Small pleasures

Message from "Sledge Echo" - 31/12/2011:

We have bad weather again today - virtually no visibility and down to -15 degrees C last night. This may sound bad, and indeed it is for the work, but I am actually quite enjoying these days off - so seldom do I have several hours to do whatever I like when at home! Today we woke up at 7am and Roger looked out of the tent door. I knew from the smile on his face that we could go back to bed (he likes to lie in). We have sat, drunk tea, and chatted whilst listening to music on the MP3 players through a small speaker. Every now and then Roger pops out of the tent to adjust the dipole for the radio so he can chat to other field parties elsewhere in Antarctica. We are particularly enjoying talking to my colleague Teal and his field assistant Tom about 300 miles north of us. They are very amusing and tend to get the same weather as us, so are in the tent at the same times. All very relaxing. Yesterday I spent most of the day working so I feel I can at least have some sort of weekend today.

Roger has been working very hard cooking nice food for us recently. Last night he showed his genius with the best pudding yet. I had earlier in the day wondered aloud if we could make ice cream by freezing the custard outside. After dinner he disappeared outside for a while, and I thought he must have gone to the 'doo loo' (more on that later). Then he came into the tent carrying two plastic mugs containing our dessert with two matchmakers sticking out of the top. I think he does very well with presentation! Anyway it took me a while to figure out exactly how he had made the ice cream, but it was heavenly. He had mixed powdery snow with condensed milk, and then put freeze-dried bananas and strawberries on the top. I would love to try this at home (perhaps when I give a talk to Phoebe's nursery in March), but sadly the snow is just not the right consistency at home and there is unlikely to be any in March!

You are probably now wondering about the 'doo loo'. This is a very cosy place to get away from it all....we have put the two skidoos side by side and tied a tarpaulin over them as a protective tent. Then in the middle is our poo bin. So at least we have somewhere out of the wind to answer the call of nature! The petrol smell from the doos masks any other aromas that may be emanating from the poo bin. Fortunately the cold weather helps to reduce those! Roger told me that he even had a wash in the doo loo yesterday - he has gone one better than me then. I haven't bothered with a wash yet at all! But today I did go for a clean pair of knickers....only the third in 2 weeks.....think I have gone native! Actually I have got to the stage where a shower would be really quite nice, but I have another 5 weeks to go without one so I must get those cravings out of my head.

We are expecting good weather for all of next week, and will also move camp - so you may not hear so much from me. It will be a busy time as we try to wrap up a few loose ends with the work and move area. It will be nice to have some new parts to explore and some new views. Then I will be making decisions about where to move to by plane in a few weeks.