Stone Clearing With Richard Herring - Chapter 19

Episode Date: April 9, 2019

Chapter 19: Midwitch Cuckoof. It's about 7pm on 8th April 2019 and Richard is enjoying the delights of an evening stone clear in the new spring. And whilst he is hampered by encroaching flora and sun-baked field, he enjoys the relative calm. Until he is haunted by the voices of children that he fears only he can hear. Where are they coming from? What do they want? Are the stones literally talking to him? And who is the man walking back and forth, dogless in the distance. Guarantee 25 more of these podcasts in 2019 and get your hands on a T shirt or even a stolen stone OR even sponsor the podcast (imagine the increased revenue your archaeological trowel business could get out of being mentioned) by heading here http://www.rhlstp.co.uk/kickstarter. Plus some stuff for people who like bins. This really is the podcast for everyone (whatever the British Podcast Awards thinks).

Stone Clearing with Richard Herring Hello, it's Monday the 8th of April in 2019, it's just coming up to 7 o'clock in the evening. That's right, we're going on a lovely spring evening stone clear today this week. We often concentrate in the mornings, we've done some night clears, but as summer approaches we can get into this rather enjoyable and pretty, even tide, as it would have been called back in the day, stone clearing. No one's really expecting it at this time, so I think you're a bit safer from vigilance. It's been a long time since I've even been out in the field at this time of the night,

so any of those log dogs and stone hawks watching me, or just the other dog walkers who we've seen over the week, especially in the week we didn't record, which is suspicious in itself, the pincer movements they've been putting on me, and I think we might get away without any interruptions. Today, Chapter 18 proved quite controversial to a lot of people, and I used to be an archaeological trowel to extricate the stones. I will be using it again. I could take this job down in time from taking millennia to its mere centuries,

and I'm not going to get blown around in a metal cart, or get all of those machines that can dig up a field and collect the stones. I'm not insane. Everything will still be done by hand, but it should be a little bit quicker. And actually, speaking of by hand, I'm not wearing any gloves today, so I hope that will be by accident, rather than by design, I have to say, so I hope that will make people slightly left more forgiving. Right by the entrance of the field, and I generally cannot see,

I'm only 10 feet away from it, the vegetation is growing so high, I generally can't even see where the can I'm aiming for. I think I might have just hit it at a click there, but yeah, everything is growing very fast in a terrifying speed, actually, out here. Of course, using the trowel does mean that it's a bit easier to do this with agging, and pick up already just a couple of nice sized stones there, on the potato scale, a medium sized potato and a small potato, still very much at the most farmed bit in stone terms of this field,

and still within two or three feet of the path picking up good lumpy stones. There's five out there that are going onto one of my stone cans. Someone has started planting a little garden in front of those stones there, so there's a tree being placed there. I don't know if that's an attempt to thwart me, possibly. I will be reminding you that you have an opportunity to ensure there will be at least 25 more stone clearing podcasts if you head to Hallislepa.co.uk

slash Kickstarter. You can donate any money that you think this podcast is worth if you want to own a piece of art of your own. If you donate £50, you can get a t-shirt, plus a natural stone, stolen, cursed stone, I'm sure it will be stolen from this field, and a nice display, a little plastic plinth, a perspex plinth, I might even sign it, I might even draw upon it. We'll see what moves takes me.

Just taking the fence there. Just looking around, there isn't anyone around, so this I may have thwarted, of course, once they get wind of this, there must be a spy somehow aware of these podcasts. Once they know, I may come out at this time of day, and I'll of course surprise them by coming out just after I've recorded another podcast. Maybe next time I do this, there will be a lot of people around.

To be fair, the time I weed on the can by the other side of the field and was seen by a man, that was the evening walk, so they are aware this is a possibility, so let's not get complacent. Be patient, don't be complacent. Some kind of weird bird, shrieking in the distance there, and I'll just take a few steps out into the field to where there is a track,

just burrow without any plants growing on it, and I have to say there is a, you know, just even, I mean, we're not far out, but there's a lot of stones out here still. How long have I been doing this stuff for a long time, and really getting nowhere near clearing even one inch of this field all the way around. It could disparate some people, another day it might disparate me,

but today I feel positive. I feel good. They're just casually tossing these few stones I picked up into, some of them going into net, some of them just going into the undergrowth. There's time, there's time enough. I'm getting very fit doing this, I've lost, well, ironically,

lost a couple of stone nearly this year on myself. Oh, blimey, what have I picked up here? See, that's where the, that looked like a fairly minimal stone just on the outskirts of the field. That is a clump that's a, looks like a hoof of an animal, pecked five in stone,

and that's going on a nice, that's the pride of place on a nice little can here. Even right by the pathway, you can get lovely surprises like this. Not only going to another fence, just looking around to see where we're at. I have to say the archaeological trail is changing my life. It is quite, it's rained today,

but it's still very dry out here on the field. And this does enable the collecting of stones that are embedded very much in the path, which are always slightly annoying. Really why this whole thing started for me as I was running around this field, annoyed that I kept tripping and hitting stones and thought I'll start to clear the path.

And it sort of led from there. My interest obviously took me into history. I've obviously been researching stone clearing. In fact, I've had a lot of facts about the stone clears of old. Oh, and nice, some nice stuff here. Again, annoyingly close to the path. Embarrassingly close, I would say. For a man who's been in this for so long

to have achieved so little, it would make another person, and I'm walking through them, it might have someone else feel bad. I'm walking through the crops now, and they are fairly hefty, it has to be said. They're swish as you go through them. I guess here's the can at the bottom,

left-hand part of the field, which has so far not luckily slightly in the shadow of the bushes and trees and hasn't got much as the nettles growing near it, which is slightly scary and worrying, to the future. But basically, that's okay. Just taking a little stone out of the path there.

They all have to go. They all have to get further away. The path is not clear. The path will be dug up by the plow, and these stones, if not removed, will bang their way back onto the field for me or another stone-clever or another generation to take out.

I'd rather get them now. I'd rather get them now. There's some good coins here in the path. And for those of you who don't like these, this is probably a good larchological trowel. You think that's from a different discipline. You think that's from the wrong century for you, perhaps. By any means necessary is what Malcolm X said

when he used to stone-clever. And I think you'll find, you know, you may think, well, I've been stone-clever for a couple of months, and I've never needed a trowel. I've been doing it for six or seven months, and you haven't, like me, have never experienced the spring and summer

where the ground is hard. And I think it's really a necessity. I'm sure the stone-clever is the path I haven't been able to find any verification of this in the history books. I'm sure they must have had something like this to help them through, because there's just no way to do it.

It's not snow, it's not ice. It is your enemy. It is the sun from where I believe stones were forged originally in the explosion of the sun, probably. I'm looking into that. That will be the undoing of the stone-clever. Just take a little hassle-hop out into the...

Oh, nice find. It looked quite small from the top, but that is... It's like a kidney-sized, a human kidney-sized stone there, almost a kidney-shaped. That will go on my can, on the opposite can to the big can.

That's what we're talking about here. I'm just picking up a couple more little beauties along the way. Some are kicked, some are picked. None are licked. That is what the stone-clevers are. They're mainly because, you know, it's all made of wood or one of those stones,

and they'll lick a stone with a wee on it. By the way, the stones I send in the post will not be ones that I have weed on. I can almost guarantee that. I'm really caught short, I might have to, but I will do my best to give you stones with as little human urine on them as possible. I can't really protect from animal urine,

for obvious reasons. And, you know, at some point in the past, someone or something may have weed on these stones, but it would have been washed away by the rain coming from the scudding clouds. Oh, I thought that wasn't even a stone. That looked like a stone in the path, and it wasn't. It's interesting.

Well, we're going to cut across the field today. It's going to be a shorter podcast this week, but I'm throwing a few stones a little distance onto that opposite can. No one around George. It sort of proves what I'm saying, doesn't it? That's how I felt it would be. They don't know I'm here, so they're not out in force

looking for me. I got an email today from a William Stone throw, a weird name. He's saying he's been on Brighton Beach, cleaning Brighton Beach, kicking stones around until his partner, it sounds suspicious in itself that someone who was a stone clearing would have a partner.

I mean, I do, but I'm a special case. I'm an extremely sexy stone clearing. I told him to stop doing it because he was hitting people. Look, there are no rules to stone clearing. Rule one, in fact, is there are no rules to stone clearing. Rule two, that was a good bounce there. I'm throwing from a big distance and about to break the very rule

I'm going to tell you about. Rule two, do make sure there are no children, if you are throwing stones or kicking them, it's very important. That's one of the more important rules of stone clearing. So I am throwing some from a distance here because I've got the scope to do so.

I'm simply excited, jumping around thinking this is for her. Well, that one's gone back onto the field. You can't win them all. And just, yeah, I thought I found a big one, but that's the answer. I thought I found a big one earlier, but I thought it was a small one,

but I thought it was a big one. That's on average two medium ones then. Hey, what are you doing? Are you insane? So you're not going to see any sparks here this time of night. Maybe a few months ago, a stone hitting against,

against the can would create sparks. It maybe does. I'm rolling one down there just to walk, just a bit, I'm too far to throw it. I'm back onto the field of play from off the path. It leads them across the field, but at least it's closer to the edge than it was. And then hopefully we'll find that on a future day.

Again, just a little, it's like tempering bowling or wolfie dunking away wolves. I don't want to break the rules of stone clearing. I've tossed it over a wolfie, and that one's gone nicely onto the path. I should be able to, wolfie may just have digressed it off the path. At this level of the field,

I have to decide how we're going to start carrying the stones with me to get them to the major can, or am I going to throw them backwards? And I have to say, I'm not sure at this point. In fact, I've just picked one up and I've decided to carry it. So what's interesting, I think, about this walk across the field, when I started and the reason, part of the reason

this main can looks so good is there was, this area was littered with huge stones. It was a prime area, but it's been over farmed by someone, I mean me, no probability. And the pickings are not as good in terms of size. There are still plenty of stones, but carrying several tiny stones

is, of course, a lot more difficult than, you're more liable to drop one stone, please. I don't know the time for childhood in this. I've got just four little stones, one of them very sharp there, I wish I was wearing my gloves. Oh, there's a beauty here in this. Is it? Yeah, that's a pretty good size. That's a decent size.

I mean, for today, that's a decent size. Maybe the second biggest stone today, if you're keeping records just out from the pathway, which I would, is so, of course, trumps down, that without this tool, I would not be able to get these stones. And these ones will definitely be caught up in the cloud. If I don't get them now, it may never be got. So again, one nil to me for saying

uses our political chow, and nil one to people saying don't. This one's deep. Oh, yeah, that's the biggest of the day. Right in the pathway, that's reminiscent of the kind of stones that were, you were just picking up by the handful, and I started walking across this part of the field.

I'll drop one, but I know it's gone. That's a stone. And another. That's the biggest of the day now. Two very big ones just picked out of the pathway. Thanks to my archaeological chow. Can't see anyone around. Of course, the danger is here.

We're walking across the field. I do have an arm full of stones. I will have to drop them if I see a person coming, and all this work could be for nothing. But I want you to be here, and just see how much can be got just by going to those areas that you thought were inaccessible.

Now, here's a big one. Or is it two? Maybe it's two. Together, but yes, it's two. Together they make a big one. And yeah, my arms are laden now. This really is like the old days, and I've dropped another one.

Looking around for, oh, another beauty. And that's a nice bit of flint, with a bit of black on the back. Yeah, I'm getting to the stage now where I am going to be dropping stones regularly if I try to take any more so. Help me back. Not saying I'm the terminator,

that's for other people to say. Oh, and there's someone on a horse. Clever. Someone on a horse in the pathway there who could just about make out what I'm doing if there were to glance this way, which of course they will. Herring's mound being approached now.

Not named by me, named by some mysterious stranger. And going to get a few more, oh, and there's a, doesn't even look like a dog walk, because it's just a man walking along the side of the path there. This is a dangerous situation.

I mean, that's suspicious, a man walking around a field on his own. I'm going to have to, I'm going to go a different way, and he's turned back on himself. I mean, that's super suspicious. So you can hear these stones going in, onto the pile,

and actually just trying to create a wall situation here. And there's a couple of big ones which will really help extend the wall. Yeah, you can just count from the clicks how far that was. I'm just going to go around the corner again. A very, a man behaving very suspiciously. So I'm going to go a different way

than I was planning, and maybe so we can get up to the stone pole, becoming the other opposite way to usual. They're picking a few stones out in the pathway, so that's going to use these in the main pole, stone pole throw. I know many of you enjoy. British podcast awards were announced.

Oh, interesting. There's a few big stones have fallen through a gap there. Big podcast awards were announced today, and how surprise, surprise, no mention of stone clearing with Richard Herring. I don't know. There's not even a stone clearing category, which in this day and age,

I think shows how out of touch the people who run that podcast are. You can go to their website and vote for a podcast that used your listener's choice. Not saying you should do that, but I am saying that this is a travesty that should be overturned by people voting for me. So I guess I am saying you should be doing it.

In the distance, a child chatting, perhaps in joy, perhaps something terrible is happening over on the estate there. No one knows. No one knows. It's probably someone in the playground, which is just over yonder. So do you remember?

Well, that's for dot-co-dot-uk slash kickstart there. If you want to own one of these stone clearing t-shirts and see the stone clearing documentary, you'll get to see, let's say, you get to see that Emma Sneaker tournament that won't be available anywhere else. If you want to see the field, get some more clues as to where I might be.

There's voices of children all around. It's hard for me to work at. It's slightly scary in that way that children are a bit scary in horror films. It's not actually coming from either the playground or the estate. It's coming from a place where children shouldn't be over by my wall that I'm not visiting today.

I'm going to try and hit the maypole, the stone pole, or that one's much too high. It sounded like it hit it. That was the fence right behind it. Oh, but second time's a charm. Let's see if I can do it more than once. Yeah, twice. I mean, it's quite easy.

Three times. Three out of five and one also hit a pole. And I will be crouching, I believe. I hope to do a clue into the field there. I'm not going to go investigate too much. Leave it to herself. So while she does that too much reading grass, I'll do a couple more.

Oh, hit the wrong pole. Hit the wrong pole. So three out of seven. Not as good as it was before. Can you finish over there, little girl? We haven't made it to the center pole. We'll wind our way back the way we came there. I mean, you've got a little bit of extra time

just because of my suspicions about being followed. I did cross there. You've heard me exclaim just as there was like a, some big stones. I don't think we're all mine. It looked like they've been blocking up a rabbit hole in some kind. I mean, am I a man?

Can you hear those kids shouting as always? It's just me. I mean, this is spooky. Maybe this is why I don't come out this time. Maybe this is when the midwitch cuckoos come out onto the field. I mean, hundreds of children walking towards me right now would be a terrifying thing even in daylight.

So I'm hoping that does not happen. But if it does, at least we'll have it recorded. But the police, the police are in with all this lot. They'll be firing up the wicker man. I'm the outsider here. So again, getting a few good stones out of this very solid path, which is partly solid because of the stones in it. But the stones, it doesn't matter if they're being used

for a purpose or not. They must be gone. They must go. Let's see what this one's like here. Not as big as I hoped. Some nice ones coming in. Let's see if we can find this burrow and fill this up again. A few of the stones have rolled through to the other side.

You look like the work of someone. I don't think it was me. It might have been me. The second thing I like to do is block up animal holes with stones and ruin their lives because they're biological and have no value to me. There's a little can there that I'll just chuck one on. Where's it gone?

I mean, maybe I imagined this whole thing. There's a dreamlike quality to today's ramble. Yeah, I can't see it now. Oh, is this it? Yeah, here it is. So yeah, some nice big stones. And a lot of them have fallen through to the other side. I don't think I could have done that.

Maybe I did and I've forgotten. I mean, these are proper massive stones. And most of them are now inaccessible. These should be on the main can. In fact, I'm taking a couple of them to put on the main can. Because something has gone awry there. And these are the kind of sizes that we're really talking about. These are double-traveled four times as big as the biggest potato you have ever seen.

Which isn't necessarily the biggest potato in the world, but the ones that you've ever had. You know, when you've got an unusually big potato in a pack, and you're like, oh, look at that. It's four times bigger than that one there. You're talking about there. It's extended things out a little bit. That guy, that suspicious man now, realising,

he's been made, has disappeared into the night, or the early evening. How can you hear those voices? I can see a child there. Oh, they're riding across the field on bicycles, but in the wrong direction. There's with an adult with a dog, two children on bicycles. The lengths these people will go to to try and find me

is somewhat worrying, I have to say, to bringing children into this. I don't know. There are no rules to stone clearing. The third rule of stone clearing is you have to be six things to stone clear. You have to be 20 to try and track down and kill a stone clear. That's just my personal ethics. You may disagree. So again, picking up a few nice path stones here on my route down.

Some of you will not approve of the path stones being taken. Some of you will not approve of me taking them with the trowel. I mean, fuck off, it's my podcast. You do your own stone clearing podcast, and that's not a thing, I'm not trying to get more people doing stone clearing podcasts, so the next year there will have to be a category which I will win. I'm just doing it because, again, I'm fed up with you telling me what I can and can't do with my own thing I've made up.

There's no rules. Rule one, there are no rules to stone clearing. How many times do I have to say it? Say it three times in this podcast. Yeah, still you don't listen and go away, you do now. This bit very overgrown. I'm trying to look for my nests, and I'm not seeing much of something. Now I'll just chuck one of the bigger stones towards that.

Bounce me to the left of it anyway. Got two nice stones here that are going into. We need two big stones to offer to the ditch god, because, well, you know, this Brexit hasn't happened yet, which, again, would be a bit of a coincidence if it wasn't every single time I say Brexit won't happen, and then I throw a stone in and Brexit doesn't happen. It's a bit, you'd have to be, you know, dumb, I think, to think that this isn't so interconnected.

But anyway, this ditch is nearly all nettles. It's hard to see where the ditch is. Someone's playing tennis there, again, an excellent subterfuge. Through the bushes, I can't really see. And there we go. Yeah, I managed to locate the rest of the stones just by sound there. I mean, do you really want 25 more of these this year? I mean, that's not even including this one.

We're only going to start from 25 from where... Oh, lovely big one coming out of the path there. We're only going to start from when the kickstarter is done. But if you want to guarantee those 25, do go to the kickstarter. But to be honest, you know, I'm going to do it anyway, aren't I? There's no way I'm stopping this. I think one person has agreed to sponsor the podcast, this podcast. So that means there's 24 opportunities to get your name at the beginning

and the end of the podcast, which I would be excited about if I was you. Oh, and the guy, fuck, looking right at me, cleverly coming out of his garden. He just looked straight at me with my three stones in my hand. This could be the end game. Of course, if I am killed by any angry villager, I will extract my one and a half year old son to carry on with the stone clearing so that you will get those 25 extra podcasts this year. So to be honest, it might be, you can say bubbles, you can say a few things, keys.

My daughter could maybe do it. She's had a bit more vocabulary. And she does like collecting stones. I'm proud to say I've never told you about this, obviously, what I'm doing. But she does come back, she came back from school the other day with a pocket full of stones that she's been collecting on her way home. They had to tip them out. There's about 30 or 40 of them in there.

She's got a little rock garden in the garden. So it's in the DNA this. It's kind of weird that she would do that her own volition, a child. It's not something you think a child do, just collect up stones. And if they're valuable, that's something a grown man would do to understand the value of stones. Or a woman. I'm not sexist.

I know there's a lot of sexism in the past in stone clearing. But not so much from the stone clearers themselves where they just saw each other as animals rather than even gender. They didn't really recognise gender amongst the stone clearers themselves. I understand. So they were very progressive in that way. But there was a lot of people that felt women shouldn't be doing this at all. Men.

But sexist still. So coming down to, yeah. So it's weird that my daughter's into stones. No. Makes you think, makes you think you are not made of stone clear. Stone clear is born. My friends. So it's bin day tomorrow.

So I might just put the bins out. Just to end the podcast. You know, just again to show some people don't like the stone stuff so much. So it's nice to give them dog and bin based bits just to help them through. You know, they've tuned into this thought, I've got to listen. Don't really like stones or stone clearing. It's nice to give them something. They might not. Bins are very interesting.

And I would like to do a bin podcast really. I've got a lot to say about bin. So I'll just get the dog in the house. So maybe it's for another day. It's starting to rain. So luckily we've got back just in time. Wolfie. You've been a good girl today.

From jumping around an inn. So let's just take the recycling week this week. So that's the recycling bin. Goes out though. I might return to tell them to write some stuff from the office. And the food bin goes out every week. Of course, quite laden down the food this week. Might be able to squeeze it one more bag in there tomorrow.

Need to be. Well, I don't think I'll put the paper down. There's no lid on the paper bin. So I might just bring the paper in. The paper bin out of the cupboard. And we keep it and then we get some paper in it tomorrow. I think it's the paper bin there. So that's the three different bins.

Non-food, non-recycle rubbish, of course. Goes out next week. So thank you for listening. Hope you enjoyed the bin bit of the end there. Nice lecture for you. We'll get it in now, Wolfs. Good girl. Do keep listening.

I'll be back next week. Do you want to guarantee these podcasts? I mean, the Snooper podcast, which is less reliable. And of course, they're filmed. Well, that's the first. Third would be third in any one's choice, I think. To visit that Kickstarter page. I've given the address out enough time, I think.

Hang in the old place. I'm going to give the little doggy a bone. It's not literally. It will be satay of. What I go for is Mech's menu chicken and lamb with rice. I know he's a junior and technically a baking wolf. He's an adult dog now. So this will be the last few days he's this stuff.

Or do we run to adults? I hope you found this interesting. And don't worry, we'll start hearing. I'll see you again next time. Just don't worry in which they're in. Good audience. Thanks for listening. Sleep well if you're using this to sleep.

Turn this on for me. Stoneclawing with Rich Turing. Me and Rich Turing on Wolfie the Dog. Also featuring that weird man in the distance who kept going back and forth and nearly caught me. And two kids on a bicycle. Scary stuff. Thank you to Mike Cosgrove for composing this music. Thanks to The Voice of the Photones.

My call for heen. Head to brahullisper.co.uk Your name and these credits are at the beginning of this podcast in the future. Bye.