When the going gets tough

I don’t know what the tough do although I suspect they don’t break into song (as an aside, I loved that film and Romancing the Stone) I do know what I do – I hide from it all and read voraciously, books, newspapers, journal articles, and surf the internet looking for distraction and catching up on blogs. Right now the going is very, very tough, to the extent that I’m almost thinking nostalgically about the time before Christmas when my main worry was the smell and the endless making of felt trees. Almost. In my head HARN towers looks like this

http://epicmickey.wikia.com/wiki/File:Dark_beauty_castle_being_struck_by_lightning.jpg

As a consequence I have been reading, a lot. But because it’s been so stressful I’ve mainly been reading children’s books, or Young Adult books and whatever we call books like this which are too young for young adults and too old for young children. None of them are even remotely about archaeology or history although some like these  and these are set in archaeological/historical times but unless you would like some children’s or teenager’s book recommendations probably of no interest. Obviously I have many other books I could and should be reading but they are serious books, archaeology or history books, books without a rattling good plot, books that mean I have to think to understand them and that is not where I’m at right now. I have just begun to read This Orient Isle by Jerry Brotton which is for adults and is history and is also very good – he wrote the fascinating A History of the World in Twelve Maps so I’m expecting This Orient Isle to be just as good. I might even write a review if I can retain any of the information.

Aside from that I’ve been pottering around the internet, getting up to date on blogs even if I have to go back a few years to do so, if that makes sense. I have learned several interesting things I didn’t know 1) Stewart Copeland him of The Police fame (and obviously many other things, please don’t tell me about them), anyway, his mother was an archaeologist, Lorraine Adie Copeland. Ms Copeland specialised in Near Eastern Palaeolithic archaeology and worked with Dorothy Garrod and Diana Kirkbride amongst others. 2) There is a Penguin Collectors Society, promoting all things Penguin books related rather than collecting actual physical penguins. Now I’ve written that I’m feeling rather disappointed, for all my love of Penguin/Puffin/Pelican books a society that physically collected penguins would be superb

By Ben Tubby (flickr.com) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

I would have to collect Southern Rockhopper Penguins, although I’m also very taken with Chinstrap and King Penguins. However, probably best if I don’t try keeping a colony of penguins in the house a la Mr Popper’s Penguins. So, disappointment aside The Penguin Collectors Society is well worth a visit and Penguin books and archaeology are well worthy of a blog post themselves – I did talk about them in archaeology and crime, way, way back, but the number Pelicans that deal with archaeology and history of archaeology are substantial. Thing 3) that I learnt was ‘For a few months in early 1962, a team from the Archaeological Survey of India excavated the site of Afyeh in Egyptian Nubia as part of the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia—the same campaign responsible for the much better-known salvage of the temples of Ramses II and Nefertari at Abu Simbel’ and William Carruthers went off to India in 2016 to investigate this. His blog posts here make fascinating reading so if, like me, you are completely behind the times go there and read. I particularly liked the entry on Lush, it made me nostalgic and also reminded me that my own son is about to hit the nerdish teenage years (I do hope W C doesn’t mind me calling him nerdish, it is meant affectionately) and I am optimistic I’ll find his obsessions endearing rather than infuriating!

I will continue to post HARN related matters and hopefully some more varied blog posts but I make no promises. If any of you would like to contribute a piece for the blog then please do, now would be an ideal time!

Meanwhile have a great weekend

Julia