I’m enjoying a wholesome breakfast here at the dig house of coffee, paracetamol and Buckingham Palace mint chocolates. I managed to sleep for almost ten hours, waking to find I’d only managed to put half my pyjamas on, and that half was inside out. The British ambassador to Turkey has come to stay and oh my, he can drink. He arrived on Thursday and brought one car (armoured landrover) full of body guards and another car full of alcohol. It took all of us to carry it in – fifty cans of export larger, twenty-four bottles of French wine, two bottles of Johnny Walker Red, twelve litres of Gordon’s London Dry Gin and thirty-six litres of tonic water. It’s good to know you can rely on Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service for this sort of thing. The dig director expressed his doubts that we could drink it all in the remaining week, but you never know what you can achieve until you try. I think I might have sorted out the gin surplus last night.

The ambassador had the site tour yesterday, prompting the entire local military police force to turn out with their M-16s, making the short walk to the loo highly intimidating and none too private. I brushed up my last remaining dead person and persuaded my workmen to stop playing Rihanna on their mobile phones. Sir David did a very good job of appearing to be interested in my mudbrick walls but I supposed that’s why the diplomatic service pays him the big bucks. He wished me luck in working out what’s going on (my trench is a bit complicated at the moment) and asked me why I have an enormous lump on my head.

I have an enormous lump on my head because a big wooden pole fell on my face on Wednesday. I was having a little power nap in the site tent during tea break when the wind got under the canvas and knocked the tent pole down, the end of which landed smack on my forehead. As ways of getting woken up go, it’s easily in the same league as when I fell asleep with my phone under my ear last week, or the time my mum told me to put my life jacket on because the ship was sinking. “Are you all right?” asked D in a shocked voice. “No” I said, trying to sort truth from fiction and sleepiness from mild concussion, “I’m not sure, but I think something just hit me on the head.” One more failure in my efforts to get through an excavation season without a major head injury.