An unexpected journey

A couple of days ago, I wrote the first post for this record of my forthcoming overseas trip. In the typical long-winded style of Rout males down the genetic lines, the post was full of the sort of world observations and asides that are the hallmark of a good story (what my wife likes to refer to as “utter crap”). Don’t expect this, or any future posts, to be any different.

So what, exactly, is this trip? You’d really like to know, wouldn’t you? Well I will tell you for a price. That price is that you to have to read all the paragraphs in this post, because nothing is free, and the thought of your torment amuses me no end.

When I was in Grade 5 at Crib Point Primary School, the teacher  (Mr. John Daly)  read a book aloud to the class. This book was The Hobbit, by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, a Professor of English Literature in England and a man who took pipe smoking from being a putrid obsession of the underclasses, and turned it into the glamorous female-attracting addiction it is today.

“This makes my lungs like the M3 motorway on a hot day, but it sure does pull tail.” – J. R. R. Tolkien, 1963

Some people scoff at the idea that a book can change your life. But the teacher said to the class after a few sessions, “is anyone enjoying this?”. My classmates, whose concepts of literature came from deciphering the “L” and “R” on the tops of their shoes, pretty well dismissed it. At lunchtime on that day in 1981, I went and I borrowed that same book from the school library. It still sits on my bookshelf to this day. Scandalous, I know, but it’s been read so many times that I probably owe the late author’s estate some sort of stipend for having it give me so much.

On a side note of that side note, my brother Darren and his lovely lady Elise are both experts on Tolkien’s writings. Elise, in particular, is an acknowledged expert to my understanding, having got one of those pieces of paper with the wax seals that says what a clever chappy a person really is. I do acknowledge my own limited understanding of that work. While I love the books, I fully admit that I skipped the poetry and songs, and focussed mainly on the people getting slaughtered. So I may have some facts wrong. But it does give you an indication of why I titled this post the way I did.

Suddenly I found myself fascinated with swords and magic and buxom women in chainmail bikinis. The latter probably came later, but I did become an avid fan of fantasy literature. As I got older, I discovered all this stuff actually had some basis in reality. People had swords, and armor, and lived in castles!. And so began my lifelong love of this sort of thing, at least from the fantastical versions of those histories. I read the tales of King Arthur and his knights, acts of chivalry, all of that stuff, and I loved it.

Queen Bodicca of the Iceni dressed like this every single day, I swear.

These days, I still like those tales, but I have been increasingly enjoying actual history. Not wars and such, though they are still interesting, but how people lived and the stories they made. That’s why I decided a few years back that I had to be a part of the discovery, and not just sit idly by and watch others do it. So, I’m going on archaeological dig in a bit less than a month, in the southwest of England. It’s a beautiful village, not too far from the coast, and I will spending a week  kneeling in mud (it’s Summer in Devon, after all) digging up… well, who knows? There’s a Romano-British graveyard there (that’s 1,200 year old dead people for the uninitiated) so I may get the chance to work on some skeletons. There’s lots of evidence of habitation, and a roman road that’s at least 1,600 years old all waiting to be uncovered and recorded.

As the day looms closer, I’m forced to remind myself that not everyone gets to do this in their lives. Doesn’t it suck to be you?