran off.

Did I report it?

No. What would I report?

It was just the kind of thing that happened. A young woman out alone at night. What do you expect?

Then there was the taxi.

Leaving Ronnie Scott’s – a famous jazz club – after 2 am. No night buses, no tubes.

And cabs weren’t willing to go beyond four miles north.

One finally took me to a rank at a mainline station – where taxi after taxi left me standing. I grew colder and more desperate, turned to the rest of the queue, asked if anyone was going in my direction.

One man was.

Youngish, in a bobble hat. A bit like Mike Nesmith of the Monkees. With a frayed bandage on his arm. I can still see him now.

The next taxi took us.

As we sped north, he leapt on me. Thrust his tongue in my mouth.

I shoved him off, asked the taxi driver to stop.

He did. And after a lecture on never, ever doing such a stupid thing again, he waited as I walked to my door, put in the key and shut it behind me.

I was young. But believe me, it doesn’t stop as you get older. Just when you think your age is an armour of sorts, you find tradesmen mistaking a cheery demeanour and cups of tea for an invitation.

It’s very, very depressing.

One post I read this week pointed out that this problem is often regarded – if it is regarded at all – as a women’s problem.

Women are raped.

Women suffer domestic violence.

No.

Men – many of them – rape.

Men – many of them – are violent.

Men violate women.

Not all men – and not all women. But many.*

And often.

And they almost always get away with it.

Bear in mind we’re not just talking about ‘minor’ things such as a pat on the behind, a leering catcall or an ‘accidental’ brush of the hand on a breast.

We’re talking about men sticking their penises in women (and men) without their consent.

Why do they get away with it?

Too many reasons to enumerate. But I can tell you the victim’s shame is one of them.

It’s time a large part of our society – men – not only took notice, but responsibility for doing something.

I saw a letter to a quality newspaper, responding to the Harvey Weinstein story, highlighting how women use flirtation to get ahead in life. As if that’s comparable.

But flirtation is not an invitation to rape or molestation.

And a man can ignore it if he chooses.

So let’s not go down that or any other diversionary route, shall we?

Rape.

It’s not a women’s problem or women’s fault.

Men who rape are criminals.

And thousands of them not only get away with it, we women shrug it off, knowing we will face at the very least disgusted looks, at worst the shame and intrusive questioning of our morals and habits.

There’s plenty more to say – about that fuzzy line between compliments and harassment, for example.

But I suggest we start with rape. And violence. That’s pretty non-controversial, isn’t it?

And as domestic-abuse statistics rise, why not consider all those domestic violence units that are having to close?*

It’s time for the world to man up, in a good way.

Men – and most especially, men in power – over to you.

* I was criticised on a previous occasion when I wrote about rape for saying ‘men rape women’ by a man who said he didn’t. I shouldn’t generalise, he implied. Well, fine, I didn’t say all men did. But it’s not women doing the raping and the statistics are horrendous.

* The police recorded 511,319 offences that were domestic abuse-related in the year ending June 2017, a 18% increase on the 431,768 offences recorded the previous year.

 

 

Posted in Thinking, or ranting, or both | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 51 Comments

Chocolate, a castle, a cake fit for a princess – and Moomins

Posted on October 18, 2017 by memoirsofahusk

Chocolate I haven’t been eating for some time. And I really don’t miss it.

Castles are just an occasional treat – well, I do love a good ruin.

And though I rarely have cake, the mere sight of a good one makes me pine. Still, I can resist.

But as for Moomins –  who can resist a Moomin?

If you don’t know the Moomins (why not?) but do like chocolate, read on, there’s an introductory  treat in store 😉

My first encounter with Moomintroll, his assorted friends and relatives – as well as some terrors – was as a small child.

My parents read Tove Jansson’s Finn Family Moomintroll to me at bedtime.

Oh, how I longed to see the King’s Ruby gleaming in the dark.  And thanks to Ms Jansson’s evocative black-and-white pictures, I could easily imagine it.

Thingumy, Bob, Moomintroll and the King’s Ruby

The book went missing and it wasn’t till I was eleven that I bought a new copy, with saved-up pocket money.

I still have my well-thumbed and precious Puffin paperback.

My favourite character is the magical-black-top-hatted Hobgoblin.

Although Thingumy and Bob, who communicate in a lange stranguage, are also cholly jaracters.

The Hobgoblin on his black panther

The Hobgoblin appears at first to be BAD, but turns out just to be SAD.

And really rather nice inside when Bingumy and Thob are kind to him.

Isn’t that so often the way? Bad people are just sad people in disguise?

Anyway. Being in Sweden, which is nearer to Finland than England is, Moominalia is available to buy.

It was on my last trip, as I walked through the shopping area, that I first came across the sweet shop. Great, glittering, heaps of cellophane-wrapped nougat – one of my favourite confections – lay, siren-like in the window.

But bravely I marched past – and found a toyshop. Wherein – oh joy – were not just toys, but plates, cups, bowls and other such Moominaceous stuff.

I bought a plastic plate. And felt a bit selfish. It wasn’t cheap. Nothing in Sweden is, especially since our Brexit decision.

But this time, as the Prof and I together wandered the after-dark streets, the sweet shop window had a special surprise for me. Moomin’s friend the Snorkmaiden and Little My, in chocolate.

Snorkmaiden & a rather large  Little My in an Uppsala sweet shop, mercifully closed for the night. When Snorkmaiden is upset she turns light green. Here she’s a nice creamy white chocolate colour 😉

Now, Little My isn’t a character I know well. She didn’t feature in Finn Family. But how can you fail to love her? Here’s her tiny biography, from the genuine Moomin website:

We tore ourselves away from the chocolate and made it to the sleeping toyshop, which had a wonderful display in each window. One featuring a rather lovely fox, the other a whole Moomin world.

Which would have to wait for another day. Because even for humans, it was time to make ready for bedtime – and first, to eat.

Moominmamma towering over Groke & Dweller Beneath the Sink on the left, Moomintroll on the right behind a Hattifattener – all under a Moomin star

We pounded the streets for quite some time after that, searching for a place to dine. And finally found an old Italian restaurant with old-style Italian food.

At Swedish prices.

Sigh.

The night was quiet in our tiny room and the breakfast options brimming with choice.  Though I never did make my own waffle, as I intended, so enticed was I by the smoked salmon and mustard sauce.

For the next two days we walked, took buses, experiencing people, places and things.

The second night’s meal was the punctuation lobster – followed by the less poetic but delicious Arctic Char. Which reminded me of the train timetable in Uppsala, which offers trains to ‘the Arctic Circle’. Oh, how romantic that sounded.

But back to the Char.

Did you know (so the Prof told me over dinner) that there is Arctic Char in a lake in Snowdonia, Wales? It’s dying out, thanks to the increasing warmth of the water. A remnant, he said (I think) of ice age days…

Anyway. I love food. I really do.

So it’s no surprise that on day three, when we visited the Castle – where we had eaten a perfect lunch of soup and endless salad on our last trip – we treated ourselves to cake.

The castle dates originally from 1549 but was largely destroyed in a fire in 1702. Dag Hammarskjöld, the second UN Secretary General, who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize and was killed in a ‘plane crash’ in Zambia in 1961, lived here growing up

It was a dreary, drippy, Sunday. And, I must confess, not only did I succumb to cake, I had warm chocolate.

See, that warm is the odd thing.

It happened in Poland too.

We in England do hot chocolate. In Sweden and Poland they do warm (barely) chocolate.

In fact, the warm chocolate in Poland was exactly that – chocolate, warmed to a gloopy liquid state. At least in Sweden it was milky.

What’s that? The cake?

Oh, my.

I’ve never eaten such a luscious cake.

Drooling as I type

Light-as-air sponge.

Sweetly whipped cream.

Icing sugar.

Mouthwatering berries.

Sugar paste. And all beautifully decorated, a dusty decorous pink.

It was called a princess cake – and it was fit for one.

Anyway. Shall I tell you what we bought in the Moomin shop?

Just a tiny tray. Made of birch wood, in Finland.

Sunshine yellow, to carry my morning cup of tea and cheer my start to the day.

But … then we made another find. In an academic bookshop.

Notebooks. Cards. Tins.

I restrained myself from even considering the bigger items – which were really expensive.

And, anyway, little things are just as good as big things. Sometimes better, as Little My  would probably agree.

So now we have our Malawi tea in a Moomin tin.

And I have a precious card that one day someone might (hmm) receive.

And a Moominvalley notebook, for little notes.

But I swept up a Groke notebook at the last minute to remind me.

Even in Moomin world, sometimes bad things are – bad.

But cake – and even warm chocolate – can be relied on to make the world feel better.

 

Posted in Art, jaunts & going out, Sweden, Travelling | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

Death, burial – and untimely resurrection

Posted on October 17, 2017 by memoirsofahusk

The dead were fast becoming the underlying (sorry) theme of our trip to Uppsala.

First it was ancient DNA.

Then, as day two dawned – actually, it was long after dawn – it was the turn of Viking burials.

Replete with smoked salmon, mustard sauce and dark brown bread, we set out for the bus.

After what felt like miles of tromping – and the sight of the requisite bus heading in the opposite direction – we finally en-bussed.

As we headed out of town, to Gamla Uppsala, all seemed set fair. But.

We arrived in the outer suburbs, to what looked like a building site. And no obvious signs.

Had we reached the wrong place?

No.

There was the museum. Buzzing with children … behind a locked door.

A little boy indicated we should wait and we’d be let in.

We were. Only to be told the museum was shut.

‘But we’ve come from England to see this,’ I exaggerated.

‘You can come back tomorrow,’ she said, smiling.

I didn’t return the smile.

Stomping down a track the real goal came into view. A trail of mounds.

Burial mounds.

As I sit here typing, at 2.35 am, in the close, dark time of the night (snuffles keeping me awake), thinking of those mounds, I begin to feel the magic.

The mystery.

Thoughts of sleeping lords and ladies, of dragons and hideous trolls (the real kind), of monsters, spells and… well, you get the idea.

But at the time, I was becoming more and more grumpy.

I’ve not only seen lots of mounds. I’ve climbed lots of mounds.

Like Etowah Indian Mounds, Alabama. Awesome, #biggly mounds.

So this string of hummocks, like the knotty spinal cord of great a sleeping giant, was tempting.

Across the flat fields, the spires of Uppsala cathedral pointed skywards. The view from the mounds would be …

But the sign said to keep to the paths. So, with an ill, will we did. Unlike the locals. Or their dogs.

By now even the archaeologist was more interested in a nearby church than mounds behind fences, so off we set.

Why do rooks and ravens find churches such a magnet I wonder?

‘A funeral is in progress,’ read the sign.

For a moment we thought our run of bad luck was continuing.

But the church was empty.

Then a man began vacuuming the aisle.

The church was a delight. I’d thought, on our last trip to Uppsala, that the painted church and cathedral were unusual, but perhaps not.

Copious painting above the organ

A bit of detail

Beautiful tree-like with such delicate painting

The 15th C altarpiece

St Erik dates from the 13/14th C & the guide says, ‘the crowned troll under the saint may symbolise both paganism and pagan contenders for the crown’ Erik being both king & a saint

It was impossible to picture this full on – but I couldn’t leave out St George and the dragon

This chest is just a hollowed out hunk of trunk which the guide says is as old as the church – which dates back to the 11th/12th C

When we get to the dissecting theatre (below) I realised this is a typical type of painted decoration of wood

After much oohing and aahing over the paintings behind the organ, out we went, into the graveyard, to scrutinise an odd building we’d seen from a distance. It had fascinating wooden shingles and appeared to be resting on lumps of stone. There was no clue to its function.

If you know what this is please comment and tell me, It has a face, don’t you think?

An odd combination of the makeshift foundation here & precisely cut shingles

As we puzzled, the unmistakable sound of digging arose. Not an archaeologist at work, but a new grave in the making.

It was turning chillier, both physically and spiritually. We hurried to investigate the remainder of the church exterior, where one more treasure lay in store: a rune stone built into the wall.

Despite the robust breakfast, lunch was now sounding tempting. We took the bus back to town (and there’s a tale for another day, perhaps, of immigrants and liberals).

A vegetarian buffet, all we could eat for 99 krone, set us up nicely for the next brush with death.

The University’s Gustavianum Museum is an intriguing landmark of a building. Its distinctive cupola sets it apart from the other buildings around it – no mean feat given the massive spires of the cathedral. But it is what’s inside that’s really impressive.

The building is from 1625 but the octagonal blob on top is the dissecting theatre built in the 1660s by Olof Rudbeck the Elder, a professor. There’s a sundial on top of that

I must confess we didn’t ‘do’ the Egyptian stuff, or even the Augsburg Art Cabinet.

We did the deathly bits.

First the octagonal seventeenth-century dissection theatre. Which was spectacular – and scarily vertiginous. Climbing huge steps to the top tier of the viewing galleries was bad enough, descending would have been perilous without the iron handrails.

Beautifully painted wooden stalls around the dissecting table

Nearly got it all in!

I imagine the narrowness of the gap between the barriers and standing spaces – there were no seats – was to stop people falling over when they fainted during dissections of the criminal corpses.

Because Professor Rudbeck’s intention was to allow students and member of the public to see, smell and taste the dissection of the corpses.

Eeeuw!

Impressive.

But the highlight of the day was still to come.

The best archaeological exhibition I’ve ever seen.

Old hazy black and white pictures – of the excavation of a Viking boat burial at Valsgärde, between the 1920s and early 1950s – had been melded together to form a slow-moving video, totally capturing the essence of the excavations.

And the excavators.

Pipe-smoking men in white caps and knickerbockers. Women in dungarees.

Diligently recording the resurrection of a burial.

Picnicking.

Laughing.

An intimate glimpse of their lives and work and fun.

Turning to a large area covered in glass, lit from beneath in the dimly-lit gallery, I saw two children take off their shoes and walk on the glass.

I looked closer. Sure enough, there was a boot jack to take off your shoes and images of feet on the edge of the glass.

It was amazing!

Walking on a dig – on history revealed – what a brilliant idea

The whole ship burial was underneath us – not the real thing obviously, but the site illustrated in graphic format just as the archaeologists had found and recorded it. There were some real finds in place, such as the rivets – which threw shadows over the two-dimensional lines of the illustration.

I had the urge to run and slide down the glass but restrained myself

There were swords, a shield a helmet. Gaming marbles. A drinking horn, a dog’s collar, a horse’s harness, fire irons… so many delights – too many to share. And anyway, hard to take decent images with a compact camera and no flash (that’s my excuse!).

The only way to get up close was to walk on the glass but hardly anyone grown up did

Lovely marbles – my favourite colour, turquoise

Graphic illustration of the burial site which was in use between the 7th & 11th Cs

I found it hard to tear myself away. But we did, for the day was not yet over. More to do, more to see.

It wasn’t till later I thought, I’m not sure about this digging-up-the-dead lark.

But I’ve been doing it myself for years and years and …

Hey ho.

I’ll leave it there for now. So, adjo, till the next instalment.

When there may be chocolate.

And Moomins.

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