It wasn't a great site - modern intrusions had removed a lot of the archaeological deposits and it wasn't as much fun as Seal House. I had a decision to make. It turned out to be a decision that took me away from the UK and eventually led me here, to a Baroque town 30 miles up the Danube from Budapest.
When I first came down from Scotland, in the summer of , I lived on a houseboat in Chelsea, now I was living in a squat off the Holloway Road. In the winter of ' London was dirty, wet and IRA bombs were going off every couple of weeks.
The DUA was handing out permanent contracts and I was on the list, but Howard Murray conservator and fellow-Scot encouraged me to apply for a job on a dig in Trondheim, Norway. Should I stay or should I go?
I was only 23 - I went. I was travelling third-class formerly known as steerage. Among my fellow passengers were a couple who were smuggling cannabis into Norway. We sat in a saloon in the bowels of the boat, passing a joint back and forth and playing chess. We abandoned the game when we noticed that both of my bishops were on the same coloured squares.
I realised that no-one was going to stop me venturing up into the classier part of the ship. There was a bar, a dancefloor, a pianist, and a lissome blonde from London. It turned out she too was heading for the Trondheim dig. Fuelled by duty free and lust, we danced into the night as the ferry chugged over the North Sea. In the small hours, clinging together in an empire built for two, we asked the pianist to play the theme from In the morning, she took the train to Trondheim via Oslo, while I sailed up the coast with the Hurtigruten.
