Time Team and thunder storms

It was 10.30 at night, and I was just setting off for bed.  There is a flash of light.  A pause.  Andrew and I held our breath, not daring to look at each other….then….a boom.   We sighed resignedly, and waited for the pitter-patter of small-ish feet to start.  Another flash, another boom, and yes, Lulu is awake.   By the time I get to her room Madeleine is awake too, and before I know it I’m sitting in the armchair with two little girls on my knee, waiting for a thunder storm to pass.

By stroke of amazing luck, at that moment Andrew turned to his favourite TV program, Time Team.  I’ve taken the proverbial out of this before, but it bears repeating: this program is so quaint it has gone over the edge into madness.  The participants are dressed as you and I might at a fancy dress party celebrating wacky outcasts of 1980′s TV programmes – Worzel Gummidge comes to mind.  In fact, as my brother pointed out recently, the presenter is literally a wacky outcast of a 1980′s programme – Tony Robinson, aka Baldrick from Blackadder.  

For those who STILL haven’t seen an episode of Time Team (get thee to a TV screen! pronto!), a group of archeologists have three days to attempt to excavate a site of potential archeological significance.  9 times out of 10 its a flipping Roman villa somewhere in the English countryside, and the cast of nutty (and I say that in an kindly, almost affectionate way) experts who have such a niche expertise they could probably only work in a place like England (the dendrochronologist – reader of tree rings – springs to mind), and spend their time picking up minute pieces of pottery and surmising that, well, some Romans lived there once.  

But sometimes we get a really special episode.  And by special, I mean these guys are SO excited by something that seems to the average person so UTTERLY pointless that you start to wonder what they are smoking.  One classic involved the “excavation” of  a wharf in the Thames.  From memory, they dug around in some swampy filthy shallows for a while before locating a a single pile – essentially a big log of wood, just one, mind you – and from that deduced that a massive wharf once stood at that very spot.

The ultimate Time Team, the excavation of the world’s first viaduct, started just as the the first crack of lightening split the sky.  I know, you are leaping from your armchair at the very thought of digging up a viaduct.  I know I was!  But to put you out of your misery, I’ll cut straight to the thrilling ending.  Having dug a hole that could probably have been seen from space – so deep in fact that it wasn’t safe for anyone to actually get into the bottom of it and look around – no viaduct had appeared.  The viaduct lay tantalizingly just beneath the surface of the bottom of the hole.  A camera was dangled down on a pole and the Team did get some pictures of the inside of the very top of the viaduct.  For safety purposes, the hole was then filled back in, and the Team all went home. Result!!

Anyway, the thunderstorm banged on, and Time Team banged on as well.  The girls were luckily entranced by the spectacle of grown men digging a hole for no discernible purpose, but then these children spend hours hiding under the dog’s basket pretending to be turtles, so their amusement threshold is easily reached. 

The cuteness of having two hyper-active, sleep deprived children on my lap wore off as Time Team filled the hole back in, but sadly the thunderstorm still had more banging and flashing to do.  The girls and I repaired to mummy and daddy’s bed, a foray that was doomed to failure, I must admit.  Even Bess the dog gave up trying to sleep in there and went back to her bed/turtle shell.  

Eventually, at about 1 am, Madeleine must have been sick of trying to get to sleep, and timidly ventured to suggest that the storm was over.  With great glee I realised it was, and in a flash the girls were booted back into their beds, Andrew came back to his, and even Bess restored herself to her proper place (between Andrew and I).

In all honesty, I’d take Time Team over a thunder storm any day.