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Stop all the spades, fill all the trenches in…

1 min read

the hatWhile browsing the web for fun archaeological things to share with our readers (it is Friday, after all!) we stumbled on this fantastic ‘Eulogy for Time Team’, based on W H Auden’s  Stop All The Clocks.

It was originally printed in the Australian edition of the  Big Issue, and by the power of the internet (thanks everyone who helped us make contact!) we can now pay tribute to the clever poet who wrote it, Richard Higgins – one half of the List Operators (www.thelisties.com). Great work, Richard!

A Eulogy for Time Team

Stop all the spades, fill all the trenches in.
Prevent the trowels from digging by throwing them in the bin,
Silence Tony’s bit to camera and the historical things we’re learning about,
No longer will we have just three days to find out.

Let fall to the floor the fossilised bones and bread,
Let them spell in the dirt TIME TEAM IS DEAD.
Phil Harding’s untouched pint has finally lost it’s fizz,
Put crepe bows ‘round the necks of the geophys.

They dug North and South and East and once to France (which was weird)
Fashionwise, where they went we followed (bad jumpers, cool beards)
Televisual ecstasy via an exhumed Roman loo,
Watched again and again and again on iview.

The diggers are not wanted now, put out every one,
Pack up Phil, Francis, Mick and Tony Robinson,
The fields will overgrow, the forests choke with wood,
For now that you’ve gone Time Team, no
anglophilic-archaelogically-themed-telly will ever be any good.

RIP TT
Apols to W.H Auden. Soz Audo.

 

You can read more about Time Team‘s 20-year run, and how it came to an end, in our feature from  CA  274,  Time Team: the rise and fall of a television phenomenon

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