Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
sledge. The hut, now occupied only in summer, was established in 1961. It had recently acquired
a smart wooden veranda on which flapped the obligatory Union Jack - upside down, as usual.
We went in to the smell of burning jam tarts and a lively row over who had forgotten to take
them out of the oven. A man with a beard like Rasputin's was defending himself on the basis that
he had been discussing an important matter on the radio. Steve Rumble, an electrician and winter
base commander who had been on the ice for twenty-seven months, kept his Walkman clamped
to his head and remained supine on his bunk. Hans Cutter, a German geodesist inevitably known
as Herr Cutter, sat at the table looking baffled at the sudden inflamed talk of tarts, especially as
it had coincided with my arrival. The fourth temporary resident at the Bluff, Ian, was standing in
the middle of the hut in his apron, grasping the tray of smouldering ex-tarts. He was the outgoing
doctor at Rothera, and an endearingly eccentric character with firm opinions and a wild glint in his
eye. I had met him on base before he left for the Bluff - he was one of the few who came up to
shake hands when I arrived. Although he spoke Home Counties English, I think he was Scottish,
as I had seen photographs of him skiing in a kilt.
The population of the Bluff was transitory. The hut was used as a staging-post for science parties
on their way further south, a holiday cottage and a place to send people if they were getting in
the way on base. Ben, the veteran dog-handler from Sheffield, had flown in with me, and shortly
after we arrived a science party of two turned up after seventy-two days on the Uranus, a glacier
which had provided many hundreds of punning jokes for generations of Rothera Beards. Graham
was a tall glaciology post-graduate from Belfast with ginger hair. He was studying how light was
reflected in the snow pack. This affected heat absorption, and yielded data which could be used to
assess the rate of global warming. His much shorter field assistant was a chunky mountaineer from
south London called Duncan. They both said they weren't sure if they could sleep between walls
after seventy-two nights in a tent. Having eaten field rations for so long, they were astonished to
find real mushrooms in the spaghetti sauce. They held pieces up on forks, just to look at them. In
the evening we drank wine the winterers had made from raisins and sultanas. It tasted of cooking
sherry, but they had decanted it into Chateau Lafite bottles.
The hut, which for years had been known as Bluebell Cottage, was about fifteen feet by twenty-
five, with a small partitioned sink area and an arched wooden ceiling. Built in at one end were
two sets of bunks with metal legs and no ladders. There was a wooden table, a dresser strewn
with magazines and books, the latter including
The Bluffer's Guide to Seduction
and
The Beauty
of Cars
, and a noticeboard upon which someone had pinned a register of fuel drums, a black-and-
white photograph of a killer whale, a clutch of cartoons and a Moral Fibre Meter, the latter inaug-
urated in honour of a pilot who issued regular tirades against the flaccidity of modern youth. One
corner was filled with communications equipment, and this area was known as the radio shack.
A few pictures of women had been ripped from magazines and stuck to the wall, and pots and
pans dangled from beams. The room was dominated by a drip-oil Aga upon which an antediluvian
kettle sat in permanent residence, growling menacingly. Off the entrance, a slender room called
Arkwright's was jumbled with tools and bags and cases of beer, and on the other side of the hut, in
a room crammed with snowshoes, crampons, ropes, karrimats, a soda syphon, nuts and bolts and
an old wooden sign saying 'No Dumping', there was a portable toilet.
