This year I am working night shifts on a full-time basis and take any chance to get out in the sun on days off. Saturday was a favourite walk again to the site of the Roman town of Calleva, near Silchester in Hampshire. I found myself at sunset looking into the field where the forum/basilica once stood. Foundations of the town’s nicely ordered buildings are buried beneath the soil only to be exposed every so often when there is (enough funding for) a dig. In a way the absence of any trace of the vanished civilisation above the ground here is as striking as the fabulous Roman ruins which dot Rome or Arles.