Bit wet & windy today but that didn't stop us, lots of new things for our students to learn since this is their first excavation, such as health & safety and good site practices like turning your barrows & trugs upside down at tea break so they don't fill up with water while you're away:
I always did wonder about that one myself - I mean if it's OK to work in the hammering down rain when everything, including your boots, fills up with water, why do we care so much about what happens at tea time? Anyway, having had site discipline beaten into me at a young age (literally - we're talking 1981 here when you could still do that!) I am now incapable of leaving things the right (or wrong?) way up at tea. Nowadays of course things have moved on a bit, we explain things politely and no-one gets hit or put on never ending Elsan duty for upsetting the supervisor. I've also just realised that the very last post of our 2019 season had those very same barrows all stacked up ready to go to Kirsty's shed till next year, but they had a lot longer holiday than we were thinking.
Back on site work continued removing the storm beach, I think I remember all of those stones individually and some of them have names, we've put them on and off the site over so many seasons:
This is when you can't help envying our friends over at the Ness of Brodgar - all they have to do is shift a few tyres and lift the plastic and they're in business. Plus they have a site right next to the main road with a big car park so you can just drive right up to it. And it's between the Ring of Brodgar and Stones of Stenness so they get loads of visitors. Not that I'm jealous or anything, just saying.
Anyway a last mystery for you - who stole Star's head when she was having her daily paddle? It doesn't do to have a headless dog on site, the SSPCA will be onto us about that!
