Vindolanda and Hadrian’s Wall: Remnants of the Roman Empire, Helen Charlie Nellist
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Hadrian built a wall to fortify the Roman Empire. Explore the remains of Hadrian’s Wall and Vindolanda in United Kingdom where intriguing stories are revealed through structures, clothing, letters and tablets unearthed. Storyteller Hellen Charlie Nellist, Roman Army Museum.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Helen Charlie Nellist: this might be the only chance we can save these beautiful treasures, that would have been considered rubbish 2, 000 years ago when they threw it away, but for us it's just this magic that you're touching, touching people from 2, 000 years ago,
[00:00:32] Catherine: Hello there. I'm Catherine, your host of this variety show podcast. Your positive imprint is transforming how we live today for a more sustainable tomorrow through education and information. Your own positive actions inspire change. Follow me on Facebook and Instagram, your positive imprint. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Visit my website, your positive imprint.com and learn more about the podcast and sign up for email updates.
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[00:01:31] Catherine: The Romans left behind possessions and tales which are now being unveiled through a charitable trust.
The Vindolanda Charitable Trust was established in 1970 with seven trustees. Brigadier Brian Archibald, Daphne Archibald, Elizabeth Archibald, Eric Birley, Anthony Birley, Robin Birley, and Charles Bosenquet Vice Chancellor of Newcastle University. The primary goal of these seven individuals was to conduct archaeological research at this site in the United Kingdom, making the discovered structures and artifacts accessible to the world.
Acting as the custodian of records and supervisor at Vindolanda, Helen Charlie Nellist serves as the co manager at the Roman Army Museum, demonstrating her deep dedication to preserving the past.
Well, hello, listeners! Oh my gosh, it is an exciting day here. I'm with Helen Charlie Nellist. Hello there, Helen!
[00:02:32] Helen Charlie Nellist: Hello!
Hello! How you doing?
[00:02:36] Catherine: I'm smiling big.
In the recent episode, 213, Helen Charlie Nellist amazed us with a glimpse into her background and the fascinating journey that led her to specialize in Roman ruins and ancient letters. All stemming from her vivid childhood imagination.
Well, today she continues our journey by recounting those stories that have been uncovered.
[00:03:02] Helen Charlie Nellist: So, , Vindolanda is actually the only constantly excavated fort along Hadrian's Wall. , we're lucky enough to be governed by our own little separate trust, , instead of all the biggies. We're the Vindolanda Trust, uh, formed in 1970. So this is like 54 years worth of solid excavations. And I can tell you, it was solid excavations because even during lockdown, we had the world's biggest Smallest dig.
Essentially there was Andrew Birley, Marta Alberti , Penny Trichler, and uh, any, anybody who was a member of the Galloway family that was actually living at the Headley Center, , could do a bit of a dig to see if they can get some stuff out. And fortunately it worked out great because our SMC, which is our scheduled monument consent, that usually runs for five years. was extended for an extra year. So essentially we had a three years worth of digging. And when we got back from, , from lockdown, we had, , our volunteer guides, unfortunately not myself, cause I was working at the time. , but some of our volunteer guides actually turned up to do, , A sort of, a practice, socially distanced excavation, which was really fun.
, Vindolanda, of course, as well, , as that we have, , lots and lots of tours that we do. Uh, we, we're always interested in, in keeping it entertaining as well. , through the summer we're actually having a bit of a break through in July and August, , from our excavations.
Largely so that our lads and masses over at Magna can get a break. , so I wouldn't mind betting Andrew might take over so Rachel and Frankie can go on holiday or something like that. And we also want to try, , a new model because, , what happens if we do run out of stuff to excavate? , we need to know that there's something else we can offer people during the summer holidays that, that nowhere else can, uh, offer.
And of course, the greatest thing about it is we're hoping to offer them a chance to come and see the Ermine Street Guard. , now the Ermine Street Guard are a lovely reenactment group, , who have worked with the Vindolanda Trust for 50 years now. Absolutely amazing. , considering they, , celebrated their 50th anniversary of actually forming the actual Ermine Street Guard, , maybe a year or two ago.
It just goes to show they've been working with us right from the very, very start.
And of course, very importantly, which I actually love, and I'm determined to go there on the Sunday if that's the case, , they're bringing the Onaga back. Now an onager is like a great big massive great catapult, so they have a couple of blisters that fire the actual arrows, very dramatically. , but when they bring the onager, they crank it right off and they fire melons across our sight.
, so needless to say the wildlife eat well that nighT.
[00:05:26] Catherine: there you go.
[00:05:28] Helen Charlie Nellist: And it was a torsion powered siege engine. Big catapult basically, that fires melons. It's really cool.
[00:05:36] Catherine: Which has been around for thousands of
[00:05:39] Helen Charlie Nellist: Thousands and thousands of years. And of course, the good thing about the Roman Empire, they were quite resourceful. Every single person they took under the umbrella, bear in mind, they'd have extra inventions they could bring in. And of course, the nicest thing about that is, as well, they also took their religion on board as well.
So, equal opportunity in slavers. , but when you were, , Actually in the, the Roman Empire, , their gods were your gods because being polytheistic, , , we have a god for everything. So, , for example, we have a beautiful, beautiful temple that was found at Vindolanda, , dedicated to the god Jupiter Dolacanus.
Now Dolacanus is an actual, , Persian god, uh, sort of brought over by some of the auxiliary soldiers, , but they share some similarities to Jupiter. who's kind of like their version of Deuce. , and essentially, , they decided to amalgamate him, become Jupiter Dolichanus, and he now sits pretty in our, in our sight as the first ever, uh, temple to be found inside a Roman fort.
So, go team Vindolanda, Vindolanda first there. , , now people around the world are addressing their forts and deciding maybe that could have been a temple, or that could have been a temple. And, of course, he's the guy that I blow kiss to every time I start my guided tour, just to make sure it doesn't rain on me, because he's a weather Heh heh heh heh.
[00:06:55] Catherine: And, and that's, I just find this so interesting because it is a worldwide work, a worldwide piece of work for everybody to see and to explore. So it's never ending. We're always learning we learn, we write about it, which is so extraordinary.
here's a prime example. If you look at early guide books from the 1970s, there's
[00:07:24] Helen Charlie Nellist: a
building as you're coming into the fort, the right hand side of
or ex removal settlement, the village. And it's quite posh, and it's got a hypercourse system, and it looks really cool.
quite lavish. And if you look at the old guidebooks, it says Mansio, which is a kind of hotel. So they're thinking, keep it posh. , it's basically where you would stay for the night and, and, and, , the higher uppers might stay on, on route to where they're going. , however, fast forward to us digging up our round houses, , about five years ago or more.
And, , it, we found out it falls right during the, , Severan.
[00:08:02] Helen Charlie Nellist: Period so 209 to 211 and harkens back to where we think we might have had a refugee slash work camp , essentially septimus severus, was a libyan guy. He died in york incidentally , and he basically, was sorting out the tribes up at the wall.
, the people like the Miamitai tribe who would ransom Romans back for, for coin and stuff, , all sorts of stuff was happening up there. And because of that, the local tribes, people who were kind of Roman sympathizers might be displaced, , big schisms in the family, , brother against brother, , big splits in the family.
And what would happen is basically there'd be a few that would sort of join forces with the tribes up, but the people that were. sort of on the roman side so to speak because they've given us bath houses and shops and things they would need a place to stay so the general theory is they were invited down to Vindolanda where the fort was actually knocked to the ground and a fortlet was put up and these round houses were built where essentially the There's the escaping refugees will be given protection, , unfortunately, , it came with a big price because essentially you've got a tiny little piece of land, a bit of food, , it'd all be squashed together, but you'd have to do all the work.
[00:09:14] Catherine: your
[00:09:20] Helen Charlie Nellist: happening is you were, you were basically become kind of indentured labor while you were staying on that fort. And , we've, we realized that the, the Mancio that we're talking about in the 70s was actually , maybe the, the headquarters building or the commanding officer's building.
, and maybe they used it afterwards for Mancio, you never know. I mean, again, we haven't actually sort of found any evidence of that, but. You know, it, it harkens back to an earlier time, so the building wasn't that sort of dedicated for that third century fort, it was maybe a building that was put up earlier in, in the 200s and, and they just decided they were going to repurpose it maybe.
It's pretty amazing, really.
[00:10:00] Catherine: It is very, very amazing. The Caesars, there were nine Caesars. Were they all part Vindolanda
[00:10:08] Helen Charlie Nellist: well, basically, , Though Julius Caesar turned up, , at the bottom of Britain, he didn't get very far. , he headed back pretty swiftly, probably because we were a bunch of tough eggs in Britain. , it was actually the Emperor Claudius that actually decided he was going to push further up, so he arrived at Kent, and rumor has it he actually, , arrived with a couple of elephants in tow.
So, you can imagine the locals seeing these big grey things with giant great tusks coming off the ship and thinking, Wow! Oh my God, what is this? , so it was really Claudius that kind of pushed up and onto the, up towards the frontier. So he sort of started the groundwork, , and , but it was, it was Hadrian that really decided that Hadrian's wall was the way to go, on account of the fact that he needed to shore up his borders.
, but we do have a building that we found, , from about the time that the wall was built. It's a lovely wooden structure that's under the Vicus. And, , It looks like it's a, a, a lovely house that would be fit for, for nobility. So we'd kind of like to think that maybe if Hadrian did visit Hadrian's Wall, when it was being built, , that maybe he stayed at Vindolanda because of course, right next to Steel Rig, which was the highest pass, , one of the biggest forts, you know, maybe he worked his way along from Corbridge, which was pretty affluent at the time as well.
, we'd like to think that he did stay and, , we, we actually, we've, we've named it Hadrian's house. , so that it's, so that basically, , when people, people visit, it might sort of wet their imagination, , , from what I understand, , we haven't got loads of evidence of all different emperors visiting, but bear in mind that at one point, Vindolanda was the place to be, , I mean, if you were a commanding officer at Vindolanda, , you had your own commanding officer.
, hot rooms and, , your three story gaff and, , it was, it was very, very posh, , right out there on the frontier. So, so I'd like to think that maybe it wasn't just Hadrian that visited and, ,
We'd like to think that Septimius sent us some heavy, , visited, , when he was up there kicking the snot out of those tribes up on the wall. , but until we find that writing tablet that says, , , Yo, Septimius here, you know, love my stay at Vindolanda, we'll write a five star review on, uh,, TripAdvisor, , I don't think we're going to ever know, really.
[00:12:19] Catherine: You are humorous. Oh, Helen, that's good. Well, that's a, that's a good segue into Hadrian's Wall. So, Hadrian's Wall.
[00:12:36] Helen Charlie Nellist: So, it's, , 74 modern miles, uh, and which would be 80 Roman miles. Now, we were, we actually got, , a lovely gentleman the other day turned up at the Roman Army Museum, which poses a little bit of a question about why do we call them miles when it should be, you know, if, if these guys were imperial, , uh, , these guys were coming over from Italy, which, which run the metric system or whatever, , why were they called miles?
And we actually looked it up and one of the names for a Roman soldier was a mile. , we, we actually found a, a lovely book in our bookshop. It turns out, , resources are everywhere. And, , from what we, what we understand, , a Roman mile was a certain amount of paces that an average soldier would do.
So, this is why it was shorter in our miles than it was, , , , shorter in their miles than our miles, which is why it was 74 to us, 80 to theirs. , there was, there's rumours around that it was something like, Queen Elizabeth the first, decided to set up the new miles or something like that.
We had a huge great debate about it, it was absolutely fantastic. So it just goes to show, working in somewhere like the Roman Army Museum of Vindolanda, sometimes you learn new things every day.
[00:13:45] Catherine: I guess you do. Oh,
[00:13:50] Helen Charlie Nellist: Every mile, we had a mile castle, so that would be the segue into Hadrian's Wall through a gate. We're currently working on mile castle 46, , at Magna, which is behind the Roman Army Museum. , it's lovely because, , we've got 56 percent of it. owned by the Vindolanda Trust. The other percentage goes to Thirwall, uh,, where the castle is and, and that, that landowner. , but we've managed to uncover our, , very first measuring instrument, which is a dual balance about year big.
And the, , the dual balance is a lovely little measuring device that they would use with little weights and a pan, , for maybe sort of little, little items like spices or. medicines or something like that and, , and because we found the dual balance right slap bang in the middle of a milecastle, that lovely theory about border control and taxation is really starting to pan out.
[00:14:43] Catherine: Uh, yeah, there's so much history on that just alone and I'm looking at the map and yeah, I can see. See, we, we missed a lot when we were out there just, just, , recently. So you've got castles and gardens and all sorts along Hadrian's wall. Now Hadrian's wall, one of the things that I found extraordinarily interesting, and especially my husband, who is an engineer, he said that The blocks were so intricately cut, and they were almost all the same shapes and sizes.
And of course, from what we could tell, there was no mortar, , with the walls. It was how they were stacked. Can you share a little bit about Hadrian's Wall and the engineering of it?
[00:15:37] Helen Charlie Nellist: Yeah, they did actually have mortar. , the downside being, of course, a lot of the original mortar has disappeared, so as you're walking around Vindolanda, you'll probably notice, and even if you're up at Hadrian's Wall, , that it's all put together, , all neat and lovely. , and that's basically, it's called reconsolidation.
, basically, the Romans, , used to use what we refer to as opus signinum, which is a mixture of lime and crushed tiles. , if you were somewhere , Pompeii or somewhere like that, they would probably also mix some volcanic ash into that as well. So it's lovely and malleable. So it worked with the stones rather than against it, and of course it was very, very waterproof as well.
, and essentially the, the, the mortar would be mixed up and, , by our reconsolidators when we, when we put our stones back together. And, , we would actually put it together in exactly the same way that the Romans did it, mainly because their mortar is better than our mortar was.
More malleable. It kind of worked with the stones. , back in, I think it was the Victorian age, there was a big push to put up some of Hadrian's Wall and they were so excited about this modern concrete and how, Durable it was and, , it's going to last for years and years and years and years and years.
And they put up a big stretch of Hadrian's Wall which fell down in, , a couple of months because it was, , it was fighting the stones rather than actually working with the stones. , and, and the wind was blowing on it and things like that. So they went back to the drawing board and they put together this, this, , Roman mortar
and, , and started again, basically. And it's, uh, and a lot, a lot of the sections have actually stayed up quite well. , we still have to keep going back to it. So we do have reconsolidators and stonemasons that will, from time to time, , sort of do a patch up job on one of our walls that's looking a bit rickety.
So, for example, that lovely bathhouse that I love so much, the, uh, Batavian one. , my lovely friend, , Dan, actually, , , reconsolidated that a couple of years back. So, it, it's, , it's, it's a work in progress. But yes, from, from what we understand, they, they had mortar, and they were very good at making it.
, , they reckon that they would chop the stones, and then haul them either down the hill, in our particular case, up from, , from Berkshire Bank and Barkham Hill. , but they would also, , hoist them up as well. So if you look down at Steel Rig, you'll see probably the quarry where they would have cut the actual stone and then used a hoist
, back in the day, they reckon they would have had the legionaries right at the bottom of the cliff , cutting out the stone and hoisting it up to their friends to put it on the wall. So, so yeah, it was pretty ingenious and bear in mind it only took six years to make. These guys knew their stuff.
[00:18:12] Catherine: Ingenious,
[00:18:14] Helen Charlie Nellist: It was really jammy. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was almost self repairing.
Hadrian was a very interesting character. , from what we, what we understand, he, , he tolerated his wife and she kind of tolerated him, but the real lover of his life was a guy called Antinous, , who unfortunately died, , in a, in a sort of freak drowning accident, , over in somewhere Africa or somewhere, , and Hadrian was so absolutely gutted at the death of the, the love of his life, basically, , that essentially he almost erected a few shrines to this guy, which is understandable really, because if you look at any of the statues of Antinous, he was gorgeous, really lovely young and, , and essentially all the, uh, all the higher uppers were , oh I can't believe he's making such a fuss about this, , this, , this, this lowly pleb, this, , this slave, whatever.
But he loved him and of course the nicest thing about it is, , after Hadrian had gone to Elysium, apparently there were still sects out there that were actually, , still paying homage to the lovely young Antonis. Uh, and of course, because, of course, for various obvious reasons, he never actually had an heir to the throne, he had to nominate somebody instead.
, so he nominated a relative of his called Antonius Pius. And Antonius Pius fancied himself a bit of an awesome emperor, who was better than Hadrian. , so essentially what happened is, , he decided he was going to expand the, the empire further up into Scotland. And he ended up going to Glasgow,
A second wall.
So yeah, the Antonine Wall went up, and, , it was made out of just the, just the wood. , but apparently he was, he was known to have been so cocky about the whole thing that he decided he was going to take all the doors off Hadrian's wall. This is the Antonine Empire. I'm so much better than him for Hadrian, who came before me.
, fortunately for him, , the guys, I don't think so. , so he was chased back to Hadrian's Wall with his tail between his legs and the doors went promptly back
[00:20:09] Catherine: good. And yes,
[00:20:16] Helen Charlie Nellist: It continued as Emperor until eventually he'd be killed. deposed by somebody or whatever is catching up with some of the emperors is interesting because some of them though they're only emperors for maybe a couple of months before somebody you know some of them are soldiers that killed the first emperor that then became emperor that then got killed by and it's just like you wouldn't want to be an emperor you know who would want that job you'd spend your whole life doing it terrified that someone was going to stab you, you know, I mean, look, , they really went for broke with Julius Caesar with, , them all stabbing him on the steps of that, , with, with knives, too brutal and all that, , I think the worst job in the world will probably be an emperor because you'd have to be mad as a badger to appreciate it.
, , shout out to you Nero, , uh, or Caligula or, , Or basically somebody who kind of had spent the whole time watching their back, . But I mean, we did get some good emperors. I mean, the likes of Marcus Aurelius, , he actually was, was, , what, what they consider one of the great emperors, and he was quite a philosopher as well.
[00:21:10] Helen Charlie Nellist: , general theory is it was him that came up with the idea of plugs. , for bath houses. , so I hear, , whether that's true. I don't know, but it was one of those things. Someone told me that basically up until that point, , bath house was not the best place to go if you had an open wound, because , that could be the death of you.
Bear in mind, all those people in the plunge pool were sploshing away and there's, you're only at the mercy of somebody who's going to empty it from time to time and reset the water. So, , a lot of time. that, , Marcus Aurelius and said, , if we had some kind of plug device where we can let the water out and give it a bit of a scrub before we put other people in, ,
yeah, basically, Marcus Aurelius, that's the guy that got killed by Joaquin Phoenix in, , in Gladiator,
[00:21:49] Catherine: And wasn't, they always make Marcus out to be really good looking.
[00:21:54] Helen Charlie Nellist: yeah, I suppose. Yes, Marcus Aurelius. I mean, Richard Harris was a, , quite an attractive lad when he was, when he was younger and, you know,
[00:22:02] Catherine: Yeah,
[00:22:02] Helen Charlie Nellist: bit of a silver fox guy got killed by, you know, so yeah, and of course, bear in mind, Hadrian was a trendsetter. They never had beards until Hadrian came along.
[00:22:11] Catherine: hmm.
[00:22:12] Helen Charlie Nellist: It was, it was the first emperor to actually, , sport the beard and after that everybody else decided that that beards were quite regal and made a guy look foxy so so yeah it worked out well and of course bear in mind we did have some female trendsetters as well it's a shout out to my friend Jill actually funny enough who's been recently installed in a beautiful display at the Roman Army Museum as a lady called Julia Domner.
Now we mentioned Septimius Severus, , earlier on in the episode, and , Julia Domner was his wife. So while he was warmongering and, and dishing out nice bathhouses to Carlisle, , essentially she was setting the trend, and , she was, she was, She was very sophisticated, and she wore her hair in a certain way.
And a bit like when, during the Elizabethan times, everyone wanted red hair, because, , Queen Bess had red hair. They all wanted the curls that Julia Domino was sporting. So it was nice to think that even back then, there was those lovely female role models that were sort of advocating for a bit of woman power in a male dominated world, basically.
They even minted some coins with her face on. It was kind of their version of Vogue. So that people could, uh, , people could say, Oh, I want my hair done like this when they went into the hairdressers and stuff. So yeah, well done Julia Domner.
[00:23:27] Catherine: the signage on her at the museum is absolutely fabulous, and the coin.
[00:23:33] Helen Charlie Nellist: Yeah, she, I mean, to be fair, most, a large percentage of the, the main protagonists for our Vindolanda story are actually , I mean, bearing in mind it was, uh, granted, , Serialis and his Batavians helped put up that first bathhouse that we had on our site. But, , it was his wife that got the birthday invite and it was her best mate that sent it to her from, from, uh, Corbridge.
And, , it's, it's, it's so nice to know that, , it wasn't just, Boys being boys, you had a whole lot of, , of women doing their stuff on Hadrian's Wall as well. Uh, we found a lovely writing tablet, , talking about, , it's a guy called Tagamas, who is a Vardoulian cavalry soldier. Uh, he's actually got, uh, if you saw the amphora with his name carved on it in the cavalry section in Vindolanda.
, he was from Spain. , but we have a lovely little slip of, of writing tablet that talks about his contubernalis. , actually, , owing three denarii to somebody. Now, who they owed it to, we don't know, because that bit was all shaved off. , but contubernalis was kind of the loose translation as, uh, messmate.
And the theory goes that maybe, , messmate was also a nice way of saying his lady. Instead of getting into, , women owing money and stuff, , his contubernales was three denarii, so you never know, this might have been the, , the woman behind the cavalry soldier as well, which is lovely.
[00:24:53] Catherine: Yeah, yeah, well, and, we think of the, that era as the women really not having any rights, which still occurs today, but there, but there were women who were very influential in that time in history.
And that is something we can't hide from history. We need to make sure people know about these women.
[00:25:13] Helen Charlie Nellist: Yeah, one of the first things I learned when I started work at Vindolanda is most of the gold that we find at Vindolanda is actually in jewellery, largely in earrings, aside from those gold earrings, uh, really the only gold we ever found was one coin and that was after 48 years of digging. , so gold was quite a, quite an impressive commodity. And, uh, that would have been half a year's worth of some poor guy's wages.
So, needless to say, he had a very bad day when he dropped that in the, in a drain. Ha,
Bear in mind, if you do find yourself walking along the high street of Vindolanda, or indeed finding your way to have a look at the milecastle in Magna, once it's dug up properly, that you're walking in the footsteps of people 2, 000 years ago that had no idea that, Their rubbish was going to make such an impact on, on the world and , their little thoughts and feelings and shopping lists and birthday invites and New Year's greetings and socks and underpants, you know, it's just, it's just absolutely wonderful.
And, and of course, there's that beautiful. set of stones popped up in the, in the coin room, , that you were talking about, the coin room, , where all these soldiers have slid their hands across it hundreds and thousands of times to get their pay and have eroded all these little delves in it. So, so if you ever find yourself at, at Vindolanda's coin room, just slide your hand across and I guarantee it will give you the bestest of goosebumps ever.
[00:26:37] Catherine: Oh, I love it. And you mentioned the birthday parties, and that's something that was, again, brilliant and extraordinary, Someone had a birthday party and sent invitations out and you actually found,
[00:26:52] Helen Charlie Nellist: will. It, yeah, we found it. It was actually, , it was a lovely lady called Claudia Severa, and we reckon that her hubby was in charge of Corbridge at the time, and her best mate, , the lovely lady Lepidina, , has, as her commanding officer was, was the head of the Batavians, so they were talking about 100 AD ish, and, , she obviously was so keen that her friend should, visit that she sent an invite out.
, obviously she'd been sending a lot of invites out because, , from what we understand amongst the, , high ranking officers on Hadrian's Wall, , there was a few mighty fine shindigs. , we get shopping lists with, with provisions and things like that. But in this particular case, she got a scribe to do most of the hard work because obviously she didn't want to write everything by hand.
, if she was sending out lots of invites, but there's a tiny little dedication on the bottom right hand side of that beautiful birthday invite, , that says something along the lines of, and bear in mind I'm paraphrasing here, it was a lot more flowery back in the day, , but basically something along the lines of, , come to my party dear, a sister, wouldn't be the same without you, love to the hubby and kids, and, , and it's,
from what we understand, it's the only surviving version of Roman female handwriting so far found in the whole of, of, of the world so far. And there it was found at Vindolanda on a bonfire site. , it's just absolutely amazing when you think about it.
[00:28:09] Catherine: is. And those traditions continue, which is, again, the brilliance of the occurrence of history and what had been found and, and just traditions that were practiced. And then we find out some of. of, of the history behind traditions that we practice today. So not that that was the first time someone invited someone to a birthday, but it
[00:28:35] Helen Charlie Nellist: but it's, it's nice to
[00:28:36] Catherine: an
[00:28:36] Helen Charlie Nellist: that even 2, 000 years ago people had best mates that wanted to come to the parties and, , and, and it's, it's kind of the, the precursor to sending a text to me best mate, you know, it's lovely.
[00:28:46] Catherine: Yeah. It's nothing new, it's nothing new. So, so anyway, so your life being in reality. So, you're in during the day, you're a reality, you're a tour guide, and then, after work, you are part of the fantastical world of Star Trek, Lord of the
[00:29:09] Helen Charlie Nellist: yes, yeah, Lord of the Rings, uh, basically anything that can take me away from, uh, you know, the craziness that is this world. , , I'd rather be orbiting Ganymede with a Rossonante or, or, , going to Middle earth and, and, and popping in to see what Legolas is up to in Rivendell or, , yeah. Lord of the Rings is a smorgasbord of lovely men of all different sizes and shapes. I love it.
[00:29:31] Catherine: Yes, yes, so
[00:29:34] Helen Charlie Nellist: Yeah.
[00:29:35] Catherine: So anyway, so, , uh, it's, it's a world. I love that world as well. And I love to fantasize.
Yeah, it's just a fun, entertainment is a fun world, and of course, learning history, that is a different world, and also brilliant and fun and amazing.
and , I always end the show with last inspiring words for the listeners.
[00:29:59] Helen Charlie Nellist: Oh. Yeah, , I've, I've basically, I decided that long ago, it's, it's high time that, , more people should dedicate their life to, to bringing a bit of sunshine into the world because the world's a rough place. , you realize that we're all part of one great big thing and the more we can spread the happiness to that the better you listen to what's going on around you, , your life is so much better.
And ever since I've really started taking up on the manifesting and the witchy stuff again, , it's just, it's just brightened. My life. And I want to spread the love, basically. , , I mean, the whole point is every time someone comes into, , into museum, uh, via, , if I'm, when I was at Vindolanda, or now that I'm at the Roman Army Museum, essentially, I want to make sure that when they come through their door, they're greeted like they're a long lost friend.
So. , don't dismiss people outright. You want to, you want to make friends with the widest amount of people you possibly can do, because at the end of the day, that's how, that's how this world's going to survive.
Try and bring everyone along with you in the journey. Because, , , laughter, fun, sunshine is to be shared.
And if you make that one person smile every day, then your world is, is infinitely better.
[00:31:11] Catherine: Well you make me smile every time I get such a cheery email from
[00:31:15] Helen Charlie Nellist: Oh, thank you.
[00:31:16] Catherine: much appreciate the cheer.
Well, thank you and thank you so much for your positive imprints. Well, Helen Charlie Nellist, it has been awesome having you here on Your Positive Imprint as you continue exploring those old worlds, but still seeking out, of course, the new life and new civilizations. And how do you end it? boldly,
[00:31:42] Helen Charlie Nellist: and prosper!
[00:31:43] Catherine: absolutely live long and prosper.
Thank you so much for exploring those civilizations that are out there and bringing them to life for each and every one of us.
[00:31:53] Helen Charlie Nellist: thank you very much.
Learn more about Vindolanda, Vindolanda. com. V I N D O L A N D A, and also RomanArmyMuseum. com. Upcoming thrilling episodes just ahead.
Discover the steps companies that you might purchase from are taking to create positive imprints by reducing the recycled materials that they use from going into the landfills. It's a very interesting process. And, meet Sandy, the great nephew of the individual who first photographed Scotland's Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster.
Head over to my website where you can access all 214 episodes and amazing positive imprints your positive imprint.com. Thank you so much for listening and supporting this podcast, your positive imprint. What's your pi your.