Young Archeologist of the Year (1980)
One thing about going on holiday with kids is that their grandparents always give them a tenner before they go. The cash burns a hole in their little shorts from that point forward. In a poll recently conducted by me on the streets of every major city in the UK 8 out of 10 kids claimed they would spend the tenner in the airport gift shop or the train station newsagents. The other 2 out of 10 said they wouldn’t wait that long and would spend it at the ice cream van before they even left for their holiday. Unless you are my brother, in which case you would wait until your sisters had spent theirs and lord it over them that you still had your tenner and the world was your oyster. The world, or a Hoseasons Holiday Camp, or Margate…whatever.
When I was around twelve I was in holiday in Northern Italy with my family, my holiday tenner a distant memory as my brother sloshed about town with his pocket chock full of about one billion lire. These were the days before the Euro when Italians had to take a suitcase of money everywhere with them just to go down the shops. Fashionable chi-chi suitcases mind, we’re talking Italians here. Regretting my purchase of five tins of assorted boiled travel sweets from an all night garage on the A96 on the way to the airport, I had to sit and watch as my brother skipped about an Italian toy shop eyeing up the Mediterranean childrens’ booty.
He’s irritating the hell out of me and my sister as he’s humming and hawing, but he knows the purchase better be a good one, because once the money is gone, he’s just like the rest of us-skint and reliant on good behaviour to make any ice-cream purchases courtesy of my parents’ goodwill. But then he spies it, and this ten year old with a notorious violent streak and an obsession with all things weaponry sees his must-have item- a bright green catapult with elastic so thick and strong it could propel a reluctant Italian into battle.
All purchases, even those made with your own money must go through my Mum’s strict and non-negotiable veto system. Needless to say strong banded catapults capable of taking the eye out of anyone in the firing line and the next three people behind them did not pass the test. “Put it back and pick something we can get through customs,” she orders the young warlord, now rendered impotent in a potential David/Goliath scenario. The boy is not happy and he refuses to even look at anything else, preferring to whine and sulk for the rest of the day. “This is just like the cross bow incident in William Tell country and the time I found an un-exploded grenade on the Normandy coast- you never let me have ANYTHING!” he pouts.
Some days go past and unexpectedly the boy makes no further mention of a desire to spend his tenner. The subject is dropped and we can all go about our 1970s business of cultivating skin cancer inducing sunburn and peeing in the Adriatic because we can’t be bothered coming out of the sea to find a toilet. It’s in one such dooks in the sea that a miracle happens. “Oh…oh…my goodness. Mum! Look! You’ll never guess what I’ve just found!!” the boy hollers as he runs excitedly towards the beach, something waving blurredly in his outstretched sea-wrinkled hand. The assembled parents look up startled- Jaws was only on cinematic release over a year ago and they are still a tad skittish.
My mum gets off her sun-lounger and heads towards her son who is still shouting excitedly. “Look! Mum! Look what I found in the sea!” he says to the woman like she herself had just washed up on the beach in a banana boat. A plastic bright green handled catapult , I’m guessing an ancient military relic from the epic travels of Aenas from Greece to Italy in around 300BC on his way to meet Sibyl who will show him the Underworld, has been found in the sea by this intrepid young archaeologist. The elastic has survived the briny harsh conditions of the Adriatic and indeed is strong enough to slay a Kraken should one emerge in a menacing fashion from the monster filled seas, even after a period of time that has seen civilisations rise and fall. What a find! What a red letter day in the field of archaeology and the study the weaponry of the Trojan era.
“Give me that” she says, the woman clearly a Philistine who callously puts the bounty in her raffia beach bag knowing nothing of its potential monetary worth and its certain historic and cultural value to the Italian and Greek governments who will surely hail the boy a hero and let him keep the relic to do with what he will for the rest of his holidays before they secure it in a museum.
“Give me that. Do you think my head zips up the back?”
(Thanks for the prompt, Ellen at Ready for Ten)
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