The student dig

 An extract from the beginning of Chapter 2 of Small Finds:

It is Friday evening when the students begin to arrive: the first-years.

They pitch their tents in a semi-circle, facing inwards, like wagons drawn up in a corral, as if they were setting up camp in a hostile environment.

The beginning of the student dig. Everything's good

Everything's the way it should be

As long as he forgets about everything else, it will all be fine

This is what he enjoys most: being out on a dig with the students

There will be plenty here to discover ...

A late 4th century Roman villa in the Cotswolds. What's not to like?

Six weeks. Starting now

Small Finds, a novel about archaeology ... and everything else

Small Finds - the beginning

Where did it all begin?

It began with Paulus Aurelius Sendico and his friends, and family, back in the 380's

That's AD 380

Specifically, it began with his nephew, Septan, but Septan was not yet born or even thought of in the 380s. Septan, his sister Helen and their friend Lydia were simply a dream conjured out of nowhere, an idea.

Septan and Helen led to their mother and their mother led to Paulus Aurelius Sendico and to his sudden departure from these shores and to his subsequent adventures in the world of the Late Antique

I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Although, in another sense, I am only now catching up with myself

That is how we got here, to the archaeolgical dig in a field just outside the village of Lynchcombe Sandicott, not far from the town of Ancester, Roman Antium, in the county of Gloucestershire in England, on the eastern fringes of the Cotswolds, in the year 2010 

That's AD 2010

2010 CE

It starts with a mess and gets messier and messier as the dig progresses

Monday 28^th June 2010

You know what it’s like. Things are going along just fine and then someone pulls the rug out from under your life and everything starts falling in on top of you, like Sampson in the Philistine temple. That’s how it feels. Falling masonry.

When he arrived on site, it was like a scene from a film about Passchendaele: all mud, water and ruin. It put him in mind of the poets Edward Thomas and Wilfred Owen and of Vaughan Williams’ second symphony. 

It had been the wettest June on record. 

The story continues here:

Small Finds Chapter 1

That was fun

 It was

I must do it again sometime

I have two more novels ready to go

Perhaps in the autumn, I'll let lose another one

For now, though, what did I learn?

I learnt that it is possible to blog a novel

I learnt that there is no limit to the number of pages you can have on Blogger but sometimes you do have to clear the cache or it won't let you add another tab or logout and log back in or restart the computer or something 

I learnt that blogging your novel concentrates the mind and helps you concentrate the story. Mostly, it went up as it was but there were some strategic edits, some deletions and some additional writing - usually, no more than half a page or at the most half a chapter

I learnt that blogging your novel helps you understand your story and the people in it. You begin to see more clearly what makes their lives tick

And I learnt that blogging your novel gives you closure

It's been twelve years and more I've lived with this story. I tried to do it as a dual timeline novel but it became too cumbersome and unwieldy so I concentrated on the contemporary story. I went to various writing workshops looking for advice and was told I had to have a body on the first page

"But, I'm writing a novel about archaeology!"

No. You have to have a body on the first page

It took me several years and several rewrites to extricate myself and the novel and my head from that experience. You can still see the ghosts of those years haunting the novel as it now is

And Broderick Arnot. It has taken me until now to really begin to understand Broderick but I think he has, at last, begun to come to life as a man

And that's another thing. It is a novel about a man. Elyssia Gadnall, among others, made a determined bid to take over the story and had to be put back in her place more than once, again and again ... and again. It is a novel about men and women. Staring into the past, as I've done for the past twelve or more years, you realise that this is what makes the human world go round

So, there it is: a novel blogged

I know self-publishing is the coward's way out but there is no way that I am ever, being the person that I am, going to hack all the razzmatazz of the publishing merry-go-round

I think it's a good novel. 

I think it stands up against published novels I read

I would like to think that you would agree

Thanks for (listening) reading

The End

Here it is!

The end of a journey

The end of a novel

The end of this blogathon

Six weeks have gone by in a flash

The summer dig is done

Loss and love. Discovery and understanding

Have a cold beer. You deserve it

Chapter 52

Small Finds

The story is complete. Or has it just begun?

On the tab Ch 51 & 52 above

Go well

Sunday

After all the tumult of yesterday, I think we deserve something quiet

Time to reflect

Time to recollect

Time to think

On Sunday morning, the Arnot and Gadnall families go to church in the village

Elyssia is preaching

It's her first time

Complete with broken arm

You have to feel for the kid 

Small Finds

Chapter 51

Not quite the end, but almost

A long, long Saturday

The dig is over

But the story has not finished yet

There is a lot to sort out

It is a long, long Saturday

It's a 4 chapter Saturday!

Chapters 47-50 up now

Tabs Ch 45-47 and Ch 48-50

Small Finds, the novel 

We're almost there

A two chapter Friday

It is all coming to a head

A press conference

The end of dig concert

Joshua Williams has a theory

Elyssia Gadnall listens

It is the last Friday

Small Finds - a novel

Chapters 45 & 46 on the tab

Some small finds are bigger than others

Some small finds are huge

Chapter 44. Thursday

It was getting close

The End

He just wanted it all to end

Now

He wanted to pack it all up, put it all away and go home

Especially, he did not want tomorrow

But tomorrow is another day

Today is Thursday 12th August 2010

(Don't argue)

Chapter 44 of my novel Small Finds is up on the tab now

Almost there

Almost

There

Almost

Chapter 43. Wednesday

The days are slipping away

It is Wednesday

Only Thursday and Friday to go

Then the final tidying up and they can all go home

Small Finds

Chapter 43

On the tab now

Soon, the adventure will be complete

Chapter 42

What day is it?

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday ...

The last week of the dig is becoming a blur

Too much going on

Not enough time

It is Tuesday

I think

Chapter 42 of my novel Small Finds

On the tab, up top

Part Four of Small Finds

Here beginneth Part Four of my novel Small Finds

But, you say, we are already in the last week of the dig

Is Part Four very short?

Time will tell

By the end of the week* all will become clear

We hope

*This week (2022) and that week (2010)

For now it is Sunday and there is a small miracle happening

But I'm not sure any one notices

But they do. They do

Chapters 39 and 40 

On the Part Four tab above

Thank you

The Penultimate Friday

What happened on this Friday all those years ago?

Murkier and murkier

It's not so much the archaeology

Although that could do with bit of clarification 

It's everything else!

It's enough to do his head in

Broderick Arnot:

dig director (under stress)

husband (under review) 

archaeology lecturer (under threat)

Small Finds Chapter 37 

up on the tab at the top of the page

A long day

Wednesday was a long day

First there was Joshua 

Then there was Mariam

Then Elyssia

Then, well ..., him himself

Stories. Our lives are made of stories

Chapters 33-35

Small Finds

On the tab, now

(Three chapters! All in one day.)

Driving back to Durham

 Small Finds, Philip Colbourn, 2022

Small Finds, Chapter 29

On the tab

At the top of the page

Strictly speaking, this was Friday night

But Friday, in 2010, was the 30th July

Broderick drives Rachel up to Durham

They share history, memories

Mostly about Professor Patricia Hashay and stuff

At home, there is a letter waiting for him

After Wednesday: Thursday, Friday

They make a visit to the hospital in Birmingham 

A roadside shrine

A lost coin leads them to Exeter

Magnus Maximus, emperor in Trier

Suspicious goings on at Undercrofts. Allegedly

Chapters 27 and 28

Small Finds

Thursday and Friday of Week Four at the summer dig

Under the 'Part Three' tab at the top of the page

Sunday 25th July

 It's 2010

There is one day difference in the dates

Today is Sunday 24th July 2022

But then, in 2010, Sunday was 25th July 

Close, eh?

Small Finds, the novel

Things are not going too well, to be honest

Chapters 22 and 23 on the tab at the top

Saturday

Saturday started off subdued

There are tears

The family arrived

There is some archaeology to talk about later, at the pub

Chapter 21 on the tab now

Friday, Friday

It's Friday!

It's a day off at the dig

But the world goes on turning, relentlessly 

Today is another two chapter day

Small Finds, the archaeology novel

Chapters 19 and 20 are up on the new tab - Ch 19,20 - above

Things are getting a bit, well, you know...

Thursday 22 July 2010

Thursday is a two-chapter day for #SmallFinds

Chapters 17 and 18 are now up and ready to read

Click on the Ch 16-18 tab above

Small Finds, the archaeology novel

Wednesday. A trip to Lydney

It's been a while

Well, two or three days 

Not much happens on an archaeological dig for most of the time

Apart from the scrape of trowels, sweeping and shovelling

But today is different

Today they have trip to see the Lydney Roman temple by the Severn Estuary

Mortimer Wheeler was there

And his wife

Or should I say, Tessa Verney Wheeler and her husband

Chapter 16 has the story

As much of it as you are going to get, anyway

See the Ch 16- tab above for more