Conditions: Cloudy, sustained periodic sunshine, few small showers, very windy.
After yesterdays postponement due to Wimbledonesque weather today is the first of the primary school mock excavations.
The day of truth for Dawn and the Outreach crew.
Is the first school going to resemble St. Recidivist’s School for Persistent Offenders with pupils “refreshingly unhindered by conventional education. Have you got to keep your eye on the Landy to make sure it doesn’t get TWOC’ed? (Taken without owners consent, I am reliably informed).
Do we have to worry about the electronic tags, being worn by a miniature version of the Kray twins, throwing out the GPS readings, or the ropes of 9ct gold “bling” round the 10 year old homeboys neck skewing the magnetometry results in the demonstration being given to the trainees?
Nah, no such problems. In fact these kids are loving it. They are split into groups and one lot go off walking the wider site as part of their landscape survey, looking at the terracing and platforms and the “lumps ‘n’ bumps”. One group are taught how to recognise finds (specifically roman :- box flue, tegula, rim sherds etc). One group excavate in the mock-up and another group record the finds on a grid. Many comments are heard from the kiddywinks along the lines of :- “I’ve seen this done on Time-Team” and “Oi, get outta my trench, Tony” 
I really can’t praise English Heritage enough for this initiative although I can’t help but feel that they are not fully exploiting the positive publicity they could be getting out of this. Publicity that could be used to attract business sponsors for future initiatives.
Anyway this is the last update from me for a couple of days. When I return Monday evening I will update you with anything I can. (If I have survived ) and by Wednesday evening I’ll be able to give you a full report from within trench 6 and hopefully will be utilising the latest technology exploited in the shape of trench cam. OK, it’s my Fujifilm digital, but used at an alluring angle.