On my way to the site one morning, I got a mighty fright as I could see someone hanging from a gibbet on the hillfort! It was a joke. The artificial human was made from a few stuffed hessian sacks. This prank had been carried out when the excavation director was away for a few days. The villagers were not too impressed! The scaffold was soon dismantled along with the hanged ‘sacking’. This gallows had been seen for miles around. It certainly got the site noticed. As I was new to excavations I was horrified to find out that each one of those digging had to take their turn emptying the contents of the portaloo used by at least forty people into a large excavated hole on the hilltop. I nearly died when it was my turn. There was no odour as it was sanitised with much disinfectant. Thankfully we had just the one turn while on the excavation. The worst part was if the contents splashed when it hit the bottom. The splashes came up quite high. We then threw a few shovelfuls of over the latest contribution! During the first week my hands were blistered and the skin was bursting and obviously very sore from using the pick and shovel on chalk ground. After my hands were bandaged I was placed with some students who were trowelling. A few days of trowelling left my hands in a bad way. So my days were then spent assisting the finds person Fiona, who to this day is a very good friend, though she lives far away in Canada. I washed and dried, then listed all the finds, gave them numbers and labelled them, followed by bagging, packing and boxing everything. They were all ready to be sent to the various experts who would carry out investigations on human bones, or on pottery etc.
An English couple Mark and Addie were studying English at some university in England. To me they seemed the perfect couple. However Addie influenced my fashion. It was her hair which was dark brown and had masses of permed curls, which the local hairdressers had made in the form ofa perm or a permanent colour. I wanted my straight fair hair to be as magnificent as hers. However, I couldn’t afford it. It was £9. My father had sent money on to me by telegram when my high heeled straw shoes with denim broke into bits in the rain of the summer. So I couldn’t go asking him for something non-essential! (As if the high healed straw shoes were! On a dig!). One evening I found a ten sterling note near the cricket field. I asked around the camp and the church hall if money had been lost by anyone but nobody claimed it. After a few days it became mine! I had no doubt how to use that amount of money. Probably equivalent to fifty euro plus today it would pay for my hair to be permed just like Addie’s! To me it turned out amazing! It was perfect for my role as bridesmaid at my sister’s wedding in Devon a few weeks later. When I had left the excavation another volunteer Gitte from Denmark also had her hair permed and a trend was set. A few of the archaeologists continued to write to me, the supervisor of the finds hut Fiona is one such friend. We have also met since then. Tony an Italian living in Canada still keeps in touch. It all seems like yesterday.