The reason for my sporadic attendance of these memoirs is my neverending wait for a bionic hip on the Welsh NHS.  The most recent reason for the delay are the mosquito bites my rear end aquired whilst on one of two working visits to Egypt in 1990.

Last Wednesday, I visited my GP in search of a remedy for the problem.  He suggested that I came back on Thursday afternoon when an eminent dermatology specialist was due to visit to give a talk to the members of the practice.  "That would be Dr Logan!", I exclaimed, shocking my GP.

The next day, I appeared at the back door of the practice and rang the door bell as instructed.  I was ushered in by my GP and was asked, "How do you wish me to introduce you?  Doctor, Professor or...?"

"Leave it to me", I replied.  I took off my Ernest Hemingway hat, threw it down in front of the visitor and declared, "Indiana - Tomb Raider Pontypridd!  And your reknown is well known to me as an eminent dermatologist, Dr Logan.  I would like to indicate that an old friend, neighbour and colleague of mine, Professor Rhona MacKie, the first lady professor at Glasgow university, and married to an archaeological colleague of mine, Ewan MacKie".  At this statement, Dr Logan nearly fell off his chair and addressed the assembled doctors of the practice stating, "This man knows one of the most reknowned specialists in dermatology in the world!  And when I have had problems (said the doctor with decades of experience in his field), I refer them to Professor MacKie in Scotland."

My GP and his colleagues looked on in admiration, then asked that I dropped my trousers.  I therefore legally mooned 5 women.  After a careful examination of my buttocks, and listening to various medical expressions that I've never heard before, they recommended some super drugs and took a number of digital camera photographs, so hopefully I will be immortalised in medical science before I donate my body to the cause.

The wedding day was in Porth. Barbara had been for 21 years playing on the minister's organ and was quite a renowned character in the community in Porth and Treorchy, where she was known as the merry widow of Treorchy.  We actually met in the businessmens' club in Treorchy.  Our knees touched and she told me that her first husband had dropped dead on that very same bar stool.

On the wedding day people had assembled from all over these islands and from Cyprus, where my best man Eddie had been working as an archaeologist.  Some were put up in the hotel where we held our reception, the Tynewydd, a rural hotel near Penderyn.  Eddie and I of course had retired to the pub an hour or so before the wedding and my kids were in the care of some of the local people.  I think the boys were about 3 and 4 at the time in their kilts, and Emma was about 2.  Anyway, Eddie and I left the pub and returned to Keith Phillips' church only to discover that Barbara had not arrived because the car in which she was travelling down from Treorchy, her cousin’s white flash Mercedes, had a leak in the radiator.  Apparently they were making their progress down the valley stopping at every pub en route to top up the radiator.  They eventually arrived about an hour late for the ceremony.

During the course of this long wait, there were fortunately lots of people to talk to in the congregation.  There were lots of archaeological matters to deal with, especially for the ancient monuments commission in Scotland and David Breeze.  I had spent the whole night before the wedding working through some pages for some archaeological work which was handed over to him and we discussed some things.  I then noticed that my daughter was lifting up each kilt of my sons in front of the congregation much to their amusement.  The organist was doing extempore playing of extraordinary music from the 18^th century to the 1980’s.  Eventually Barbara arrived and all went well.

We had to phone the hotel to indicate that we were an hour late.  The owner and his wife were very annoyed at this; the ex-special branch, James Bond by name, and his wife, the equally formidable character called Norma.  We had ordered Pimms on the patio outside, a lovely spot overlooking a croquet lawn and a sunken rose garden.  We wolfed back our Pimms, although some of the guests couldn't quite managed all of theirs.  Back inside, I suddenly realised when looking out of the window that my kids and everybody else's kids were knocking back the Pimms at a great rate, so they were quite inebriated when they came in for the wedding breakfast.

The time came for our departure; my kids were whisked back to the Rhondda to stay with my old folks, and Barbara and I hit the road for Llyswen and the Griffin Inn.  I wondered about what was going to happen that night (he said euphemistically), but we walked into the pub and everybody said "'ello Eric!"  Barbara was quite disgruntled thinking that I wasn’t known in the vicinity.  We were then presented with a bottle of champagne and a bunch of flowers from the landlord and his wife, and retired for the night.  However, my mates from Treorchy had sussed out where I was likely to stay since the Griffin and Llyswen was a great place for us – not only a watering hole but also an excellent restaurant and they in fact discovered that we were staying there and there was a garage across the road.   So it happened that when we got up in the morning to go to Ireland, the car had been heavily sabotaged.  The worst aspect of the sabotage was the insertion of metal beer caps into the hubcaps of the 4 wheels.

When we arrived at Whites in Wexford, I had said that I would take them out, but of course with it being the first night of our honeymoon in Ireland, my mind was elsewhere so I never got around to it.  In fact, I never got around to it at all during the whole week we were away.  When we drove through narrow streets, the sound was incredible!  Also in Wexford, the windscreen wipers were nicked as we had English plates on the car instead of Welsh or Irish plates on the car.  On the way back to Wales, we were going through the customs shed at Fishguard at about 4 o'clock in the morning.  The customs people were quite astounded with the sound coming from the car so one of the officers quipped, "Oh, so you’re smuggling watches into Wales from Ireland!!", and of course when I told them the story, they were greatly amused.

In June to December 2004, I was invited to share in the domestic non-bliss of the Magic Cottage.  It stood in a remarkable geomorphological feature twixt the Rhondda and Ely valleys, with views of the Vale of Glamorgan, the Bristol Channel and northern Somerset (depending on the cloud cover).  It soon became apparent that the cottage was much haunted and surrounded at night time by hooting owls.

My own nocturnal noises, snoring, singing, reciting, etc, caused much hilarity for my cottage mates who tried on many occasions to record me, but on presentation of a microphone to my lips, I became mysteriously silent.  Sleep also often caused me to drift into the wall.  A sense of security, perhaps reminiscences of Glasgow's tenement wall beds, but could it be that I was communing with the resonances in the interior walls which had accumulated the memories of many decades of eccentric behaviour?  Could this account for my notorious nocturnal utterances?

The final bizarre event was at All Hallow's Eve, when a gang of nutters from Pontypridd happened upon us for the festivities.  At midnight, my host appeared at the entrance of the cottage to welcome Samhain (the Celtic New Year), nude, covered in wode and clutching his staff.  His then girlfriend couldn't manage to join in the celebrations due to being literally arse over tit drunk having consumed a surfeit of vodka earlier in the evening.  I was impressed by her ability to sleep standing up, but bent double in an A shape…

Later that night, I was summoned to the kitchen by our Brazilian friend who found it wildly funny to paint my hair red and face black, having previous refused her request to swap clothes with her.  Being a stalwart soul, I woke up before everyone else the next morning and as I went to perform my morning ablutions, was confronted by my bizarre appearance in the mirror which I had completely forgotten about.

Decisions, decisions… Should I now walk the 2 miles to my book shop in Penygraig and confirm everyone's view of my eccentricity, or should I wash?  Unfortunately, when I tried to clean the various paints from my person, it all went a bit streaky.  Eventually with the aid of some shampoo, I was able to remove all evidence of the previous night.

The Magic Cottage could be a great refuge in time of stress and drunkenness.  On one notable occasion, I was placed to rest there after I accidentally fell in the brook on a short cut from the Penrhiwfer Club, resulting with my trolley filled with books ending up on top of me and my glasses presumably swept away towards the River Ely.  Fortunately, the barmaid from the club sent my friend Peter Spices after me, being concerned about my state of inebriation.

And I will live to tell another tale…

Back in the early 90’s, I joined a friend who worked in the Probation Service at his office’s Christmas party in G&T’s in Porth.  He introduced me to one of his ‘merry’ young subordinates who hailed from Penygraig, my home at that time; a young lady by the name of Leanne Wood.  As I was about to shake her hand in greeting, my friend mentioned that I was the Conservative Party agent for the Rhondda.  At that point, I was pushed back into my chair by the young lady, who promptly leapt upon me and began to throttle me.  Luckily (for her or me, I’m still not quite sure), her mother suddenly appeared, dragged her off and apologised saying, “I’m very sorry, but my daughter is somewhat immature when it comes to politics!”

Some months later, during the campaign for the local by-election, there was a knock at my front door whilst I was cooking.  Covered in flour, I was confronted by the sight of the young lady who had violated my person at yuletide.  “Oh f***”, she said.  “My mother said I should apologise, but I didn’t know where you lived!”

(That night, I retired to bed in happy refrain, dreaming of ‘The Wizard of Oz’, and Judy Garland singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ – only joking!!)

From that day, young Leanne became a regular visitor to my shop, often giving me a little hug and a kiss on my cheek in thanks for my displaying of Plaid Cymru posters in the shop window and my local hostelry, the Turberville Arms.

I first realised I was a free thinker when I was denounced from the pulpit of Tabernacle Independent Baptist Chapel, Hannah Street, Porth, at the age of 10.  The reason for this was for spreading theories in the Sunday School of evolution, the accuracy of stratification in the archeological and genealogial record, and the accuracy of scientific dating records.  This was followed by the burning of my library books in the kitchen fire by my father.  It was around this time that I heard on BBC Radio Wales' Children's Hour Dr V E Nash-Williams' account of the excavations of a Roman Villa at Llantwit Major.  I knew then that I was destined to become a trenchant rebel archeologist.

Nine years later, I lay at the feet of Prof. R J C Atkinson and his peculiar  staf and knew that with my 5 other fellow students in the Honours Class, I was to end up at the forefront of modern British archeology and literally push forwards the frontier of historical and archeologal knowledge.

(cue fanfare)