crowded houses

so this is just a glimpse of the excitement that the week has offered and the first of what must be a crowded house. its the smallest house in britain in conwy. we somehow stumbled across it while trying to find out how to get back up on to the walls of Conwy while on a day trip on Friday. by we i mean myself Cynthia Espinosa ( who some of you may remember from when she was over here) and Chris her musically talented boyfriend. we went in search of the archetypal British castle. i mean they saw that big house thing in Edinburgh but for real castles you really need to go to wales. and a very impressive castle we found too.

the second crowded house was thanks to the reunited band themselves. lisa and i, along with susanna and mancho went to see them at the MEN on wednesday night. a full 14 years after we saw them last. it was an interesting gig. almost Church like. i presume a lot of people were seeing them for the first time after listening for years. i say church like because everyone stood of the encores and sang along, almost reverentially, to song like 4 seasons in one day and better be home soon while neil finn played along. it was really good to hear them again but men is just too big for any band to play with any atmosphere. their old banter was there though.

it was a busy night for gigs. we hot footed over to sankeys to see the Bluebird kid Clark 'Aftershow' night and managed to get forcibly ejected from the club at the end of the night. the bluebirds were as good as ever just the crazy bouncers were intent on causing trouble. i mean can you imagine some manc indie kids making trouble but these guys were shoving and threatening everyone. when i politely pointed out a better way the big man could precede he decided to make his house (well club) a little less crowded and propel me out the door (along with about 5 others that got carried along in the flow). luckily jonny and mark held me and lisa back. boy what i would have done if they hadn't been there! actually the situation wasn't too dissimilar from an incident on our conwy trip. except the roles were reversed. i ACCIDENTALLY managed to knock a little girl into the gutter. look you've already seen how small the house are, imagine the pavement. a woman was trying to get past while we were looking at welsh things in a shop window. so we breathed in and let her past. so i turned...........and there was a little person .....why do they make them that small....they should carry head height signs or something. so i must have knocked her and she went face first into the gutter. she was ok but the worst was when she said " mummy that man tripped me up"

beetroot wee

so enough of the archaeological pictures for now. yes i know you were all enjoying them but you can get too much of a good thing. plus the site is moslty machined away now to make way for the new.

in other news we are just about settling into to life back in manchester. we got our second organic vegable box delivered today from the conviently placed organic/fairtrade grocers in levenshulme. todays box offered some purple kale, white carrots and white beekroot. the last being much appreciated after we cooked up last weeks normal beetroot last night. who knew that eating fresh beetroot turns your wee red! maybe white will prove less ....interesting or more maybe. i'll keep you posted.

its also been quite a week for competitions. first i came a runner up in a bedouin soundclash comp. no tickets but i did win the alnum and a hoodie. unfortunately the said hoodie turned out to be a size small and very emo black. so thats waiting to go back in the hope of getting something more fitting.

then yesterday i got a call saying i had won tickets to the warehouse project in manchester this saturday. and i didnt even enter that competition. now thats luck. actually lisa entered on my email as well as hers, just so happened mine won . so come saturday nigh we shall be clubing til 5.30am i'm informed. we'll see. it's the company end of site do tomorrow, food and drink all paid for so it could be a big weekend. glad we've got some healthy veg to get us through it.

The romans were here

Someone found this on the site today. Thought it was quite cool. It's a roman rooftile. With a difference. The stamp say LEG XX VV. which for those of you who are a bit rusty mo their roman inscriptions is the stamp of the 20th legion who were based in chester. The VV apparently stands for Valeria-where they were originally from in spain, Victus - cause they beat boudica's army.

*this pottery may contain scenes of an adult nature

So as you can see by the last few posts i'm back digging holes. this time in chester ( the old police HQ by the racecourse if you know chester). yes its a bit of a trek in the morning from manchester but the amount of finds kind of makes up for it. considering i only found about 5 pieces of pottery in the whole of last year this is a teasure trove.

its great to be on a site where you can find everyday roman objects all oer thes site. i've been lucky to stumble upon a few personally. first the female head: prob a depiction of a goddess for a a house shrine? and then i found the copper alloy spoon: this would have been for scooping oysters out of shells probably.

then there is the 'colourful' pottery. if you look closely at the picture above.....welll ahem i'll let you work it out.

This is a roman spoon. I found this too

Here's one i found earlier

Santiago de Compostela

This morning we didn´t have to walk anywhere. no 30 km walk to set off in the dark. We had arrived. We woke up this morning in our (single) hotel room in the city of Santiago de Compostela. 774km, 480 miles, 37 days (with a few rest days) and some sore feet.

we managed to walk 36km yesterday just so we could finish. strange was that the first day we walked it rained then it has all been sunshine- so sunny that you cant´t really walk much after 12. then yesterday the heavens opened again. actually it meant we could do the longer day without suffering too much.

so we rolled into Santigo about 5ish and headed straight to the pilgrims office. this is the place where you show you´re credencials, which is the booklet that has to be stamped each day at the hostels to show that you actually have walked all the way across spain. then then ask the reasons why you have done it. hmmm. basically if you cant´t say that part of the reason was religious they will just give you a ´certificate´ written on the back of an old swimming width certificate or something. now if you can say it was religious (as we did ) you get the ´Compostela´ - a form written in latin (even your name) which apparently might do you a few favours at the pearly gates, if you know what i mean. adn some favours around Santiago i here.

so we have a few days to kill around santiago. got to see them saintly bones today and tomorrow we should be meeting some of the other guys we met on teh way to have our celebratory drink ( got kind of messy last time the wine came out in La Rioja so it should be a good night)

right where´s taht taxi to take us back to our hotel

the Compeed sponsored camino

so i won´t list every day. suffice to say we are still walking but we are making progress. we are over halfway now. in km (what they measure it in here) we have about 320km to go (out of 774km) i think thats about 280 miles.

we are a day out of leon (the spainish one not lyon in france). so we are taking a day off there. quite strange waking everyday knowing you have to walk nearly 30km.

so the lows. about 3 days ago we arrived at our hostel in some spainish town (they are kind of looking the same at the moment when i realised i didin´t have my howies jumper. now we have very few clothes on our trip so a jumper is a big deal especially my HOWIES jumper. i looked and searched. lisa even made lost notices with a little picture and my phone number but nothing. it was lost. i was sad

skip forward 2 days and about 50km. we stopped for lunch in a small town when a guy, another pilgrim called us over. hey amigos, did you lose a jumper? the man had picked it up on the path and recognised it as mine and remembered us because of lisa´s hat. amazing. i mean its something that he picked it up and carried for 2 days but to know whjo to give it to.

so the lows. well 28km per day is taking its toll on our feet. lisa ankles are sorting themselves out now but my feet have erupted in blisters. they are kind of like that bubble wrap. i´m sure if you twisted them they would crackle. i have a nice coating of compeed blister plasters ( that either don´t stick or stick too much sometimes on the smae blister)

thats it for now about 11 days left of walking we think. flat at the moment but the mountains are coming.....

a quick recap.....

so we are up to about day 8 of walking. we are in a very nice pilgrims hostel in a place called Los Arcos today. just to give you some idea of our trip it´s gone like this:

24 august: St jean pied de port (france)- Valcarlos (spain) 11km

25 august: Valcarlos -Roncesvalles 19km -over the pyrennees to the monestry where most spanish pilgrims start.

26th: Roncesvalles- Zubiri 21.5 km really hard day. very hot. walked too much in the midday sun. ( mad dogs and englishmen etc......)

27th Zubiri- Trinidad de Arre 18km a small rastifarian enclave of spain . yeah mon. an oasis of a hostal attched to a medieval church. oh it wasn´t really caribbean by the way.

28th Trinidad - Pamplona 4,5km woohoo time off. we did a short walk in today and found a very nice hotel for some privacy.

29th Pamplona yes still here. but it is nice just to chillax.

30th Pamplona- Puente la reina 22.5km really good day walking . got further than we thought.

31st Puente la reina - Estella 21.5 another good day but crap crowded hostel

1st september Estella - Los Arcos 21.5 phew time nearly out on internet but thats where we are you can add it up. 640 km odd to go though.

more flesh to this story later......

...pilgrimage has gained momentum

a funny thing. i was walking passed a vending machine in the mid day heat in the small spainish village we arrived in today when an ice cold bottle of water dropped out. i looked around...no one there but someone seemed to be looking after me.

we´re on day 3 of actually walking on our pilgrimage. we started walking from st jean pied de port on thursday morning.....early.....too early. it was dark and raining. we made it over the pyrennes about 30km, with a little stop in nice little town called valcarlos. the climb up to roncevalles yesterday was a real killer... the thunder storm didin´t help. luckily we found a derelict house to get some shelter from the storm (thanks for the song bob-going through my head the whole time).

so yesterday we reached Roncesvalles where many spainish pilgrims start. it´s kind of a pilgrim factory, stamp them in, bless them, let them sleep in a big (converted barn, quite nice actually) then kick them on their way in the morning.

so 22km to the next place today, Zubiri. nicehostel with free internet. although as i write numerous peregrinos (pilgrims) are asking me in a variety of languages whether i have any beds. some little spanish kids just booked a girl in while there mum was out when there wasn´t a bed left. that´s got to hurt after a long walk.

so onwards to pamplona and a hotel/day off. maybe tomorrow if we can make it .....or the next day. lisa and i are still getting into our stride

....to be a pilgrim

so we are just about reading for the off. all is amazingly packed into our small walking bags. not really sure how, but i'm sure we will appreciate the lack of weight while we are walking. As i said a few posts ago we are off walking across spain towards santiago de compostela. it's been a bit of a dream of ours to do the walk ever since i heard about from my aussie/new yorker friend lisa did it back in 2001. see had just walked for a month before digging the bones of some long dead cisterians on the dig i was on in spain ( with that crazy guy, mark horton off Coast on the tele).

to make it more interesting one of the monk skeletons we excavated had a shell around his neck- i sign that he imself had done the pilgramage back in the 12 century. i suppose this is now a quite modern adventure but the connection with the people how have been treading these paths over a millenia is quite something.

so we think it could take 4-6 weeks ( we may take it quite easy) . we think we might be doing 20 km a day (it 780km to santiago)

apart from that i all quite unknown.


Just returned from Green Man Festival. Apart from having a great name ( and now having a green man tshirt) ths is the real credible festival of the summer. none of those obvious charty line ups of glastonbury and V. havent got time to go into all the bands which you will be thankful for, but i few highlights:

• Euros Childs and Richard James- always great even Gorkys is no more
• Battles- amazing new band- where music is going apparently ( though that sounds quite pretentious ), i have never seen a drummer go so fast- there was steam coming off him.
• the folky stuff- Devenra banhart, men an tol, vetiver,
• Hearing Stephen Malkmus interviewed and witnessing a less than obvious finale to the festival.
• Gruff rhys (SFA) performing a 20 minute redition of SKYLON!, his epic telling of how he diffuse a bomb on a plane ( with acting and props)
  

apart from the music lisa and i had a great festival, bit muddy but its all part of it i suppose.


right better put my sandals on and hit the road.......

look at my carrots and courgettes!

im so amazed

mainly because i had let them for dead after i had cared for them so much in the beginning but then i had no more pots or compost to replant them and spread them out and my garden is made from concrete, but then yesterday i just went to pull up some of the leafy bits for the rabbit and a whole baby carrot emerged, and then i had a look at the pot of courgettes, removed 12 snails, and there they were, three baby courgettes, just growing, against all odds, all on their own. i am amazed.

and we have started getting in shape for our walk and this is our local stretch of coast that we get to train on. almost as amazing as my veg.






such joys were short lived after the exhaust decided to fall off our beast of a citroen on the busiest stretch of road in town yesterday. this wasnt so bad, what was worrying was the stupidity of people. i dont even care if that sounds rude because those people were so rude! rude and stupid. we were sat on the verge by the side of the road for over two hours waiting for the rac, and not one person offered help, just a whole bunch of toots and insults and pointing. the high point was when a cropped trousered topless bald doped up man approached us and told us 'you cant park there'. steve wisely ruled out sarcasm and told him we were broken down to which he suggested we should put on our hazzard lights then. steve pointed out the flashing orange lights on the car. the man looked skeptical then walked off.

i love swansea.

an end has a beginning

i'm trying not to forget about this old fashioned blogging thing now that the phenomenon of facebook as arrived. ok i have to say i'm hooked to facebook just for the fact that you can find so many people that you have lost track of. i suppose it is just a hi tech address book. that's right the good old blog won't get too neglected.

so i've finally finished on the pipeline archaeology job. it all ended today. so now i have to find something to occupy 12 hours of my day. its really good just to be back home and able to hang out with lisa knowing that i don't have to back to work on sunday night.

actually we only have a normal life for a few weeks then our summer plans kick in. first there is the Greenman Festival down near brecon. an amazing lineup. stephen malkmus from Pavement, euros childs and Richard James from Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Gruff Rhys from Super Furry Animals and lots more.

then lisa and i embark on our pilgrimage to santiago de Compostela in spain. we set off from teh france/spain border and tae 4 or 5 weeks to walk along the top of spain with our pilgrims passport.

Tour de france

Who knew so many people in this county enjoyed watching cycling. Just wait for my train away from the big city and back into sleepy wales. Hot to see le grand depart then the prologue time trial and the slightest glimpse of the stage start this morning. Great atmosphere.

Ruth and alice

Rabbitgate,graduands and journeys

This is the said culprit in last weeks rabbitgate affair that almost got me evicted from my work accomodation. Hard to imagine that this is the same rabid bunny that was tearing around the flat when the cleaners came in. This is biscuit by the way, our rabbit. Well lisa's really. The picture is of her right now in the back of the car mo our way back down to swansea. She's just just taking a few minutes out from driving. Lisa just been up for a job interview for a place on a graduate scheme doing community development stuff which seemed to in really well. As i say she is a graduand now as she passed her degree. It goes without saying that i am very proud of her. Well i purpose i just said it. So only about 4 hours to go. Exciting weekend coming up.on friday i shak my new contact lenses and then i head straight for london to watch the start of the tour de france. And before you say, i know it's in france but it starts in the uk this year. Ok

New roads to tread

Well i'm finally off that cursed mountain that has been my life for the past 6 months. In fact it turned out to be quite interesting as we found 2 prehistoric houses in the last week. To celebrate our company threw a party with about £1200 behind the bar only we managed to run up a £2500 bar bill, good but messy night all round. So now after months of scratching hill sides we are back in the news for the cool roman road we are digging. You may be able to see of on the bbc website pretending to dig it.

Wes

Mark eating

Turkey pictures

i come back to manchester for two days and it rains the entire time!
but despite the rain its nice to be home even if only for a short time. there has only been time to catch up with family, but back again at the end of the month so hopefully we'll see some much missed friends then.
i almost forget how awesome manchester is, there is so much going on. as much as i love swansea i can't honestly say a great deal happens. which is possibly which i like it. but manchester has jobs and music and galleries and social action things, but no coast! maybe i'll work on that.
so we are thinking of trying a joint move back up when the contract on the new place runs out in october. i know. another one of my plans. steve just nods and smiles. he is a saint. but i have a good feeling about this one.

but apart from thinking about what we can do with our futures, the here and now is all nice and easy and sunny and lovely. im not being smug, its just nice is all. normally there is a little good time, then some dreaded event or deadline or something on the horizon, but right now we only have good things to look forward to, holiday, graduation, and well thats it really! thought there was more. wow our lives are empty, argh! but still we have the gower, the brecons and great joy so that will do just fine for now. i take back the 'im not being smug' comment!

there is a kind of guilt from being happy, especially when you know others aren't having such a great time at the minute, those people are constantly in our thoughts (especially when we are kicking back on the beach and we know that poor city dwellers arent). but seriously. in the non-patronising way, you are.

take it easy xx

i'm not from barcelona

as jonny right pointed out it has been awhile. this is mostly due to our packed social calendar. hmm actually its becuase my company is making me work every hour of daylight (and some that's a bit darker) and lisa has been swamped with her last few essays, which she is just in the process of handing in this minute. i however still have to work from 7am to 7pm tomorrow though and they want us to work saturday and sunday 72 hours last week. yes thank you all for the sympathy. and yes i'm still on that hill in the brecon beacons. now we are cleaning the whole mountian with just trowels and toothpicks.

on the other hand i am taking advantage of our new sick pay allowance by taking a paid sick day today. it was to help move our stuff to a new (non-shared) house in mumbles but i ended up actually feeling ill. i wonder if that is a guilt thing. so yeah we are moving again. a road or two away from the seafront but still close and with a great view of a big castle. we wern't sure about it at first but the place is growing on us now.

other things in no particular order or sense. been listening to a great new band our friend ruth recommended called i'm from barcelona ( i think they are on the T mobile). watched Pan's Labyrinth finally yesterday: brilliant. we're going to turkey next month on holiday and that's in asia.wooo. end.

Viva La Revolutione!

so the main event of the week was lisa's employment tribunal in cardiff on wednesday. I took the day off to go along with her and so will be the faithful witness to the events that took place as lisa is currently feeling crap after i passed on the horrible head cold that i have been suffering from the last few days. i tried not to pass it on but it was probably inevitable.

the tribunal was surprisingly formal. i think we both imagined some arbitration in a room with a desk . as it was we sat at our desks the claimant and the respondent and had to stand when the chairman came in and sat behind his big desk at the front. then lisa had to swear on the bible before she gave evidence. actually he seemed really nice and it was good to get down to the facts after all the hassle we have gone through to get this money.

lisa had her chance to say what happened and what pay she should have gotten then Mr burrows ( the boss) could cross examine her. then he spoke and lisa asked him question.

so cutting to the chase the judge summed up into a tape recorder and he basically agreed with everything lisa said. about the hourly rate (no it wasn't 'just a guideline'), about the hours worked and about the need to give notice. basically teh judge told this guy off and told him he should be thankful that lisa hadn't asked for more money as he would have probably given it. he also told him off for not giving out contracts to people.

anyway i was very proud to sit there with lisa as my wife. i don't think that cocky 'businessman' expected to be out in that sort of position where he was getting told off by a judge and lisa was the one who followed through on her promises and stood up for something when she saw that she hadn't been treated right. there wasn't a vast amount of money involved but hopefully he will think before he tries to screw over the rest of his staff now.

so yes an unequivocal victory for lisa and downtrodden worker everywhere. Viva La Revolutione!

less importantly on the side. 2 things people should get hold of this week:
firstly everyone should take a listen to the new Gruff Rhys album Candylion (gruff is the lead singer of the vastly underrated super furry animals. there's a song called 'the court of king arthur' where he details his love of archaeology. genius.
secondly, another peice of genius: Guinness Marmite.

so steve has finally managed to make it back up those brecon hills, and down again, and up again, and down again, all in accordance with the beautiful welsh weather. its real nice to see him wet, muddy, tired and happy again.

im working part time in the local wine shop and am refusing to call it an off licence. its really great. a laid back job, some nice laid back staff and its right on my door step. and part time is nice as it means i get to go and see steve for a night or two in the week which cant be bad.

yeah, its all a little slow, but right now i really wouldnt have it any other way, sometimes its nice just to be. work life, whilst enjoying it, is coming in second to living life, we're making enough money to cover rent and food, although not much else, and we get to do lots of things that make us happy. it crosses my mind that this may be a selfish way to live, but just for now i reckon its ok.

the one stress at the minute is my employment tribunal next week, really not looking forward to it and all for the sake of £210. i keep wanting to forget it but steve reminds me it's about the point and not the money. he's right. i really wouldnt have much room to talk about people standing up for their rights if i cant even be bothered to do it in a country that, for the most, allows me to do so (wow, im such a martyr i know), either way, id better walk away with a cheque on wednesday!

take it easy x

pipeline / kill time

even though the bank finally came through with the money there always seems to be soo many things to pay (i've always thought that so should be spelt with 2 o's in this sort of context just like to- that makes sense doesn't it) . one treat i did surprise lisa with though were tickets to see bedouin soundclash next month in cardiff which is going to be amazing ( and it earned me some brownie points).

if you haven't heard bedouin soundclash yet you should seek them out. they have had a song on a phone advert for awhile but it doesn't seem to have broken them into mainstream consciousness yet.

as it happends they are also one of the those friend of a friends band. in this case the lead singer is a friend of one of lisa's friends in canada. (my friend of friend band is coldplay- obviously not as cool anymore.

as my location might suggest i'm still not doing any work. actually the last proper days work i did was october 19th. even though they spent £15,000 on mountain equipment (about £500 each) so we could work on the brecon beacons safely they still haven't actually let us go up there to dig our holes. I have been made a team leader so i'm not actually going to digwhich is going to be strange. i do however get to carry the leaders rucksack- fully equiped with mountain tent, first aid kit, GPS and a she-wee (i'll let you work that one out).

so lisa is back in manchester this weekend doing family stuff leaving me to endure my first ever filling today. not sure what that is going to entail but looking forward to being able to chew on both sides of my mouth.

bank charges

just another short update. got a letter from hsbc this week. they are offering me £1180 to settle my claim. i'll take that thank you. going to try to close it soon and move to a move ethical bank.

updates

seems like that last picture didn't work. i'll have to try to sort that sometime.

it appears that our optimism over lisa's cheque before christmas was premature. we were chasing it wehen we got back and found out that he decided not to send her pay after all for some unknown reason. it's all going to an employment tribunal at the end of february now unless he sees sense beforehand.

as for my bank charges. they are currently dealing with it and hiring more people to cope with the amount of claims for refunds that are coming in. 7 weeks was the maximum length of time it could take. but it all seems quite routine so it looks like i should get it back at some point.

and finally it looks like i will be back digging my holes on the brecon beacons this week. we had a meeting on friday 'preparing' us for the mountain. and trying to avoid hitting the papers like last time. felt more like we are going on a polar expedition. they are supposedly buying us goretex jackets, trousers and boots this time. oh and a whistle.

15 mb of fame

found this while we were chucking some stuff away from lisa's bedroom in stockport and it made me laugh. i must have had this for 3 months before lisa pointed out we (and eifion) were on the cover. i don't think any of us were students at the time either.

smaller footprints

2007. no matter how much you try not to subscibe to cliches it's hard not to think of a new year in terms of new starts and resolutions. i suppose this is partially added to by having a birthday nearby so i contemplate what having an extra year means ( not having started back at work yet also gives me the time to think such things).

coincidentally in a couple of months i'll get to skip back a decade when lots of my uni friends will come down to mumbles for the weekend. i'm not sure if will be quite like the reunion in 'this life+10' the other night but i've dubbed it 'leicester life +10 anyway.

so resolutions. was speaking to mark payne the other day and just read his blog entry. we decided to trade pounds. he could have a few of mine that i didn't want. smaller footprints is what i'm thinking. getting fitter yes ( i'm sure that will come when i have to walk up the brecons ever day come next week) but mainly eating healthier and having less of an impact on the environment. kind of along the lines of mark's ethical living. trying to make the extra effort to recycle stuff and make more ethical choices with my money. we'll see.