Savage Kitchen (everybody likes a good muffin)

Dear Diary,

In my place of work they sing. The words "don't give up your day-job" spring to mind, for my "learned" colleagues are… more than a little out of tune, to say the least. Recently, the idea has been bandeyed about of forming a band, called "Savage Kitchen". I suggested a number of songs: Those potatoes won't peel themselves, Keep that [dish-washing] Machine Going, and One Brulé [One Ovid, One Vergil]; the B-side to the concept album includes such tracks as She has a bun in the oven, Hot Muffin, and Don't be nasty: show us your pasty. It is a base and really sad state of affairs, because not only does the album lack any decorum or respect for those of the fairer-sex, but the contralto (K.P. Dan) has broken up the band and got another job; which means that the barbershop quartet is only left with a tenor (Colin), a soprano (Dolor) and the basso-fortuno (the chef Dan). Accordingly, I have taken his place as contralto, and will of course, compose all the music, and accompany them on the piano (while the others play the spoons, or percussion on saucepans).

Some songs are too controversial to put on the album, songs such as Forbidden Waitress, she's only eighteen, and Don't be shy: show us your pie [hole]. It is really the gutter. We were thinking of covering Spinal Tap: "Big bottom, big bottom, talk about beef-cakes my girl's got 'em.", but the copyright infringement means we cannot not do so.

Archaeology: A true calling

Dear Diary,

"In considering the area of Maumbury and the height of the encircling back, it is undoubtedly the largest and most important structure of its kind in Great Britain. It is, moreover, one of the rarest types of ancient monuments remaining in our country and I feel it a privilege to have had… these excavations in my hands." - Excavations at Maumbury Rings, by Henry Saint George Gray, 1908.

Today I put the trowel in one of the most sacred sites in our fair shores, and feel most gratified indeed to be able to dig, and unearth the treasures which may be curated by the Dorchester (Durnovaria) Museum and to be more well understood from scholars in ages to come.

Seemingly archaeologists from Exeter (Isca) are sometimes brought in, but the Council favour Dorset's own archaeological team (yours truly, and my mentor - Phil Clarke) to investigate these ancient ruins in the near future. Only three feet down were found some of the rarest Roman artefacts ever unearthed, and I am most gratified indeed to have ousted the Devonian "antiquisearchers" and that us (the "detectorists") have managed to win the hearts and minds of the local powers that be.

The next part of the project is to excavate some steps that need re-fashioning, and this will give us access to some of the most precious pieces of earth known to these shores. We may find nothing. It may be archaeologically sterile. But, if it is not (and let's face it: nothing ventured, nothing gained) then we may stumble across some discoveries of significance, to be researched by the local historians and archaeologists.

It does not matter that the other sites we have on the drawing-board (Bridport and Weymouth) are not as high profile.

This morning I was (in my mind at least) somewhere between Mortimer Wheeler and Indiana Jones.

God, I love archaeology. Whereas historians and Classicists (my contemporaries and colleagues) read about things and write about them, it is only the archaeologist who puts in the work, who gets his or her hands dirty, and unearths the fruits, which all other slothful scholars and arm-chair generals so venerate.

Love, life and archaeology

Dear Diary,

Oh! It is like having the sun shine on one, from both sides at once. Maximus has again fallen deeply in love, with another fair maiden. Oh! The lady is exquisite. Last night as I walked the long road home from "Broadchurch" (as we call the place now), I stopped by a tavern on the edge of town, that didn't go so well, but that's okay. The "battery-farm drinkers" (Weatherspoons) was open. I sat reading Vergil's Aeneid (West's translation, which is excellent by the way) then went outside for a cigarette. I spied an old army-cadet buddy, Thomas. He was sat with a couple of his colleagues from where he works, at the hospital.

Young Tom sang my praises about guitar playing, and I gracefully thanked him for the sincere compliment. Next to me was a radiant-looking lady, adorned with a head of beautiful auburn straight hair, with eyes so comely all else faded from view. The lady sported a soft Irish lilt, musical, light on the ears (she is from Belfast). I recited her some poetry, and she told me she loved me, twice. I bought her a drink, then she stood up Tom (with whom she had gone out with that evening seemingly) then melted in to the gloom of night. Tom was most put out, his mate told him to forget it.

I had planned on sending her some flowers today (using the most appropriate floral bouquet from the language of symbolism in a book I have), but then I remembered that pollen through the air is no longer permitted in British hospitals (the French sell them outside hospitals). So, I decided to write her a poem, in my hand (which is my most redeeming feature).

Some time later, the telephone rang. It was Arrowhead Archaeology. I am invited to excavate the site of Maumbury Rings, which I am so excited about. (I'm basically a young Indiana Jones now, in my mind at least). The sacred site is a stone's throw from the County Hospital, and so everything is falling in to place.

I have a hundred and one other things I need to be doing, but for now I am lost in Ovid, Sappho, and the sapphire-like twin pools of the fair maiden Vivian.