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There you are.. a full face photo!

This is the last week of the Prescot Street excavation… Which is both a relief and a heartbreaker. Down on site, the team are working in gloriously miserable English weather, and attempts to squeeze journal entries out of them resulted in a) bitter tears and b) hysterical laughter. However, as I am sure that you, dear reader, want to know how it all ends, I have done my best to bribe, threaten and persuade some of them to write individual conclusions.

The website will continue to exist, and as the post-excavation process grinds along, further articles and images will be added to the site, albeit at a slower pace than during the excavation. I hope this will maintain your interest until publication – If you click for an RSS feed on the front page, you can guarantee that you will be kept up-to-date with all new information.

Personally, I am leaving to become the outreach officer for the Thames Discovery Programme, which will involve the public in the survey and monitoring of the biggest archaeological site in London – the Thames foreshore. I am planning another award-winning website (such modesty) for the project, and no doubt you will see and hear from me, banging on about public access to archaeology in a magazine or newspaper sometime soon. Get involved.

I am sad to leave – Prescot Street and L – P has changed my life in so many ways. It has left me with new friends and a greater understanding of why I love and defend public archaeology (and, not forgetting, consolidated my affections for a certain gentleman). The excavation has been an endless source of amusement, stress and worry, and I’ve loved most of it. I am also very pleased that I have managed to avoid a full-face photo for 8 whole months, and have sensibly steered a clear path around any involvement with Anies’ video project…alas, cracking at the last hurdle. I will mostly miss the school visits, the endless personal requests for stationery, and the obvious envy of my psychic abilities to locate any small item of site equipment blind, after a short bout of “boy-looking” by my esteemed colleagues. I will never again have to shout “ no I don’t know where the $*$*$*%% sharpie markers are, am I %&$** Derren &*^*$$$ Brown?”…..