I’m absolutely full of it today. I enjoyed writing about the sweethearts yesterday, the boss is going away on a trip, and, when I returned home tonight, my anticoagulant results were in.
They were spot on target and I don’t have a retest until early December. This is a better way to live – free from the tyranny of medical tests – though it does mean that I tend to bleed a little too freely when I nick a finger tip in the kitchen.
I must improve my knife skills. Or make Julia do more of the cooking.
Last night we had a very enjoyable talk at the Numismatic Society.
They weren’t big on portraits in the early days of coinage, but the production method didn’t really lend itself to quality work. This is Edward I from a Canterbury Mint penny of 1272-1307. It could, however, be any one of a number of Kings, or even Shrek
I grant you, Coins in the later Medieval Countryside is not a title calculated to cause rapturous outbursts of enthusiasm, even amongst the members of the Numismatic Society. There were a number of familiar faces missing, but as they are normally the ones who sit at the back and mutter it actually improved the evening.
The talk was mainly about the archaeology of the coins from Rendlesham in Suffolk, which seems to have been an active high-status estate in Anglo-Saxon and early Mediaeval times. It is close to Sutton Hoo, which is a lot more famous and, let’s face it, a lot more interesting.
Long cross penny of Edward I – Lincoln Mint 1270
The project at Rendlesham has consisted, as far as the coins go, in using metal detectors in a scientific manner to search surrounding fields, and graph the types and frequency of coins, to give an idea of they way money was used. They have found over a thousand coins during the project and one of the questions coming out of the research is whether other sites could produce as many coins if they were worked in a similar intensive way.
Another equally important question, for me at least, was why did they never tell you there were jobs like this when I was at school? A job playing with coins, writing books and giving talks to numismatic societies – what more could you want?
Anyway, it’s time for me to go and practice my knife skills – roast veg with cumin served with steak and kidney pies and fruit crumble. As long as I don’t cut either of my typing fingers I should be OK.
Sorry about the photos – they are from an old post and could have been presented better. Unfortunately WP has been acting up again and I can’t work on them tonight.
Sounds like an interesting talk you went to, Quercus!
It was.
Those old coins are lovely. I especially like the one with the cross. In comparison, our coins are so boring.
Lovely but impractical – the long cross was partly to discourage people clipping the coins to get tiny bits of silver off them, and partly to divide them into halfpennies and farthings (fourthings) as we had no smaller coins.
I do identify with your comments about the lack of career advice so long ago. My entry into marine insurance was a bit like your first jobs – I followed my uncle until I had my epiphany
It’s what we do, but good that we did have that epiphany.
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Mrs T lives in hope of finding just one Roman coin in the garden. She can dream, I suppose. It sounds like an interesting talk so I bet the folk who missed it are sorry now.
Not sure if I mentioned it in a previous post but we had a man in the shop a few weeks ago who bought a Roman coin so that his daughter could find it when practising with her metal detector. 🙂
So glad you are feeling happy with your choice of profession. I am just getting there, myself!
My first choice of career was selling newspapers – I liked the man who sold newspapers at York hospital, which I used to visit when my Mum was expecting my sister. Then I moved on to train driver after my uncle (a train driver) took me round the railway museum. I’ve never been good at careers…
Train driver would make me too nervous – I don’t even like driving a car. Were you actually a train driver at one point?
I’ve been a freelance bookkeeper since 1996. Since the kids are mostly grown, and I gained a bit of time and mind space, I have wanted more. So I am now also pursuing SAT Tutoring and Rolodex Card designing. I like these two new things much better and hope to phase out the bookkeeping over time.
No, I lost the train driving ambition when I was about ten. I thought Rolodex had gone the same way as the passenger pigeon, the typewriter and those adding machines with handles on the sides! 🙂
It has – but I still use them and decided to make them pretty. Seems like there are quite a few weirdos like me out there.
The world is a better place because of people who stand out against the loss of the rolodex.
Others can fight against the destruction of the Amazon and the resultant effects on our dying planet or the loss of whole species of plants and animals, but I have taken a firm stand against the extinction of an outdated office supply. I want my life to have meaning.
Isn’t it past your bed time?
Everyone needs a crusade to fight,and as a rolodex does not need power I’m sure they will be a prized possession in a post apocolyptic world.
Bedtime is a flexible concept for a a man who wakes every two hours and naps in the evening. 🙂