Travel Reference
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do first, in Stanley and in the U.K. There was talk of trees, and fruit, and pubs, and handing over
money and getting something back.
The weather veered between savage snowstorms and sunshine, crisp air and clear skies. Time
dripped away slowly in the bad weather, and the field assistants prowled around like caged anim-
als. I worked my way through a pile of Antarctic films stored in dented tins in the tiny windowless
archive. Life took on an agreeably even rhythm, bleached of highs and lows. The days grew short-
er.
The easy equilibrium was hijacked one day by the arrival of mail. I was sitting in the library,
with one eye on a pair of Adélies outside the window, when someone tossed a pile of letters se-
cured by an elastic band on to the desk in front of me. I forgot about the penguins and began
ripping envelopes open. The first one, forwarded from my home, unleashed a wave of regret. It
contained a stiff, embossed invitation to my publisher's Christmas party two months previously.
The Jonathan Cape bash was acknowledged to be the best on the literary circuit - drunken, Stygi-
an, overheated, late and a hotbed of incestuous gossip. The previous year it had been the scene of
disgracefully bad behaviour, perpetrated not least by the Patron of my expedition and me. It was
all very well to relish the absence of clutter and the spiritual opportunities of the Antarctic wilder-
ness, but I missed the debris of urban lowlife. The invitation threw me off balance, and I spent the
remains of the day kicking up snow disconsolately around the point and glaring murderously at the
seals.
In the second week of March, Ben, Vasco and Steve Rumble were going on a recreational three-
day trip to Lagoon Island. It was an end-of-season treat.
'Why don't you come?' said Ben.
'Won't I be taking someone else's place?' I asked. I had become absurdly over-sensitised to my
superfluity.
'Of course not. Nobody else wants to come. I've asked the other two, and they'd be pleased if
you joined us. Go on.'
We fitted crampons, stole bread from the kitchen and filled a manfood box with supplies,
struggled into red inflation suits, winched two Humber inflatables into the bay and nudged our
way through the pancake ice. It was a perfect day, without a cloud in the sky.
Lagoon was the northernmost of the Leonie islands, in Ryder Bay. It was charted in 1936, and
formed a lagoon with the island on its west side. When we arrived, it was five degrees above zero
and the sun was beating down. Vasco, the dark, flaming-eyed field assistant named after Vasco
da Gama, put on a pair of shorts and took off his t-shirt. I was especially aware of the date - 10
March - as it was a friend's birthday. The previous year we had driven up to the Peak District for
the weekend to celebrate at a twee hotel nestling in a dale. An unexpectedly harsh frost had fallen
on Saturday night, and when we woke on Sunday the temperature outside was minus five Celsius
- the perfect excuse to stay in bed all morning. I made a note to write to my friend to tell him that
on the same day a year on it was ten degrees warmer in Antarctica than it had been in the north of
England.
Steve set about hoisting the flag. He was the former winter base commander and electrician
whom I had met at the Bluff. Ben went off to doze behind a rock, and I joined Vasco to do nothing
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