...my constant request whilst in Pompeii earlier this week. I had seen a programme about Pompeii a few weeks before going and the historian lady, strolling around looking at things, stopped behind some of the now-famous plaster casts of Pompeian people who were found when excavating the town. She said something like "This is the first thing that greets you when you enter Pompeii."
Well, thought I, this will be excellent. I shall see the actual people. I will see their faces and can imagine what their lives must have been like and imagine them in these grand homes.
I find it fascinating, imagining the people going about their daily lives. It suddenly makes history a really alive subject that I can connect with because I can start to imagine myself in the past and how different my life would have been from the one I am now leading.
So we entered Pompeii, my eyes scanned for the Pompeians lying on the ground....
Eventually, walking into the Stabian Baths, we saw a few in glass boxes...
...and it was so strange. On the TV programme, they had talked about pyroclastic flows and ash falling and four different flows of something, which had meant that people had died almost immediately. There was no long drawn-out choking to death or disease or anything. They had been caught unawares and had barely any time to try and escape. So when I looked at the man in the top case, I imagined him seeing the ash falling and lying down and covering his face and being immortalised that way, forever. How strange, that the smallest action has defined his life forever. Of all the other things he did in his life here at Pompeii, he is forever defined by covering his face from the approaching disaster.
We kept walking but it was a long time before we saw any more people, which had become my obsession at Pompeii, a little bit.
Danda walking across the stones set high up in the road so people could still cross the road when it was raining.
Me 'working' in the Pompeian version of a deli.
Wall paintings
Floor mosaics
More people! The lady on the programme said that this position with the arms is typical of someone going into rigor mortis after a shock.
This one is strange in a totally different way. His exposed skull and two thousand year old teeth poking out from the plaster made me feel odd, like I'd accidentally seen someone undressing.
You can even see the shape of the belt he was wearing when Vesuvius decimated the town.
We found some more people in an area which seemed to be blocked off for archaeologists to work in, although there were none there at the time. In between all the wine jars and other artefacts, there were some more people.
The lady on the programme talked about how this person had probably crouched down and put their hands to their face to stop the ash going on it.
This person, it seems, dived on the floor and hid their face.
O and here's one we found. Just in amongst the wine jugs on the shelf. Have you spotted him yet?
After looking at loads more buildings and reading in my little guidebook about what it used to be and who used to live there, we were back near the entrance, we had been there for five hours and were both knackered.
"But I didn't see the people from the programme..." I said sadly.
Danda insisted we go and find them, even though I was tired and said it was ok. He reminded me that we don't know if we'll ever come back here so we mustn't go home disappointed. So off we went, back into Pompeii, not much time to spare before closing, the tourists almost all gone, to find "the people."
We trekked right back to the other end, near to the vineyards which, by the way, they have replanted and turned back into working vineyards (the wine produced there is called Villa dei Misteri) and eventually we found them! The people! The people lying on the floor! Hurrah!
And it was so interesting. I was enthralled, standing up against the glass case imagining who's children they were, which house had been theirs, whether they had worked in the vineyards, as that is where these 13 were found during excavations or whether they had lived close by and just run there together to shelter.
Eventually, time and daylight were running out so we made our way back to the entrance, having added an hour on for "the people" and left, among the last few.
What a brilliant brilliant day. Damn planes and trains and the history of the automobile, give me some real people's faces and clothes and lives to look at and I'm planning my future as an archaeologist/historian.
That's inbetween my full time job as a farmer, my part time job as the world's best baker, my hobby as an internationally renowned pianist and my ongoing project as a human rights lawyer.
I can fit it all in, don't you worry.
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