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I have noticed over the years that nearly everyone builds up a collection of funny stories that often lighten the spirits on what can sometimes be a boring site,and as such should be told to illustrate the fact that archaeology is more than just digging and recording-and is as much about the people themselves.
Back in the mid 90s on a long site we all used to take it in turns making the tea for break time,and one day as we all sat down to enjoy a well earned cuppa it became clear that the tea tasted absolutely vile,after asking "Mike" had he rinsed out the cups first I glanced in the box and discovered the teabags were bright green and covered in mold! "my coffee is all right" we was told on asking why he'd tried to poison the lot of us.
To this day i still call him Lizzie Bordon's grandson.
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Can't remember where I heard a great story about tea tasting horrible. (Hope I didn't read it on BAJR[:I]) The mystery was solved when someone caught an old lag cooking boil in the bag kippers in the Birco!!!!
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Once saw a guy try to eat a tea bag for a betat a boring break time. If it's un-used it's just not possible. Sucks all moisture out of your mouth and can't be swallowed apparently.
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A story from a grim flooded East Yorks site. Diggers sitting around site hut that was ankle deep in floodwater. Horrified looks all round as a human turd floats past. Old lag looks down at turd while eating sandwich, and deadpans " that's one of mine."
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I was there at the time of the 'kipper boiling in Burco' incident. London circa 1989. Oh yes.....the same guy was also once discovered trying to melt the point of a road-grimed traffic cone in the same burco.....
...but also. I worked on a site in Orkney and we had a Canadian guy who when it came to his turn at tea, claimed never to have made communal tea before in his life. He asked a passing digger (who obviously had other things on her mind) how many teabags he should use and she replied without thinking 'errrr...one for every person and one for the pot'.
19 tea bags later and the old adage that the tea was so strong you could have stood a trowel in it was both quoted and demonstrated!!
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The turd in Barney Sloane's safety helmet comes to mind - one of the Spitalfields sites had clay of a consistency to make excellent fake jobbies (ah the simple pleasures of the digger!!) - Barney came into the site hut one day after a short absence to discover, in his upturned hard ht a perfectly formed turd, embellished with loo roll and steaming gently (it was cold and a judicious splash of boiling water from the kettle gave a perfect effect - cue Barney erupting from the hut cursing at the top of his voice and swearing vengeance on the dirty B.... who had shat in his hat --- to find the entire site staff wearing hard hats adorned with fake jobbies and near hysterical with laughter!!!
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I recall freaking out one bone-idle digger at morning break when working indoors pot washing,the MSC crew I was with was indoors during a spell of bad weather and this lad from 8 to 10am just sat slumped in the corner on a chair (not moving or speaking) come Tbreak he suddenly spoke! I replied "blimey your still alive",looking shocked he said "you thought i was dead and didn't do anything"?,why should we i said "its not as if you was in the way,don't worry we would have moved you at the end of the day"
The poor lad was so upset he promptly went home calling me totaly heartless!}
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A the simple turd joke...
nasty one coming up :
A site I worked on... which better remain nameless ... was pretty dull. So dull in fact that the entire 6 weeks uneartherd only a cat burial and an air raid shelter! Anyway I digress ... To enliven our time, we took to hideous practical jokes. Every tea break, I would enjoy my Choclate eclair, my treat for 10am. One day, one of the other diggers nicked it.. so as I ranted about where my eclair was, he suddenly pulls it out.. and hovers it over his mouth... the rest of the tea hut are wetting themselves... which just gets me angrier (hey.. a man's eclair is a man's eclair) thinking this was great fun, and with the tea hut obviously behind him, he takes a big bite...
and promptly spits it out, gagging and running outside... #blearchhhhhhhh
What he did not know (and I did not know) was that before he got to it, the rest of the hut had inserted a small dog turd inside the creamy centre! Guess I was lucky! But I still missed my ecalir that day! talk about jolly japes!
"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu
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Practical jokes? this reminds me of one extremely boring field walking exercise where through sheer annoyance of their being virtually nothing to bag I decided to bag a dead mouse and see how far through the system it would go. Several weeks after the job and i'm working on finds when one of the project managers realises the finds from it had not been looked at yet,so across to the finds room he comes and by pure bad luck picks the mouse bag up without looking and pours the rotting contents on his hand,after a few seconds silence he screams one name (the supervisor of that job who was known for HIS jokes) and runs of to give him a verbal dressing down. After his admonishment,sitting in ignorant shock he then came up with one name "dirty dave-i'll kill him!" and then comes over to yell at me,but considering it was pay-back for a joke he'd played on me weeks earlier all I could do was laugh.
And then wait for the payback of the payback of the payback.....}
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I found that you should never ever create a slate drawing of a partial 10th century gaming board, bury it at the start of the dig, dig it up 6 weeks later and then insert it into someones trench when they nip off for tea break....
trouble was... it was a devil to convince people tht it realy was a fake.... ! and then disaster as every other carved slate object was then thrust under my nose... " what about this one!!!!! " hmmm... confess.... SLAP.... come on Rattty... speak up... <whap>
"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu
