After three hours, significant frustration and a lot of text messages to miapatrick, I am now up and running with my new iPhone 4, I have my Kindle books and a considerable amount of music. I am happy.
Ah, the world in your pocket. Or, at any rate, that part of the world that gives you good feelings. Most excellent. What with that and Magnum Opus you're having a very productive time!
I can now relax a bit with the second book - I intend to go off camping (in comfort, no tents) in the vicinity of Pevensey Castle to try to work out how the blazes Aelle ever managed to take it, even with the assistance of a 5th century Fluellen.
Good luck! Unpicking several centuries-worth of coastline and vegetation change, not to mention disintegration and building/repair/rebuilding of made structures, should keep the grey cells well buzzing!
Fortunately the Normans only built in one corner and I have (somewhere) a map of what the coastline was like at the time. Also the wall on one side is mostly down so I can use that as the point of attack, which come to think of it was probably where it was.
There's the potential for a weak point. One year miapatrick and I spent some time at Butser Ancient Farm building part of a Roman villa from the same sort of flints. We were all lectured firmly on not just sloshing on the mortar and sticking the flints in anyhow. This was fresh in the mind when we visited Pevensey and found a stretch about six feet high built just the way we were told not to, and immediately above it a beautifully constructed stretch. "Guess at what point the centurion came along and saw what they were doing," miapatrick said.
The thing is, if there was a stretch like that at the fallen part, siege artillery could batter its way in.
The whole thing is a problem, though. Most "barbarians" were like the Frank who said "I have no quarrel with walls"; they just left fortified positions alone. The only one who did attack and take fortified positions was Attila, who is known to have used Roman military engineers.
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I can now relax a bit with the second book - I intend to go off camping (in comfort, no tents) in the vicinity of Pevensey Castle to try to work out how the blazes Aelle ever managed to take it, even with the assistance of a 5th century Fluellen.
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There's the potential for a weak point. One year miapatrick and I spent some time at Butser Ancient Farm building part of a Roman villa from the same sort of flints. We were all lectured firmly on not just sloshing on the mortar and sticking the flints in anyhow. This was fresh in the mind when we visited Pevensey and found a stretch about six feet high built just the way we were told not to, and immediately above it a beautifully constructed stretch. "Guess at what point the centurion came along and saw what they were doing," miapatrick said.
The thing is, if there was a stretch like that at the fallen part, siege artillery could batter its way in.
The whole thing is a problem, though. Most "barbarians" were like the Frank who said "I have no quarrel with walls"; they just left fortified positions alone. The only one who did attack and take fortified positions was Attila, who is known to have used Roman military engineers.