July 2, 2007
A Midwinter Celebration
On the 21st day of June in the year 2007, we merry group of people known as Muppets did celebrated the midwinter solstice in all it’s glory and splendour. A time to celebrate and be merry, a time to relax and have fun, but more importantly, the best time to realise that the Sun has awoken from its long slumber, and is on its way home. It’ll take another 6 weeks for the Sun to appear in our sky once more, but at least it hasn’t forgotten us completely. I hope…
The best thing about midwinter day is that its preceded and followed (arghhghgh!!!!) by days of fun, games, frolics and er, sometimes pain. We had an itinerary planned a few weeks prior and we started our midwinter on Friday the 15th …
Friday – How can anyone celebrate Christmas without a bona fide Christmas office party? This particular party hosted by the lovely people at the Simpson. We had games, drinks, food, photocopying things, etc – all good fun.
Saturday – Halley Biathlon. A ski (or run if your skis brake at the start … stupid design) to the memorial (about 800m), back to the Laws, throw snowballs at 5 cans – a quick penalty run around the melt tank for missing cans (I missed 3 .. urgh) and then back to the memorial for the final lap. Do not run, I repeat do not run a biathlon if everyone else is skiing. Result: KNACKERED.
Sunday – Table tennis tournament in the afternoon, followed by the traditional screening of The Thing in the evening.
Monday – A slide show of Tom’s trip to the Arctic on the Polarstern. Followed by Pete’s midwinter Pub Quiz.
Tuesday – An afternoon of Scaletrix followed by an intriguing murder mystery in the evening, with Jumbo Jimbo and Dodgy Deano as Gangsters running the show (top marks for Richard and Tamsin for the most convincing freak… I mean characters)
Wednesday – An early morning (11am) marathon, a 2km run around the perimeter. A round of crazy golf on the main platform followed by carol singing outside (words provided by Tamsin … you can guess what that means).
Thursday – MIDWINTER (huge day, see below)
Friday – A whole day dedicated to films. 4 films shown back to back took up most of the day, culminating with the most exciting spectacle the base has ever seen … Z or Dead! Yes that’s right, the band played LIVE in the lounge to a sell out audience of 14.
Saturday – We had the pool tournament finals: Jules ‘The Jammy’ Rix vs Brian ‘Chicken Kiev’ Hunter, with Brian being victorious after 5 close games. The fact that I got knocked out of the first round by a girl doesn’t mean anything because it’s a stupid game and I didn’t want to play and I let her win and she smells so I couldn’t concentrate.
Sunday – A relaxing day, which was needed as I spent more energy in the last week than the last 4 combined.
Midwinter proper started off with breakfast in bed, delivered by our base commander Pete. I decided to forgo the bacon sandwich and went for a nice cup of tea. After a relatively nice lie-in, I got up and pottered about the base, and did the unthinkable … I got naked with everyone else and ran a lap around the base. The naked run has been a tradition for years, and it wasn’t cold at all. My lungs hurt for a while, but my bits barely noticed the -35 degree temperatures. I hung around, played pool, and waited for feast to start at 4 o’clock. I scrubbed and shaved, and donned my crinkly suit and joined the others in the lounge for Champagne and canapés.
* Duo of trout & monkfish fillets with bearnaise emulsion and an asparagus , green bean & shallot salad;
* Marinated barbecue noisettes of lamb, canon of beef on a bed of onion puree served with griddled vegetables, fondant potatoes and a raspberry balsamic port jus;
Swish doesn’t come close to describing it.
We all huddle and smile for the camera. Halley Research Station Winter 2007
We then went on to the most fabulous restaurant in the Antarctic.
Ant slaves away in the kitchen. Fair play to Ant, he spent days preparing the midwinter feast. We had about 9 courses in total, and it made the whole evening even more memorable.
As midwinter week is our version of Christmas the typical holiday activities are also duplicated.
We sing carols (words by Tamsin … you can figure out for yourselves what that means)
We get dressed up on midwinter’s day… Here’s Dave’s Bond impression
We even have a tree …
But best of all, we have gifts!
Even though midwinter starts half way through June, the preparations however started on our first night on base as winterers. On February 20th, the ship left and after the long drive from N9, we arrived home and had our first meal together. After we all finished eating, the time came to decide who’d receive our winter present (once they were made), so we all drew names out of a hat and kept them secret (with some success) and started planning. I was lucky enough to get Tom, our resident German UAV pilot (and proper full on qualified meteorologist) and instantly knew what to make … a penguin standing at a base of a ladder inside a jar. What?
Apparently, the Germans have an advanced weather predicting system called a Weatherfrog. It consists of a jar, a frog and a small ladder. It is said that the frog’s position on the ladder is dependant on the weather – the more pleasant the weather the higher the frog will climb. Being in Antarctica I slightly altered this theme and replaced the frog with a penguin …
The weather penguin!
Tom seemed to like it. Or he was being polite.
The ladder took maybe a day to make, but the penguin took a lot longer. The one above is 4th generation, with the first two being absolutely rubbish (looked more like traffic cones) and the third braking its neck in a horrible vice/file/anger/stupid-welsh-tit combination. The fourth was much more penguin like, and was finished on the same day as it was received by Tom … nice and timely eh, seeing as I started the project 6 weeks ago.
Rich receives an awesome sculpture made by Mat (not just a mech, but a poncy artist too by the looks of it)
Ant receives candlesticks from Brian.
I was eager to get at mine, seeing as the box labelled ‘Something for the Comms Manager’ was the biggest. I cracked it open to find a sledge! Awesome I thought, I then turned it over and my jaw hit the floor…
It’s a collage of the main platform made from smaller pictures of life at Halley, set in a highly polished aluminium frame. It took Ant every weekend and a lot of days off to finish this in time, and I hope he knows how much I appreciate it. Cheers Ant!
The whole spread.
Half way through the gifts ceremony, we tuned into the BBC’s Midwinter Broadcast – a special broadcast dedicated to us down south with recorded messages from our friends and family. We also get to choose a song to accompany the messages, and we had Echo Beach playing in the background as our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and loved ones all revealed embarrassing nicknames and best wishes. Thanks for the message Mam!
Once the broadcast and gift-giving had finished, most of us popped outside for a cigar and a dram of whisky.
The epitome of cool and suave. Or is it two pompous plonkers looking smug? I forget.
Dave with his pipe, and Jim with what looks like a pair of pants on his head.
We then retired to the lounge to unwind and chat the night away. Some didn’t quite make it …
A most excellent week. I’ve not listed half of the things we got up to, but I’m sure you can use your imagination.
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