Midwinter Week
We had our midwinter celebrations this
week. It also marks the half way point for some of us who came in
early, as we are now 8 months in with 8 months to go. In some ways it
has flown by and in other ways not. But here we are at the end of
June, in the darkness and experiencing our coldest temperatures so
far (- 55.7 C).
Sunday the 21st saw our main
midwinter celebrations and it’s somewhat like Christmas in ways. I
started the day in the kitchen, of course, but midwinter brunch
responsibility fell on our winter base commander Tom Welsh. We
gathered together in the bar for a relaxed brunch complete with
bubbly and freshly pressed orange juice I had put away in the freezer
months ago.
Then it was on to our winter gift
giving/opening (Bescherung). I’ll explain this a little bit here…
Months ago, at the start of winter, we
each drew a name out of a hat who was to be the recipient of a gift
we had to make ourselves. Some were kept more secret than others. I
shut myself in my room for a long time stitching my fingers to the
bone to complete my embroidery piece for Tom W. I enjoyed it…until
probably the last few hours of work, which nearly broke me!
The gift given to me was made by Dave –
one of our science team here and the youngest member on base. Thanks
so much for your efforts – greatly appreciated and I will make sure
to look after it and treasure it.
It was great to see what everybody had
come up with and hear their stories of success or woe in the making
process.
Thanks Tom Welsh for the photo
After the gifts I hopped straight back
into the kitchen to sort Midwinter’s dinner out. This had taken the
last couple of weeks and some late nights in the kitchen to prepare
for, so on the day it was pretty straightforward. But it still meant
many hours in the kitchen making sure it all worked out alright. I
was pretty happy with how it turned out in the end, and I hope the
rest of the team was too.
Thanks again Tom for the pic.
After dinner I could finally run and
grab a shower, change into my glad rags and join the others in
listening to the BBC World Service broadcast. Each base selects a
song to put on, requests a guest speaker to say a few words, and then
gets a message or two from loved ones back home (thanks lots Mum, Dad, and Becky). We also had a quick conference call with last years’
winter team, who were having their own solstice celebrations back in
the UK.
After all of this we managed to fit in
some more food in the way of cheese, homemade crackers, and a
Christmas cake (Dave’s granny’s recipe, made by Dave…expertly,
or NOT, iced by me – in the shape of Windy Bay with the penguin
colony) and more drinks.
We all had the rest of the week off and
filled it with a mix of doing absolutely nothing, and some organised
traditional events. The Halley Olympics was pretty funny and got
everybody out and about. The events were a hammer throw, jumaring in
the garage, man hauling team members on the kiddy sledges, mass egg
and spoon race (with orange golf balls instead of eggs), curling
under the modules (with heavy pans and brushes), team table tennis,
table football and ending with the corridor bungee. Good work
everybody…. especially the team I was on…who won!
Later in the week we had a base
pub-crawl. Most of us came up with a drink and a bar that we set up
in our workspaces and it was a good change of scenery to our usual
bar. Some drinks were nicer than others…
I chose to make good use of the copious
amounts of processed tinned meat we have on station…
And then we had the crazy golf
tournament set up around the place by Pete and Ian. Most of us made
our own clubs for the occasion. In case anybody needs this advice for
the future – the dough hook from the mixer strapped to a ski pole
does not make the most accurate golf club. Now you know.
And so it’s back to work. It’s come
around so soon, as it always does. Our next week off will be our
second round of winter trips somewhere around October. That seems way
off right now, but I am sure it will be here in a flash.
