Middle of winter

Before I left the UK people were amazed to hear that I would be spending 16 months living on a tiny island in the middle of the Southern Ocean. More people have climbed Mount Everest than have set foot on this island. When I told them that during the winter months (for an 8-9 month duration) there would only be four of us on the island, most people were incredulous. Everyone wanted to know “How would I cope?” “Wouldn’t I get bored?” “What if I didn’t get on with the other people?” and “What if you, or worse, someone else goes crazy?”. 

We are now five months into our winter and so far we are all good, and no one is totally insane (people do seem to speak to themselves with far more frequency than I noticed in the UK, but maybe that’s just because I’m spending 24/7 with them). Living together on a small base on a very small island certainly has its difficulties, but life is much simpler. I am definitely enjoying being away from the madness of life in the UK. I can’t tell you how great it is to never have to go food shopping, visit the bank, drive anywhere (especially on motorways), or be squashed into a tube carriage with your face shoved in someone’s armpit. 

There are things I do miss there are the obvious ones my family, friends and my pets. Then there are the less obvious things like flowers, trees, the SUN (it’s not been seen in what feels a very long time), fresh food (I’d kill for a salad right now….mmmm fresh rocket and cherry tomatoes!), lemonade, butterflies and moths, UK birds (especially the noisy ones like Swifts and Skylark), grass (the short, nice to lie on variety), radio, thunder and lightning storms (we don’t get the right clouds), being able to go out without having to wear thermals and salopettes. 

In order to survive a “winter” in Antarctica without having a rubbish time, or at worst completely losing it, you have to do certain things. Firstly you have to talk to your fellow winterers and not spend all your time in your room working your way through endless box sets. Secondly you have to devise events (mainly fancy dress evenings) to keep you all entertained. In the last couple of months there have been a fair number of ‘events’ on Bird Island. The main one being Mid Winter, which is a big deal in Antarctica. This years mid winter fell on the 21 June, and is the turning point of the sun returning to Antarctica. For us who never experience total darkness it isn’t such an important time, but for our colleagues at the Halley base, who have months of darkness it’s very important. However we didn’t want to be left out and celebrated enthusiastically along with the rest of the continent. 

Our official mid winter photo that we sent to all of the other bases. The Wandering albatross chick was pretty good at posing for the shot! (Photo by Craig Brown).

It was our annual week off (although we still had to do the Leopard seal checks every day and I had to check on my chicks). First up was crazy golf around the base, we had eight holes to complete in the generator shed, lab, office, lounge, and corridors. We each designed a couple of holes using whatever we could find.  Somehow I managed to pip the others to the post to win the coveted chocolate bar. We hadn’t thought some of them through very well, and gave up after taking 30 shots on each hole, otherwise we would have been there all night! 

Me taking a shot in the generator shed (Photo by Craig Brown)

Jerry following the crazy golf course around the office (yes the route was under the desk!)

Wimbledon 2013 (the table tennis edition) was also held during mid winters week and was won by Craig, there was a short interruption in play due to a Leopard seal appearing in the bay (but at least there was no rain!).

Wimbledon 2013 (Photo by Craig Brown)

Continuing on the sports theme we tossed the caber, wanged the welly, and completed the obstacle course (with a fair bit of cheating and egg throwing). The obstacle course was made more difficult because the Sheathbills kept stealing parts of the course. I’m not entirely sure who won, but I’m inclined to put it down as a victory to the girls. Unfortunately due to generators problems we didn’t get to finish the mid winter games, but hopefully we’ll get around to it soon.

Craig tossing the caber during the mid winter highland games (Photo by Jerry Gillham)

On Mid winters day itself we awoke to a brilliant fry up courtesy of Jerry our base commander. After filling our bellies we went out to check for Leopard seals and I made friends with a tiny Elephant seal. Once the work was done for the day we decided to get the traditional dip out of the way. Around 20 minutes prior to going in we spotted a Leopard seal in the bay, so waited until we thought it had gone. We then ran out in our towels and dressing gowns to the water edge, got the camera set up and raced into the water. It was cold! The fact it had started snowing and that there was an icy breeze didn’t help. We didn’t get in very deep before Jerry sounded what I thought was the Leopard seal alarm, but was just the turn around sound. I ran pretty fast out of the water imagining a Leopard seal coming after me! We grabbed a towel and raced back to the house to the warm showers. I’m not going to post any pictures as there are only a couple still in existence and the others might kill me! 

Me and a tiny Elephant seal seen on our mid winters day walk (Photo by Craig Brown).

Once we had warmed ourselves up we settled down for a screening of ‘The Thing’- the traditional movie that everyone across Antarctica watches. Luckily for us we don’t have the constant darkness that other bases have so we weren’t too terrified to go outside by ourselves after watching it. 

In the evening we tucked into our mid winter meal (similar to Christmas dinner) and had some of our two cakes! After finishing the food it was time to exchange gifts, that we had all spent a lot of time working on. Everyone seemed pleased with what they got, gifts included a painting of all the wildlife on the island, a set of hand-made knives in a box, a framed hand drawn map of the island, and a hand painted deck of  cards and Tabasco glass shot glass. We spent the rest of the evening playing card games and doing a little bit of dancing. 

Mid winters meal (Photo by Craig Brown)

We received greeting cards and messages from all of the other bases, and even had letters from David Cameron and President Obama. Stephen Fry sent us a video message and we all had messages from our families (although those we didn’t get for quite a bit later as we couldn’t download the messages with our slow internet connection). 

Jerry's knives made by Craig (Photo by Jerry Gillham)

Hannah's picture made by me (Photo by Jerry)

My painting by Jerry (Photo by Jerry)

Craig's cards and shot glass made by Hannah (Photo by Jerry).

The following day we were all pretty worn out from the festivities so enjoyed a movie marathon and relaxed.

Near the end of the week we went on a bar crawl. I hear you say “But don’t you live on a tiny island, what bars??” Well for one day only the base was transformed into four different bars, with each of us running one each. We started off at the Jolly Albatross Inn, a pirate themed bar by walking the plank blindfolded to get in. After a couple of piratey drinks, mainly featuring rum, some pirate music and a game of find the treasure (like pin the tail of the donkey but with a map and a sticker) we headed to the beach. Hannah’s bar was a Hawaiian themed cocktail bar in the boot room (which is the hottest place on base). We all got into our shorts and relaxed beneath the palm trees and sipped cocktails with our sunglasses on. Following that we headed to the laboratory for some crazily coloured drinks- green and purple (suspiciously they just tasted like cider and G&T). Finally we headed off to the generator shed for some drinks with very dodgy sounding names (yet fairly tasty).  A great night was had by all, and everyone felt fine in the morning. 

Jerry and I chilling in the Hawaiian bar (Photo by Hannah Wood).

Bar number 3 the Puboratory in the laboratory (Photo by Craig Brown)

Me directing Craig onto the plank ready to walk into the pirate bar (Photo by Hannah Wood).

Relaxing at the end of the bar crawl evening on some very comfy lagging in the generator room (Photo by Craig Brown).

We rounded off mid winters week by holding our very own Glastonbury festival. We printed off the line up and tried to listen to songs by some of those artists. We had a BBQ and camped out ln the beach. The Skuas were very interested in the tents and kept trying to pull up our guy ropes. Fortunately they left us alone during the night and didn’t keep us awake. 

Since mid winters we have been up to lots of other stuff but I’ll save that for another post.