In the beginning...
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 archaeological and genealogical 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 archaeologist.
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 archaeology and literally push forwards the frontier of historical and archaeological knowledge. (cue fanfare)
A Plaid Stranglehold
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.
Doctor Do and the Magic Cottage
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...
Getting married again was quite a remarkable experience
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 traveling down from Treorchy, her cousin's flash white 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 18th 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 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. I won't tell you what happened in between...
Twice Bitten, Never Shy
The reason for my sporadic attendance of these memoirs is my never ending wait for a bionic hip on the Welsh NHS. The most recent reason for the delay are the mosquito bites my rear end acquired 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 renown 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 renowned 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.
Arm-in-arm with the Empress of India
1980 was a very strange year. My wife had died in May, then I had to be involved in the continuing excavation of the ancient monastic site of Watten, in Caithness. For a number of years I had dug in Caithness to the extent that a John O' Groats journal said "Oor Eric is up for the summer".
For the duration, I rented a very large cottage from Lord Thurso; so large that it accommodated myself, my 3 children, their newly acquired nanny, Shasha from Glasgow, plus Dai Lewis and his wife from Treorchy, my sister in law, her husband and their 3 children. Dai Lewis, being a member of the wine society, ordered a case of wine to be delivered on our day of arrival . Wonderful!!!
That day was the first day of the nanny's regime and she was somewhat overwhelmed at the age of 18 having never been involved in such a extraordinary gathering. The most extraordinary event was when during the excavation, my old friend, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, arrived at the site of the dig. Shasha, Dai Lewis' wife and the children had been out all day on the beach and visited the site before going home. I was in deep discussion with "Mumsy" and Lady Fermoy (Diana's grandmother), when a voice from behind asked "Introduce us to your friends". When Mumsy turned around, Shasha nearly dropped little Emma on her head.
Incidentally, I must be one of the few men in the world to have escorted an Empress of India arm-in-arm, as I did whilst escorting her from the trench back to her car. It unnerved me that she knew so much about me, but her local lady-in-waiting, Hettie Munroe, was a local antiquarian book dealer in Thurso, and I had also previously met Mumsy at the King's Lynn Festival in 1966/7 whilst I had lived near the Sandringham estate. She enquired as to where I would be digging next. "Balmoral, Ma'am", I replied casually, "Bring the family".
Her response was an enigmatic smile.
Halcyon days in King's Lynn
After years of being an undergraduate and postgraduate student at Cardiff, I was appointed to be recorder to the King's Lynn archaeological survey. The appointment was made by Sir David Wilson of the British Museum and the redoubtable Professor Eleanora Carus-Wilson, a specialist in medieval North Sea trade. Patron of the survey was Lady Fermoy, a great chum of the Queen Mother.
It was a great privilege to pioneer an archaeological investigation into this Hansiatic League town's connection with all parts of Northern Europe and beyond.Because of the high water table, most items were preserved that would normally have decayed in other contexts. As a result, we had many surviving items relating to all aspects of life and trade in the borough. Complete medieval merchant houses were discovered in their entirety, including some constructed in wood.
This reminds me of a hilarious event during on of the 2 King's Lynn music festivals that I patronised. During a wine tasting one afternoon, I encountered my fellow countrymen Glyn Daniel, Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge University in the company of one of my great heroes, the Poet Laureate, John Betjeman. The latter had always had a love of antiquities and when the 3 of us were quite sloshed, it was decided that I should take them into the area of our recently excavated merchant house. Myself and my team managed to get them down the ladder to the area of excavation, but it was a different matter to get them out since both were somewhat inebriated and of large girth.
In wintertime, King's Lynn was one of the coldest places I have every worked, also the flattest. All the fens would become one big skating rink. Due to the driving skills I had acquired in the Rhondda Valleys, I managed to avoid ending up in drains like Six Mile Bottom, and other similarly named drainage systems. The hospitality I received was overwhelming, especially in the pubs, and particularly The Wheatsheaf at Walpole-St-Peter. I went there to church most Sundays. It was one of the most beautiful of the large fenland churches. By the end of each service, the altar was floating on a cloud of incense. The rector, Father Jack Woods, who became a great friend of mine, later became Provost of Inverness Cathedral where he tried to persuade me to become vicar of Wick in Caithness, later to become Bishop of Moray, Ross and Caithness.
After my first week in the King's Lynn digs, (a situation comedy scenario as any archaeologist will tell you!!), I found accommodation in Sundial Cottage near Sandringham. I shared the cottage with the owner, Miss Petch. She was a formidable lady of about 6 foot, and cultivated the garden around the cottage which was heavily defended by her flock of geese. I suffered their wrath on many occasions when coming home from the pub at Castle Rising in a somewhat inebriated state. I rode by bicycle there every evening and met up with that great character, the Singing Postman, Allan Smethurst. I wouldn't say that he became "Top of the Pops", but naturally he became famous for his bizarre Norfolk dialogue songs which became renowned nationally.
From him and others, I picked up a wide vocabulary and perfected my 'Narfork' dialect and accent. This was aided by another Welsh valley boy, George Ewart Evans. He been born and brought up in Abercynon and become a school teacher and staunch communist. Teaching had taken him to East Anglia, and he became completely immersed in the life, history and culture of Norfolk and Suffolk. Faber and Faber, the publishers, published many of his books concerning rural life in those 2 counties, the best known perhaps being 'The Horse and the Furrow'. We met very often and he used to invite me to speak at the East Anglian Folk Museum, which he had founded at Stowmarket. He encouraged me to record dialect names for farm equipment in my area of Norfolk and to record reminiscences. At one stage, I was actually paid by King's Lynn Museum to go around local pubs recording the sea shanties of the sailing barge men who plied the route from Lynn, around the East Anglian coast and up the Thames.
These experiences made me very much aware of the greater role of the archaeologist other than excavation. Many evenings, I traversed the length of the North Sea pipe line and discovered many sites which would otherwise not been discovered had it not been for the construction of this major link. I was also very much involved in the study of vernacular architecture for much was being demolished by developers. Behind Georgian facades, medieval timber buildings would appear before what Hitler didn't destroy, the British developer did. One of my many other tasks was to keep an eye on all building trenches in town to recover all discovered artifacts and I even took the groundwork men into the museum during their breaks to talk about what to look out for in the way of artifacts.
Many an evening with no traffic around, I used to be seen wandering around the streets with 2 cameras around my neck, undertaking a complete photographic survey of the area of the medieval borough. I failed to photograph 1 cottage next to St Nicholas' Church. On each occasion that I attempted to take a photograph, the shutters jammed. Eventually, the occupant came down and told me that I would me unable to succeed in my venture because as a Wizard (I jest not!), he would continue to prevent me photographing his home. He did, however, take me inside and showed me an amazing collection of the occult and told me that he was an adviser to the Norfolk Constabulary on black magic rites. I excused myself, and hastened down the path whilst clutching my crucifix.
Halcyon days in King's Lynn, part 2
All was not work. It was extremely pleasant for me to experience two King's Lynn music festivals. The festival had become renowned in the field of Early Music. My 2 closest and oldest friends from the Rhondda (we were in school together in the Rhondda), came eastwards for both occasions in 1966 and 1967, and stayed at Sundial Cottage with me.
The whole experience on both occasions reminded me very much of Jerome K Jerome's "3 men in a Boat", something which was resurrected in 2006 when we did a replay 40 years on. The height of that experience was being ejected from my old local pub "Wem's" on a Friday evening after emerging from St Margaret's Collegiate church where we'd attended a delightful Early Music concert. Our offense was to refuse to remove our Panama hats. We were inclined to indicate that they had ejected a retired professor of archeology, judge and politician. However we benefited from the experience by entering a neighbouring low dive and being entertained by some "ladies" of the town.
When the boys visited me in the 60's, Miss Petch, my landlady, was much impressed at their arrival from Treorchy, in that Dai Lewis at that time drove a large vintage Alvis (with spoked wheels!), which ground and purred up the gravel drive. This was very reminiscent of her brother's arrival in his large silver Bentley. Dr Petch was a Harley Street specialist and a jolly fellow. Foolishly, on one occasion I offered to wash his car while I was washing my own. I realised too late the enormous size of the saloon car.
There were many highlights to the King's Lynn festival when the boys were up, several of them bizarre. I well remember the 3 of us carrying the Chief Constable of Norfolk following a Martini reception after a Monteverdi concert at the Guildhall. We placed him on the back seat of his police car for which his driver was most grateful, to the extent that the following evening in deepest, darkest Norfolk, we were accorded the best parking space at Sandringham church for a organ recital. We were somewhat overcome by the occasion and whisked ourselves down to the front of the church to settle ourselves into these red plush seats. We had only been seated for a few minutes when an usher indicated that the seats were reserved for the Queen Mother and her entourage, and we should move to the row behind. During the interval, Lady Fermoy introduced "Mumsy" to myself, and I introduced the lads to her.
When we got back to King's Lynn, the boys planned to call their mothers straight away to tell them all about it. Unfortunately there was an obstacle in the way of the telephone being the loss of my keys to Sundial Cottage. I daren't risk waking the formidable Miss Petch, although she was probably at a WI meeting. I noticed that there was an upstairs window open and remembered that there was an extending ladder next to the place where I parked my car. In a bizarre escapade, we carried the ladder through the asparagus beds and placed the top of the ladder against a projecting brick swastika. Believe it or not, the entire circumference of the cottage was thus decorated; an unusual, yet not uncommon feature in East Anglia. Amazingly, in our inebriated state and portly chaps even in our youth, we managed to make our way inside.
The next afternoon, we went to an open air concert at Castle Rising and sat above the Norman earthen ramparts to listen to the Gabrieli Brass Ensemble, a delightfully dotty group which I had previously listened to in the West End on the first night of a musical about Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. We'd had the foresight to take with us a picnic basket filled with glasses, bottles of wine, bath oliver biscuits and various cheeses. Perchance, next to us settled the Queen Mother and Lady Fermoy. They hadn't had the foresight to bring any nibbles with them, so we were perfect gentlemen and shared our provisions.
The 5 Year Dig
Early 1975, I was approached by Stuart Cruden, Head of Ancient Monuments for Scotland, to completely excavate The Peel of Lumphanan, 25 miles up Royal Deeside from Aberdeen, between the towns of Torphins and Banchory. This was one of the many places settled by Norman favourites of the Scottish monarchs. In this case, it was the stronghold of the Durward family, the surname arising from the fact that the family were doorkeepers to the Scottish Royal Family.
Peel was a motte castle, with a very wide wet ditch around it. It was a natural glacial mound called Drumlin in Scotland, and had been scarped to form a castle mound. It was one of the biggest castle mounds in Scotland. The name Peel is an anglicised contraction form of the latin Pallacirum (a palisade). However, the edge of the mound was surmounted by a collapsed stone wall and over the years had been published in many sources as a stone enclosure castle on an earthen mound. Excavations showed that in fact the edge of the mound had been surrounded by a turf bank, like the Roman antonine wall. Documentary and excavation research showed that the wall was an 18th century agricultural enclosure and the top of the mound was farmed.
The 5 years of excavation - 1975 to 1979, were the happiest of my archaeological career; a month of sunshine bliss after the rigours of the monsoon season in Caithness. My student team from Glasgow were farmed out into barns and cottages, and myself, my wife and our young family rented a cottage and became part of the community. This was the extent that when my wife died in 1980, about half of the village came to her funeral in Glasgow. My mainstays in the community were David Riach, the headmaster of the local school, and Betty Forrest, landlady of one of the world most wonderful pubs, the Macbeth Arms.
One of the firm historical facts we know about King Macbeth is that he was killed in Lumphanan, his head buried in a cairn and the rest of his body buried with the rest of the Scottish kings on Iona. The Macbeth Arms was the centre of the community, and a godsend for us as an archeological team. We became very popular in the pub and the community, particularly when journalists and television crews turned up and also frequented the pub. It was therefore extremely annoying when my boss at Glasgow University, Professor Leslie Allsopp (who was also my boss in Cardiff when I was a research student) stated "I don't know how you can find the time to socialise when you're working". He was therefore somewhat miffed when so many people came from the community came to the funeral.
1976 was a very hot summer. I took my students in the minibus to the pub every lunchtime and in the hour or so's break, each of us must have consumed 6 or 7 pints of HEAVY. The heat was such that hardly anyone needed to use the loo, as it was all coming out sideways!! The last season in 1979 was one when the family didn't come up as my daughter Emma had just been born. My companion on the excavation was Ifor Rowlands, lecturuer in medieval history in Swansea. Natuarlly enough, we stayed in the Macbeth Arms in a bedroom with very wobbly floorboards!!
There were some amazing highlights to that final season besides the occasion when I drove a dumper truck for the only time in my life. Once, in the middle of the night, the bedroom door was knocked by the manager put in by Betty Forrest. He said that his wife was in a serious condition and that he was taking her to Aberdeen Infirmary. Could I look after the bar the next day, which was a Sunday at the height of the harvest? Much as I am a hreaty drinker, I had never been on the other side before. My greatest worry was that height of technology, the till, which I failed to open. Fortunately, next to the pub was the Clydesdale Bank.
On Saturday night, I had carried the bank manager home to his bed, so he owed me a favour. I realised that I needed a big float as I couldn't open the till. The bank manager was also favourable due to the amount of money I had deposited there from the Ancient Monuments Committee. None of my students were living in the village, but were scattered all over the local area. Many had bar experience from Glasgow, so I sent Ifor off to rouse some of them from their drunken stupor to help me look after the bar. Although pubs weren't open on Sundays in Scotland, those with a minimum of 4 bedrooms were allowed to open at noon. The farmers and their families flocked in at noon with terrible thirsts.
There was I, having never worked behind the bar before, running up and down the bar serving pints of Heavy and "wee senstations". Scotland, before England and Wales had the requirement that a new glass had to be used for every drink, so not only was I faced with a large assembly of thirsty customers, but also a vast array of empty glasses which I somehow had to wash.
Around 2 o'clock, the first of my bleary eyed students arrived to help, and I retired to the heights of a bar stool on the correct side of the bar. When the landlord arrived back from the hospital that evening, he was delighted with the accomplishments of my students and myself. The financial situation was chaotic vis-a-vis the till, but he rewarded me with free beer for the week. I could never remember how much the float was!!!