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18th December 2006, 12:53 PM
Am prompted to write this as Ive just got back from probably the worst clay site ever.Add to this a bit of Noahs Ark weather (upside-down rain) for the past month and your there. Whats the most mingin site you had to endure? No names obviously- a county and associated weather/geological/whatever, will do nicely
Last years winter was spent in Leicester where we had hailstones, snow and lethal wind-chill (damned fine kebabs though) and this year I got caught in a tornado whilst delivering samples in Leeds! Clay-all pumps and puddles....:face-huh:
..knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity..(imam ghazali,ayyuhal-walad)
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18th December 2006, 06:30 PM
I'm slopping about in wet clay at he moment too
At least its not frozen yet, the worst sites are clay ones where you have to break the ice before you start bailing... just a matter I time I fear.
I was thinking this morning its not worth the £47.90 I take home a day to get out of bed.
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18th December 2006, 08:58 PM
Ahhh the joy of clay.... perhaps with a bit of gravel... just to make it impossible to get a clean spade cut as well... ... it broke me ... broke me ya hear!
"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu
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19th December 2006, 06:31 PM
A circular-shaped excavation in the shadow of Car Park No.3, in a former railway town in South Yorkshire, during the winter of 1993-1994.
07.30 to 09.00, remove snow that had fallen overnight
09.00 to 11.00, hack folornly at frozen clay
11.00 to 14.00, air temperature warms sufficiently for frozen clay to thaw into sticky slush which adheres to boots, mattocks and people. Frozen fingers grappling with chains to hook barrows to hoist, slipping and sliding on the planks.
14.00 to 16.30, clay gradually freezes again, starts snowing.
For which, as I recall, we experienced site assistants were on about £6,000 a year - or about £19 a day after tax.
OR
Somewhere 'near' Driffield, North Yorkshire, autumn 1992
In which excavation staff were billeted in tents on the top of the Wolds in October/November. My colleague's tent was blown away in the middle of the night and he was left huddling in a sleeping bag in the middle of the field.
Pay on this occasion was I think about £50 a week, cash.
You were lucky to have a cardboard box... etc.
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19th December 2006, 07:48 PM
Glad I am not the only one who still digs out the notebooks we all seemed to keep... Do people still do that?
"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu
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20th December 2006, 02:27 PM
No notebook, it is just engraved on my brain!
http://www.ironbridge.blogspot.com
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20th December 2006, 02:35 PM
Oh... so I am alone in my sad note collection ;-((
"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu
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20th December 2006, 06:12 PM
Circa late September 1989, I returned to a largely-backfilled and nominally finished excavation in Dumfriesshire to dig out one more section. It's tipping down with rain, I'm covered from head to foot in mud and swinging a mattock.
As I work, a carload of tourists pulls up next to the field, and they start taking photos. I imagined comments something like:
'Oh look Darlene - the peasants here still work the fields by hand!'
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished
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21st December 2006, 11:48 AM
Late 80s. On graduating got an offer of employment for a 'research dig' in Jersey. Lovely site - I'd volunteered the year before. Got there to find out there was a shortfall in funding, but they would 'put me right'. That amounted to the odd pint over the first fortnight. Thereafter nothing. No washing facilities. Very dry site so perspiration and dust combined to give me a very strange complexion. Spent the final two weeks subsisting on Jersey potatoes nicked from the local farms. I USED to like Jersey potatoes....
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21st December 2006, 06:23 PM
It's around 0 celcius here (Alberta, Canada), and the ground is frozen. It has been to -40 celcius and we still go out. My new best friend is a 65lb jackhammer. And frozen roads that I can drive on in the forest. The ground is too frozen to screen so we just break up the chunks of dirt (excavated with jackhammer) with a sledgehammer. At least the bears are hibernating.
