Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
While I was working on the dump one day with Graham, the tall Belfast glaciologist, he said
irritably, 'No wonder they call them the good old days. They chucked all their bloody rubbish
straight down where they stood.'
Graham had a strong northern Irish accent, for which he came under constant fire from the oth-
ers, but no account of teasing could provoke him. One day at the dump he decided to requisition
the unclaimed portion of Antarctica for Ulster.
'Storming,' he said as he contemplated this idea. He was affable, lively and spontaneous, and
kept a tin whistle in his pocket. Duncan, the field assistant from South London who had spent
seventy-two days on the Uranus with Graham and his whistle, was more reserved and less cheerful.
I noticed that he made a quick exit from Bluebell Cottage whenever Graham's hand approached
the pocket containing his whistle.
I stayed at the Bluff for two weeks, and each day walked along a thin path across the scree at the
foot of Drune towards the Eros Glacier. It ran alongside a frozen inlet, and beyond the windscoop
on the opposite side the glacier fell to a ledge over a pearly blue cavern. On the way back I used
to lie on the scree and contemplate the Eros, and watch the rose pink glow of sunset die over the
Batterbees on the other side of the streaky Sound.
As further evidence of Scottishness, Ian had his bagpipes sent over on a passing Otter. He
needed constant stimulation, and displayed none of the pubbish characteristics of the other BAS
men. I got the impression that he had not particularly enjoyed the winter as a result. He stood on
the veranda playing 'Amazing Grace'. It was not a great success, due to cold drones.
'Let me have a go,' said Graham, who was game for anything. Ian handed the pipes over, and
Graham expended a great deal of energy producing no sound at all.
'Why don't I blow,' said Ben, who, as a marathon runner, had a reliable pair of lungs, 'and you
hold the bagpipes and press the buttons?'
After a good deal of jostling on the veranda, a single reedy note wheezed out of the pipes. It had
a dying fall.
'Where's all the breath
going
?' said Ben.
Graham gave up, and fetched his tin whistle. Perhaps it was the first time bagpipes and a tin
whistle have ever been heard together in Antarctica.
'And I hope the last,' said Duncan when I mentioned this.
The manfood boxes that had sustained Graham and Duncan in the field were packed in 1986.
Everything was years past its sell-by date in Antarctica. When it was all over and I got home, I
was shocked to see sell-by dates in the future, as if it worked the other way round, and that meant
you weren't supposed to eat the goods. But it didn't seem to matter - we were never ill. Some
things were less appetising than they might have been. Upon contact with heat the tinned spaghetti
disintegrated, as it had been thawed and refrozen so many times. In one field camp I saw a tub of
Parmesan cheese bearing the printed label
Matured ten months
. Underneath, someone had written,
FROZEN TEN YEARS
.
Still, care parcels arrived sometimes from Al, the medal-winning Rothera cook, and one day a
joint of beef was tossed out of a refuelling Otter. Ian cooked it, with Yorkshire pudding and all the
trimmings. He was an excellent cook. Besides two loaves a day, he churned out pies and scones,
