Petersfield project wins national award

The rising pile of litter is clearly visible behind the skatepark fence

Petersfield’s skatepark has entered the record books within six months of opening – for the amount of litter it has generated.

Officials from the Government’s Department of Really Untidy Places have confirmed the amount of litter produced in the last six months has topped that of the previous record holder Trafalgar Square.

The announcement came after Tony Robinson’s Time Team crew was called in to Love Lane on Sunday to excavate Petersfield Town Football Club’s stadium from under an increasing pile of fast-food containers, drinks cartons, lycra shirts and Marvel comics, in time for one of the club’s biggest annual events.

A spokesman for Petersfield Town Council said: “We are delighted the skatepark has received official recognition and this is testament to the effort we put in to ensuring the project went ahead despite opposition from NIMBYs, for whom this latest accolade must be a real blow.

“This is only the second occasion the Time Team programme has visited Petersfield and it helps to put the town on the map. The subsequent spin-offs are good for the town too.

“The number of seagulls circling overhead enables visiting skateboarders to find the skate park easily, plus we are able to employ another 16 refuse collectors on a permanent basis for the Love Lane recreation field alone.

“What’s more, once Tony Robinson and his team had rediscovered the town’s football club underneath the detritus they also found Shergar and Lord Lucan. The town’s museum will benefit exponentially.”

A spokesman for the town’s football club, who had been reported missing for six days underneath the burgeoning morass, emerged to say: “We share the council’s delight at this award. It has really helped put us on the map.

"The young people visiting are always leaving fast-food containers or losing their expensive trainers, while the 30-somethings who use the site lose their dignity and a large amount of unkempt facial hair.

“The combination of all these things is second-to-none and the council should be congratulated for having the initiative to hide one of the resident waste-paper bins around the corner out-of-sight. It only encourages the visitors to dump more on the ground when the main bin is full. Absolute genius!”

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Rare Roman parking tablets, left, and Upforanorgy, still looking for that perfect bone.

  

Excavations at the Ill Intent have resulted in extraordinary and groundbreaking finds that have excited Petersfield's incredibly popular archaeologist Claudia Upforanorgy.

She said: "If you recall, last week I predicted that there was a good chance that the Roman settlement that was here nearly two thousand years ago, reflected the current usage of the site. What we have found is astonishing.

"We didn't find teeth bleaching products that vain Romans might have used in an expensive dentist, nor did we find urns that would have contained ale and wine. If that sounds disappointing, what we found far surpassed those hopes and our wildest imagination. We found Roman parking tablets!"

These incredible artefacts have not been found anywhere in the world let alone at a British outpost.

The five parking tablets are in fantastic condition and clearly show an extortionate parking fine of one million Dinar.

"This really is like the Holy Grail," declared Upforanorgy. "Equally remarkable is the slightly less decipherable but still fairly clear small print on the back.

 You wouldn't want to fight this fine.

  

"So not only did the Romans give us straight roads and metalled surfaces, they also introduced the notion of unfeasibly high parking fines, with enforcement. This is a defining moment in Roman excavation.

"This has been such a fantastic weekend, surpassing my wildest dreams. The Time Team boys have been fantastic with some of the real men helping me out with a dig of my own. My legs are going weak again at the thought of it."

The landlord of the Ill Intent, Phil Harup was quick to offer his opinion.

"Lovely carpets," he said. "But boy can those Time Team buggers drink. Also that Claudia whatserface managed to break one of our beds. Idiot.”

Ill Intent has Roman holiday

Baldrick getting dirty in one of Carenza's holes

Petersfield's Ill Intent pub is closed on Monday and Tuesday to facilitate investigation into the Roman remains that were inadvertantly uncovered in College Street almost a year ago.

Newswire exclusively brought you this story back in February 2010 when the road started to decay and Roman tesserae were exposed.

News of the find reached Channel 4's Time Team and now Baldrick is in town to establish what historical remains exist beneath the pub.

Claudia Upforanorgy, Petersfield's very popular historian, told Newswire: "This is really exciting stuff. These days, any discovery of Roman architectural remains tend to be in remote locations, taking the form of small settlements and farms; this has the potential to be far more significant.

"The tesserae uncovered last year were of high quality and we expect any foundations to be in line with that evidence."

We asked the landlord of the Ill Intent what he thought of the disruption.

"We don't mind" he told us. "We get our pub on the telly, you can't buy advertising like that. We also get new carpets throughout which will more than compensate for a couple of days lost trade.

"We simply have to cross our fingers that they don't find anything really significant that means we have to close down."

We asked Upforanorgy if she had any theories regarding the site.

"Well yes", she told us. "Often the types of building that exist in an area don't vary much over the millenia. Whatever suited this environment two thousand years ago may well have been the same as exist here today".

We asked her to be a little more specific, did she mean a town?

"I'd be bolder than that," she boasted. "I'd be prepared to predict that we might uncover the remains of an inn, an exclusive and expensive dental practice, and if we are really lucky the remains of a neglected building with a chariot park that charged perhaps as much as 2,000,000 Dinar per day."