@ichabod

“They make a desert and call it peace” . . . said of the Romans Empire I think, but by whom?).

According to Tacitus it was said by Calgacus, a leader of the Caledonian confederacy, in a speech before the battle of Mons Graupius.  This reference in The Agricola is, I think, the only known mention of a leader of that name, and the speech is…[Read more]

@Bluesqueakpip    Many thanks; I’ll add it to my ‘to read’ list.

@Craig , @purofilion , @Bluesqueakpip

‘We are all stories in the end’.  And yes, @Bluesqueakpip , I think we do shape our understanding of the world and ourselves in narrative terms, though if you can point me in the direction of arguments to the contrary I would be interested to learn more.  One definition of homo sapiens could be ‘the sp…[Read more]

@ichabod  @janetteB  @purofilion

The way to deal with monsters under the bed, or in the closet, or anywhere else for that matter is, as Susan StoHelit would tell you, and everyone who has read Hogfather knows, to confront them armed with the weapon that slays all monsters: the fireside poker.  There is just one problem with this remedy: nowad…[Read more]

@Ichabod   I, too, tend to keep my extremities safely tucked under the duvet, but that is because I prefer to sleep in an unheated room, and in winter it gets chilly out there 🙂

As far as I can recall, I don’t think that I was ever worried by things under the bed (other than dust bunnies, or perhaps the family cat). What haunted my nightmares a…[Read more]

@Bluesqueakpip  @PinchofVortex

when The Moment lifted the Time Lock, it stayed lifted. The Time Lock is gone;

I hadn’t seen Moffat’s clarification of this question, but it was certainly the understanding that I was left with at the end of Day of the Doctor.  So Gallifrey is once again accessible at any time before the ending of the time war, an…[Read more]

@DroneX1  I am fully in agreement with @purofilion, @BarbaraLefty and @ichabod  here;  I do not see how ‘I am not your boyfriend’ can be interpreted as being necessarily dismissive of Clara as a person.  My experience, for what little it is worth, was rather the opposite; it was the people who saw me in a romantic light and wanted to be my boyfr…[Read more]

@Craig  From an alumna of Edinburgh University to a fellow alumnus, greetings – although it was a different Faculty and at a different time.  Your mention of that venerable seat of learning has induced a nostalgic mood in me, because I so much enjoyed my years there and have so many joyful memories.

In my first year I was in digs in Marchmont St…[Read more]

@Bluesqueakpip

They wanted a long barrow, which I’d guess would go much better with a stone chamber?

Thanks for that information. So evidently they did do some research!  Long barrows do indeed normally cover stone chambers or the remains of wooden structures, although various types of chambered tomb in Ireland and in parts of Wales and Corn…[Read more]

@jimthefish

the BBC types are a great piece of mild self-satire

Yes indeed, I meant to mention this;   and the presenter (whose name I didn’t catch) did a particularly good voice impression of Richard Dimbleby!

I’m afraid my first reaction was ‘That’s no way to excavate a barrow’, quickly followed by ‘If a barrow has a stone chamber inside it, then it is (occult or extraterrestrial explanations aside) a Neolithic chambered tomb, and anyone who identifies it as Bronze Age in date has no business investigating it’.  And it is a rash and unprofessional a…[Read more]

@ichabod

Whuzzizname, the sausage seller hawking filth in good old Ankh-Morpork

The ubiquitous, inevitable C M O T (cut-my-own-throat) Dibbler.  I’m sure the  equivalent of garum residue is available in Ankh-Morpork  to which all roads lead, and it could only improve the flavour of a pie filled with suspicious organs, lethal to all who are not bo…[Read more]

@ichabod   Re garum; yes, it seems that fish which had begun to decompose in the normal way was no good for the purpose; some sources suggest that for best results the fish had to be still flapping when it was gutted.  The guts, or in some cases whole fish, were layered with various fresh aromatic herbs in the vats, covered in brine and left i…[Read more]

@Ichabod   Now you have lured me into discussion of the Vikings, which is another subject I find hard to resist, even though it has little relevance to the topic of companions.  Come to think of it, the Doctor has had at least one tangential encounter with them, in The Meddling Monk, though the Vikings in question were scarcely companion mater…[Read more]

@ichabod    garum  – ah yes; fermented fish gut sauce. Yum!

I have always imagined that, once suitably aged, it tasted something like heavily salted anchovy paste.  Has anyone ever tried making it?

@lisa

why do we refer to this period as being so dark anyway?

For my answer to this question (for what it is worth), see my response to  @ichabod  above.  You must have posted just after I logged on, otherwise I would have referenced you as well.

@ichabod    The term ‘Dark Ages’ isn’t much used these days, at least not by us archaeologists.  When it was/is used it generally refers to the centuries immediately following the fall of the Roman Empire in Western Europe – a period for which few written records survive, hence ‘dark’ in the sense that it is very poorly documented, his…[Read more]