A new year starts and I am trying to shake off that holiday feeling and get back to it. Before my week off I had an excellent couple of days in which I had one of my excavations at Norton Common filmed by fellow artist Jo Taylor. It made rather an unusual change to have someone else along filming me and thankfully it ended up being a really interesting excavation with some notable finds. I was doing a section of the Pudding Basin at Norton Common. As soon as we arrived, snuck under a bush and into its base we were greeted by the sight of a Muntjac Deer moving through the undergrowth over on the far side. It felt like a charming start to what was a crisp and sunny morning.
At first inspection I wasn’t sure there was much to find but after marking out an area 5m x 6m around about the centre, things began to emerge. Jo filmed and I wrestled with my external reactions when quite soon into the excavation I spotted a number of hypodermic needles located around a tree stump within my marked area. My first reaction was to just pack up and leave. What on earth was I doing poking around in places that should just not be poked around in? My second reaction was to just carry on but ignore, avoid and pretend they weren’t there. In the end I resolved to deal with it and very carefully flag, bag and take them as finds. I didn’t take this decision lightly and now I have two potentially hazardous finds in my collection that make me feel a little out of my depth. I guess I expected that these might be the kind of things that would be left in these places but actually coming into contact with it in one of the most public and central sites I’m working on, somehow makes it feel more unsettling.
We also almost got attacked by someone’s dog, or it felt like a possibility momentarily as we were barked at from the main clearing. Both of us froze and watched as a large retriever tried to alert its owner to something suspicious going on in the bushes. He was called away, and the owner did take a quick look, meeting the scene of camera rolling and me, gloved up, crouched down, in amongst a sea of pink flags. Whatever he thought he wasn’t hanging around to ask questions.
It was an eventful morning and I’m preparing myself for another visit to the Pudding Basin soon. The other area at Norton Common that I’m looking at is where my aunt discovered a tent a few months back. I’ve excavated this site in several locations and believe I have found some evidence of inhabitance but the clues left have been sparse so far. I may carry out one more area excavation if I have time before this part of the project finishes at the end of January. I am currently crossing over sites as I have now started my final site, the underpass beneath the A1(m) towards Baldock.
