caldrail

Well into the middle ages in secret, reactivated as fashionable alternatives from the Rennaisance onward, but with Christianity dominant and in post Roman times very intolerant of paganism, it was never going to gain any popular acceptance. For instance,... http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1986-7/horton.htm

Money is a funny thing. Some people are almost supernaturally capable of accruing it, others simply take what others earn without permission, and most of us get by with what we can get. How we spend our cash is another matter. Younger people tend to be hedonistic - there's a young lad at work who has spent his entire monthly pay cheque in two days each and every time. To be fair, he doesn't moan about the hassles of having no money like some do, but all the same time, he desperately needs some financial advice and discipline. On the other end of the scale is one guy I often talk to who wanted to propose to his girlfriend. So he went out and bought an engagement ring. Nine pounds? Don't be silly. Ninety points? Not good enough. Nine hundred pounds? Doesn't make that big statement. No, he squandered his savings, nine thousand pounds, on the ring. Happily she said yes. Given how depressed he gets by the end of a working shift maybe that's just as well. I must confess I do sometimes spend on impulse. The other day I wandered past the local pawnbroker and thought that since I had some time on my hands, why not have a browse? It's sometimes interesting what people will sell. I went over to the line of guitars hanging on the wall. One stood out immediately, a gothic metal style electric guitar with a huge price tag. I looked closer. Floyd Rose tremolo, Seymour Duncan pickups, 24 frets with gothic inlays, full locking, and a feel of quality. Oh yes. It will be mine. Right now, hey, Mr Manager, I want this..... So I have ownership of an upmarket electric guitar retailing at nearly a thousand pounds, though I got it considerably cheaper as secondhand.. At first it was horrendous to play because the action (the height of strings above the fretboard) was ridiculous. Too high and the fingers have to make clumsy, slow, and overlong movements. Too low and you get fret buzz and a nasty truncated sound. But adjust it correctly and.... Please excuse me while an adult male goes glassy eyed and rather excited by a smooth and heavyweight distorted guitar sound. Money can be so useful sometimes. Oh No, Not Scotland Again... That detestable Sturgeon woman just won't shut up. She and other Scottish Nationalists are spouting their demands for another referendum on independence. This time we had Alex Salmond, the politician who failed last time to persuade the Scots to leave the United Kingdom, claiming that the British government cannot ignore democracy. Excuse me? I seem to remember the Scots have had a referendum on independence and chose to remain within the United Kingdom. Sorry Mr Salmond, but you cannot ignore democracy. Worse still the Nationalists seem to believe that if you don't like the result of a referendum then vote again until you do. What's democratic about that? But where is Scotland going to get the money from? North Sea oil and gas revenues having vanished, the only option is to stay in the EU. Which they cannot do as part of the UK since Brexit is now enabled by parliamentary law and signed off by the Queen. As an independent country? What they don't seem to realise is that as a new country, even if they get independence before Brexit is finalised, they still have to apply for EU membership, require full consent of current members, and won't have the financial perks hard won by British politicians over the years. A colleague at work suggested the English should have a referendum to decide whether we want the Scots with us or not. I'm starting to agree with him. Get rid of those moaning minnies up north and forget them. Close the border and deport all those terrible Scottish people in our midst. I'm not the only one who has noticed that the Scots up north are the nicest people in the world whilst those living in England are just the rear end of human society, a comedian said exactly that on television. I don't really want to wish the Scottish any hardship but I confess I would take great pleasure in watching Scotland stumble.

Deep seated approval of military service? You might be shocked how little there was. For most, legion service was a guaranteed career for a couple of decades in imperial times assuming nothing untoward happened (the vast majority never saw anything more violent than a tavern punch-up ). However, the regard of most people was that the legions were a necessary evil or a business opportunity. Living near soldiers was a dubious benefit for some considering they often appropriated whatever they felt like and there was no real legal address other than complaints to the legion command, which got you nowhere, or worse, beaten up once or twice - and very severely - by outraged soldiers whose perks you interfered with. This is attested to in the sources. Note also that legion service was already beginning to become undesirable in the reign of Augustus. We have an account of a man punished for cutting off the thumbs of his sons so they would never serve, and Tiberius was asked to look into how many men were avoiding military service by hiding in rural slave barracks. The situation only got worse. By the end of his reign we have mutinies in Germania and Pannonia over conditions of service and the apparent withdrawal of normal retirement rights, caused by legion commanders who found it more cost effective to keep long serving veterans on the payroll by hook or by crook than waste time looking for raw recruits to replace them. And of course it got worse still over the course of the imperial period. People cutting their thumbs became a scandal, a real issue, such that Constantine ruled men without thumbs were still capable of civic roles. Valentinian ordered them burned alive, and Theodosius recruited them anyway on the basis that two men without thumbs were as good as one fully able man. By then recruitment was a corrupt affair with recruiters pocketing budgets and hiring cheaper migrants. Religion was making recruitment all the more difficult.

It works a heck of a lot better than the old software. Thumbs up (or down, if you accept this new fangled interpretation of traditional symbolic getsures )

The demand of the Roman world for people to speak latin only really impacts upon administration and politics, where we see the local Italian languages become recessive and maternal in persistence whereas latin dominates the paternal line because of the need to earn a living in a more expansive state, instead of the tribal regions cooperating but not actually run from Rome. I don't dispute that latin spread through trading, but learning the native language, or adopting a hybrid slang, would ordinarily be more conducive to getting a good deal.

These should answer many questions... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholae_Palatinae www.fectio.org.uk/articles/scholae.htm The Praetorians may have been disbanded by Constantine but the position of Praetorian Prefect remained as a political office.

Doris has been across England. It just isn't English to have storms and gale force gusts blasted the country, and someone really ought to do something about this freak weather. I mean, really.... But it happened. So I trudged four miles to work in a sort of unsteady zig-zag pattern depending on which way the wind was blowing. Luckily the rain held off. It was damp, a sort of fine spray, but no deluge made my life even more miserable than having to brave the elements each working day and endure the long hours of labour. Feed Me Our new big waster crusher is installed. It cost a vast sum of money - modesty and company privacy prevents me from mentioning the enormous wad of cash the installation has demanded. Over the last few months I've been getting familiar with each small baler and it's foibles. Reliable Olive, bad tempered Barney, lazy old Bob, neglected Nessie, and all the others. The engineer in charge of the new baler inadvertently called it 'Doris', and that is the name by which it shall be called. Doris it is. Now Doris is not a small machine. It's a veritable T Rex of a baler, permanently open mouthed and a 'feed me' expression it's sheet steel face. But times move on, I'm being put back on general duties, and Doris will have new keepers to tend to it's voracious appetite. Good. Boys Will Be Boys The high winds caused other problems for us, not least blowing rubbish down storage racking aisles that imposed obstacles for our long suffering forklift trucks. The answer that the managers conjured was to move an industrial 40ft skip inside the warehouse instead of leaving it out in the yard, so filling it could be done with doors closed. That would be fine, but one young colleague of mine, a former retail manager with a penchant for treating the workplace like an adventure playground, found organising the push as a great chance to climb, point, shout, and generally play at being important. The thing is I watched horrified as he rode the huge skip on top of a ladder whilst the forklift lifted, bumped, and edged the container forwards. That was visibly risky, and as soon as he was separate from everyone else, I headed over to remind him of Health & Safety in the Workplace. You see, in Britain this much hated concern has a very real relevance. If I see someone doing something dangerous and don't report or take action upon it, then any accident is just as much my own fault. That's enshrined in law. LP was not interested in my advice. "Yeah well you keep your opinions to yourself. You're not a manager." He told me firmly over his shoulder. Perhaps, but in view of his disrespect and blatent disregard for his own well-being, I had a word with a team leader who had a word with him. Of course that has now soured the relationship. We used to converse and joke together but frankly someone who once worked as a manger and keeps going on about becoming one again really ought to know better. He doesn't. His understanding of industrial practises are woeful, his attitude increasingly self important as managers come to rely on his organisational flair. Nonetheless, just as he reminded me, he isn't a manger either. And lately he's been given some very hard lessons on activity within the workplace, responsibility, and the prerogatives of status. Silly boy. But life is a learning process and hopefully for him, a safer one. Holiday Procedure of the Week This most coveted award must go to the agency I work for. I discovered a few days ago that if I don't book all my outstanding holiday by March 31st, I lose them, and the pay that goes with it. Oh great. Three Bank Holidays and a Spring Shutdown with no holiday allowance left afterward? Worst still, they gave me conflicting instructions on how to book a holiday. So as in most cases of these kinds, my internal emotional thermometer went straight to boiling point and angry phone calls were followed by visits of the agency rep to put me straight. A peace treaty concluded, I was told that my outstanding entitlement - which has to be calculated at Head Office - will be passed on to me by the end of the week. No, the end of the next week. No, the Wednesday after that. What a farce. Holiday request pending.

The Roman world is often seen in modern popular opinion as an evil empire - but this is a reflection of more recent experience such as the vast scale of the ideological conflicts of the last century which more or less started in 1914 and haven't completely yet tailed off. The Roman Empire is a title one needs to be cautious of - they were not a unified society in terms of culture (many don't realise this - common perception is everyone got 'romanised' after being conquered, but that just isn't true, and the image of latin culture we get introduced to at school is incredibly misleading). Nor was their empire a coherent centrally controlled nation state - it was a patchwork of loyal territories with varying status. Mainland Italy for instance never achieved provincial status until the reign of Diocletian. Evil? Well, the Romans certainly got up to things we see as morally or ethically wrong. Politically they toy with tyranny to suit themselves. Their political system was not gentlemanly and often involved murder. Their justice system was very harsh and often partisan, their military functionally independent of state control and for that matter often barely under control, their entertainment heavily skewed in favour of violence and risk of death. Their Caesars were often power hungry, domineering, dangerous men. One or two genuinely flakey. That's accepted. In actual fact the Roman Empire was relatively benign, nothing like as cruel and overbearing to its own citizens as say the Sassanid Persian Empire. There was a genuine chance of social mobility, opportunities to prosper, ways of making your mark upon the world. The simple fact is, regardless of circumstance, the desire of former territories to look back upon the Roman Empire as a sort of 'golden age' is very expressive of the lingering attachment the bonds of latin dominance have left us - we still bear those marks today and it colours modern politics.

Good grief. It's nearly half way through February and my poor deprived readers have had no news and whinges from me since the festive season. Fear not, brave public, you are not forgotten. At no cost to the country's economy and tattered finances, without the need for UN convoys and airlifts, without the need for drone and bombing attacks to clear obstructions, I bring the latest, and I mean late, news from the Rushey Platt Villa. [bSnowfall [/b] There I was, knee deep in cardboard boxes, stuffing them into a crushing machine while fending off colleagues who saw my job as an easier option than theirs, when I spotted it. Snow? Was that snow falling outside? Of course I couldn't miss the opportunity to head over to the door of the warehouse and have a looksee. It was. Nothing special or disastrous, just a few flurries of wintery weather to please the British heart after our lacklustre Christmas. "What is that stuff coming out of the sky?" Asked a forklifter. He really didn't know. That was the first time he had ever witnessed snow in his life, and in his far off homeland in sub-tropical Goa, snow just does not happen. Another Goan was nervous, not really understanding what snow was, and worried about possible side effects. One the other hand, one Polish girl prayed the snow would get heavier so she could build a snowman like she did back home. Well, despite the repeated warnings on weather reports, the snow flurries across England were fairly feeble and here in rainy old Swindon we got almost nothing. Fighting Hunger There are times we think our employer gives us almost nothing. Oh sure we get paid, but there's an insidious lack of morale as the targets we have to meet only get higher with fewer resources to achieve them. Maybe I'm whinging a little. After all, the company did pay for a Christmas dinner and a week or two ago we got a free fish and chips. Yummy. I notice the bottles of tomato ketchup and mayonnaise left on the tables afterward quickly started evaporating. President Of The Week Who else but Donald Trump? Clearly expecting to rule by decree and change the face of the Earth with clicks of his fingers and swipes of his expensive pens, he has run straight into a lesson on co-operation mounted by the judiciary branch of American government, one we never normally hear anything about in Britain. The funny things was that I debated with a colleague at work about whether Trump would get a lesson, but I confess I thought it was going to be from the security services, not the judges. So his executive order to ban travel from suspicious states achieves almost nothing. Thus he threatens to make another. How the Russians must be laughing. All that effort to rig the electoral system, all those spies wandering around taking photographs and exchanging envelopes of secret information, all those bugs and whistleblowers and Wikileaks.... All the Russians have to do is follow Trump on Twitter.

No, The Senate could not issue decrees until the reign of Tiberius. For emergencies they called upon action from the Consuls, or if necessary, assigned a Dictator for six months or until the emergency was over - but this was giving Rome a temporary tyrant and was never done lightly, or indeed often. Understand this essential point of Roman republican politics - they were not avoiding tyranny, they managed it to avoid the consequences of excess.

Day One by Andreas Carrini examines archeological evidence of Rome's earliest time. Mary Beard's SPQR contains useful insights and critique of the monarchial period. In fact I have by coincidence arrived at similar conclusions to Mary Beard's ideas surrounding the meaning of the latin word Rex which we translate as 'King'. She doesn't see that word as meaning 'monarch' in either medieval or modern sense, and prefers to think of it as 'Chieftan'. As for myself I noted the use of the word rex in letters from Vindolanda, and since a commanding officer is clearly not a king, there had to be a different, more primal meaning, one associated with overlordship and control. The thing about Rome's earliest history is that the versions we have inherited from Roman writers is to a large extent fiction, which Mary Beard notes bears extraordinary resemblance to greek models. They knew no more about their past than we do, and so basically filled in the gaps with stuff that sounded good.

The greeks were focused on colonies rather than actual territory. Places like Cumae, Tarentum, and Naples were greek settlements I believe.

I have a strange feeling it might be nearly Christmas again. My suspicions were raised when my local supermarket began playing the very same Christmas hits - you know the ones, I won't traumatise you with their memory. The next clue was the presence of a brass band playing .. well... Christmassy tunes. One of them was out of tune. I know this because I happen to be a musician. The final clue in this insidious seasonal plot was the strange pleasantness exhibited by the managers at work. It's a strange experience to have the top boss of the site demanding to know whether I wanted parsnips for my Christmas lunch. The bad side of things is that I sustained an injury at work. One of those stupid ones too. Normally I do pay attention to health and safety in the workplace, especially since I went on a course and got a neat if somewhat useless certificate to prove it, but on this occaision, working under pressure and getting a little complacent, I reached inside the baling machine to remove some pesky excess cardboard and forgot to support my weight. So my foot slipped on the ledge I was using and my ribs connected rather sharply with the edge of the hatch. The machine won. Nothing broken - I think - but I've been on pain killers and lying in bed is excruciatingly uncomfortable. But never fear, Captain Compactor is still here, fighting for tidiness, cleanliness, and the chance to survive a Christmas lunch. Addiction, Blindness, & Other Issues Every break from work we assemble in the canteen or outside in the designated smoking area. In the canteen, discussion soon ebbs away as mobile devices begin to dominate peoples attention. This happened the other day while I was sat at the table, both my colleagues fixated by small electronic boxes and not responding to my attempts to converse. Jeez... I had no idea Roman history was that dull... Anyway I began to advise one colleague who was busy playing a game, furiously tapping his thumbs on various virtual buttons and staring at the screen wide eyed. You know, I said, computer gaming isn't good for you. It can cause difficulties with social interaction, repetitive strain injuries, eyesight degradation, and psychological addiction. "Huh?" He said after a pause lasting several minutes. He had won. He showed me the 'victory' screen, and stared at me with a happy gaze of someone who has battled demons, robots, falling shapes, strange bouncy balls, and survived. Happiness at work? I hope the boss doesn't see that. "Just like you and your flight simulators then?" Said another colleague. Yes I suppose so. Oh, there goes the buzzer. Back to work fellas.... Christmas Lunch Of The Year The confirmation of my fears that Christmas was back again came with the company seasonal lunch. It was an odd affair, with a senior Japanese delegate expecting all sorts of party atmosphere and getting a load of people staring at mobile devices in a desperate bid to escape reality. One colleague refused to pull his Christmas cracker on the grounds that it was silly. So I pulled it for him, gave him the enclosed joke, and handed him the plastic moustache that came as the gift. Oh how we laughed. Of course it wasn't all bad. Parsnips aside, the lunch was reasonable quality and given the normal diet of stale baguettes, curries, sandwiches, and crisps, it made a welcome relief especially because we didn't have to pay for it. But the best thing was seeing one of the admin ladies in tight jeans and high boots. Good grief. I had no idea the workplace was so exciting. Caldrail's Inevitable Xmas Message Have fun. No really. Stop shooting each other, arguing with your partner, swimming the cold Mediterranean, debating the oncoming disaster of Donald Trump, and just have fun, so the BBC News doesn't have to be so endlessly morbid. Or if smiling is too hard, buy each other mobile devices so you're too busy saving civilisation to argue. Have a great Christmas and New Year.

Archeologists call it the Stanegate Line, but as far as I know, it had no special name other than Rome's furthest Brittanic frontier.

I don't think anyone bothered to document it. But I do imagine it was a considerable entourage.

There are some commonalities in their alphabets but only a few greek loanwords in Etruscan, which is one of a couple of dozen languages spoken in Italy until the dominance of Latin in the 1st century ad (and even then, the dominance is paternal in nature and tied to occupations - there is evidence that via maternal influence the languages remained in dwindling use within Italian society for some time afterward)

Ah yes, and I've seen it stated that he had designs on replacing the Roman Caesar (presumably Tiberius), which I find ridiculous. I don't doubt he was seeking some form of local power. This wasn't impossible, even under Roman domination, as the Roman governor would simply deal with the native government in day to day affairs, but I imagine that Pilate wasn't going to settle for disruption in his province. He was after all a very pro-Roman governor eventually recalled for upsetting the Judaeans with overt displays of Roman symbols. As it was, he acted in typical governor mode. The local elite didn't like our vocal carpenter (and religious activist remember) but unable to stop him, they complained to Pilate. Since Judaean law wasn't going to work, Pilate simply looked for a reason under Roman law to stop him, and found treason/rebellion as his sufficient to have him dealt with. People certainly did advance themselves from time to time. A more successful story was a school teacher who got it into his head to become an elite, raising a small army in Gaul. The Caesar concerned was told that the former teacher was motivated to protect him from threat and got rewarded with a large income and title made permanent.

I don't like the way that the article seperates 'legitimate' and 'illegal' emperors. Since there was no official post in Roman government called 'Emperor', neither category was any better than the other legally, although I suppose I have to accept that acceptance was an important key to success. But the point here is that all these usurpers are known of, despite some having dubious provenance. I was thinking more of those whose attempts to gain power escaped historical attention.

Another local newsletter fell through my letter box the other day. It seems our fair town of Swindon wants to change, wants to progress, wants to become a cultural vanguard. Yeah? Really? The civic leaders and planners trumpeted that line thirty years ago, which shows how little vanguarding they managed to achieve. One of their former pet projects, the 'circus tent' market hall, is to be demolished which has alarmed local traders who can't afford the high street premises. The planners haven't said so, but clearly that building wasn't the success they dreamed of. Worse is yet to come. Finally approving a plan to restore the old Victorian era Locarno building, currently a burned out shell, what do I see? Restaurants. Lots of restaurants. Swindon was once known for having the greatest concentration of drinking dens in one square mile, now it wants to be known as the place where you stuff yourself silly. As if it has escaped the attention of planners that many of our local restaurant premises are vacant or closed for business. But it seems you can't have culture without places to consume expensive gourmet food. Hmmm... But most of those premises aren't open commercially.... A Bird In The Rafters At work I left the rest area and headed back toward the warehouse floor, a daily ritual that one must complete with strict adherence to the timetable or suffer the wrath of management. On this particular day I met a guy by the forklift garage, holding an extensible plastic rod that was wobbling right up the top of our modern tin shack. A bird was trying to nest in the steel beam rafters. Not the usual pigeon - those birds seem to nest anywhere and don't much care who walks underneath - but a large heron, a bird more accustomed to natural waterside surroundings. I watched as it got fed up of being prodded and effortlessly winged its way to another perch, where it would await another prodding. Lovely bird, but it can't stay in the warehouse. I wonder why it came inside? To find a safe nesting spot? Seeking a warmer nesting spot? Or perhaps it was looking for a restaurant? Working With Machines One job I regularly undertake is compacting cardboard and plastic rubbish in hydraulic baling machines. They're powerful beasties, crushing the waste with 3,000lbs/sq in (Hey, imperial measurements buddy - we're talking Brexit here). The amount of packaging used by car parts suppliers is enormous and you would expect it to be, since each article has to arrive at the production line absolutely spotless and perfect. The only problem is of course that I have to let the other two shifts use 'my' machines when I'm not there, and what a mess they make. Wires not properly installed making it difficult to extract the finished bale, or more usually, simply over-filling the machine until it isn't possible to bale it at all. Oh no. They've done it again. So I have to open the doors and let the rubbish cascade out onto the floor and repack it properly. And stop well meaning colleagues from trying to stop the rubbish coming out. Life is full of action and adventure in waste management. The managers of course know the problem exists. They would do - I've told them - but nothing seems to improve. Oh well. At least there's been no weekend working for me to put right. One of the welding robots stopped working and its replacement caught fire. Technology is great isn't it? Election Ploy Of The Week Okay, against all odds, Donald Trump won enough Electoral College votes and that makes him President-Elect. But what do I hear? One party in America has decided the voting system has been hacked, and wants a recount. If enough states do that, and it only needs one or two, Hilary Clinton is technically the winner. Imagine that? Of course if Donald gets trumped at the last call - can they do that in America? - Clinton would likely be the least popular president ever. Now there's an achievement.

It begs the question who else has been forgotten because they didn't succeed? The Romans loved success, status, and spoils. Although not as 'Winner Takes All' as the Greeks, they did share many of the same predilictions.

Stronger, yes, because he didn't have to run 26 miles and instead walked carrying a heavier load and potentially perform much more arduous physical tasks. The Romans deliberately aimed to strengthen their troops using practice shields and dummy weapons heavier than the real thing, and regularly. That said, I doubt many Roman legionaries were capable of running a modern marathon.

I think Polybius had it right back in 150BC. He had the same idea as me in that nation states exhibit birth, growth, maturity, and declining old age, assuming violence or other disaster don't overcome them.

Just the other day I wandered through town in that aimless state of uncontrolled free time that sometimes happens between shifts at the car factory. Ooh look, a book store, let's have a browse and see if there's anything worth reading or better yet purchasing with my new found affluence. So I wandered in and headed for the 'scifi/fantasy' section as it was the nearest section I had any interest in reading. Almost immediately I spotted it. the Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set. Good grief, I remember the Basic Rules from when I was a teenager back in the seventies. Oh what fun we had. gathering around a table pretending to be heroic fighters, rascally thieves, clever wizards, or insidious clerics. Or for that matter, pretending we knew anything about medieval society, Arthurian mythos, or that we'd actually read Lord of the Rings. No matter, the Dungeonmaster would hide his papers behind a cardboard screen and describe the world we were about to set forth into and play merry adventure. D&D always came back to haunt me. For a while in my thirties I ran a game world for a bunch of players. Some might snigger or shake their head, but it was fun, social, and the added maturity of the players resulted in a much more rewarding experience in my opinion. It does occur to me that there must be plenty out there who don't know what a tabletop RPG is all about. I did think computer gaming had all but destroyed the hobby - what a surprise to see the box on the shelf of my local bookstore. Nostalgia is a compulsive beast. My mind goes back to those starting games and so often they began with that first old door in some neglected or forgotten crypt. Listen at the door? An odd sound, like a rasping noise, intermittent but quite audible. Aha, so you try to pick the lock do you thief? Yer can't, 'cos the door ain't locked. Duh! Armed to the teeth with blades and spells, ready for anything, eager to find what was the other side, they ask what's inside. In the centre of the dark chamber is a table and chair. A goblin is sat face down, holding a bottle, snoring as he sleeps off his ill gotten drink. The fact the poor little green creature was incapable of defending himself or that he would know where the treasure was mattered not one jot. The players would burst through the door and in a mad frenzy of rolling twenty sided dice the creature is dispatched to the grave. Then the ritual of searching the body. When they discover all he had was a pair of used underpants the players got annoyed, having risked their lives for so little gain. That's okay. Two levels down in a room far more secure is something they won't be so brave against. Heh heh heh.... Such fun. Reality Check Of the Week With my nostalgia trip over it was time to head into work and resume my quest for a comfortable life. Yesterday I had a bit of a problem. Recently I've been handling packing waste on four baling machines, half the section in total, and believe me, I get swamped out with mountains of cardboard and plastic regularly. On this particular day two of the machines went out of action. Oh no! So I improvised, swapping full and empty waste cages, heading outside into the cold where the big industrial balers were to make sure the cages were emptied, and after a shift long physical exercise regime like that, I was broken. I had, by my own initiative, kept our section from complaints of senior managers for leaving the section looking like a rubbish tip. And no-one thanked me. Nor did I find any treasure. Worst of all, I earned no experience points to advance my 'Level'. Pfah. This real world stuff sucks big time.

Interesting how people immediate use terms like 'NCO'. Sorry to add a sour point (I can't resist it) but the Romans had no NCO's by definition. The reason is that while 'not commisioned' as officers, they are in fact holders of military office (hence the name) thus represent a level of authority that is independent of role. The Roman system does not normally separate status and purpose and on no account were the Romans going to give lesser mortals a form of imperium no matter how restricted or humble. They had enough trouble keeping their men in line as it was. For instance, I perused a volume that mentions a role in the late empire legion called campidoctor. No, it doesn't define an effeminate physician, but an instructor of weapons drill. They were said to be masters of the sword and could take anyone on - they were also individual placements and rare. Note however the book refers to this as a 'rank' but surely this was a role with status, since one would not ordinarily be promoted through this job? The same thing happens with Optio, which means 'Chosen Man'. Varro informs us that centurions used to choose who their optio's were, but later the tribunes (presumably post Augustan reforms) allocated them. The point is that a man was not promoted to being a centurions right hand man - he was selected speficially for the role and there is nothing to suggest he could keep that role permanently or even rise higher for having held it. Okay, that's my gripe over with

The weather is getting colder. The words of wisdom issued by weather girls on television isn't necessary for me to know that, With doors open to the elements the ambient warmth is quickly defeated by draughts or breezes that penetrate. One young lady from Poland is suffering from the decline in British weather. It's laughable, it really is, because in her country the winters can be way more severe, yet she stands shivering in the same ambient warmth that we Britons take for granted in the workplace. And that's after the company issued everyone with bulky winter jackets. Forklifters are wandering around in garments that would protect them from the Atlantic swell, one increasingly resembling a WW1 air ace, and layers of clothing like hoodies are much in evidence. Yet although the outside gets very cold at night now, the inside temperature is much the same as it has been for the past month. One colleague who works on waste is now spending much more time indoors. I asked him about that. He said it was because the next shift was coming in and making his job difficult. Yeah. Right. My Phone Company Two weeks ago I discovered my mobile phone was blocked. Apparently I needed a PUK code to get it working again. As you might expect, security issues mean that you can only get PUK's from your mobile provider, as I quickly discovered. I tried to use their website but my account number wasn't accepted. Oh great. So I looked through my statement and found the hel mail address. Which they don't recognise any more. You have to use the website. Which I cannot use because they gave me an account number lost in the files marked 'Miscellaneous'. Does this company want my business? Do they want any business at all? yes, Virgin Mobile, I'm talking about you, and your lack of customer service. Your loss I guess. Driver of the Week This much admired accolade goes to the moslem lady I saw the other day. Right now one major road junction in town is being upgraded with work expected to last until January and big delays advised by electric signs. Motorists for the most part are taking it all in their stride, queuing up responsibly and patiently, but this lady? Apparently she'd taken the wrong exit, but instead of finding a more suitable turning place she decided that continuing was not a good thing and proceeded to cut across the unsurfaced road marked off by road cones. her car wobbled over the rough terrain, confused motorists unsure of what she was up to, and with complete determination she turned onto the opposite lane and squeezed into traffic. And not a single horn was blasted in her direction. Keeping Allah a bit busy there, I suspect.