OK, so I’ve been mistaken for a priest, and like a fool I went along with it –and now of course, it’s too late to back out. In a way I’m not too worried:

First, I may not be here that long – I almost expect to be sent somewhere else within a month or so.

Second, I think I can fool them – my Dad was a clergyman, which isn’t the same, I realise as being a priest here, but I have some idea of how to comport myself in a priestly way, and some idea about worship – even if I don’t actually believe any of it myself.

I’m not sure of the date (the locals here wouldn’t have any concept, I don’t think – and how do you bring it up, anyway?) but I assume we’re in the 10^th – 12^th centuries (but that’s a wild guess) – anyway, before the Reformation, so this is a Roman Catholic church, and everything is in Latin. That plays to my advantage, because I can say things in church which the locals won’t understand. I have to be a bit careful, obviously, because even if they don’t speak Latin, some words would be familiar. That’s where the internet has been so useful, as I’ve managed to get Latin services there. There aren’t any books here – not even a Bible – but fortunately I’ve got the wristpad, so I’ve just downloaded the words I need, and scroll through them as the service progresses. Well, it’s worked OK so far.

My major concern, obviously, is meeting another priest, or even a member of the nobility, who’ll know what I’m saying, and will, I suspect, see through me pretty fast. I suspect that imitating a priest – particularly leading eucharists – is probably heresy. And they burn heretics here, don’t they?

Still, at the moment I’ve got a roof over my head, and food in my belly (it’s staying down now, fortunately) so I’m just going to keep going as I am, at least until I get a better plan.

I haven’t been able to write anything here for a while because I’ve been ill – terrible stomach pains, vomiting etc. I think it was probably food poisoning. Things were OK while I was in the wilds, cooking for myself. Since I’ve been here though, I’ve been having to eat with the villagers – or eat the food they bring me – and their standards of hygiene just aren’t up to 21^st-century standards. But why should they be? They’ve never heard of bacterium.

Anyway, I’m feeling a little bit better now, and hopefully my system will get used to the bugs. At least I can boil my water before I drink it, and try to ensure anything I eat is cooked right through.

I’m still weak, and very tired, so I’m not going to try writing for too long. I thought I ought to explain what my position here is. Samuel, who is the verger, or churchwarden, or whatever the title is (he’s never actually said it, and assumes I know) had taken one look at me, and my obviously different clothing, and had assumed I was the new priest. By the time I realised what had happened, it was a bit late to try to track back and explain.

Anyway, it means I’ve got a house, and some respect here, and people excuse my strange accent and the problems I have understanding what they’re saying, because they assume I’m a foreigner. Oh yes, and they feed me too.

I’ll explain what I’m doing about trying to fulfil a priestly role when I next get the energy to write.

I’m sorry I haven’t been able to get back to finish off my last posting for a while, but writing with a wristpad is time-consuming and tiring, particularly when you’re trying to transcribe a conversation at the same time. In fact, I’ve decided not to write down the conversation verbatim, as most of it is still unintelligible to me. I could try to put down phonetically what I think I heard, but it won’t make any sense, so instead, here’s the gist of what went on:

The chap coming to meet me (I’ve now found he’s called Samuel) greeted me in what was clearly English, but with a very strong accent, and some words are so strange that I just can’t make sense of them at all. It may be the accent, or it may be that these are just words that don’t appear in modern English.

Anyway, it was obvious that he was saying hello, so I said ‘hello’ back. He stopped, and took a good look at me – mind you, I was doing the same to him. Clearly, my accent marks me out as a stranger, as indeed, does my clothing – army fatigues, even after having been worn continuously for several weeks, are obviously of a completely different order of quality to what he was wearing, and a type of material I guess he’d never seen (probably no-one on this planet will have come across synthetic fibres).

If this is, as I suspect, a feudal society, then I obviously have class. And although I haven’t been able to have a bath for some time, he looked (and smelt) as if he’d never seen a bath in his entire life, so hygiene wasn’t a problem.

He spoke at length. I got very little, but consoled myself that at least I was recording him. I did reply to what I could understand, and also asked him to speak slower, for what it was worth.

One phrase I did manage to get pretty clearly was, “You’ll be from Nople then?” I still have no idea who Nople is, but as it seemed clear at the time that he was sure that’s who’d sent me there, I did agree. It seemed to satisfy him, anyway.

He took me into the church, and showed me round, obviously expecting me to be interested. I tried to look and sound intelligent – fortunately having done an archaeology course, and having a father who’s a clergyman (even if not a priest in this sort of church) being in a medieval building like this didn’t throw me too much.

On replaying our conversation later, he was obviously a caretaker (verger?) for the church, and he wanted to point out all the important features of the building, including all the minutiae, even down to the cupboard where the candles were stored.

He then took me outside, to a small house behind the church itself, and showed me in. After a short monologue, of which I understood not a single word, he left me there. Playing back his words, I finally realised that he had been telling me this was my house. Clearly there has been some confusion here. He was obviously expecting someone, sent by this chap Nople, and thought I was his man. Oh well, I thought, at least I’d got a roof over my head.

Things became a little more clear the next morning – but I think that will have to wait until I can find time to do some more typing. My life is a little busy at the moment, what with the work I’m expected to do, and the research I’m doing on the internet, trying to work out how to do it. More next time.

Well, it’s happened again. At first, I wasn’t sure. I woke up in a heavily forested area, but my shelter was missing. When I got to the top of a slight hill, and climbed a tree, I found the terrain was similar to where I’d been, but slightly flatter. I wonder if the ‘wormhole’ on every version of Earth still goes between the location of the sites of the camp in rural Norfolk and Mercury House, and I’m bouncing back and forwards between the two ends – possibly because the team are still sending.

Anyway, the other thing I could see from the tree was smoke, rising from several different points, which told me, if I hadn’t already guessed, that I was on yet another version of Earth. I took a bearing on the closest column of smoke, and set out to investigate.

After about a mile, I came across a track, heading roughly in the direction I wanted. It was certainly going to be easier taking it than forcing my way through virgin forest, and it was presumably going towards human habitation, so it took to the track.

Eventually I came to a clearing, on top of a bluff, overlooking a river, and there was a small church. I’m looking at it now: it’s mainly built of flints, but with some other stone making up the corners and doorway. It has a round tower – someone told me once that there are several like this in Norfolk – their argument was that you can’t make corners with flint, the local building material, so they made their towers round. That makes some sense, until you realise that the rest of the church has square corners – by using stone blocks. So if the builders wanted to make the tower square they could have. To me it feels more like a defensive feature – good all-round observation, and firing slits to cover the approaches. Not that the current building would be much use, defensively, with the large side windows, but they are in aisles which I think are later. The original nave is quite narrow, and I just have the feel this place was built partly with defence in mind.

But I’m not trying to write an archaeological/architectural report. This is a sit rep, so, back to what happened a couple of days ago:

Before I reached the church, a man came out of it. He was dressed in fairly coarse woollen garments – a brown tunic-type top, and green trousers/leggings. Clearly I wasn’t back to the 21st Century – unless he was taking part in a medieval reconstruction.

The voice recorder function of my wristpad is still working, so I activated it – which means that I have a verbatim record of our conversation – which is a good thing, as I didn’t understand much of it at the time, and still don’t get most of it. He was speaking English though, albeit with a very strong accent – not unlike a modern Norfolk brogue.

The light’s fading now, and it’s quite hard work typing at length on a wristpad, so I’m going to shut down now, but will try to post again soon.

This, by the way, is a picture I took of the church yesterday.