In which we visit Lys, Eastwatch-by-the-Sea and finally go North of the Wall.

For some years now, I and a band of intrepid adventurers ( my character is probably the least intrepid by some distance) have spent Easter sailing round and round the island of Skagos off the far Northwest of Westeros, getting confused, and intermittently and not very successfully trying to sort out a mysterious piracy problem.

As is now traditional, I drew hasty pictures as we went along.  This year I went for charcoal.
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What will happen next year? Who knows? I'm pretty sure that someone is going to drop the magic obsidian axe on their toe at some point and the whole thing will be documented in somewhat blotchy drawings, and with a number of misplaced apostrophes. Yes, I know it goes in front of the "t". My fingers just don't want to put it there. Mostly.

Hereditary interests

I had a feeling that I'd seen a translation of Tacitus's Annals lurking around the house somewhere. Seeking this, I rummaged around in our history shelves and found a couple of old books I'd forgotten.

1) 'The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial, a provisional guide' - dated 1958, with my father's name written on the front. When I picked this up, some very yellow newspaper cuttings about the Fishbourne palace at Chichester floated out of it. The cuttings don't have dates, but on the back of one of them are some London property adverts. A three bed, 2 reception room flat in Marble Arch with garage? £675pa!

2) A very faded copy of 'Everyday Life in Roman Britain' published in 1924, with my grandfather's name in it...

I wonder if somewhere, there are even older books about Roman Britain with great-grandparently names in them. And I wonder how much of the information I am reading now is stuff that they read too. Both died when I was in my teens, and I don't remember ever discussing this with either of them.

(I found Tacitus: the translation is published 1948, so I think it's probably my Granddad's.)