Roman Villa Dig

Or how I sold a book!

‘Organised despair’ is how Bruce Lee described a lot of martial arts training: it looks fancy, but it doesn’t make you a better fighter.

I used the phrase a lot in my sports coaching: fancy drills, equipment or complicated terminology that does little to make you better at your sport. Worse, it detracts from the main thing.

A lot of the ‘work’ of me being a writer has been ‘organised despair’: website, this newsletter, and signing up to sites like Storygraph and Libraro that have done nothing to move the needle on my book sales.

Last month, a good old human interaction led me to selling a hard copy of my novel, Stone and Water. Yipee!

The site of the Roman Villa dig at Halberton, near Tiverton, Devon.

I visited the site’s open day during a break in the rain. I have an interest in the Roman occupation of Britain (Stone and Water is set in South West Britain at the time of the invasion under Vespasian) and have been interested in archaeology since attending a week at Kilve Court when I was doing ‘O’Level History.

The week was for ‘outstanding history scholars’ (yes, my only academic claim to fame: I peaked too early), where we roamed over the Quantocks and looked at Iron Age hillforts and learned about Palaeolithic migrations across the Bering Straits. In a shitty time in my home life, a week away was welcome, and remains a fond memory.

Anyway, back to the dig. The field was full of middle-class parents dragging Tarquins and Tallulahs around and encouraging their precocious obnoxiousness. When young Tarquin touched objects marked ‘don’t touch,’ the parents didn’t tell them off, they explained, ‘he’s on the spectrum.’

There goes that 2000-year-old plate.

A nice undergraduate gave me a guided tour of the site: she explained the work in progress and how the different agencies collaborated on bringing the project together. The farmer, the universities, the county archaeologist (yes, that’s a real job), local volunteers and English Heritage.

I was impressed by her enthusiasm and also the sheer joy of people working together. In today’s fractured world, where millionaires and billionaires dominate the news headlines by telling us how bad things are, this was refreshing. It won’t make the front pages of any papers, and won’t ‘go viral’ but I came away better for it.

No cryptocurrency here.

A family lived in this villa for 200 years! Then, with the collapse of the Roman Empire, it was abandoned.

On the way back to my car, I walked beside a young, normal family. The dad asked me about volunteering, and I said I’d already registered but had been turned down because they had too many!

His daughter was studying the Romans at school, and that’s why they’d travelled from Honiton. We talked about Hembury Fort, and then I mentioned that I’d written a book set in that time. He got on his phone and ordered a copy there and then! I thanked him profusely.

What a nice family.

We were parked in a field nearby. The rain had been persistent, and the grass near the gate to the side road was churned to mud. My car got stuck and the wheels span. That’s never happened to me before. I reversed onto firmer ground to pick up speed, but still got stuck. I tried this twice more before I felt purchase and then left.

The dad had pushed me out of the mud! I got out of my car and shouted thanks. My faith in humanity was restored, and with a whopping £3.21 of royalties in my pocket for the month, I went home and drank some tea.