I didn’t think I’d find a TV series about ‘Detectorists’ all that interesting. Billed as a comedy, I wasn’t sure where the laughs would come from watching two blokes in a field with metal detectors. But then these two blokes were Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones. Also written and directed by Crook, the series was always going to be not just funny but poignant too. Lou and I enjoyed it very much.
Perhaps we had other motivation to watch the series. Just this summer we had bought Finlay a metal detector for his birthday. We thought it was a fun activity for us all to do together and with so much land to detect on it seemed a good idea. Although, during the height of summer, the land was so hard we could not dig it up! Now it has softened, we can begin to hunt for treasure.
Another motivation is that Lou and I miss one particular thing about the UK and that is a charity shop. They aren’t very common in Portugal. As we walked along Scarborough high street we could never resist popping into a charity shop. “Shall we see if we can find some treasure today?!” I would ask.
That treasure would be an old book that smells like, well, an old book. Or a board game that would bring back memories of family holidays. Or a lamp that would remind us of it sitting in our grandparents house in the 80’s. Or a tea set from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, a particular favourite of Lou’s. A couple of big boxes came over on pallets full of tea sets. They all survived the trip.
Of course, we never expected to find a book or indeed a tea set intact on our land. Maybe an old farming tool. But Finlay had grand ideas of finding a pot of gold. What we found was three rusty nails all located in different areas. The buzz of the machine detecting metal is quite exhilarating, even if it was just a rusty old nail. What have they been used for and when? I like to imagine their journey to when we found them. But for Finlay, as happy as he was to have found something, it wasn’t the pot of gold that he was hoping for. It got me thinking.
We could try to seek our treasure for the rest of our lives and keep finding little more than a few rusty nails. But what did finding those nails do for us? Well, it brought us together to work as a team. A detectorist and a digger. We all took it in turns. We were in nature. During our adventure we found wild boar footprints, beautiful butterflies and dragonflies and new wild flowers appearing. We were tired. A few hours walking and digging is great exercise. And it got the boys off of computer games. Something the modern parent often has to battle against.
Finlay didn’t find gold, but he and the rest of us found a golden opportunity with much more wealth than any coins could ever give us. It gave us a moment together to witness all of this. And if a rusty nail is all that we ever find in the soil, I know that we’ll be discovering so much more about life together whilst we do it.
Never Give Up PT 