Reading time 6-7 minutes
Gavin loved his job as a lecturer in the archaeology department of Exeter University. He was planning an excavation on Dartmoor over the summer, with the help of some of his students. He had no idea that it would lead to an even greater love.
Mark, an old friend from his schooldays, had worked his way into a senior role at the Meteorological Office. As an excuse to catch up with his friend, Gavin came up with the idea of asking for a weather forecast for the period of the work. Mark was happy to help.
They shook hands warmly when they met in Mark’s office. “You realise”, said Mark, “that I don’t actually do any forecasting myself these days, so I’ve asked a colleague to come and see you.”
There was a knock at the door, and a young woman walked into the office.
“Jane”, said Mark, “this is Gavin. He’s an archaeologist.”
There was an instant mutual attraction.
“Well, dig you”, said Jane. She walked up to Gavin, already intrigued by what might lay beneath his surface. He was taken aback by the approaching warm front. As she extended a hand, he was dazzled by the sun shining from her face. “Nice to meet you, Gavin”, she said.
While holding her hand, Gavin was thinking that the outlook was set very fair for the next few weeks, regardless of the weather in Devon.
“Mark said you’re spending the summer on Dartmoor”, she said. “All you need to know is that we’re expecting average precipitation and temperatures, day and night, and you should get away without any days of excessive rain. You’ll probably spend a bit of time in low cloud, but that’s better than being too hot, and anyway, I presume you’ll be looking down most of the time, not up. Make sure to pack your umbrella, and if you’re camping, I’d go with some woolly socks for the nights.”
He looked at the two long range charts she had given him. “The site’s very close to some Iron Age hut circles”, he said, pointing to the area on one of the charts. “It’s not been dug before. You’d be very welcome to come and take a look. No pressure, of course, high or low. I’m sure we’d find a spare shovel or whatever if you fancied it. It would make a change from barometers and rain gauges.”
Her face clouded over. Even though she was still under thirty, she was not proud of her catalogue of failed relationships. “You might try digging up my past”, she said.
“I promise your history will remain unsifted”, he said. With a cheeky smile, he went on; “In my job, I have to be very good at dating. It’s what I do. Have a think about it.” He gave her his number. “I’ll expect a foehn call.”
“That’s truly awful”, she said, “although a knowledge of katabatic winds is quite impressive for a digger of holes, I suppose. Perhaps I will come, but I don’t want any of that cross-dating stuff going on. Can you promise excitement?”
“The excitement might only be occasional”, he said, “but I can promise that it will be groundbreaking work.”
* * * * *
Their first date was soon arranged. She suggested a cocktail bar that he didn’t know. He arrived first, and waited for her before ordering. He soon saw her breeze confidently through the door.
“I like it here”, he said. “Nice atmosphere”.
“Good”, she said. “Atmosphere is important to me. So are bars.”
He laughed. This was going to be fun.
She ordered a Hurricane; he went for a Blow My Skull Off, which made her laugh. “That sounds rather violent”, she said.
“I couldn’t see a ‘Gently Brush the Dirt off my Skull’ on the menu”, he said.
“I must warn you”, she said, “my trust in men is at absolute zero. To do your job, you must be in love with the past. How do I know your attitude to women is not prehistoric?”
“It sounds like you’ve had a tempestuous past”, he said. “Perhaps I can be your calm after the storm.”
She said nothing, so he carried on; “I’m pretty sure you’re not an antiquity, so I won’t treat you like one. I’m always very grounded in my line of work.” He nodded to make sure she understood his meaning in every sense. “It’s no good me looking for pie in the sky. It’s more likely to be in the midden.”
“Yes, but you might be entrenched in your ideas”, she said. “I’ll still be keeping a weather eye on you.”
“No problem”, he said. “If you don’t like the way it’s going, just issue one of your severe warnings.”
He asked her about her job. “So, has the balloon gone up recently?”
“We still use balloons, but my job is more about ground readings and satellites, and computer modelling.”
He resisted the urge to ask why she had to make model computers instead of using real ones.
She was prodding the ice cubes in her drink with a blue plastic stirrer. “Which would you prefer finding?” she said; “a gold amulet, or a human skull?”
“Tough one”, he said. “A lot would depend on where they were.”
“Suppose they were next to some old hut circles on Dartmoor”, she said.
“Well”, he said, “the amulet would probably be prettier, and maybe more exciting, and you already know that I’m attracted to pretty and exciting things.”
She returned the big smile on his face. “Are all archaeologists this cheeky?” she said.
“Well, we do like to get down and dirty”, he said.
“And the skull?” she said, ignoring his comment.
“The skull would probably tell me more, and therefore be more useful.”
“So”, she said, “you’d be happier picking up a skull than something exciting and pretty?”
For a moment he felt cornered, before he dug deep, reached out his hand, gently touched the side of her face, and said, “Perhaps with you, I’ve found both.”
Looking into his eyes without blinking, while holding her drink in both hands, she sucked slowly on the straw.
* * * * *
She visited his archaeological site for a weekend in July. On the second night, he woke to find her in his tent.
“What exactly is your intent?” he said.
“To be exactly in your tent”, she said. “Besides which, it’s raining, and my tent’s leaking.”
“Well now”, he said, “we don’t want flooding in your low lying regions, do we?”
* * * * *
The whirlwind romance continued. He was not in the least surprised when she proposed to him.
“I’ve no intention of resisting”, he said. “We archaeologists know when to throw in the trowel.”
She gave him a hug, and wiped her eyes.
“Where do you think we should get married?” he said. “I’ve always thought Barrow would be appropriate.”
“Not Bury, or Gravesend?” she said.
He considered these for a moment, before saying, “I prefer the disinterment stage”.
“Pity”, she said, “or Sunbury would have fitted both of us, and it’s near my family.”
“How about you?” he said.
“Well, there’s Wetherby, Rainham, and Hailsham, and Windsor, of course, or Sunningdale?”
“There’s a shop in London called Guess”, he said.
She laughed, poked him in the ribs, and said, “I’ll have you know, forecasting the weather is no more guesswork than you working out the age of a broken flower pot, or whatever it is you do. And anyway, I’m not getting married in a shop.”
“Your options all sound nicer than mine”, he said.
Hoping that it would reflect on their future life together, they went with Sunningdale.
He had a number of friends from which to select his best man. He settled on Eddy. She wanted to reciprocate, but didn’t have any friends called Doug, so she picked her friends Gayle and Hayley to be bridesmaids.
Instead of a wedding list, they had an inventory of desired artefacts, with a guide to where they could be found.
Selecting the wedding cake was tricky. He wanted her to have an iced lemon drizzle cake. She thought a chocolate mud cake would be right for him. In the end, they had one of each.
As he put the ring on her finger, he said, “I promise that this band of gold will last infinitely longer than your bands of rain.”
Her response was, “I promise to shower you with love. And I also promise that with me, the more you dig, the more you’ll like what you find.”
During his speech, he came out with his favourite line, telling people that he knows why it’s called the Met Office now, because it’s where they met.
When it was Eddy’s turn to speak, Gavin warned him not to make heavy weather of it.
Eddy took a deep breath, and started. “If I had to choose between being a weather forecaster and being an archaeologist, I’d go with weather forecaster every time.” This was met with silence. Eddy looked around at faces waiting for an explanation. “Well, it’s obvious”, he said. “There’s absolutely no bones about it”.
Encouraged by the laughter, and even a small ripple of applause, he carried on. “I said to Jane earlier today, that I thought I saw some coins falling from the sky. She said, ‘It’s like I said yesterday, that I was expecting some change in the weather.’”
This generated more groans than giggles. Undeterred, he stuck to his script. “I’ve told them, I said, when you go on honeymoon, don’t forget to pack your thunderwear.”
He was not put off by the shower of screwed up pieces of paper that was being thrown at him, and the cries of “Get off”. After a couple of tales of an earthy nature about Gavin’s past, Eddy finished triumphantly, by spinning around on the spot in the way that eddies do, and proposing a toast. “Let’s raise a glass to the happy couple.”
“Make that a weather glass”, shouted Jane.
* * * * *
Deciding on the honeymoon destination had been a good excuse for a night out. To combine both of their interests, somewhere with a ruined temple in the South American rain forest had been their starting point, but they soon agreed it was unlikely to be engaging enough for two weeks.
They eventually chose a fortnight in Egypt, incorporating a short cruise on the Nile. The ancient sites that they selected to visit had been places of worship to the sun god Ra, and the rain god Tefnut. They didn’t get off to the best of starts, with the outbound flight being delayed by fog.
“I didn’t see that coming”, she admitted at the airport.
“That’s fog for you”, he said. “You tend not to see anything coming.”
After that, the honeymoon was a great success. Needless to say, the time passed like lightning.
And now? For work reasons, they stayed in Exeter, but are agreed that one day, Settle would be the ideal place to live, with echoes of settled weather for her, old settlements for him, and a settled outlook for them both.
The End