MCR Mudlark

This morning I met my friends Ed Adkins and Sam Wills at the Tate end of Millennium Bridge for a bit of mudlarking. The weather mainly cooperated and the company was excellent; it was fun to sift the history of the city while performing a Brexit post-mortem with an economist and a historian — like discussing causes of death with our hands in the cadaver.

We scraped on the south side of the river for awhile but nothing of note turned up. When we crossed the Thames we had more luck. Sam found a 17th c. trader’s token of Robert Booth, Holborn Bridge. I had a couple of buttons and modern clad, and Ed collected a handful of pipestems and fragmentary bowls. Sam’s find was definitely the class of the day, not only in our little group; it attracted the envious attention of others on the foreshore, who asked repeatedly to have it out for a look. Definitely one to record with the PAS.

After our lark we had lunch at a pub overlooking the river, and then coffee on the sixth floor of the Tate Modern. We watched the river rise to cover the foreshore where we’d searched, and we looked out over the city, trying to descry the future in the lineaments of its grey stones and steel.

Forrest Fenn Update

“On the Hunt, ‘Where Warm Waters Halt,’ for a $2 Million Treasure” , an article about the Forrest Fenn Treasure, ran today in the New York Times. 

Vicky Brexit London

The title here reminded me vaguely of Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Gabriel and I spent Saturday as part of a 40,000 person protest of Brexit, marching from Hyde Park to Parliament Square. Afterwards we went mudlarking for half an hour on the South Bank, and I was able to offer proof of method, plucking a knackered Vicky 1858 sixpence from the river mud. I asked Gabe to give it to his mum, who is interested in such things — her own mother, the wife of celebrated novelist PH Newby, was a bit of an amateur archaeologist.