I had wandered off to sit awhile, listening to the calls of the gentoo penguins, lost in my thoughts and surroundings. When I got up to go, I saw the ship sailing away without me.
It’s all right, I thought. Kirsten will call for my tag to be turned; they’ll notice I’m missing; they’ll come back for me.
But the Akademik Shokalskiy headed for the horizon as I watched in the gathering gloom.
13 April, 2006
Street Scene
The lone lime’s bare branches
Would scratch colour into this dull sky.
But they barely move.
Nothing to carry away the tobacco smell
Or the traffic’s roar
By the tree stands a queue of shops
A mixture of heights and ages.
One, behind its metal frame
Wears a tile-hung waistcoat
A papoose-bundled baby
Feet in teddy bears,
A woman pushed in a wheelchair
Her one leg walking the ground ahead
The old man walks to a slow rhythm, spider-like.
Deliberate.
One, three, two, four.
A grimace or a grin?
No socks on either pair of feet
Against the cold
On a black half-moon handbag
A young woman on her knees
Clothed in moonlight
Washes her long straight hair
In a plain white porcelain bowl
A lover strolls amid the traffic
Swinging dizzied roses by his side
Past the van with the man
Wearing pear-drop earrings
Splashed against his window
Would scratch colour into this dull sky.
But they barely move.
Nothing to carry away the tobacco smell
Or the traffic’s roar
By the tree stands a queue of shops
A mixture of heights and ages.
One, behind its metal frame
Wears a tile-hung waistcoat
A papoose-bundled baby
Feet in teddy bears,
A woman pushed in a wheelchair
Her one leg walking the ground ahead
The old man walks to a slow rhythm, spider-like.
Deliberate.
One, three, two, four.
A grimace or a grin?
No socks on either pair of feet
Against the cold
On a black half-moon handbag
A young woman on her knees
Clothed in moonlight
Washes her long straight hair
In a plain white porcelain bowl
A lover strolls amid the traffic
Swinging dizzied roses by his side
Past the van with the man
Wearing pear-drop earrings
Splashed against his window
May I have your attention, please?
They are so polite, these public information messages. Whether they are imploring you to take your rubbish home with you instead of just dropping it and forgetting it the moment it leaves your fingers, or asking you to look out for suspicious characters acting suspiciously with their suspicious belongings, the message is always in phrases of which Sergeant Wilson would be proud.
“Would you mind awfully not dropping litter?”
“Please report that chap in the funny hat to a member of staff.”
“Sorry about the CCTV cameras, you know how it is.”
“We do hate destroying your luggage, but if you will leave it unattended, what can we do?”
So here I am, standing on platform 1 of Brockley Station, listening to the polite young man telling me about the security arrangements, which he ends with the phrase “All footage is recorded.”
All footage is recorded.
My first thought is the cameras are not being monitored. If I’m mugged or beaten up by sailors, the transport police won’t be turning up to rescue me. The footage will be used to gather evidence afterwards, or shown on News 24 to illustrate the alarming rise in criminal activities by Naval personnel – like the kid on a bike lobbing a brick through the car window.
But then I thought, what? Run that by me again?
All footage is recorded.
It doesn’t make sense. Of course all footage is recorded. It wouldn’t be footage, otherwise. Try this:
All writing is written
See what I mean? It’s incomplete, a grocer’s apostrophe of a sentence. You find yourself thinking ‘all writing is written - what?’
All footage is recorded - what?
All footage is recorded on a sticky label on the back of the cassette.
All footage is recorded, illuminated and indexed by silent monks in Poland (the recording process has been sent abroad, but within the EU, so that’s all right).
All footage is recorded at a frame rate of 50fps, though we would like to record at 1000fps, the better to appreciate the poetry that is the morning rush hour. We have souls as well, you know.
Watch out for sailors.
“Would you mind awfully not dropping litter?”
“Please report that chap in the funny hat to a member of staff.”
“Sorry about the CCTV cameras, you know how it is.”
“We do hate destroying your luggage, but if you will leave it unattended, what can we do?”
So here I am, standing on platform 1 of Brockley Station, listening to the polite young man telling me about the security arrangements, which he ends with the phrase “All footage is recorded.”
All footage is recorded.
My first thought is the cameras are not being monitored. If I’m mugged or beaten up by sailors, the transport police won’t be turning up to rescue me. The footage will be used to gather evidence afterwards, or shown on News 24 to illustrate the alarming rise in criminal activities by Naval personnel – like the kid on a bike lobbing a brick through the car window.
But then I thought, what? Run that by me again?
All footage is recorded.
It doesn’t make sense. Of course all footage is recorded. It wouldn’t be footage, otherwise. Try this:
All writing is written
See what I mean? It’s incomplete, a grocer’s apostrophe of a sentence. You find yourself thinking ‘all writing is written - what?’
All footage is recorded - what?
All footage is recorded on a sticky label on the back of the cassette.
All footage is recorded, illuminated and indexed by silent monks in Poland (the recording process has been sent abroad, but within the EU, so that’s all right).
All footage is recorded at a frame rate of 50fps, though we would like to record at 1000fps, the better to appreciate the poetry that is the morning rush hour. We have souls as well, you know.
Watch out for sailors.
12 April, 2006
The Adventure: Day 8
Antarctica
“Break your leg in a heartbeat”
Today I would set foot on the continent of Antarctica – I have the certificate to prove it. Today I would also try inadvertently to injure myself in quite interesting ways. But today would also be the most beautiful of the trip.
We were split into two groups. While one group cruised Skontrop Cove and the head of a glacier, the other would land at Almirante Brown, an old Argentine research station.
The cruise around the head of the glacier was magical. The still waters, the architectural ice shapes, the colours - splashes of dark blue ink across the ice - the silence. We asked the Russian pilot if we could move our zodiac closer. “Kirsten won’t like it,” he smiled. Kirsten wouldn’t like it because glaciers calve icebergs without warning, and even a small calving could cause a lot of harm. We still moved closer. “Wow,” said one of us, repeatedly. “Wow.”
After breakfast it was our turn to land at Almirante Brown. Landing involved pulling yourself out of the zodiac by a length of old rope onto what used to be a landing stage, but what was now a loose plank with little support. Once on land you hike yourself up a 350ft hill to enjoy the views of the harbour below. Then you decide how best to get back down again.
“Some people,” we were told at the lecture the previous evening, “just sit down and sort of shuffle on their bums down the slope. We don’t recommend this method.” No, but it is the safest, and for some the quickest way. The boots we were issued with at the start of the voyage were fine walking up hill on the crisp, powdery snow, but their lack of flexibility made the descent difficult.
Bum-shuffling is really the only way. I proceeded to shuffle, following the track of a previous bum until a voice called over to me “I’d head over this way, if I were you. You’re heading toward a cliff.” I crabbed myself swiftly sideways and yes, about 20ft from where I had been, my gentle slope quickly became vertical, rocky and quite definitely lethal - easily a 60ft drop.
Soon afterwards, I hear a female voice from far behind me cry “Oh Shit!” followed by the umistakeable sound of human sliding on snow. The sound grew louder as she skittered by, not stopping until she reached the bottom of the hill, spinning slowly to an unhurt stop, laughing herself silly.
After safely reaching the bottom, I wanted to be by myself for a while, so I walked away from the main group. My path crossed the tracks of previous visitors as I headed towards the water. The snow was quite deep but manageable, I thought, until my right leg disappeared beneath me and kept on disappearing. Stuck.
I heard a voice at my side. “Break your leg in a heartbeat,” growled Phil, a 10-year veteran of McMurdo Antarctic base and one of the Quark Expeditions personnel.
With Phil's help, it took me a little while to work myself free, my boot being just bendy enough for me to point my toes. Luckily I didn’t need anyone to dig me from the snow, but it was a close thing – as was that broken leg.
That evening was my second Antarctic sunset aboard ship. The Lemaire Channel must be one of the most beautiful places on Earth at any time, but that evening it was perfect.
A crescent moon rode high in the sky as we followed a large cruise ship between the mountains, the peaks lit by the slowly setting sun. It takes a long time for the sun to set at these latitudes, and of course it never really gets dark in the Anarctic Spring.
This was our most southerly point of the trip, 65°07’S.
Back to Day 1
“Break your leg in a heartbeat”
Today I would set foot on the continent of Antarctica – I have the certificate to prove it. Today I would also try inadvertently to injure myself in quite interesting ways. But today would also be the most beautiful of the trip.
We were split into two groups. While one group cruised Skontrop Cove and the head of a glacier, the other would land at Almirante Brown, an old Argentine research station.
The cruise around the head of the glacier was magical. The still waters, the architectural ice shapes, the colours - splashes of dark blue ink across the ice - the silence. We asked the Russian pilot if we could move our zodiac closer. “Kirsten won’t like it,” he smiled. Kirsten wouldn’t like it because glaciers calve icebergs without warning, and even a small calving could cause a lot of harm. We still moved closer. “Wow,” said one of us, repeatedly. “Wow.”
After breakfast it was our turn to land at Almirante Brown. Landing involved pulling yourself out of the zodiac by a length of old rope onto what used to be a landing stage, but what was now a loose plank with little support. Once on land you hike yourself up a 350ft hill to enjoy the views of the harbour below. Then you decide how best to get back down again.
“Some people,” we were told at the lecture the previous evening, “just sit down and sort of shuffle on their bums down the slope. We don’t recommend this method.” No, but it is the safest, and for some the quickest way. The boots we were issued with at the start of the voyage were fine walking up hill on the crisp, powdery snow, but their lack of flexibility made the descent difficult.
Bum-shuffling is really the only way. I proceeded to shuffle, following the track of a previous bum until a voice called over to me “I’d head over this way, if I were you. You’re heading toward a cliff.” I crabbed myself swiftly sideways and yes, about 20ft from where I had been, my gentle slope quickly became vertical, rocky and quite definitely lethal - easily a 60ft drop.
Soon afterwards, I hear a female voice from far behind me cry “Oh Shit!” followed by the umistakeable sound of human sliding on snow. The sound grew louder as she skittered by, not stopping until she reached the bottom of the hill, spinning slowly to an unhurt stop, laughing herself silly.
After safely reaching the bottom, I wanted to be by myself for a while, so I walked away from the main group. My path crossed the tracks of previous visitors as I headed towards the water. The snow was quite deep but manageable, I thought, until my right leg disappeared beneath me and kept on disappearing. Stuck.
I heard a voice at my side. “Break your leg in a heartbeat,” growled Phil, a 10-year veteran of McMurdo Antarctic base and one of the Quark Expeditions personnel.
With Phil's help, it took me a little while to work myself free, my boot being just bendy enough for me to point my toes. Luckily I didn’t need anyone to dig me from the snow, but it was a close thing – as was that broken leg.
That evening was my second Antarctic sunset aboard ship. The Lemaire Channel must be one of the most beautiful places on Earth at any time, but that evening it was perfect.
A crescent moon rode high in the sky as we followed a large cruise ship between the mountains, the peaks lit by the slowly setting sun. It takes a long time for the sun to set at these latitudes, and of course it never really gets dark in the Anarctic Spring.
This was our most southerly point of the trip, 65°07’S.
Back to Day 1
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)