National Treasures

Decided I would take half a day off work to visit my favourite dig site. That and an opportunity to see in the flesh the delectable Dan Snow. National Treasures Live had come to Stratford. And Will's back.
The film crew had already set up and there was wires and equipment and bodies all over the place.
Tasked with cleaning up the stepped section in the front garden with 2 other ladies. The soil is so dry and crumbly, it was a nightmare but we got it done and then we started cleaning up the Haliwell brick structures. Just to make everything look nice for the camera.
Then suddenly we were inundated with all the guides from the house who came down to have their photo taken as a group. We weren't very impressed when we were told to make way for the diggers!!.....and we are.....!!!!! Obviously volunteers don't score very highly on the digger's scale. Miffed wasn the word!.

Anyway, it was interesting to meet Sian and Dan. They appear to be friendly, approachable people and Sian even had a bit of a banter with some of the volunteers.
There were several rehearals throughout the day and the umbrellas were in constant use. Yes it rained and we all got very wet...twice.

There was a lot of hanging around and doing nothing, because the film crew kept moving us out of shot etc. But they were very polite to joe public.

Chloe grabbed a couple of us and said that there were some t-shirts with "Dig for Shakespeare" on that she wanted us to wear. However this didn't go down well with the rest of the volunteers because the t-shirts were something we wanted since last year. Even if we had to put something towards them. I think there will be a few emails flying around.

Finally Will had a couple of minutes away from his newly found star status (yes he's on camera) to start alloting jobs for the actual live run. Myself and Colin were tasked with "pretending" to do a section drawing in the "Brew House". We actually got it done as well. Well it saved hanging around for hours with nothing to do.

All to soon the programme had finished, and I think I became Dan's oldest groupie that day, by asking him to sign my site diary which he did graciously.

When I watched the programme later that night I realised that my dig bag got 2 seconds of fame and that I was just a little dot in the background clutching our finished plan in the final few minutes of the show. Oh well, it was in interesting experience.