Can't remember how we met but it must have been through my research into the Cillins...the babies burial grounds. Christina is a horribly clever Swedish woman who is also a forensic archaeologist...a small person of some considerable girth who wears layers upon layers of clothes and has a Viking burial in her backyard at her home in Sweden...like you do.
She offered to conduct another survey on 'our' Cillin to see if my suspicions about there being an early church there were right or not...
She picked me up bright and early one morning and we decided the best way to the Cillin would be through Brian's fields...easier walking than through Henrys land, which was needed 'cos we were weighed down with measuring sticks and cameras and notebooks...
We plodded along happily chatting about Russia...saw a few sheep...and a fox...negotiated an electric fence and then spent several hours measuring and taking numerous photos. She told about always looking in 'tree caves'...those huge gaping holes left when a tree falls over...all manner of goodies can be found, though we only unearthed bits of clay pipe...they went into our pockets though.
She agreed about the remains of what certainly looked like a very early church...then we slithered our arms into the holes left by animals to see if we could find shroud pins or pieces of fabric...maybe even a grave gift, like a tiny silver spoon. But there were only fat green slugs and spiders...anything we'd have found would have been photographed and put back. Didn't bother to take photos of the slugs...or the spiders.
When we'd finished, we gathered up all our bits and bobs and started on the way back to the road.
Christina suddenly poked me in the ribs and hissed...'Can it get to us? '
'Can what get to us?'...'That animal...it is looking at us' ' It looks cross' says Christina
Understatement of the entire decade I thought, as I looked at where she was pointing with a quivering finger to see Brian's little bull pawing the ground and snorting...
The bull is only small...he is short in stature but has a neck and shoulders of a very much bigger bull and he also has the dubious reputation of being 'wicked'...being relatively light on his feet also means he can run...fast.
There were clods of earth flying in all directions as he stamped his little feet and scraped up grass and blew copious amounts of snot out of his nostrils...
'What can we do' asked Christina...'Should we run?' and she gripped my arm in a vicelike grip and I thought ye gods...this is a woman who has conducted 'digs' on the Russian steppes with packs of hungry wolves roaming about and she's asking me what should we do about a silly little bull...
' Hold my hand' I said and we'll walk really quickly...
So we held sweaty hands and walked very fast indeed and kept one eye on the bull who had now decided to come trotting over and have a proper close-up look at us...we reached the stout wooden fence bordering the field just as I swear I felt his hot breath on my face and sort of fell over it in a heap of yard sticks and cameras.
After we'd recovered ourselves we made it back to Christina's car and she asked me would I put the cameras in the bag on the back seat...I only saw a Tesco's carrier bag so opened it up to find three brownish skulls grinning up at me...
'There are dead people in this bag Christina'...'there are?'...'will I be putting the cameras in with them?' 'Better not, those peoples are rare'...
We went home and I made coffee and opened the biscuit tin.
xx
Coughing up green sputum. 
new to bronchiectasis follow up
You couldn’t make it up!
bronchiectasis flare up
Clots not clearing up
