Bald-Headed Men - Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman to Ski Solo Across the Southern Ice - page 136

of penguins, would you start to experience penguin-related
hallucinations?'
After a lengthy discussion we agreed that I would attempt to
use imagery of seaside scenes from around my home in Kent
that I knew well and, if I still experienced hallucinations, to
note whether they took on a particularly coastal theme.
And so it was that as I skied towards Christmas morning
on the polar plateau of Antarctica, the impact of my first
hallucinatory experience of the expedition was slightly
tempered by the disappointment that it had nothing to do with
the sea. As I ploughed dizzily through the same kind of dense
disorientating whiteout that had become such a regular feature
of my journey I was surprisingly calm to notice a small man
emerge from a hiding place (that I assumed was probably a
large sastrugi hidden in the flat light) on my right. He was only
a few feet high with a round, bald head and triangular body. It
was clearly a vision, the figure was transparent and etched in
grey so that it was barely perceptible against the close weather
and yet it was real enough for me to see details of the figure's
expression and body language. I was left in no doubt that I
had clumsily blundered into this little man's world and that my
disturbance had forced him unwillingly from his hiding place.
He looked both annoyed and a little embarrassed to be startled
into the open, hurriedly scurried off into the blizzard, and was
gone. A short while later I saw another figure. He was of a
comparable size and stature to the first character and similarly
emerged from behind an unseen sastrugi, but this time the
vision rode a tiny dinosaur, a bonsai triceratops. Bolder and
more belligerent than the first little man, he shook his fist at me
for intruding into his personal space before galloping off into
the haze on his Cretaceous charger.