It's been a seriously surreal day couple of days here - all started quite innocently with a report from SCARF - the Scottish Archaeological Research Forum - of the latest research going on in the Scottish Neolithic, published by Archaeology Scotland. This included the work that my man Dave's been doing on the Isbister bones, which I've mentioned here before - lots of good evidence for disease, dietary deficiencies & interpersonal violence in the Orcadian Neolithic, people getting hit over the head with sharp pointy objects, that kind of thing.
All perfectly straightforward, but the next thing we know there's a journalist on the phone wanting to know all about the violence side of things, then there's picture editors wanting pics of skulls etc & of Dave - & preferably of Dave holding a skull. Well my man's a bit shy & didn't want his picture in the paper, so he just sent them some of the bone pics- duly published in The Scotsman & the Daily Mail with suitably gory headlines:
http://www.scotsman.com/news/Tomb-of-the-Eagles-gives.6730778.jp?articlepage=1
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1364489/85-New-Stone-Age-skulls-head-injuries-Orkneys-Tomb-Eagles.html
The Daily Mail got round the 'no picture of me ' by simply lifting one off our website without asking!!
Next we know we had BBC Radio Scotland on the phone wanting to interview him live for the Drive Time programme - he banished me & the dogs to the kitchen for that one - the dogs in cases they barked hysterically & me because I was threatening to pick the other phone up & yell our web address down it (some folk have no idea about advertising - honestly!)
Now the local ITV rep wants to film a piece for TV down at the tomb itself & interview him there - I'm trying to persuade Dave to hold up a banner with 'Orkney Archaeology Tours' across the top but he's not having any of it.
I think the funniest thing is some of the comments that people have been posting after reading the story - it's very odd, I suppose in the old days when you had to physically write to the newspaper they wouldn't publish letters written in crayon but it's a bit different now it's all instantly online.
It's also snowing again - any sign of spring having sprung has vanished & all the aforesaid lambs are shivering in the icy blast. Supposed to get worse over the weekend too.
To cap it all the van went in for its routine annual service ended up needing a cylinder head reboring. Started innocently enough - I always ask the garage to replace anything that looks even remotely dodgy at the service as better now than in the middle of the season.
So far so good - but got a phone call to say I needed new glow plugs as the old ones were rusty & likely to fail soon. No problem - I used to routinely remove & check/clean/replace the glow plugs on my old Landy every year. Not so, say the garage - it's a well known problem on Ford Tourneos/transits/etc - the glow plugs have a nasty habit of snapping off in the hole & needing drilled out - which you can't do on the vehicle as you get rusty metal in the engine, so the cylinder head has to come off, & then you usually can't cleanly drill out the hole, it has to go off to an engineering firm south to be rethreaded or something.
Question - do I want them to go ahead & replace the glowplugs? Urghhhhhh! Well on the basis that if I didn't go ahead the glowplugs were sure to fail in July & then there'd be the same problem only more desperate, I said yes go ahead & crossed my fingers all would be OK.
You can guess the rest - they got three out fine & the 4th snapped off - so off with the cylinder head, but they think that with just one they can get a local engineering firm to do it - 2 weeks with a bit of luck. I have three & a half weeks before the season starts so should be safe - more fingers crossed! Plus I don't even want to think about how much this is going to cost - about the only upside is I can now claim back the VAT on the repair bill!
http://www.orkneyarchaeologytours.co.uk
