Friends and Romans

Right: The Romans did show up in Leeds – August 2005

I took a drive to Old Sarum yesterday with friend and Æon author Dev Agarwal, a fellow Roman enthusiast. English Heritage were putting on a Romano-British day, and we bravely set out from Whitton only two hours behind schedule, armed with our wits and a road atlas, the latter item being what saved us from driving pointlessly around Salisbury all afternoon. But I’m hours ahead of myself here in Salisbury, so let’s back up a bit:

There’s a truth every Briton knows and every visitor soon learns: “Never plan any travel on a Bank Holiday weekend.” The reason is that those weekends when most people do travel are also the weekends Transport for London and the various regional rail services that used to be British Rail schedule engineering works and station closures. So a 30-minute tube-and-overland rail journey to reach our meeting place in Twickenham turned into a 90-minute snafu of closed stations and detours and busses, and we hadn’t even gotten a start on the day out proper. Once we did, we managed the drive to Old Sarum (actually I managed being a passenger, at which I excel) without getting lost more than twice. It had been raining all morning, but we outpaced the weather and arrived at a stunning English springtime in Wiltshire.

Old Sarum was there as advertised, and English Heritage, and there were interesting demonstrations of Roman cookery and engineering, but the actual Romans seem to have marched past the whole thing, and by now are probably encamped somewhere in Devon. Their participation was sorely missed; we had all come there expecting to see a cohort of Britain’s ancient oppressors smiling for the cameras, perhaps a few camp-followers and Romano-British brats running about. As it happens the entire event consisted of two couples at opposite ends of a field, one roasting parsnips in honey (pretty good, actually) and the other operating models of ancient inventions.

An hour or so sufficed to absorb all this and walk around the ruins, and we were on our way back to Whitton and a late lunch with Dev’s wife (transplanted American writer Terri Trimble) and daughter (the irresistible Rani) at a café near their home. After tea back at the flat, and making the acquaintance of several friends named Piglet, it was back to good ol’ Room 3. I had managed to take my first complete day off in several weeks, and without experiencing the tiniest pang of guilt. As I suspected, all the work I left undone was still here waiting for me this morning along with more rain, and a lovely day out had done tons for my outlook.