Red-headed Roman

This is half term week, and there were Small People in The House of Stories. The Golden Child, now aged four, was here with her mum and her big brother, the Red-headed Laddie. They are both as bright as buttons and twice as alive as any normal human. The Golden Child throws herself into every new thing like a puppy off the lead, and the Red-Headed Laddie soaks up knowledge as if he would starve for the lack off it.

The RHL is learning about the Romans at school. The New House of Stories is very close to Hadrian's Wall country, in fact we're quite blase about Romans here. You can soon get Romanned-out. As a culture I don't care for them much, and every Northumbrian school child, sooner or later, will get sick to death of them because they're always being dragged off to educational projects on the Wall, usually when it's freezing cold and the wind is blowing a hooley. In order to get a good view of the surrounding countryside, the Romans built that wall on the highest and most exposed site in the north of England.

In spite of the risk of hypothermia, the Roman sites do their best to attract visitors and Chesters Roman Fort had a programme of events for children this week. We stitched ourselves into our thermal everythings and off we went. Those guys doing the presentation were on form. The kids all got to handle replica objects - dolls, manicure tools, wax writing tablets, purses, and sponges on sticks. I won't tell you what they used the sponges on sticks for, but the children found it hilarious. This was followed by half an hour of Roman drill with shields, spears, swords, helmets, and worried parents. There was one very small legionary in the ranks who hadn't quite sorted out her sinister from her dexter, so the orders, shouted in Latin, were generally followed by 'Other way, sweetie'. The glee on the face of the Golden Child as she charged forward with her stabbing sword makes me feel I've failed as a godmother.

Finally we drove home, seeing all the way what the legions would have seen - the rise and fall of the landscape under the misting light and the dazzle of winter sunlight in the west. Sometimes, perhaps the legionaries forgot the cold, the wind, the drill and the Picts, and just stared.