hellogreenergrass

[hellogreenergrass]

People vs Place

Im in the process of reading two books, almost simultaneously. The one counters the other you see and I would veer into one side of my personality too much if I didn’t balance the books out. Become too much about “people” or too much about the wilds, the “place”. The first book is Homo Deus by Yuval Harari, a book about human civilisation, about us as this collective machine churning forward under the bleating mantra of “progress”. It talks less about the great achievements we have made, and more about the path of destruction each civilisation has left in its wake, from the Sumerians, to the Mayans, and the Easter Island folk. Of course the Easter Island folk. He is gearing us up to ask where will be tomorrow, as a civilisation. What is our end game? We roll relentlessly ‘forward’, all the time watching the ball rather than the game. And could that ever have been more true than right now, with our civilisation on the brink of… something. It could be one of many things: civil war as politics polarises our every opinion; nuclear war as two fat man-children wave their warhead-willies at each other; or an almighty natural disaster, as floods and winds, seas and sun batter our wildly short-sighted urban habitats. I dunno, it just feels like something is going to happen. Safe to say, the book whilst a must read, is really fucking depressing. And the weight of it is bearing on me. I said to Kristian last night that I used to only read novels and books less about people but more about place, or at most books by people who just walked around places (see Fiona Campbell in Africa for another good read, she used to bonk Ray Mears and he appears in a bush in the book!). But now I read politics day and night. I no longer subscribe to BBC Wildlife or National Geographic, but to the Washington Post and The Economist. I no longer live on the edge of a forest or the sea or a moor, but in a city. Granted, I found a tiny oasis of park and lake and live on the edge of that instead. But on one side where I have ducks, grebes, herons, owls, foxes and every native deciduous tree that can grow here, on the other I have a busy road churning with city traffic, airplanes overhead, sirens in the distance, litter instead of leaves. My flat could not be more of a metaphor for my life if I had planned it! Torn between my ambitions that keep me in cities and my desire to roam and live a wilder life. To make the metaphor more reflective, the “city side” has a hospital - hidden by trees – that houses a mental ward. On nice days people come outside and in between the rush of cars you hear the screaming and manic shrieking of the unwell…

So the other book is probably the main reason I am so tetchy right now. Its hit a nerve that has made me realise all of the above. Its called the Outrun by Amy Liptrot, an Orcadian who like others, left the Islands and moved South to London of all places. In London she found she constantly searched for the horizon and never found it, looking for ‘the edge’ of things all the time. I get that – Its been a decade since I left Cornwall and I still find myself doing it. Whilst South she developed a problem with drink and after a years of abuse has returned to the Orkneys to get better. She has moved out to Papay where she is holed up in an RSPB property (she was a “corncrake wife”) called Rose Cottage, and is documenting her recovery and inner revelations whilst talking us through everything about the island life: The seals, the skies, the ‘merry dancers’. All the while she is tuning into the tide and moon cycles, the stars, the weather. And I realised how detached I am from them here. We don’t get much weather in Birmingham, which is weird for me. I grew up on the Cornish coast, I’ve never lived somewhere so stable. If civilisation pacifies you into insignificance through the weight of our population size and the rituals of consumerism, then cities are the final nail in the lid, pacifying you from your very nature. Detaching you from the cycles of the world. Infrastructure making tides and weather and seasons irrelevant. Kristian and I grow stuff, keeping a tenuous thread of attachment to the cycles going. I’m about to clear out the aphid infested purple sprouting broccoli and plant the Autumn stocks for next Spring: Garlic and some Spring onions I think. We’ve had our first crop of apples on the trees I bought Krisitan for his birthday last year, and we recently slept overnight in the forest at Cannock Chase so we could fill as many tubs as the daylight would allow with blackberries. Little threads.

I wonder if I am homesick, but I don’t really have a home so don’t really know if that is it. Cornwall is kind of home, but I cant really go back for any length whilst my dad still exists there. Scandinavia is a close second, but the language barrier jars on me. Makes the place too much about the people all over again. I think about Scotland as an in-between, but don’t know what I would do for work up there. I do like the choice of communities in Birmingham though. I like cycling through the park and seeing the Asian guy doing tai-chi every morning in the bandstand, the catholic nuns basking in the sun on the benches, the burka clad women running in circuits with their white Nikes flashing out from under their black skirts. The three Sikh guys that stroll out together in deep conversation, turbans bowed into one another as they walk. The military fitness club, the yummy-mummies, the hooded lads draped over bikes and benches as they huddle over a smart phone. And then I remember how pointless it all is. How we are just little specks in a machine of civilisation. I don’t know them, they don’t know me. And if one of us ‘went’ tomorrow, it wouldn’t really matter. Nothing would change. I don’t really believe that the “butterfly flaps its wings” metaphor is applicable to humans. We are too many.

And that’s kind of where I have got myself too. I wonder if that’s the reason most people feel the need to be away somewhere remote: so that you are surrounded by fewer people in order to be more significant. On Signy, in Antarctica, our footsteps in the moss would last years. Here, on the tarmac, I leave none.

I wonder where my place is. So yeah. That old chestnut! 

[hellogreenergrass]

WEEK ELEVEN PHOTOS - Featuring: NEW PEOPLE NEW PEOPLE NEW PEOPLE!!....and the usual seals, penguins, stunning views and magical bergs....yaddah yaddah yaddah....

[hellogreenergrass]

Signy Island - Week Eleven

20th Feb

“ Suuuuummertiiiiime, and the weather is snoooooowwwwweeeeey”

Just saw two skuas take out a snow petrel and then tear it apart on the beach. Annoyingly they caught it just out of my sight behind the base building. As I ran around they were knocking it into the sea. Was awesome!

I’d been up on Bernsten Point after dinner to look at the large berg that I’d seen earlier whilst working up on the backslope. It had huge arches and had been blown in even closer over the last few hours by the super strong Southerly winds that have just turned on us, bringing snow and that kind of excited fizziness that you get when it’s really, really windy. When I saw the berg earlier it was largely whole, but obviously beginning to fracture with the high waves. Now, 8 hours later, it is falling apart in spectacular style. A tower of ice has split from its western flank and floated north in a crumble of icy debris and baby bergs. Just awesome. It must be several stories high. I photographed it every way I could. I wish I could explain or capture these icebergs the way they deserve, but I really don’t think I can. They are simply sublime. And not in the way that we use the word to describe a good dessert, the proper 19th Century way of the Romantics. Look it up. No, I’ll do it for you.

“ Sublime:

·         adj. 1. Of such excellence, grandeur and beauty as to inspire awe. 2 extreme or unparalleled.

·         verb. Elevate to a high degree of purity or excellence.”

21st Feb

Wrote something in the region of 20 postcards today ready to go out on the Shack. I got tired of writing some version of “Hello from Antarctica!” over and over, so started writing stupid poems and limericks instead. There was a young penguin from Signy, who lived a life very shitty…that kind of stuff. Wrote a card to David Attenborough too! Although no limerick for him. Wanted to thank him and the BBC for giving me the inspiration and drive to come here. I also gave him my email, my home address and my blog in case he’d like to get in contact and wanted a variety of options by which to do so. Here’s hoping! I’d be made up for life if he ever wrote back!

Work going well. Lots of soil sample processing ahead of me, but things are slowing down nicely. Still feel like I should be doing more, an 8 hour day seems part-time now. Doesn’t seem right having all this time to sit down and write daft poetry and fan mail of an evening!

Looks like the Shack will be arriving tomorrow early in the morning. Exciting! NEW PEOPLE!

Now, rowing…

23rd Feb

The Shack arrived. Fresh fruit and veg arrived (nom nom raw pepper). Fresh faces arrived! It has been MONTHS since I saw anyone else. And it was so so good! Matt got us all up at 6.30am to clear the jetty of seals and snow and bring all the cargo down. The ship was already moored in the bay off Bernsten Point and we could see the tender getting lowered over the side. Onboard were about 40 FIDS who had all come out of Halley, and most had been on-board for nearly a month already after the base had to close down because of Halloween Crack. The majority were summer staff, but some had been overwintering and hadn’t seen land, or much life other than humans and the odd stray Emperor penguin for nearly 18 months. Can you imagine?! They all got a chance to come ashore and stretch their legs on land and everyone was excited by the wildlife and understandably, the smallest spots of green moss and even lichens. The topography too was a highlight for them. Imagine being on a sheet of flat white ice for months or years, before coming to an island with mountains, vegetation (granted not much, but still), wildlife and liquid water!

I kept a shuttle run of tours going all morning, taking groups of 4-8 on the Bernsten Point circuit, as rib boats went back and forth from the ship to shore. Was so nice to talk to new people. So much good energy around. I did 6 tours before lunch, the final being the best with elephant, fur and even a Weddell seal, plus chinstrap and Gentoo penguins sprinkled about. The weather was still and grey but the cloud base was high, so great views all round especially as the berg with the arches was still knocking about.

After lunch a few of the FIDS remained as the ship went around the coast to do some work for us collecting old fencing (a continuation of what the Protector started back in January). We took them on a good hike up to the Khyber depot at the base of the McLeod glacier and then around to Cemetery Flats. I guided a group of friends who had overwintered at Halley together and were now heading to South America to travel for a few months, once they got to the Falklands. They were so much fun, and it made me realise how much I missed that easy silliness and banter I have with my mates back home. They also did spontaneous acro-yoga which just made my day! I loved having them here and showing them the Island.

We have Jack here now, who is going to be a general assistant on base until the end of the season. Remarkably he is also a Gordon, from Glasgow, has a ginger beard and wears Asic trainers indoors…he is also very nice. Win.

24th Feb

Membranes out on the backslope today, ready to pick up any trace of soil nutrient flux in relation to bug population. The skua esctorted me around again the whole time, following me as a slowly zigzagged my way up the hill. At one point their chick came and sat nearby too, which kind of defeated the purpose of the parent making all that fuss and perpetually squawking in my ear and threatening to peck my eyes out! I swear it does it out of spite…

Also, I broke the rower. It seems I have outgunned the bungee cord. Will take it apart tomorrow and have a look. So close to my target too!

[hellogreenergrass]

WEEK TEN PHOTOS - Featuring: Me in a hood; balding penguins and melodramatic seals, snow and ice and all things...cold and frankly whilst exciting, reasonably miserable.

[hellogreenergrass]

Signy Island - Week Ten

13th Feb

As a job, field work is unusual for many reasons, but  especially because you need to be OK with both your own company and that of others for long periods. You also need to be tolerant of a disconcerting amount of self-reflection and personal psychotherapy, self-administered without much warning, due to the amount of time you have to spend working on your own/wandering about hills. I’m quite comfortable with both my own and other peoples company, in about equal measures I’d say. That being 50% of the time I am happier on my own and 50% of the time would rather be with others. Sometimes my mood and circumstance correlate, other times less so….

Being on a small island with six people who you live and work with all day, every day (despite them being very lovely and all, I cannot stress this enough!) and cannot escape from without having to inform them of the fact via route cards, VHF radios, appropriate clothing, a designated time slot, a will, a note from your mum, and a renewed membership to your local swimming baths…is beginning to grate a little. As a consequence I’ve been a bit uncoordinated with my desire for company and moods lately. This has led to long, unwanted bouts of self-reflection on my behaviour. The horrifying conclusion being that I fear those ex-boyfriends may have been occasionally right about me!

Despite being a usually patient, kind, cheery, sing-songy type person who makes a lot of unnecessary noise in pursuit of saying and doing unnecessary silly things to make people equally as cheery – I can also be sullenly quiet and bitterly stroppy on occasion. This can be triggered by the following: headaches scaled from niggling dull throb to migranes (which I get often); people in the kitchen when Im cooking; people eating noisily, or worse noisily with their mouths open like masticating cows; too much work; too little work; the wrong tea; the right tea, but not made for me; hormones; a changing tide; the transit of Venus; a butterfly flapping its wings in China….and so forth.  I think of these phases post-hoc as my “little funks” As if they were harmless little splodges on rug that were easily cleaned up and forgotten about. Rather than them actually being a large gift from the cat quietly hidden behind the sofa, but you know it is in the room as the air is so deeply scented that it alters the very atmosphere and chokes you…

14th Feb

You know that scene in Labyrinth where David Bowie holds court with the Goblins just before he sings “Dance Magic Dance”? Well, that noise that the Goblins make, that’s the sound of the apparently hysterical petrels that I can hear outside my bedroom right now. Very peculiar.

They aren’t the only hysterical birds: Yesterday I was dive bombed three times by a screaming banshee. The Skua is back, and heavily on my case. On the third and final swooping it waited until it was level with and 50cm from my ear, before squawking loudly, causing me to leap into the air in alarm squawking my own series of expletives in return call. It then sat quietly nearby and watched me work through slitted eyes. When I moved it looked away from me and became preoccupied with its feathers, or a bit of lichen on the rock, as if they were the whole reason it was there afterall. It got bored with me shortly after and left me be. Which was actually a bit disappointing.

Lab work today kept me out of the skua’s way  – desorption of the ions from my fancy soil membranes that came in yesterday. Had to work a second late night in a row to get it done.

15th Feb

Going back to bullet points. Handwriting is overrated, archaic and beside my pen is running out.

Wrote 3000 words this morning for two new BAS articles: Signy Island Part 1 & 2.

Committee meeting stuff- arranged phone call with the British Ecological Society for next week and caught up with Athena Swan stuff

Put out 40m x 40m grid with Aqlima, up on the backslope. Sun shone. Skuas harassed me, and only me…

Snap froze 20 Alaskozetes from Cummings

BBC looking for “women experts”, but they want a 2 min long video uploaded to YouTube. Not gonna happen with our bandwidth. I sent them an email explaining and attached a picture of a cute penguin as bait.

Beat, nay smashed my rowing PB! 956 strokes in 25m. Also on 220 step runs, which with the dodgy knee and wrecked ankle combo was good going. I want to buy a rowing machine.

16th Feb

I really need a new pen. But this one matches my diary so this is an upsetting turn of events.

Good day today (co-ordinating pen woes aside), although I didn’t go anywhere. On earlies today, but woke at 6am feeling nauseous. It persisted until 6.30, so I went back to bed and woke at 9.30 feeling fine! I get this sometimes if I am overtired/underslept. Wonder what causes it? And no, buns in the oven are definitely not responsible. I’ve been on an Island in the Southern Ocean for months. Months. ITS BEEN MONTHS! :-( 

Ticked off my to-do list today. Feeling nicely on schedule. Went out to Gourlay to put out some membranes, have lunch and potter about. Beautiful weddell seal asleep there on the rocks. It was so deeply asleep I got within a meter of it. Such a lovely creature.

Rowed again, well 20 mins of running and 10 rowing. I can keep at 40 strokes p/m at weight 6 now, but am a bit tired after yesterdays effort. A good hard 20 minutes felt good though (mmmmm matron!). Made sitting at a microscope all day today feel less back breaking.

Still no news on the Shackleton. Last we heard it was due to us tomorrow, but its still en route to the Ronne Ice Shelf, so that’s not going to happen! I guess its stuck in the ice down there and won’t be here until next week at least. It will drop off a guy who will be with us until we close the base down, and take some cargo off our hands aswell. With any luck they will have some fresh fruit and veg they can share. Hopefully the Halley guys I sailed down with will be on board. Would be so great to see them!

Goblins are rioting outside again.

18th Feb

Just one month to go! Feels strange. Mixed emotions about this…

Spoke to mum tonight. Lovely to hear her: “Ello me daRRlin’!”. She is well and on top form. K went to visit her today and helped out in the garden in exchange for mum hugs and some top soil. Fair deal I reckon.

Working hours have been pretty gentle the last few days and I feel like Im slacking as a result! But 10-14 hour days are not something to be kept up. Discovered Billy Connelly and climbing videos (Hard Grit!) on the media drive, so they’ve all helped with the mundane task I’ve had today, tying little bits of string to small rectangles of ion-exchange membranes. And to think I do the more glamourous type of science apparently…

Stacey cooked up a storm for Saturday dinner: Carrot soup, gammon with all the trimmings, apple and cinnamon cake with custard. Girl did good. Then we all played the card game Presidents and Assholes. Which was excellent! Especially as I got myself to President twice. Aqlima got there three times and promptly became quite the dictator on each occasion!  

[hellogreenergrass]

WEEK NINE PHOTOS @ Waterpipe Hut - Featuring: Glaciers, icebergs, whale bones, and excessive use of HDR, more seals.

[hellogreenergrass]

WEEK NINE PHOTOS @ Foca - Featuring: Icebergs, seas, huts, feathers, pretty light, seals and more icebergs.

[hellogreenergrass]

Singy Island - Week Nine

8th Feb – The Foca Hut, West Coast of Signy

Iain and I set off at 10:30am to catch the low tide that reveals a causeway in a lagoon in front of the Orwell glacier. This allows us to route to the other side of the island without having to cross the ice cap. Which today was not visible, a sure sign that you don’t want to be up there. The wind is gusting in petulant little bursts, the gaps between them lulling you into a false sense of stability as you teeter across rock pools and stepping stones that are too far apart for your diminished leg length. We may have jumped the gun a bit with the tide, it could have been lower. And I could have ended up drier. Ive been paying with wet boots and socks all day as a result. Over the crossing we stopped at Waterpipe Hut, an in case of fog/high tide hut, changed socks and dropped off some gin supplies before heading up the Limestone Valley: a steep gorge between the mountain mass that is home to the ice cap and the radiating ridge of that gives us the peaks of Jane and Robin. The valley was more dramatic than the view from base suggests and has shielded its entrance with a short but steep snow wall that hides the valley from view as you stand beneath it.

At the top on Jane Col we dropped our bags in a small saddle of rocks and ascended the adjacent Jane Peak. Some great views back to base and around the whole East Coast. This was the highest point of the crossing and it was a steady walk down to the West Coast from here. The Foca Hut is newer and larger than Cummings, more of your typical wooden shed type hut. Its got four beds in a good sized room with separate living/cooking area and Perspex windows looking out to sea on two sides. After a break, new socks and cup of tea, I set out to finish the sampling that I had been doing all the way from the tidal crossing and put out ion-exchange membranes amongst a Giant Petrel colony up on a ridge. Im putting these out around the island to get an idea of the nutrients the different wildlife groups contribute to the terrestrial ecosystem, so that when I get the data back from the contribution of my bug, I have something local to compare it too.

Back to the hut for a freeze-dried pasta dinner, and then we headed out again for a jolly to Amos Lake a few miles away along the coast. With no work to do I got wildly distracted by everything from feathers in streams to capturing my favourite combination of Signy residents: Giant Petrels and Icebergs. The light was great, oranges and golds seeping throught he gaps in the clouds. Now in bed, wrapped in a zipless downfilled sleeping bag with another Buffalo fleece lined sleeping bag opened up to be a blanket on top, I am slowly warming up. And my feet are dry for the first time today. Im writing by candle and Tilley lamp and the wind is just loud enough to make me cosier without alarming me into thinking the roof will leave us. Walking North tomorrow before heading back to Waterpipe hut via a different route.

9th Feb – Waterpipe Hut

Good nights sleep last night. Eventually got warm, then toasty, then cosy as hell. Was a drag to leave my sleeping bag nest this morning. Iain made me tea in bed which helped though…

We got up and packed, a slack three hours after waking up. Thankfully there was no rush, but still. No Alpine starts here. The winds were reasonably high as we set off and the air was full off mizzle and clag. The ice cap was still under cloud, which was now rolling down the mountains towards us. We walked along the coast, following coves so I could sample for a mite called Alaskozetes along the way (it likes to live just up from the shore). By lunch we had got to North Point where I had some more work to do putting out membranes to assess a penguin colonies contribution to the Islands nutrient content, collecting soil cores and some more mites. I set Iain loose to roam about checking out what we could see of the view and birds. I was working in the Adelie colony I had helped count a few weeks ago, but now it was desolate. Just a few fledgling chicks around, everyone else had left. There were quite a lot of dead penguins, and happy Skuas as a result. Im not sure if this is usual, but I couldn’t take many strides before finding another carcass. Im guessing they were the remains of fledglings that couldn’t fend for themselves once their parents left for sea.

From North Point we waded, literally, across Moss Braes, sampling as we went. Moss Braes is the most intact green bit of the island, a sweep of mire enriched with peat and moss that can be meters deep. After a mile or so of filtering swamp through my socks, we started uphill to a thankfully dry and stony fellfield ramp that leads up to today’s highpoint, Spindrift Col. Once here I was back in new territory having never been down into the Paternoster and Three Lakes Valleys that take up this portion of the Island. We found debris from an old scientific or engineering installation near a lake up in a hanging valley. No idea what it was for, maybe pumping freshwater down to the hut as this was done in the area in the past, although from a different lake I thought?

Arriving at Waterpipe Hut later that afternoon, I was pleased to see that it had a proper stove for actual heat, meaning I could be warm through means other than my own metabolism for the first time in 24 hours. And could dry my socks and rather sorry looking boots. I brought my old hiking boots along to Antarctica for two reasons: 1) they’ve been my loved and comfy companions over many thousands of miles and several field seasons. They’ve been around the world and I didn’t want to leave them out of this adventure. 2) Whilst BAS provide you with perfectly good Meindl boots, these are brand new and I didn’t pick them, so didn’t want to rely on them in case they didn’t fit nicely. Which they don’t. They wilfully try to remove circulation to the majority of the parts of my feet that are most useful. Last time I wore them they did a good job of turning my toes from pink to red and then onto a lasting shade of off-white, regardless of how they were laced, or how much I shouted at them to stop it. So my trusty back up Scarpa boots have been in use more than intended. As I look at them hanging by their feathered shoelaces from the beam above the fire, splitting at several seams, no longer waterproof, oozing with patches of glue from repairs gone by, I am giving in to the fact that they need to be put into full time retirement. And maybe even sent off to the hiking trails in the sky. Or the incinerator on the Shackleton. End of an era. Now I have to battle it out with the, urgh, Meindls *spits to the side in disgust*.

We took advantage of a brightening evening and headed out to collect a few more samples from a local cove and take in the panorama of the East Coast and Coronation Island that a few small hills and knolls allowed us. This part of the Island is strewn with whale bones. Not insignificant ones either. Blue whales. Vertebrae the size of small cars, and rib bones the length of roof beams. Before science came to Signy, this was an old Norwegian whaling station, the large tidal beaches made for good places to butcher a whale it seems. Even the beach outside base has a suspicious amount of white pebbles, which on closer inspection you realise are eroded and rounded bones of whales no longer destined to roam the Southern Oceans. It’s a reminder that most of the knowledge we have of Antarctica has been built over time upon the shoulders of fisherman and whalers who knew this place long before the likes of Amundsen and Scott. Like it or not, the evidence is here in front of me. And its not pretty. Im just thankful that its science that prevails in Antarctica now, and not resource hunting.

10th Feb - Waterpipe Hut

Two big thumps this morning made me look out of the hut window suspiciously. Nope, nothing but a serene view over sea and snow-capped mountains. A larger rumble and crash 30 minutes later sent Iain out the door to investigate. The front of the Orwell glacier was collapsing in on itself. After we packed up and got back to the tidal crossing, we saw that the glacier had lost 30-40m of itself to the increasingly warm winds and sea waters that have been knocking it back year after year. This latest collapse saw the majority of the cave at the front of the glacier, disappear. Now there was new blue ice scarring the outline of what was formerly a deep river tunnel. The Orwell is an interesting glacier in that it spill over the edge of a steep cliff face in a suspended waterfall. At its steepest it is near vertical. The crevasses that form here give the impression that this wall is held on by threads of ice and would collapse at any moment, but in reality even with this level of retreat those vertical walls may take years to peel away from the cliff underneath. Ice really does move very very slowly. What a noise that would make though when it finally does go. A lot of ice to fall a long way down.

After another drenching tidal crossing, we got back to base around lunch, and I promptly took the rest of the day off, enjoying a long shower, central heating, and hanging up my boots from what may well have been their last trip out. At least it was a multi-day hike in Antarctica. Not a bad way to go! I spent the rest of the day spending too much time on photos, and as a result may well have over-edited them all. I’ll let you be the judge of that though!

[hellogreenergrass]

WEEK EIGHT PHOTOS - Featuring: Birthday colour and cake; Birthday games; Me at work in the sun (no coat!); Aqlima’s suspicion.

[hellogreenergrass]

Signy Island - Week Eight

29th January

Im out on the veranda enjoying some brief sunshine. Seeing those lenticulated clouds again. Another storm coming? I got out the lab today, just a few Km of hiking around to put out ion- exchange membranes for some soil chemistry. They were all disparately spaced at the edges of my main field site, which with my ankle in this state wasn’t helpful. But it did OK. I went slow, Iain helped.

Im watching seals. Some furries are twirling about in the water like they do. They slowly turn and spin in the sea in a gently exhalant way. I wonder if it is cleaning? There is a very young elephant seal eyeing up a much much larger one from behind a rock. It’s very cute. Big black orb eyes peering out from above the water line. The bigger one is a beautiful colour, a fawny-silver into deep grey with a velveteen texture. I’d like to hug it if it weren’t liable to crush me…

31st January

Another lab day. I swear I feel physically worse after a day at a computer or microscope than I ever have after a day in the hills. Worse still, I had the realisation yesterday that better science will come from creating even more work for myself in the lab, dissecting up midge egg sacs. They are as tiny as you think, and the task is laborious and mind numbing, but will provide good data. On the plus side, it dosent require I think too much so I can just plough through audio books: I’ve listened to Bill Bryson reading “Short History of Everything” today. All of it. I’ve had him with me for a few days now and find his voice just lovely. First I went to the US to be amongst some very missed trees for “A Walk in the Woods”, and then to Oz for some heat in “From a Sunburned Country”. Its nice to be whisked away somewhere whilst staring down a microscope for hours, nay days on end. Even when you are in Antarctica! But then, I do have the perennial affliction of always looking for greener grass…

Kristian and I had a disagreement about his new placement of the sofa back home. A trifling matter really that makes perfect sense, but I took against the idea of coming home to a house changed. And besides, there are asthetic considerations! He mentioned something about banishing throw cushions as well. I thought I could trust him in my absence not to abandon the soft furnishings to logic…

1st February

An Antarctic birthday! Quite something. And the sun is shining too, properly too. No-coat weather! I woke up to a gift from Kristian that had been stowed away by Iain, and my own personal gift to myself that had been stowed away at the back of my mouth, waiting for that special moment to come and show itself. My final remaining wisdom tooth has broken ground, and bestowed me with toothache on my 34th birthday. Evidence of one year older, another wiser perhaps. My present from K was about as good a present as I could want. A party pack: Balloons, bunting, a make your own birthday badge, a very sweet letter and also another hidden video message on my laptop. It’s perfect! We hung the decorations and embellished the balloons with pictures and messages. It was lovely. So much colour everywhere! Iain and Stacey had written a big happy birthday sign for me and made me a card, and then later after a special birthday dinner of spinach and ricotta cannelloni (to please the vegetarian in me that’s currently having to be on sabbatical), I got birthday cake too! With a massive emergency use candle in it to blow out! I have been spoilt. Im so pleased I can barely form sentences.

We spent the evening together playing several increasingly hysterical rounds of The Resistance and I cracked open the last of my St Austell brews, Korev. Went down a treat and helped ease the toothache, which meant I could eat more cake :-D

2nd Feb

Hid inside all day today. Post-cake lull. The wind arrived last night. All of it. And has shown no signs of relenting, in fact has invited its friends rain and sleet along for the day too. I think they must have been mad that they missed the party yesterday and have banished Sun for bothering to show up and make me happy.

Managed to get through 2 plots worth of soil samples over 5 hours of work this afternoon, which is ridiculous. I have dozens and dozens of plots. Im very glad I have a permit to take the soil off the island so I can finish this back in the UK. David Attenborough, “Life on Air” as company today.

On lates tonight so I took advantage of people in bed by reading news online. This is what the world appears to be talking about: MP’s voted in favour of Brexit, unsurprisingly seeing as that’s how the country also voted; Trump is still a colossal nightmare – but he is doing what he said he would do, which was be a colossal nightmare; Beyonce is having twins and announced it in her typical understated way: with her as a semi naked art installation.

New word: “Perminion” – a permanent helper, such as I need.

4th Feb

Search and rescue training today. Matt was the casualty up on Observation Bluff, with a ‘head injury and possible broken leg’. Megumu and Alex co-ordinated everything from base whilst Iain and Stacey went out in the first search for him, Aqlima and I following later with stretchers and splints. Was a good run up the hill! Vacuum mattress was a bitch to get underneath our casualty, and I fear we worsened any potential neck injury as we rolled him back and forth across rocks. I was at his head the whole time checking vitals and keeping spirits up and that, and trying to remember what it was that I learnt on that first aid course beyond how to inject oranges and that entonox is good fun. We carried him just a few meters before deciding that he was too heavy and needed to make a miraculous recovery so he could walk back down himself. Well, it was only training afterall!

I was on cook the rest of the day, did a Chinese take-out kind of meal. Rowed later on, struggling to hit my PB of 910 strokes, but not failing. If I want to reach that goal of 1000 in the next 6 weeks I need to significantly up my game!

[hellogreenergrass]

Signy Island - Week Seven

22nd Jan – Sunday

Lie ins are lush. I feel renewed. This last week Ive been firing on ½ my cylinders I think. Not sure why, but after a month of full speed, I think I needed to take my foot off the peddle. I’ve been effectively part time this week, with days out to help Stacey not counting as work. But today I will end an easy week with a flourish. I will have A WHOLE DAY OFF. No lab, no thinking of work, no field treks. Just cooking, some rowing, writing and photography. Stacey took my early this morning as she had to get up early anyway to sort out some krill samples (she does this so the rest of us dont have to endure the stench that seeps out from her lab!). I owe her bigly. Oh yes, and Donald Trump was sworn in on Friday. I feel like we are entering a dystopian novel. He was greeted by ½ million people marching in protest through Washington DC. It will be an interesting presidency. A few weeks ago, we all made wishes as we threw wood into a fire and collectively decided that we wished a rapid and ultimately dooming impeachment upon him…

I’ve been drawing most days, but on the whiteboard in the living room as well as my sketch book.  It started as a small pic of something for whoever was on earlies that day. Then Stacey asked for a woodland as she missed trees, and I drew a landscape of a birch stand next to a river that wound down from some hills in the distance. On the other side of the river stands an old oak tree with branches that reach out over a waterfall. Since then, each day I add something else at the request of whoever is on earlies. We now have bluebells and harebells, sheep, a wolf, a peacock, a monkey, highland cows, a llama, a rabbit, and a bear. Iain & Stacey drew me a small hedgehog and some butterflies last night. Looking at it one night, Matt said he’d like me to do something for the new base they are building in the next few years. He will give some thought to what. Nice to think my work would be here even if I am not!

Meowntains  - new word combining two of my loves, cats and mountains. If there is a heaven …

24th Jan

This month is flying by! Cant believe its almost February. And Im almost 34. Jeez. Have been a bit slack at writing in this lately. I put my diary in a drawer in my room and whenever I have the presence of mind to remember it, I either couldn’t be bothered or get distracted en route. So now Im making an effort over brekkie.

The last few days have largely been lab/office based. I spent Monday trying to update my field plan for the coming month and reworking some experiments. The grid plan has had a reboot, less elegant now, but also less work. I hope.  I’ve been reading the work of a chap called Smith (we don’t do first names in scientific literature!) who has been working on Marion Island in the sub-Antarctic Indian Ocean area. His work spans 30 years from a word mapped food web to today, actual raw data on the energy and nutrient flow on the island. I’d love to do something like that here on Signy. He compiled data on all the input from major wildlife contributors and how the plants use it or lose it. Where it runs off the Island or gets blown back in, and the likely fate of it in the oceans. Science like that makes me heart all a flutter!

Aqlima and I went out to look for adult midge on Monday, to no avail. Although she really enjoys looking for them as she works with essentially invisible bacteria, so bugs are massive and remarkably charismatic for her! I think the adults are finished now. Where they go to die I couldn’t tell you as I’ve stopped seeing them in my soil samples too. Add that to the bank of mysteries and unanswerable questions I am accruing this season. I’ve also started going out to collect a species of mite for Scott (my boss back in Brum). He wants to do some population genetics on them. But whilst Ive started collections, Im not sure we can amend my permit again to take them off the island. Can but ask though.

Iain and I spent a few hours out yesterday getting in the last of the soil cores. Sun shone, the wind blew and the innuendo flowed! Down at the site in the unfortunately named Gash Cove, we went down onto the rocks and stood in the sun watching the huge swell roll up a slope of glistening rock the colour of titanium and almost iridescent.  It was a slab of mica-schist, mica being the mineral that gives the glitter to eye shadow. It had been buffered smooth by the waves who slid up the slope many meters and then recoiled back to the ocean excessively exposing an area of rocks and shore rarely seen, like the draw back of a tidal wave, or the curled snarl of lip. It was hypnotic. No furries around here, which is odd. In fact numbers have dropped off again, which Im told is unusual.

Im off to Gourlay today. Day out on my todd. The sun is shining, but its still blowing a hooley. I’ll collect that mite (Alaskozetes antarcticus) and spot sample the route for my midge along the way. Have lunch at the huts out there and see the penguins, then pop down to Cemetery Flats on my way home for more samples. Just me myself and I. Should be a nice day out J

26th Jan

I twisted my ankle!! Not even a little bit, but a proper sprain with swellings and everything! I’d been to Gourlay, hiked back and collected all the samples. Then as I stood at the top of the Stonechute, the final rock and scree descent to base, I recalled Stacey’s recent tale of her twisting her ankle just meters from base whilst carrying a heavy load. It was just a 2cm drop off a rock, but put her off her feet for weeks. I pondered this as I heaved my loaded rucksack on, weighed down by kilos of soil samples, decided not to withdraw my second walking pole and dove down the chute. Despite being just a few hundred meters from home and the first and last part of everyone’s day out, it is one of the riskiest bits. Not least because as well as being steep and loose, it is often full of fur seals. And it was furries that I was checking for as I misplaced my footing and went over on the side of my foot.

I knew immediately that it was not good as I sat trying to catch my breath that had just been dragged from me by the rushing and unweilding pain. Not again I thought. Just last July, I’d gone over on my left leg and torn any remaining shreds of ligament and cartilagein my knee whilst up in the mountains of Norway and out on my own. At least this time I had VHF radio and base in sight. I realised I was going to need help. No way was I carrying that bag across the boulders of the high-tide route. I called in and Alex and Stacey came out to help me back down. I slowly and carefully negotiated my way back, and an hour of ice and elevation followed by a shower seem to have eased it a bit. As have the painkillers. And the 2 glasses of gin I just had. So now I feel just fine!

27th Jan

Woke to stiffness and a substantial amount of pain this morning, but thankfully this eased as the day went on. Although the swelling has peaked and there is some bruising coming through now. I’ll be a few shades of purple soon. At least I actually did something, hate to think Im being melodramatic! I have to try and go out to do some field work tomorrow though, not sure how likely that is, I can’t walk properly. I’ve prepped the ion-exchange membranes already and they have a limited amount of time to be used you see. I did the last of the work whilst watching Seven Years in Tibet tonight in anticipation of being able to at least stagger along in the field with some back-up tomorrow. Great movie, and by God that man. I swear Brad Pitt must have hovered up all the good-looking genes in his family for the best part of a century. The mind boggles. Speaking of good looking men, I spoke to K today. He’s been offered a new job! Interview was at 11am, with two others to follow him and by 2pm they’d made up their mind and called to offer him the position.  I’m not surprised, he has that effect on people ;-)

Wind is still blowing hard and finding its way into the cracks and gaps in the seams of the cabin. Makes the whole place scream and whistle all the time. Some flights from Punto Arenas in Chile to Rothera on the Peninsular have been delayed. I wonder if they have the same weather system. Few thousand km away though. Its been quite unstable the last few weeks, but we are about to enter the warmest month of the year soon, so at least it may stop snowing even the wind keeps up its run of 20+ knots!

[hellogreenergrass]

WEEK SIX PHOTOS - Featuring: Views from base; the Cummings Hut; Penguin surveys, penguin beaks, penguin poo and penguin colonies! Elephant seals having a tender moment.

[hellogreenergrass]

Signy Island - Week Six

18th January

Snowing again. And windy. And generally a bit Polar. Despite these clear signs that today should be an inside day, a day where you hide in your heated laboratory and bask in the technological and mechanical advances that have allowed humans to house themselves on a remote Island in the full force of the Southern Ocean. Wondering if you should put a jumper on, not because you are cold, but because it would make you feel even cosier. Or whether you should treat yourself and put your tea in the thermal mug with the Tardigrade on it that your (very considerate) friends brought you. The advantage being that you could have a large supply of hot tea on your desk without having to strain yourself to go to the kitchen to make another when you inevitably forgot about it and it went cold. Such luxuries are afforded on inside days, all the while the Polar winds whirl outside, forcing the seals into the ocean and birds back to their nests in order to wait it out. This was today.

But I didn’t do any of this. I gamely dragged myself and Iain, to be my field assistant, out into the field to drill 88 soil cores spread over hilly and coastal, weather lashed terrain. Each point to be sampled was 100m away from the other, in a grid nearly a kilometre wide and long. This sounds straight forward enough, especially when planning such things on maps. In reality, one point may be at sea level and another 100m away could well be at the top of the cliff. Or in the case of one point, over the edge of a cliff on a steep and disintegrating bank of moss and scree roughly at an angle of 60 degrees, sometimes more.  I’d set out the grid on my own a few days earlier, and whilst I followed my GPS over the edge of the cliff where it indicated the next point was to be, I wondered if maybe I should go back to base and rope up. I decided not and plunged forth, immediately regretting my decision as I downclimbed what turned out to be an unreversible move. It was later pointed out to me that when one is in a situation where they think, “maybe I should do this thing, like rope up and abseil, or call base and let them know what Im doing”, then that is probably the thing I should do. But I styled it out with an ingracious amount of bum sliding, swearing and a heart rate of at least 250bpm. Safe to say Iain and I found an alternative route, approaching the point from the ground up, rather than giving ourselves over completely to gravity and the God’s of misadventure.

Despite the appalling conditions we had a great day out. Iain is good company and made a dull job brighter, if not the weather. In part because of the large amount of innuendo about large penetrating rods into moist substrate….trust a Glaswegian.

20th Jan

I bum lifted today! No, this was not a crude endeavour you filthy minded so and so you. Nor is it innuendo, (well, sometimes it is around here) but is in fact what we call chick counting when the penguins are still sitting on them. Because you have to lift up penguin bottoms. You see, much more delightful than what you were thinking! I was Stacey’s field assistant for the day and we needed to count the Chinstrap chicks over at Cummings and the Moyes Corrie area on the West Coast of the Island. It’s beautiful around there, and the high winds that still hadn’t dissipated from earlier in the week, only added to the drama. Big waves crashed over icebergs in the bay, the mist continuously rose and lowered it’s skirts, so that every few minutes another part of the view would be teasingly revealed or tucked away. I find that clouds and mists on mountains give a good sense of scale, as if we innately equate a cloud with a certain distance. They belong in the heavens, and we on Earth, and mountains are where they meet. Us tiny specks of biology in comparison to either.Or maybe thats just the romantic in me.

Cummings Cove is also home to the Cummings Hut. A battered and bruised relic of early polar adventures, that was all the lovelier for the brow beatings that Antarctica had furrowed upon its walls. It is essentially a roof planted on short, thick stone walls, with the door attached to the roof and slotted into the allocated space, as if the whole structure came as one piece and just needed a few feet of stone to raise it up for head clearance. It felt very Alpine. The roof has recently been replaced, and just the other week Iain and Matt came out to replace the chimney vent. And on this trip Alex painted the front door to match the fascia. Its now a bright blue (Cuprinol Beach Blue in fact!) and alongside the roof and gables that are ‘BAS Green’, a sort of pale sage, it looks quite fetching. Inside, the hut contains a worktop the length of one side with an array of tinned and dried food stuffs: namely a worrying amount of processed cheese in tins, several butts of drinking water and the Tilley lamps and Primus stoves of yore that furnish all our huts. Along the other side are two bunks with fleece skins over the mattresses for warmth and a mound of down sleeping bags of varying ages, sizes and perfumes. A small Perspex window looks out from the rear gable over the cove and the dozens of fur seals that live there. We stopped briefly, leaving Alex to stock up the first aid kit and finish the paint work, before heading out to count the penguins.

To get to Moyes Corry and the majority of the Chinstrap colonies that we needed to see today, we hiked up the short but steep scree and snow slope that makes the Southern edge of the bay and Cummings area. At the top, the ridge was greener than expected (for a ridge) and on closer inspection showed a multitude of colours and textures in the diverse array of moss and lichen species present. This was Cryptogam Ridge. Naturally. (FYI: Cryptogam is a plant with no true flowers, cryptogram on the other hand is code breaking). Down the cliff from here was our first colony and out of 35 nests this year, only 2 chicks have made it this far. In previous years there have been three colonies at this spot, but today, only one. And this one doesn’t appear to be having a good year. Stacey and her colleagues suspect the combining doom of climate change and the El Nino to be the indirect cause.

Next we had to ascend a small peak and then traverse across its Southern slopes of perilously placed scree, before shuffling our way down the final descent – a 50 degree slide of snow, ice and loose rocks. Remember that here in Antarctica, the South facing slopes are the ones kept shaded and cold, not the North face! A mile more and we arrived at the biggest colony on todays survey list: A few hundred nests of chinstraps. I gloved up, armed with a spray can of blue sheep dye to mark the nests we had checked off, and got lifting! Taking a cluster of nests at a time, I offered my right hand in a distracting  sacrifice to the understandably furious pecks of the parent penguin, whilst lifting its tail up and counting the chicks beneath. Sometimes there was nothing, sometimes an egg, but usually it was a grey fluffy mass  and sprawling wings that stares blankly at you with the blackest little eyes, like beads of onyx dropped into a mound of silvery fuzz. The chicks vary in size, from the recently hatched that are smaller than my palm, to the huge and frankly ridiculous chicks that are near the size of their parents. All the more ridiculous as their parents are still sheltering them, but as they are so big now the parents are lifted clear of the ground and balance atop a massive fluff bundle. So I repeat this process for the best part of 200 times: bend, lift penguin, get pecked and hit (flippers hurt!), shout out the number to Stacey and then spray the rock adjacent blue. Sometimes the nests were at the bottom of the cliff, so I would scramble down to the surging waves, slipping on the rock as my boots – now weighing a few extra Kg with congealed penguin shit – struggled to take grip on the frictionless schist rock. Shit on schist.

At the final colony, we looked down into a wen that was flanked by hundreds of meters of soaring cliff. Stacey pointed out the nests of sea birds that I had overlooked, too distracted by the view of a Moe Island. Moe is essentially a mountain in the sea, and a spectacular feature of Signy. The island stands maybe a mile offshore, perhaps less, and the bulk of it is a mountain peak. Although the whole island cant be more than a kilometre or two in diameter. There is a brief plateau on one side, before the land gives way to a sheer cliff into the sea. Today it was snow capped and what had been huge waves crashing the beach at Cummings, now looked like sloshing ripples lapping at pebbles under the mass of Moe. The cool thing about Antarctica is that latitude has already done the work of altitude. We may live at sea level, but to all intents and purposes it’s the same as being a few thousand meters up in the mountains of Europe. So smaller peaks that we would not even consider a mountain back home, are very Alpine. Both in topography and climate. A hill of 50m above sea level  has more in common with the high mountain plateaus of Northern Norway than anything at the same level back in the UK. Stace and I both stood in silence taking it in: Just beneath us a flock of Cape Petrels floated in the sea, hundreds of them bobbing like black and white flotsam in the swell. Our view stretched to the horizon and it was exhilarating knowing that there was nothing but open ocean for thousands of kilometres, and in fact if we set sail from here and just let the winds take us, we wouldn’t make land fall again until we hit the South Orkneys from the other direction. Such are the currents of the Southern Ocean, circling around and around the continent. I felt so very very lucky to be here.

[hellogreenergrass]

WEEK FIVE PHOTOS - Featuring: PENGUIN CHICKS!!!! Giant Petrels in flight and coming in to land; A pompus fur seal; Icebergs; More Penguins.

[hellogreenergrass]

Signy Island - Week Five

13th January – All lab work and no field play makes Jes a grumpy fucker. Must think of the scientific papers…think of the papers….must. get. papers. WONT ANYONE THINK OF THE PAPERS!

Not much gone on so I’ll write about the mundane stuff. We start work at 8.30am every day, I normally kick off by doing the monitoring of all my experiments early on. At 10.30, we all grind to a temporary halt  and converge on the lounge where we will do the days crosswords from the emailed newspaper that we get: Several A4 pages of the latest headlines and a few paragraphs of story. About 60% of the paper is sport, so we are largely in the dark about what is actually going on in the world. But we do get 2 crosswords which are a significant feature in our daily lives. At first, I avoided them because I didn’t get all the answers on my first go (I have a petulant side that doesn’t like doing things Im not good at). But have since realised that that is normal, and that actually Im not bad at them. And its also good for the noggin. 1-2pm we stop for lunch, and then unless busy will stop again at 16.30pm for another bash at the crossword if we haven’t already finished it. Back to work again and then we roll the dinner tables out for 18.30, immediately followed by gash duties. Gash is a shipping/military term for chores. A lot of the slang that’s used in BAS comes from the military or merchant navy probably because there isn’t much practical difference between them. Other than we science other than war. Just that small thing… After dinner and chores, we are done for the day. Or not, as is usually my case. Sometimes we will get together and watch an episode of something - It was Game of Thrones, now we are onto Deadwood. Or maybe we will go for a hike, perhaps go out watch wildlife and take photos, or just sit in the lab until midnight torturing bugs and hoping that this will all pay off and you’ll be able to write your own post-doc grant, thereby setting yourself up in employment for at least another few years…

16th Jan – I got out!! I HAD A DAY OFF!! I went over to North Point, unsurprisingly at the Northernmost tip of the Island, with Stacey, Alex and Megumu. I was meant to be on a reccy of my control field site over the moss banks on that side of the ice cap, but ended up spending the whole day helping Stacey count penguin chicks. PENGUIN CHICKS! First we hiked up to the Skidoo depot, and then drove lengthways along the ice cap for a couple of miles to Spindrift Col. From here it’s another few miles hiking down mountain across moss banks and scree slopes. The Point was bird mecca: Colonies of Giant Petrels, huge majestic birds that are like the Albatrosses’ ugly cousin, but wonderful none-the-less; Adelie penguins, those of goggly eye fame and now to be known to me also as the muckiest penguins of them all. If their chicks weren’t brown to start with I’m sure they would have ended up that colour. You can see their colonies from a distance, big pink-brown splodges of poo. Then there were two Chinstrap colonies, a more refined penguin in my opinion; and a large and sprawling Gentoo colony that had spread over about 500m2. The Gentoos’ are quite elegant looking birds with neat black heads and orange beaks, and a clear eye that is ringed by white. Enough to define it, but not so much as to make them look like cartoons, unlike the Adelies. Up on the point proper was a Blue-Eyed shag colony of about 200 nests. Bloody odd birds. They build their nests like little clay islands on the rocks, and then shit all around them so that they look like they are marooned on a teeny tiny volcano in a sea of poo. The dinosaur chicks that they raise in place of actual birds were nearly the size of the adults, yet were still feeding like they were a fraction of the size. Birds regurgitate their catch for their young, but the shags do it all back to front, seeming to swallow their young, let them feed on the catch within, and then regurgitating the bewildered chick back up. Makes me gag just recalling it. Weirdos.

In between herding chicks about so that we could feasibly count them , which is one of the cutest things Ive ever seen by the way, I sat in amongst the bird colonies and watched and learned. I learnt the moves of the bonding dance between a breeding pair of Chinstraps, watched how a Giant Petrel took flight simply by stretching out it’s wings and letting the breeze do the rest, and obsessed over getting a shot of them coming into land, like huge feathered planes. I saw how Adelies, for all their ridiculousness were very protective over not just their own chicks but also others. I saw a Gentoo chick fight off a skua twice its size and then saunter back to colony like nothing had happened. And I also held a Chinstrap chick. And nearly squeaked my way into oblivion in the process it was all so damn adorable. A grey bundle of soft warm down that fitted into my two cupped hands…and my pocket if there weren’t other people around.

As we wrapped up for the day and started the hike back up to the ice cap, the sky started to break apart and the grey that had hung above us all day split into shards and pockets of brightness. In the distance the light fell in silver bands across a glacier and lit up icebergs that sat in its bay. It was all very moving. I needed this day.

[hellogreenergrass]

WEEK FOUR PHOTOS: Featuring talking Adelies; Snow fall over icebergs in the bay; Moon rise from base; moulting ellys; Cape Petrel murmurations from a cloudy Rusty Bluff summit.

[hellogreenergrass]

Signy - Week 4

WEEK 4

5th Jan – Iain and I hiked up to the peak of Rusty Bluff last night. A good few hundred meters of ascent from sea level , but not too far so we did it in under an hour to the summit.  Views from the top were awesome and I could see the entirety of the massive slab berg that I woke up next to that morning we arrived here on the Shackleton. It’s now opposite Sunshine Glacier off Coronation Is.  The terns were upset with us being at the summit, but thankfully didn’t quite stretch to dive bombing us! They are wonderful to watch, their feathers so light as to be almost transparent and combined with the forked shape, their tails look like a fishes. They are so improbably white and delicate it makes your heart ache a little bit. Beautiful birds. Speaking of pure white, we had a big dump of snow overnight, and I woke up to 10cm covering all my plots. Zero data day. But now the sun is shining so Im sitting outside writing this, with a cuppa, a fig roll and a newly arrived fur seal for company. They should start to arrive slowly over the next few weeks, building up to several hundred around base by the end of the month. They are much more dog like than the ellys, able to walk around on flippers like they are legs, and communicating through a complex series of barks and whimpers. They also have a famed dog like bite..

6th Jan – Beginning to miss people back home a bit now. I emailed my Birmingham posse today with updates, hopefully they will return the favour and give me some news from home other than the snippets we get in the daily e-‘newspaper’.  

The petrels that live in the cliff that rises above base are cooing and croaking outside my bedroom window. They nest so close and the noise is so peculiar that it feels like its resonating within me. Weird.

8th Jan – We had another storm come in. Not as dramatic as before, but we still lost comms so I couldn’t call Emma yesterday on her birthday. Twenty-seven now. Bonkers. I made a speech bubble sign for Iain and Stacey to take out to Gourlay so that a penguin could tell her happy birthday for me instead!

Had a good rowing session this morning. 866 strokes in 25 minutes at weight 7. Will aim for 890 next time. 1000 by the end of the season. I have to do something whilst in the lab so much, people keep making cake!

Played ‘The Resistance’ last night. Aqlima is very suspicious! Iain is a worryingly good spy. Made me miss my neighbours.

10th Jan – Had a bumpy day today. Missing home and Kristian a lot, so I emailed him to vent and he replied with a link to a hidden folder on my laptop. It was a pre-recorded “in case of emergency” video of him telling me that everything was going to be OK, despite it being hard being apart, that he was proud of me and loved me very much, and to enjoy my time here because it will be over before I knew it. Blew me away that he would anticipate me like that. Im a very lucky lady. Day. Made. Choice in man verifiably excellent.

Field work is not always easy or fun and I would be dishonest if I just showed you nothing but beautiful landscapes and told tales of extraordinary wildlife. As incredible as this is, it can also be tough. Mentally and physically, sometimes both at the same time. And as a career choice you are continually faced with difficult decisions, especially as a woman who wants a family. Its a hard compromise when following your dreams means being away from the people you’d most like to share them with: You have to love what you do as much as you love them, else what’s the point in either endeavour? And I don’t doubt how hard it is to be the one left behind, having to patch over a an empty space in the home and daily life, and then always having the mistress of “the field” pulling at the heart strings of your partner when they are back. This is the 7th time Ive gone away for 3 months or more and left someone I cared about at home. But this time was the hardest. Kristian is the best of the bunch and someone I met on field work, so he understands the addiction. Not many frequent field workers have successfull relationships with non-field types. I can testify to that.

Given the complexity of emotions that comes with a job like this, I often wonder what drives others, and myself I suppose, to live a life punctuated by field seasons away. We compromise a lot for this work: I’ve put off crucial knee reconstruction operations for years because of how it would interfere with field work; delayed starting a family and putting down roots; had relationships fail because of the time apart. I met a guy on the ship down here who had just left his 4 week old daughter, he was heartbroken, but still heading South. Mind-boggling behaviour for any rational person! So why do we do it? I’ve started asking around, from Antarctic base commanders to Royal Marines perenially on tour, and will start to publish some interviews over the coming months. A way of explaining myself I guess! In part because I thought that Antarctica would be the pinnacle for me, but I’m starting to realise it may only be the beginning...