Hadrian's Wall Path - Day 2, part 1

I was woken by the dawn light, a yellowish-green glow through the fabric of my tent. It had rained heavily overnight, but the morning brought clear skies. I shared the campsite, a small field behind a farmhouse, with a couple of other hikers and a pair of cyclists. One of the hikers I would see every day except my last: he was in his 40s, wiry and fit-looking, with a distinctive khaki neck-flap hat and a GPS mounted on his shoulder like a miniature space cannon. Like a Japanese version of Predator, except he wasn’t Japanese. Or an alien.


It stayed bright into the afternoon. The walk was pleasant, following the line of the military road which was built in the eighteenth century along the course of the Wall. This section was actually built on top of the Wall, using the Wall and its associated forts as the main building material – an act of egregious vandalism that shocked antiquarians at the time and led to bitter complaints in Parliament.


For now, though, the sight of the massive ditch defences were enough to excite me, both the ditch to the immediate north of the Wall line, and the much larger ‘vallum’ ditch to the south. Archaeologists debate the precise purpose of this southern vallum ditch, which follows the course of the Wall closely, varying in distance from 50 to several hundred yards, depending on terrain. It clearly serves to demarcate some kind of military zone, but one wonders how it worked in practice.


I passed a few day trippers, but this part of the route was pleasantly quiet. The sense of isolation didn’t help when I crossed a stile to be confronted by a faceless scarecrow.


A little later I crossed another stile to find a small purple dragon staring up at me. A few yards farther on some kind of hippo was perched on a fence, and it was followed by an array of Scooby Doos.


By this point I was hardly even surprised when I saw a SNES shell embedded in a garden wall. At first I thought it was a novelty letterbox, but no, it was filled with cement.


Hurrying on, I passed by the Robin Hood Inn – because if you decided to establish a pub right next to the most important Roman monument in Britain, in fact built out of stone from said Roman monument, and decided to give it a relevant historical theme, you would name it after that most famous Roman of all, Robin Hood.


Around lunchtime I saw this crude but friendly bucket lid inviting me to stop at St Oswald’s tea shop. This place was actually already a planned stop, mostly because of the name. St Oswald was a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon king who converted to Christianity and won a famous victory on this very spot, and to celebrate he founded a tea shop.


It was a beautiful spot. I threw down my backpack and hammered my fist on one of the tables on the patio, and demanded a cream tea, which duly arrived. Eating the scones was a challenge as the tea shop was crawling with pests in the form of an assortment of cats and kittens, who stalked my food with admirable persistance. The kittens were quite easy to flick away, but the mother cat, clearly a grizzled veteran at such things, had the clever strategy of hopping onto my leg and trying to reach my tray while digging her claws into my trousers to prevent removal.


Next to the tea shop was the battle site of Heavenfield itself. A lonely church stands in the middle of the field, surrounded by a circular wall. Inside the church was a little exhibition about St Oswald.


My favourite part was a children’s colouring book, the novelty of which was that it was not only meant to be coloured in by children, but had also been drawn by a child (to be precise, Caitlin, aged 3).


I teach Anglo-Saxon history, but I don’t remember the part in the life of St Oswald where he rode around on a psychedelic llama.


Or where he rowed a boat carrying a queen whose body comprised nothing but a massive head.


Or the part where three soldiers knelt in front of him while he clutched his crotch in a worrying fashion.

I left the church and moved on. My punishment for making fun of a three-year-old was a growing darkness in the sky; brooding storm clouds loomed ever closer from the west, as you can see in this photo, and soon I would pay the price for my wickedness...

Hadrian's Wall Path - Day 1

This is my account of walking the Hadrian's Wall path last week.

It was a typically bright and sunny morning in the north-east. As I walked to the station thoughts were running through my head. Not very interesting thoughts though, so I won't bother recounting them here.

To reach the start of the walk I had to get to the Wallsend Metro station in Newcastle. The Newcastle metro system isn't exactly very extensive, but they do manage to make it incredibly confusing, which is quite an achievement. When I eventually worked out how to get to Wallsend, I got off the train to be greeted by bilingual signage.

Then I started to walk. And I saw a big round picture of Hadrian's head, so I knew I was on the right track.

The route left the Wall almost immediately, and followed the river Tyne through Newcastle.

There were many bridges.

After about 15 miles I found the Wall again at Heddon-on-the-Wall. Hooray! Then it was another 3 miles to my first campsite.

Harry Potter review

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 review

I went to see this film yesterday with Moogdroog as I had nothing else to do, except buy some zip-lock plastic bags. Apparently “Harry Potter” is quite popular with the kids these days. I think I read a couple of pages of the first “Harry Potter” book once, but then I put it down and decided to read Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and Dino Buzzati’s The Tartar Steppe and Gore Vidal’s Julian instead, because I realised I’m not twelve fucking years old.

Anyway, this film is directed by some guy whose name I forget. Daniel Redcliff plays the eponymous wizard “Harry Potter”, Emily Watson is a she-wizard, and Rupert Grinch is a ginger wizard. Together they form a kind of wizard triumvirate. Towards the end of the film Emily Watson and Rupert Grinch started kissing, which I didn’t like very much.

“Harry Potter” and his friends are fighting against a villain who was constantly referred to as “you-know-who”, which was annoying, as I didn’t know who. I shall call him nose-face man. He had a pet snake.


I feel a bit bad for the producers because they obviously picked the three young leads when they were about five years old, and none of them has turned out to be a particularly good actor. Emily Watson wanders around looking vaguely fretful, and Rupert Grinch is sort of there and not there at the same time, and Daniel Redcliff stands about like a pouty cornstalk. Sometimes he turns his head to look at things, like he’s been caught in a lateral gust of wind.

There was a bit with a dragon, which was good fun, and a big fight when nose-face man and a load of evil wizards attacked Hogwards Wizard School. As far as I could understand it, which isn’t very far, “Harry Potter” had to destroy a group of things which had part of the soul of nose-face man in them, like a cup, and a tiara, and himself. He died and ended up talking to Michael Gambon in an Apple Store for a while, and then (for reasons that were not clear) he came alive again at a dramatically appropriate moment, had another fight, and won.


Er, spoiler alert.

I quite enjoyed it, on the whole. The CGI was overblown and cumbersome, but that was more or less necessary in order to fill the vacuum left by Daniel Redcliff’s lack of presence. The dialogue was crappy, but then “Harry Potter” is meant for children, isn’t it? Apart from all the violence and terrifying monsters.

In fact the scariest scene of all was at the very end, when the triumvirate see off the next generation of Hogwards Wizard School students at King’s Cross. They are meant to be about 40, and they look like this:


Final verdict: 10/10!!!!11

Lindisfarne

The other week I went on a day trip to Lindisfarne with Alex, Nole, Anna and Helen. Lindisfarne is a tidal island off the Northumbrian coast. Monks made a monastery here in the olden days. Then Vikings came and burned it down and stole loads of stuff. Then the monks rebuilt it. Then a bunch of other stuff happened. Then we came for a day trip. Here are some photos.

Climbing up to Lindisfarne Castle

This image gave me nightmares for days

Anna in a boat

Alex goes for a paddle to a little holy island

Alex rejoicing on the little holy island

Note monk at lower right sending a text on his mobile

Bus stop sign seems to have bullet holes in it

Bird

Sat 20 - Sun 21 Aug: Viking Raiders re-enactment day at Lindisfarne. A bit tasteless, I think, like having a German WW2 Wehrmacht re-enactment day at Dachau

Holy bin

Helen and Alex wondering if Alex will be able to pass into the sacred precinct without his face burning off

Saint Cuthbert, who never looked this relaxed in real life

Guns

Now this juxtaposition of news and advert from the FOX News front page sums up something unsettling about American culture...

Law and order in the 6th century

From the Law Code issued by King Gundobad of the Burgundians...

Chapter XCVII

Concerning hounds, hunting dogs, or running dogs


If anyone shall presume to steal a hound, or a hunting dog, or a running dog, we order that he be compelled to kiss the posterior of that dog publicly in the presence of all the people, or let him be compelled to pay five gold coins to him whose dog he took, and a fine of two gold coins.

Hostel crazy

There’s a reason I don’t like staying at hostels, and it’s the same reason I should probably do so more often: I always attract the odd types. This time I was staying at a hostel in Chicago, sitting in the foyer, minding my own business, reading a book about fourth-century aristocrats in the western imperial court, when a large, heavy-featured, middle-aged guy deposited himself on the chair next to me.

“Just gonna sit down before I take off,” he said. I smiled vaguely and tried to look busy.

It didn’t work.

The name of this place should have been my first warning

For the next fifteen minutes or so we exchanged occasional polite comments, and I kept my nose in my book. I learned nonetheless that he had hoped to get a dorm bed in the hostel for the night, only to find that none was available. So he had booked one for the next night, and was planning to spend the night in a 24 hour Starbucks, then he would come to the hostel and check in as early as he could. And he would sleep until someone kicked him out. “No-one better disturb me,” he growled, his black baseball cap pulled low over his brow. “Anyone wakes me up, I’ll put a foot in their ass.” Then he started telling me about his haemorrhoids.

It wasn’t long before he was explaining his theory about why America has gone to hell. He was fifty years old, a former factory worker, and unemployed. He had travelled across America and had seen the pollution everywhere. He blamed the British for the terrible state of the country: micro-toxins in the water, emaciated trees where once were virgin forests, the nuclear moonscape that is Nevada. The best of the British had stayed at home, he said; only the worst, the greediest, the cruellest, had come to America. He was Hungarian – 100% Hungarian – and despised the bastard tongue he was forced to speak, when he should have been speaking his mother tongue, or at least German.

100% Hungarians

But it wasn’t just the British. It was the Africans, too. The British, of course, were to blame for bringing the Africans over, and starting wars with them. The last time his people, the Hungarians, had fought the Africans, under Attila the Hun in 398, they had beaten them. (Half a century too early for Attila, and his Huns had fought Franks, Gauls, Italians, Burgundians, Goths, Vandals – in fact just about everyone except Africans. I didn’t mention this, of course, as I didn’t want to derail his delicate train of logic.)

Why had America lost its manufacturing base? Simple. The factories had become multi-racial workplaces. (He looked over his shoulder, leaned in close, and explained this part in hushed tones.) People of different colour didn’t get along in the factories. The worker of one colour (i.e. black) complained to the foreman that a better worker of another colour (i.e. white) had called him an offensive name, and the better worker was dismissed. Then the black foreman sabotaged the manufacturing process so that the American-built car went rusty, and the industry was destroyed. He didn’t explain why the black foreman would want to do this, but he did ask me to guess what happened next.

Racial tension

“Hmm,” I said.

“Go on, guess.”

“All right,” I said, “all the manufacturing jobs went overseas.”

“Where?”

“The far east.”

“Exactly.” This is where his logic came to form a beautiful, racist circle. All the people in China look the same, so there is no racial tension on the factory floor between persons of different colour. Quite entranced by this argument, I told him he should write a book about it. He agreed. “People want to hear the truth,” he said.

Racial harmony

The Jews came in for a hard time, too, of course; no semi-coherent rant about why any particular country is fucked up is complete without a mention of the Jews. I can’t recall exactly what they had done. It wasn’t good though. (Earlier in the conversation he had shown me his current reading material – Albert Einstein on the theory of relativity – in order to demonstrate his intelligence. In fact he tore out the back page to give me his email address.)

He had a simple ten-year plan to fix America. First, stop all of America’s wars and bring the troops home – not just from Iraq and Afghanistan, but from Europe, Japan, anywhere else. This sounded quite reasonable, I thought, but then he said that America should also build a huge wall along the Mexican border, and plant mines along it, and I knew we were back in Crazyland. Then America should invest in manufacturing, and build up the military (this seemed a bit contradictory with stopping America’s wars, but never mind).

That was pretty much it. “Give it ten years, and we’ll see where we are.” This was important, for within ten years, he believed, China was planning to occupy Taiwan and provoke a nuclear war with America. He had obtained this information from a retired colonel in military intelligence whom he had met once hitch-hiking, and whose name he could not recall.

At about this point he decided he needed to go to Starbucks and sleep. He rose and shook my hand and wished me well, and left.

Setting the world to rights is a tiring business, that’s for sure.

Roman Holiday

Mithraea and I went on a Roman roadtrip a couple of weeks ago and visited a few piles of stone. Here are some photos.

A very tidy ruin

This is Wroxeter. It's near Shrewsbury, which has two claims to fame: 1) It's the setting for Ellis Peters' series of novels about the medieval monk-detective Cadfael, and 2) nobody knows how to pronounce it (I've heard Shroosbury, Shrowsbury, Shoosbury).

Wroxeter is now just a pile of crap in a field, but it was once the fourth biggest city in Roman Britain. The big piece of standing masonry, known as 'the Old Work', was a wall of the civic bathhouse.

What ruins should look like

A bunch of people recently built a replica Roman villa on the site and filmed the process for a multi-part Channel 4 reality documentary, because nowadays people will watch any old shit about something being built or renovated. The gimmick of the show was that the people who built it were regular 21st century builders who, naturally enough, had no idea how to build a Roman villa, and had to learn from scratch on a tight budget.

Mithraea and a replica Roman villa

They even got the 21st century builders to do the decorating. For comparison, here is a genuine Roman fresco from Pompeii.

Amazing

And now from the Wroxeter Roman villa:

Less amazing

It's a bit like what Roman villas would have been like if Roman villas had been built by children. We also checked out the medieval church in the nearby village, but only because its builders used Roman columns and stone when constructing it.

Spot the Roman columns

We went to Caerwent in south-east Wales, another old Roman city which is now largely abandoned. It has a lot more to see than Wroxeter, and the remains were even more impressive than I was expecting. The south side of the city wall has survived amazingly well - to give you a sense of scale in the next photo, Mithraea is about twelve feet tall.

The missing brickwork is the part Mithraea ate for lunch

Quite a lot of Caerwent has been excavated and left exposed - a temple, the forum and basilica and a some townhouses. Here we see Mithraea walking along an actual Roman street. You can see the drain and building foundations and everything.

OMG WHERE IS MY HOUSE GONE LOL

Not far from Caerwent is Caerleon, whose highlights include a pretty awesome Roman museum stuffed full of stuff, and a very well presented section of the legionary bathhouse which includes an olympic-length swimming pool for the Roman legionaries to practice swimming. Also visible was a massive amphitheatre which was full of kids drinking cider and eating crack.

Next we headed for the Cotswolds, a pretty corner of England where all the well-heeled wankers of Londinium built their country homes, thus pricing locals out of the housing market. This is Great Witcombe.


In olden times it supposedly looked more like this:


A little to the west is Chedworth, an even more impressive villa. Unfortunately much of it is covered with scaffolding as it's undergoing a huge refurbishment that won't be finished until 2012. We were so mad we kicked over a bunch of hypocaust piles. Here's a reconstruction though:


And a lizard we saw:


All in all, I learned a lot about the Romans, and I saw the first lizard I've ever seen in Britain, so it was definitely worthwhile.

Silverstone 2011

This coming Sunday I'm running the Silverstone Half Marathon along with Gemma and Edmund. My run is in aid of Cancer Research UK, and is in memory of Dunk, who passed away in January.

I've set up a charity fundraising page here. Any donations to the cause, no matter how much (I know times are hard) will be greatly valued.

The Diet Delusion

I finally finished reading Gary Taubes’ The Diet Delusion (originally published in the US as Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health). It took me months (I started some time last summer) because it’s massive and unapologetically dense: 460 pages of prose, followed by 45 pages of endnotes and almost 100 pages of bibliography.

This isn’t your typical popular diet book. Taubes is not a nutritionist or lifestyle guru, but a science journalist, and this book is as much about science and the scientific method, and what happens when they meet politics, as it is about what we should or should not eat.

I came across the book when I began reading up on the paleo diet, which I stumbled across by chance and began to follow precisely one year and two days ago. Since then I’ve kept to the diet quite well, apart from extended lapses at home through the summer and over Christmas, when I was too lazy to buy my own food.

But these lapses, if anything, have only convinced me further that the paleo diet is the way to go. Since Christmas, never a healthy time of year for anyone, I’ve pulled out all the stops. I’ve scarcely touched bread, rice or any type of grain or starchy food; my caloric intake derives from some vegetables, but mostly protein and fat – including saturated fat. With gay abandon I ignore those scary red warning stickers on supermarket packaging. I’ve even ditched olive oil except for salad dressing, and now I fry everything, which means most breakfasts and dinners, in lard.

Saturated fat alert!

The result after six weeks is that the Christmas gut has evaporated and I haven’t had a single heart attack. I feel healthy and energetic and I never let myself go hungry. The only time I feel lethargic is when for some reason I have a high-carb meal, like when I had lasagne for lunch yesterday and two hours later the post-glucose crash left me falling asleep on the sofa.

Lard makes you be young and fall in love!

Being an archaeologist interested in human history, I found the basic premise of the paleo diet attractive as soon as I started reading about it, but Gary Taubes has really helped elucidate two things: first, the science of fat metabolism, which explains why the diet works as well as it does; and second, the politics of dietary research, which explains why the diet diverges so starkly from what governments and health experts tell us we should be eating.

This is what Taubes has to say about people who work in nutrition, chronic disease and obesity:

“I believe it is difficult to use the term ‘scientist’ to describe those individuals who work in these disciplines, and I have actively avoided doing so in this book. It’s simply debatable, at best, whether what these individuals have practiced for the past fifty years, and whether the culture they have created, as a result, can reasonably be described as science, as most working scientists or philosophers of science would typically characterize it.”

It’s truly alarming, since we base our personal notions of what constitutes a healthy diet so much on trust.

Taubes explains that obesity is not caused by caloric input and expenditure per se – i.e. the idea that you get fat because you eat too much and/or exercise too little – but on a dysfunction in how the body stores and mobilises fat deposits.

The comedy documentary filmmaker Tom Naughton can explain it better than I can, as he does in Fat Head, which I highly recommend.

None of this is scientifically controversial, but due to politics, peer pressure and lack of communication, the obvious conclusion that eating fewer carbs will promote weight loss has been swamped in the last three decades by the twin misapprehensions that eating fat makes you fat and clogs your arteries, leading to heart disease (it doesn’t), and that chronic obesity is principally the result of a character defect, in other words lack of willpower (it isn’t).

While Taubes’ main focus is on obesity, he also suggests that excessive carbohydrate consumption is a root cause of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, dementia and even premature ageing – the so-called ‘diseases of civilization’. Clearly a lot of dedicated research needs to be done to test these hypotheses, but the possibility is intriguing.

Basically, The Diet Delusion is perhaps the most important book I’ve ever read. I can honestly say that it’s changed my life – and how often can we say that?