it's a hard rain's gonna fall / ring of fire

so i've been both rained and burnt off site today. I'm digging on the site of a tudor manor house near little hulton at present which is being used as an open cast coal mine. its also being used as a entertainment centre for all the scallies of the little hulton estates. before we got there we were warned but assured there was an evacuation plan in place in case we got 'set upon'. so apart from beiong greeted by a lot of rain on site today we were also told that we couldn't go anywhere near our site as scallies had set fire to about 30 tyres plus a couple of gas cylinders that had been cleared from the site.urban archaeaology eh. who said it wasn't as exciting as indiana jones.

in other news we are on the move again. not far this time. just another flat in levenshulme. a little cheaper and a little closer to the train station in the morning. we may be moving this weekend so you might get a call asking for some help.

i suppose i had better start packing then

visiting the great great grandparents

i'm sure lisa will tell you what a lovely weekend trip we had to wales. it was very much a trip into our family past. we ended up in llandudno, somewhere lisa went every year on holiday to when she was growing up. i maintain that it was my first visit but my parents will probably correct me and say "don't you remember we took you when you were 6 months old".

llandudno was actually very nice and just as lisa remembered Barnacles served some very nice fish, chips and gravy.

my trip family memories took the form of dragging lisa around the graveyards of north wales. yes she does know how lucky she is to have me. As you can see i visited my g g grandparents Edward and Elizabeth Wynne in the very small, very sheepy and very mined village of Rhesycae in Flintshire. We arn't really a family that visits graves so it was quite an experience to see these names that i had only seen on census's, carved in solid stone. so much of family tree stuff can be done online now that you forget sometimes about all the physical connections.

Intriguingly there were fresh daffodils on the grave (as you can see in the photo) which must mean someone connected is still around there.

there search continues......
in other news

Might be off digging on the Isle of Man soon. that should be interesting. although it will be hard to be away from lisa and home again.

listening to the laura imbruglia album a lot at the moment. i know you might think how good can it be, surely she's just copying her sister but it's actually really good. more alternative than natalie- great song called anarchists and lettuces about her vegan punk friends.

"i'm hungry, i haven't eaten since later this afternoon"

2008 and no blog post yet. is it life getting dull or facebook taking over. maybe not dull but busy. back and to to chester everyday and to the 9-6 of ofsted for lisa. my work has kept me on my employment toes this year as what was meant to be one week of work has turned into a month so far and possibly another two months if a contract falls our way.

i'm only really writing this as i'm waiting for various problems to tell me just how riddled our pc is with spyware. would be nice if just one of them was to actually do something about it without asking for £30 first. this all started cause somebody tried the phish (with a ph like phat) my bank account. lukily they didn't get very far but it does give you a wake up call. i think i have aways approached in a low key, "i hope they don't notice my little pc" kind of thing.

the title of the post comes from the dvd i bought yesterday - Primer- an amazing low budget film about time travel. it has to be seen to be understood. then seen again, then maybe looked up on the internet. this morning i watched it for the 3rd time then again with the directors commentary over the top and i think i'm beginning to understand. maybe it's a boy thing

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.