Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
as part of its Way Forward Programme. John was a plumber who had never travelled beyond
Bournemouth, and George was a sixty-eight-year-old manager who had been brought out of retire-
ment to oversee the job. George had already been south once, and was keen to impart his know-
ledge on this and any other matter. He emitted noise non-stop, in fact, like the continuousloop
soundtrack at the Antarctic Encounter.
The crinkly coastline of Ascension, laced with white surf, was ringed with a band of streaky
green which faded into the chinablue Atlantic. The island was goose-bumped with small peaks.
When we landed the braying and overfed senior officers in the front row got off first, met by a
mini-squadron of clean-shaven air force personnel marching along the tarmac in a uniform of pale
khaki shorts with long socks and Hush Puppies. They looked like extras in a war film set in the
Western Desert. A team of firefighters stood to attention in silver-foil outfits as the VIPs sped past,
provoking the squaddies bound for the Falklands into a burst of Gary Glitter choruses. The rest of
us were herded into a compound, and locked up. It was very hot and sticky despite the soft tropical
breeze, and everyone bought cold cans of Becks beer.
'I've never drunk beer in the morning before,' said John. George and I exchanged guilty glances.
The squaddies were dispensing beer as if they might never see liquid again. Most of them were
from RAF 20 Squadron, responsible for the ground-to-air missile system in the Falklands. An an-
nouncement over the loudspeaker informed us that anyone drunk would be offloaded, at which a
great cheer went up, Ascension Island (beyond the compound at least) being rather more agreeable
than the Falklands.
The compound consisted of a flagged concrete yard containing wooden tables with integrated
chairs and parasols, and a pockmarked 1883 cannon. It was surrounded by a wire fence and lined
on one side with palm trees. The small hills around the airstrip were littered with military hard-
ware. One of them, higher than the others, stood out because it was green, not brown, and in a
startling fit of imagination it had been named Green Mountain. It reminded me of Juan Fernandez,
the Pacific island where the original Robinson Crusoe had been abandoned.
Not much had happened to Ascension Island or its famous green turtles since it was garrisoned
by the Royal Marines in 1815, initially to prevent the French rescuing Napoleon from St Helena.
Certainly nothing happened while we were there. The flight was delayed. The sun bleached the
sky, and the squaddies began revealing an extensive range of tattoos. Hour after hour trickled by in
this hot cage as further delays were announced over the rasping loudspeaker. George talked about
his 'laddies', by which he meant the builders, as if they were at nursery school. The Becks ran out.
An announcement that we were being diverted to Rio provoked another cheer. The squaddies were
envisaging sultry nights in the bars of Copacabana - but it was more likely to mean a long, stuffy
evening on a bucket seat in another faceless airport.
∗
As we flew over wide green spaces and the thin ribbons of dusty, untravelled Brazilian roads, I
suddenly longed for the freedom of anonymous travel. Brazil seemed a long way from the con-
straints of the ice. At that moment, I felt as if I were locked into a claustrophobic love affair, and
