Writing from Halley

It’s a been a busy day by Halley standards. We’ve had just a mere glimpse

of the speed of things back home and are retreating back into our shell. To

plot. It’s a nice shell, it’s safe and warm and has lots of laughter all the

time reverberating off walls. It’s our place, our home. There are two places

at the moment: here, and not here. You are not here. I am here. It’s very, very

simple.

But we also like to communicate with the world out there. Some people use

the phone a lot, justifying the huge bills each month as their way of staying

in touch with friends and family. Other people write emails. I write blogs.

I sometimes forget why I do and then one of you nice folk out there, not here,

writes and reminds me. It’s not just about telling you, but also about reminding

me. And a way to make me open my eyes to where I am. I would hate to have this

incredible opportunity and find upon looking back that I can’t really remember

anything at all.

But I’m not writing for the future either – it’s very much about now.

Here and now. The present that I’m experiencing that I’ll never, never be able

to describe so well as in this moment. Ask me now about the journey down on

the ship and already I muddle things up. It would be catastrophic, but I might

forget completely to mention phosphorescence or flying fish!

There’s a third reason for writing these blogs that I discovered upon my return

to Blighty last year. You’ve heard the stories, you’ve seen some pictures, you’ve

tried to travel with me. When we meet, your questions are sincere and interesting.

I answer without even realising that I’m talking about It again.

When I got back to London, Felix had to hold my hand crossing Tottenham Court

Road, he saved me a number of times from impending crashes with cars, he veered

my eyes away from the tops of buildings (did you know there were gargoyles up

there?) towards pavements and tube entrances. He did his best to find a route

through greenery and spacious bars but still I felt overwhelmed. And I’d only

been gone for four months. Phones and keys and dates to be in places… it was

all so unnecessarily exhausting.

I found myself planning delightful days, entire days, with friends instead

of the usual hurried meetings between meetings squeezed into a schedule you’ll

never be able to keep to. Friends who had been reading my scrawl would say,-

those ice crystals sounded amazing, or, what do penguins smell like? Other friends

hadn’t read anything but it didn’t matter, we just sat still and allowed experiences

from both sides to slowly unravel. Both of these were delightful. The hard ones

were with strangers or acquaintances who’d heard ‘she’s been to Antarctica’

and would target me like that car at Piccadilly Circus. What was it like? Is

it cold? Why did you go? What do you do? What are penguins like? What do you

eat? Didn’t you get bored? AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa!

If I was lucky, Felix or one my friends nearby would see the fear on my face

and jump to my rescue. But sometimes I just had to go it alone. "Cold,

white, flat." was my usual response. And then I’d feel bad for being a

bitch. How do you describe this place in the midst of that bustle? How can you

possibly squeeze even an idea of it into the soundbite of, what, 30 seconds,

that your interrogator has scheduled in for an answer? So to them I could say,

well, I wrote about stuff while I was there and if you’re really interested,

you can read that. If you’re not, that’s fine too: if I was you I probably wouldn’t

bother. It’s true, I know me and I never research anything, I rarely read about

adventures or follow stories, and I don’t mind in the slightest if you don’t

follow these. This is my adventure and you’re welcome to join me or not.

What prompted this? Ah yes. Our Busy Day. Well, in my last entry I mentioned

that I’d been working on the Halley webpage. Today it finally got hosted,

but looked different from bits that I’d sent. (We don’t have internet access

down here so I only know this because I asked Felix to send me the text.) I

wrote to the guy in Cambridge and it now looks a lot more similar. So thank-you,

friend in Cambridge.

It got edited in order to conform with the BAS corporate image. I understand

even if I was a bit disappointed. Photos were removed and shrunk so the page

would load up quicker, text was changed so it would seem as though we were working

more and partying less. Millions of exclamation marks were added to the end

of my sentences to ensure that everyone could tell which bits were meant to

be tongue-in-cheek. It lost some of its charm perhaps but already I don’t mind

so much.

What I minded was not being asked to do the editing myself and, more importantly,

not even being told that the changes had been made. I guess we have no idea

what our past pages look like either. It’s a time like this that I realise,

a little sadly, that we are still the puppets of the organisation that we work

for. On the whole, I think they’re ok people to work for and I understand most

of their decisions even if I don’t always agree with them.

In the summer, I wrote a piece trying to describe the incompatibility of this

beautiful vast continent with the industrial site that it becomes when the ship

arrives, riddled with noise, politics, gossip and unnappeciative punters. In

the winter, we love the peace, it’s the best time of year. We’d like to think

that once the ship leaves, They can’t touch us. "What are they gonna do,

fire you?!" is a common joke around here.

But on the whole we follow the rules. We write risk assessments for every possible

activity, we fill in accident, incident and near miss forms every time something

doesn’t happen, we phone Cambridge if a field party is delayed due to bad weather

and have regular email contact and phone calls with line management. We go to

work every day. We could, it’s true, go on strike. But we won’t.

There have been years in the past that are infamous for their post-winter cliqueism

– the classic was the catapult built one year to greet the ship’s arrival.

I think any good wintering team will necessarrily have a hard time when the

new faces arrive; we are a team, but we’re not deliberately antagonistic. We

like to think we have power but in fact BAS owns us – we depend on them

for food, clothing, heat, mail, and communication. They even prescribe how much

alcohol we are allowed for the year and sell it to us.

Like teenagers trying to rebel, we want to have our own voice. The webpage

is one small, but very important, part of that. It’s a place we direct our friends

and family to, a place with lots of photos that we can’t afford to send on our

1MB/month email allowance. It’s a way of trying to describe to you out there

what we’re experiencing down here. If it’s tongue-in-cheek, well, maybe that’s

a reflection of how we’re feeling at the moment. So for the friends and family

of everyone down here, click here

for the original webpage. (If you don’t understand the "on fire"

reference at the end, try clicking on one of the photos…)