November 28th - December 12th

November 28th - December 12th

An uneventful period and I actually began to get a bit bored at times - a thing I would not have thought possible. All the best books have gone away from here, and one tends to get tired of technical reading.

After last international day we slept hard, so hard in fact that the alarm didn’t wake us up in the morning and we missed the weather report to Bear Island and didn’t get up till 10a.m. in time for the ionosphere run. What’s more, with the low temperature outside and the absence of a fire in the living room for such a long period we found everything frozen hard in the morning. The water in all the jugs had thick ice on top, developers had turned to mushy porridge and a winchester containing clean water was frozen almost solid and cracked.

The aurorae and clear days continued and then at the beginning of the month Brownie started communications with England. This time he surprisingly got through quite well to Johnson twice which was a very good piece of work and long messages went to and fro - so glad I was able to get one to Emily this way, for it was too expensive to send direct. Sorry not to have known where Cicely was. Afterwards we had to send Sandy’s messages up by phone, and since he hasn’t got a transmitter we never knew whether he had received it or not, so we sent it seven times, only to hear indirectly from Robert on the seventh day that Sandy had not been listening at that time but would do so in future. So another seven times! On Sunday 8th December Robert says that Andrew and Dan have reached A Station, so Andrew and John are back at last from Cape Leigh Smith safely. When Brownie asked if he should shoot Ayo, Andrew says “No, I am coming at once.” He left A Station with David next day, and we expected him daily afterwards - hoping that he would come before the international day, but there was no sign of him. It was fine and calm and clear of ice up to Monday evening but then the wind changed and blew ice in, and there was a big swell on the bay for some days.

Three nights recently Bear Island has taken Christmas messages for us at night. Heard my Bach Fugue from Moscow one evening, and on another night one of the Bach suites that we have on the gramophone from the same station.

Listened in to the Oxford v Cambridge rugger match: fading bad, but an exciting match to listen to; imagined Professor watching it - he nearly always does.