The bones of a quilting bee

Continuing instalments in my quilting life, which carries on through thick and thin as it weaves its way around work,reading, blogging etc. I nipped out to my now regular monthly quilting bee with my good friend Ann yesterday afternoon. The idea is that we stitch while we talk books, then we stop for a pot of tea and cake and then we stitch and talk books some more.It's that pure stream of consciousness multi-tasking chat that I love, one thread leads to another and before long we're debating anything and everything.
Ann and her husband have had a tough year and Ann is living proof that quilting is therapy, there was a point in the year when she couldn't concentrate to read but she could quilt, and by crikey she did.She puts me to shame with her output and is quite an amazing person anyway.
Ann is a consultant anthropologist, palaeopathologist and osteo-archaeologist, most of which I can hardly spell,and to be honest, I don't have many of them in my address book.She did definitive research on the remains of the sailor's bones found on board the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's flagship and raised from the Solent all those years ago.Her doctoral research made some exciting discoveries about the manpower on board the ship; discoveries that could only be made from the bones.I've picked her brains on it all and it's fascinating. I also love her take on books that we may both have read, we each bring something very different to them especially if it's a crime novel and there's a buried body involved or historical fiction about which she is a fastidious critic.Veracity is all and she spots discrepancies a mile away that would pass me by unnoticed.
I remember the day the Mary Rose was raised back in 1982 so well, we watched it live on the tele ALL DAY. What was so gripping? Well nothing to look at really as these slimey, blackened timbers inched their way out of the water and remember that heart-stopping moment when it all did a great big lurch and nearly sank back to the bottom and the nation gasped as of one?
It was pure history visibly revealed before our eyes and it had been heralded as something hugely important which it was for Ann because of course she wrote a book about it.