Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Island and discovered that the small scientific station there, its occupants always keen participants,
had never had a dartboard on the premises.
A man approaching the end of a two-and-a-half year tour of duty as a member of base support
staff announced that he had remembered a good joke.
'Why do women have periods?' it went.
Nobody knew the answer.
'Because they deserve it!' the man burst out, no longer able to keep this side-splitting informa-
tion to himself. Everyone laughed.
It was as if I had entered a time capsule and been hurtled back to an age in which Neanderthal
man was prowling around on the look-out for mammoths. Later that evening, safely removed from
the bar, which I had come to think of as occupied territory, a Byronic youth apprehended me next
to the tea urn.
'I hope you weren't too offended by that joke,' he said.
I couldn't think of anything to say.
'It does seem to mean a lot to them - I mean, keeping it male,' the man went on. 'I came down
here from Grimsby on the BAS ship. Three women got on at Signy base, and it electrified the at-
mosphere on board. It sparked the major debate of the whole trip - even some of the young guys
were arguing passionately against women down here. By the way, I'm Lucas.' We shook hands,
took our tea and sat down at a formica table. Lucas was working for BAS as a summer-only field
assistant, and felt 'at one remove' from the community at Rothera.
'Why on earth do they feel so strongly about it?' I asked.
He hesitated. 'They don't want the complication of a female in such a pristine place,' he said
eventually. 'It's visceral.'
I didn't need to be told that. I felt it every day.
'Were the Americans like it too?' he asked.
'Er, no.'
'I suppose you have to remember that the majority of support staff here sign on for a two-and-
a-half year tour of duty. It's a long time to live on an Antarctic base. Attitudes get entrenched.'
'The support staff seem very young here,' I said. 'Much younger than they are in other pro-
grammes.'
'Well, they are. Twenty isn't an uncommon age. You can't get a man to leave a wife and kids
for two-and-a-half years.'
'They seem to find it hard to cope with outsiders . . .'
'There aren't any outsiders except you! They've never had a writer here before.'
It was as if I had moved into a family home and tried to pretend I was a relative. It wasn't fair
to blame them for it. There was a highly developed sense of ownership among the British. The in-
cumbents owned the base, figuratively, just as in their heads they owned 'their' bit of the continent.
Besides the fact that most support staff were deployed for such a long period, the scientists were
all employed by BAS. They worked in the same building in Cambridge, saw each other on the
ice year after year, and were imbued with the same culture. Other Antarctic programmes worked
with scientists from a wide variety of universities and external institutions, but BAS people were
