Wibbly Wobbly 3

At Lancaster University there is a burger bar called Wibbly Wobbly 2 (originally there was a WW1 in town, but it moved to campus), affectionately known as WibWobs. Wibwobs do the best ever spicy bean burgers, with lots of salad, in lovely soft rolls. You can pile it high with chillies, spread it with a multitude of sauces and enjoy a LiteBites on the side (chips, onion rings and mushrooms). Geek-Boy loves the chicken fillet with mushrooms, others go for the pork chops, or beef burgers or bacon. Or several of those together - there is a WibWobs for everyone. There is even a WibWobs Appreciation Society on Facebook

In Antarctica however, there is no WibWobs. Until now. The chef is doing night-watch this week, so we're fending for ourselves, and Monday was our turn in the kitchen. We made beef burgers, turkey fillets (we're running low on chicken) and pork chops. Geek-boy made bread rolls, but there weren't quite the success that last week's were (in fact, they were like yeast-flavoured rocks), so we had to put out bread instead, and we are somewhat lacking in lettuce and tomatoes at the moment, but I mixed up garlic mayo and made some beer batter for the mushrooms and it all went down rather well.

We'd decided on roast lamb for dinner, so once we'd cleared away after lunch we started scrubbing potatoes, opening cans of carrots (well, soggy orange disks, which might have seen a carrot once, from a distance) and brushing the 3 lamb legs with butter and rosemary. It was a bit stressful as I've never done a roast for that many people, but everything came out fine.

Cooking continued on Wednesday when I rustled up some dark chocolate covered ginger and vanilla ice cream sandwiches. Trying to dunk frozen ice cream into hot molten chocolate was, to say the least, rather messy; subsequently trying to photograph them, when the only decent light was the heat lamp on the food service area, was also not without complications - hence not being the best photograph in the world - but you should get the general idea.

Midwinter's Week Round-Up

This week's vital statistics

• Rows of sock knitted: 54
• Exciting boxes of presents received: 1
• Rows of sock frogged back: 54
• Horizontal bungee rope challenges run: 3
• Rows of sock re-knitted: 43
• Amount of paracetamol taken to fix neck after bungee run: Lots

This week has nominally been a 'week off' for most of base. Since the weather doesn't take a week off, we've still been doing met obs and balloon launches, and fixing things that break, but most normal work has been suspended.

Midwinter's Day and the Winter Olympics have been covered in earlier posts, so this is just a round-up of what else has happened this week.

I wanted to get a blog and online photos sorted by the end of the week, and have accomplished the blog (evidently), but online photos are taking a bit more work, partly due to the slow internet, and partly because knitting is so much more interesting than faffing around online.

I've started the Pomatomus socks from Knitty, but despite knitting to gauge, it wouldn't fit over my ankle. I ripped it back and started again on bigger needles and it feels much better - more elastic - and the pattern is showing more. I won't finish a sock this week (my original aim), but they are at least on the needles, and can be returned to when I get fed up with my blanket.

As it has largely been dark and windy, I've watched a lot of 'Harry Potter' and 'Northern Exposure' while knitting. On Thursday, Geek-Boy and I were on cooking duty, so made Chunky Chicken Stew (a.k.a. Left-Over Surprise) and chunky wholemeal rolls. It was all eaten, so I assume it was okay.

On Friday we went skiing on the Ramp, which is the bit of glacier opposite base and offers the steepest skiing available. It was pretty icy in places but we had fun playing on the slalom course that was used for the Winter Olympics until the wind became too strong for it to be any fun any more. In the evening we had a bar crawl around various bars that people had set up around base. We went 'Under The Sea' in the marine sciences laboratory, to the 'Texas Penitentiary' for orally administered 'lethal injections' and of course the horizontal bungee-run provided by the GAs.

This involves wearing a skidoo helmet and boiler suit, then being anchored to the far end of the corridor with a large bungee cord. One then runs down the corridor in an attempt at reaching the drinks lined up at the end. First available is water, then lemonade, lager, John Smith's, Guinness and a final prize of Pisco. I don't think anyone reached the Pisco, but many good attempts were made. Sadly, being fast-moving and in the dark, it was hard to photograph.

Saturday evening was the debut performance of this year's winter band, 'Snow Rhythm'. They played a good set, and it was all the more impressive as several members had never played before the band formed. It was also one of the GA's birthdays, so out came the obligatory themed cake and everyone finished the week on a sugar high.

Winter Olympics

Give people a large pile of snow and a week off and they will, inevitably, find ways to amuse and damage themselves. In an effort to promote the former, and reduce the latter, our GAs (the people who know stuff about snow) kindly organise the Winter Olympics, where we divide into four teams and pit ourselves against each other in games of skill and cunning.

As our team was largely comprised of Met people (for some reason called Boris and Doris), the remaining two members were promptly named Floris (the Doc) and Norris (Geek-Boy) and the Games began.

First up was ice climbing and Boris, being strong of arm and light of weight quickly shinned up the overhanging ice cliff in impressive style. Floris put in a noble effort, but being more used to chipping ice into G&Ts rather than off mountains, did not fare so well.

Norris and I stepped up to the next challenge - downhill slalom skiing. This was fun because we not only had to go between the flags, but we also had to avoid the large patches of pure ice that the wind had kindly cleared of snow for us. I had great fun skiing down, going for speed more than style, and shot through the final gates to the cheers from my team mates. It was at that point I realised that shortly after the gates the terrain becomes rather unpleasant and I finished with a graceful head dive into a snow drift.

Boris and I took on the Manfood Box Challenge. This involves stacking manfood boxes on top of each other, with one person standing on top, climbing higher with each added box. Boris was the stacker/climber, and I had the terribly challenging and very important role as box-passer. With my skilful passing of the boxes Boris managed to stack eleven boxes on top of each other before falling off, which was quite considerate of him as I couldn't actually pass the boxes any higher anyway. Boris was wearing a rigging harness and was top-roped to the roof of the hangar, so after we'd grabbed his ankles and swung him around a bit, he came safely back to Earth.

The skidoo race through flags over a variety of snow drifts and windscoops was entertaining. Boris races lawnmowers at home and put in a good effort. Being one of the last to go the course was rather churned up and I got stuck in one place, but my team mates came and helped pull the skidoo out, and I discovered that it doesn't hurt as much as I thought it would do when a skidoo runs over your foot. I finished with a nice sideways skid and received a barrage of comments about women's ability to park.

The final two events were bog-chisel throwing (like javelin, but not quite), and flare-firing. It was dark and there was a blizzard by this point, but Floris managed to be one of only two people to hit the target with a flare, which shows that doctors can be useful at times.

Boris dashed off to the kitchen as he was on cooking duty, and the rest of us drank tea and talked up our achievements, so that by the time dinner was ready some people had apparently run up the vertical cliff, stacked boxes so high that they needed oxygen and skidooed so radically that the skidoos didn't work any more. Actually, that last one is kind of true.

After dinner medals and prizes were awarded. The winners received a box of beer and the losers (us) a bottle of Lingham's Chilli Sauce. I could buy a box of beer in the bar for £12, but I'd have to wait six months before I could get chilli sauce, so we may have lost on the events, but I think we won on the prizes.

Midwinter's Day

Today is the shortest day of the year, and we celebrate it in style.

The day started by the winter base commander bringing everyone breakfast in bed, although I had to eat mine rather quickly and run off to do the 12z met ob - somewhat inconsiderately the weather doesn't take a day off! We had a lazy morning, then went to Bransfield House for brunch. Tradition dictates that we watch 'The Thing' - a horror film set in Antarctica - but a few of us who are prone to over-active imaginations decided to watch 'Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire' instead. We only realised half-way through that it is two and a half hours long though, so cut it short in order to go back to Admirals House to get dressed up for the evening meal.

Suited and booted (or frocked and socked in my case), Geek-Boy and I came back to Bransfield House at 4pm ready for the present swapping. The carpenter went first with a bar stool for the chef, who presented one of the GAs with a spice box made to look like a miniature man-food box, and so on. I gave the Dive Officer a reversible knitted hat, and it was a relief to find that it fitted as I hadn't managed to come up with a plan to stealth-measure his head before I started knitting. I was given a beautiful picture frame with an IOU taped to the back - its creator had unfortunately had an accident with the chop saw while making my 'real' present, which apparently I will be given once he's had the stitches taken out and is allowed back into the workshop!

Dinner followed, although after two courses we went to the Ops Tower to listen to the BBC's 'Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast'. In ye olden dayes, when you were allowed 150 words a month of messages, radioed from the UK in morse (and men were men, skidoos were dogs and women were something that other countries employed), the Midwinter Broadcast was the only opportunity to hear loved ones back home. It has continued despite the advances in technology, and it was really nice to hear everyone's messages, and from our two celebrities Brian Cox (particle physicist) and Rolf Harris.

We had another few courses of dinner, and then much to my surprise Santa Claus appeared and started handing out presents. Unknown to me, all the home contacts were invited to send in a shoe-box of presents, which was kept secret. It was really exciting because it was a complete surprise, so I had great fun opening up my box of presents. There were lots of Burt's Bees hand creams which will be very useful as the dry air has aged my hands by about 30 years! There were lots of sweets and other goodies, and a photo of them dressed up in hats and scarves drinking mulled wine taken on July 18th last year - two weeks before I had even started working in Cambridge! Sister-Girl had included a few goodies, as well as a CD of cold-themed songs, which was cool(!).

We retired to the bar for drinks and to admire all of the presents again. I knitted some socks while watching people play pool and looked forwards to the lighter days ahead as the sun makes its return.