Today a cold front arrived, bringing with it plenty o' rain, and dropping the temperature enough that outside you could see your breath. The English talk about the weather a lot because there's a lot to talk about!

We processed small finds most of the day, and did some washing inside for the rest of it. We had a quick site tour where the trench supervisors summed the week's work. Not much new in that regard, but the week has flown by for me, that's for certain.

Perhaps I could have brought out the Panoscan for this evening, but when decision time came, I thought the sky looked too threatening. It's cleared by now, of course, but the evening did not go to waste. The city library happens to be literally next door to the dig, so I jumped in there hoping they would have Internet access. It turns out they do, but non members may have only half an hour and must pay a pound to use it.

Now that cider has gotten a little more popular in the US, it looks like the UK's upping the ante. Many places now sell strong or extra-strong varieties, with 7.5% alcohol instead of 6%, and give it names like White Lightning or Laser. I'm chilling my first can in the sink right now, since I have no fridge. Buying the stuff in the grocery store costs only about 30% of what a pub charges. That's some savings. I'll drink (alone) to that!

They also now have cheese called "seriously strong cheddar," which I avouch is. Too strong for my taste, although the Wenslydale I bought for lunch went down rather nicely.

The project did not hold a BBQ tonight, most likely because the guy who usually runs it is out at another site, and the weather wasn't good for it (in theory). Everyone disappeared at the end of the day, so no pub tonight either. This is certainly not what I had expected, although it's likely saving me quite a few pounds of reciprocal drink buying costs. ;-)

Back to the timeline. After checking e-mail at the library, I set off in search of the fabled evening-hours laundromat. To get there, I walked the medieval city wall around half the perimeter. Found the place. It was closed. Doh. So much for that one. Guess it's Saturday morning at the 'mat next week, and wearing things more than once until then, which ain't that big a deal. Not like I'm sweating all day in the desert this time.

On the way home I walked the rest of the wall perimeter (it totals two miles), found the town supermarket, and bought some chow. This includes the candy bars in the packaging shown below. Check out the "interface" wrapper, which seems to rely on a computer GUI metaphor to show information about the contents. Weird.

Tomorrow's activities depend on the weather. Non-rainy = Panoscanning; Rainy = train to Leeds for visiting the Royal Armouries.

Best wishes to Jenn in her black belt testing tomorrow! I expect to be drinking the other three strong ciders in the evening as a toast to her success!




Inside the wall: nice wide walkway here, with a gentle embankment down to the inside; other places very narrow and a sheer wall drops off tens of feet, often without railings.




Outside the wall: a significant climb for attackers if they want to have a go at the wall itself, forcing them up into archers lining the battlements.




The Tower of London's ravens have nothing on Clifford's Tower's geese... which I caught going out for a stroll after the rain.




A strangely metaphored candy wrapper.