I also like the belief that it’s my god-given right to be whomever I want, do whatever I want, change the world, fuck the world, create my own world. Whenever I come here I return to Britain inspired, fired up, ready to follow my dreams, do the impossible, be that person and create that job. Back in Britain, it’s good to be comfortable, secure, following an accepted path. It’s good to be content with who you are, where you are. There is merit in that too.

Britain has its advantages. A good cup of tea is common, delicious and properly made, scallops are served with the orange bit as well as the white, marmite is a sensible spread for toast, museums and art galleries are usually free, it is relatively easy to see a doctor and not be charged for it and the majority of the population is suspicious of, and a little uncomfortable around, overt nationalism. In addition, Christianity is not referred to either as the Truth or a worrying extreme right wing movement and there’s no problem with Darwin being buried in Westminster Abbey.

On the flip side, our shops close around the end of the working day and sometimes never open at all on a Sunday. Late night licensing has only just been introduced but many pubs still ring the bell at 11pm. And brunch, frankly, is a disaster. Why have Brits not woken up to the profitable luxury that is brunch? Last Sunday I had a divine crab and avocado benedict at my friend’s restaurant but it needn’t be so fancy: good coffee, juice, various egg dishes, pancakes or waffles, and plenty of time for refills and hangover recovery are, I think, the main ingredients.

I did laugh during brunch though when my friend’s six year old daughter pointed to her plate and asked, “Mama, are these potatoes organic? I hope so cos otherwise we’d be eating Darth Tater”. Visit StoreWars for clarity on this, it’s worth it. The day before, in the same town, we went to see a Truckers Parade. Only in the US can I imagine having so much fun watching multiple lorries driving past decorated to the nines with fairy lights, Rudolphs, flashing candy canes and extra large Santas ho ho ho-ing. I like the diversity of this country: the organic-food movement coexisting with the truckers.

On a more challenging note, I have found myself caught between two visions of America, and the world, that are impossible to reconcile. The primary reason for my visit to the States is the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. This is a huge and well respected affair: twelve thousand people, disciplines ranging across all the geosciences, five days of simultaneous poster and oral sessions from 8am to 5pm. The thing that strikes me is that while the debate on the street still seems to be “is climate change happening,” not once do I hear that asked inside. To these scientists, the critical questions now are how climate change will come about, what the implications are and what processes might be implemented that could make the change slightly gentler. What changes are we already observing, what are the models predicting, how accurate are they and what areas need particular attention?

Some of these discussions happen in fields close to my own but most range into places that interest me greatly but travel beyond my full comprehension. The conference includes geophysicists, atmospheric scientists, climatologists, chemists, biologists, physicists, geologists and mathematicians to name a few. Hot topics include simulations which use super-computers to model everything from molecular processes to the entire global climate. There are also results from field experiments taking place everywhere from the tropics to the poles, and covering land, forest, ice, ocean, desert and cities. Big picture, tiny picture, theoretical, experimental, diverse interdisciplinary studies: each one dedicated to understanding one particular aspect of the world a little better.

If I manage to follow the introductory slide and conclusions of a talk outside my field then I walk away having learnt something. I trust that other experts in the room will challenge the presenter if any of his or her arguments are fundamentally flawed. It interests me to discover what the salient points are, where the areas of debate still lie, and what the different disciplines are concerned by. I realise that I trust the scientific method and I trust the people presenting this material even if I don’t entirely understand their work. Perhaps it’s because I received a scientific training. I prefer to think that it’s because that training showed me how the scientific method works and I have been convinced by many of its merits. I believe that this method is, on the whole, applied ethically and responsibly across all of the disciplines I have been listening to. And so, ultimately, I have been convinced that climate change is a reality we will face during the next few generations. In some hot spots around the world such as the antarctic peninsula and the arctic, we appear to be observing its effects already.

The scientific community is convinced of the reality of human-induced climate change. We do not know how it will manifest itself, as the world is an extremely complex place with many interactions and feedback processes that we don’t understand. This is what the current science is focusing on, this is where debate lies and these are the aspects where experts disagree. It is the nature of scientific interrogation to debate and question, and hence all the more convincing that the overwhelming majority of the scientific population agrees that climate change is a reality. (This isn’t that uncommon though: gravity and evolution are generally accepted theories these days too.) The question, “how am I supposed to know what to think when the scientists themselves seem to disagree?” drives me up the wall. Of course they disagree, but it’s the detail, not the general trend, that is being argued about. That’s how we find stuff out.

So, what is my challenge? Well, I am wondering: What more scientific results could be discovered that would make any substantial change to public opinion or policy? Although I see the validity in more science being done, including more extensive simulations of climate change that in turn require more field data, it seems to me that the real work now has to be in public education and outreach.

Do we need to explain the scientific method better? Do we need to explain climate change better? It would be a start if we could get the main points across, and increase the public trust in science in general. Without public concern, policies won’t be changed, as the timescale for effect is much longer than a goverment term. Without policy change, the climate system will be pushed extremely hard and extremely quickly and none of us can say for sure what the result will be. What we can say is that no one has yet come up with a model that predicts that all will be just fine.

Part of what I love about America is its boldness. Part of what I hate is its belligerence. How can scientific argument turn things around so we make bold steps in a different direction?

For those of you who don’t know, I’m here for my brother’s wedding. Folk are flying in from around the world: UK, Germany, Egypt, California, Sweden, Argentina… descending on the city for what promises to be a great party. And as warrants for such an occasion, the hype is picking up. Now, any follower of this website should have realized that though I adore my brother and everything, well almost everything, about him, we are very different creatures. I don’t like shopping, I don’t know the correct names and locations of any countries in South America, or any continent for that matter, can’t argue politics, culture, current affairs or money with any conviction and certainly wouldn’t know the difference between cool and kitsch. However if he and Michelle are going to have a party, no amount of sea ice could keep me away.

So, first I got my hair cut, that was a novelty but I survived and no-one, not a soul, noticed. (Why do folk pay good money to look exactly the same?) And then I bought a dress, and some shoes. Pink shoes no less. And today I went to get my legs waxed. My ‘beautician’ was a polish gem and rather than gawk at my furry legs we spent most of the session talking about how ridiculous the hair-free culture in the US is. I still can’t believe that her 15 year-old daughter, or anyone for that matter, shaves her arms.

Next stop? The spa directed me to Bloomingdales to buy some make-up. Now I’m not sure how you’re supposed to decide between the various desks piled high with powders and lacquers but after circling the floor once I somehow ended up in a chair in the Mac booth, being done. There were three worryingly beautiful people working at this stall: one doll-like girl, one heavily made-up queen and my gentleman artist with finely curled lashes for whom I was the palette. We begun with foundation, he did half my face first and then the whole thing to show me the difference. I looked like me but blander. Then he put concealer on and I looked like me but blander and paler. And then he put cream blusher on and I looked more like me again. Finally he put glycerine all over my freshly blushed cheeks and I looked exactly like me at a party. Once it was all done he covered me in invisible powder (the point?) and told me to beware of the subway as the air there is so filthy. I didn’t think it appropriate to mention that Felix and I were intending on taking the F-train to his wedding.

Next came the eyes. Inside light, outside dark. Make the dark bits lighter with this one. Make the sticky out bits lighter. Edges dark again, “like an apple”. Right, that helps. Then a middle colour at the top and a dark one at the edges and underneath and then a pencil right in my eyes so they watered and looked bloodshot but I later realized that was the desired effect. “Smokey”. And then the lips. This was my favourite bit.

“You usually use yongblast?”
“???”
“Yonglast.”
“?”
“Do you usually use long-lasting lipstick?”
“Um, I think I’ve worn lipstick 5 times in my life”
“Oh.”

And he gave me some lipgloss stuff that apparrantly lasts 7 hours as long as I don’t eat chicken wings. I’m going to test it all day today.

The crème de la crème came at the end with lash curling and mascara. This took ages, I have no idea why and when he showed me the mirror I burst out laughing as I looked the spit of Aunt Sally. The whole thing took him twenty minutes but he confidently said I should, with practice, be able to get my morning make-up routine down to seven though evenings would obviously still require half an hour. I was having such fun by this time that I bought 80% of the products and he gave me his phone number. I still don’t understand.

As I was leaving I asked if it would be very cheeky to come back on Saturday for him to repeat the activity for real. He replied in all sincerity, “what’s cheeky?” adding, “ I heard a Brit once call his friend a cheeky bastard but didn’t know what it meant.”

I walked home with my pre-pubescent legs and drag-queen lashes laughing to myself. I did feel beautiful but, contrary to the aim of the exercise, it had nothing to do with the external applications and all to do with its ridiculousness.

I’ve been thinking about this ‘growing up’ thing since Felix’s last post. I’ve been to a wedding and watched two friends do the thing they really want to do: get married, make a commitment to each other, live together... and by that I mean really live, lebensgefährter, travel through life together. Other friends have had kids lately, something that has made them so happy, has been absolutely rewarding. Something they really wanted to do. It’s quite something to feel capable, ready, grown-up enough, to not only want these things but to carry them out. To opt in.

I fear I may have been wrongly represented. Or rather, people may have assumed my stand-point by virtue of the last year in a strange place, ‘a wonderfully simple bubble’ as commented by Span. A number of people wondered if going to Antarctica was running away from something, escaping reality, and I used to vehemently defend it as an alternative way to ‘opt in’ to life rather than opt out. (Similarly, I think ‘gap-year’ is a terrible expression, suggesting an acceptable one year ‘out’ of the real world.)

What you may not know is that I have been thoroughly enjoying being a part of the working world since coming back. Making my contribution to the 9-5 world that I know so little about. I love flexi-time and take great satisfaction in swiping-in and out every day. I like my dull job. It's exciting in the bigger picture, perhaps, but the daily process of number-crunching is a far cry from laughing with the midday stars. I like coming home at a reasonable time and having an evening to take whatever class I fancy, cook dinner or meet folk in the pub. I love the house that I share with one friend. Today, I even like the rain. And sure, I can see that ten years of this might become monotonous and dull – but so could ten years on the ice.

I have never lived such a routined life as at Halley. So today, for the record, I’m all about opting-in. Choosing the life you want. Having babies, buying houses, going to work and contributing to the flow of whichever city you live in. In Cambridge, it’s biking along the river and shopping in the market. In London, it’s watching people on the tube and magicking myself from one side of town to the other on the buses using my swish new oyster card. In Edinburgh this weekend I enjoyed being a tourist, admiring the great old buildings and being swung around the dancefloor, clueless, at a ceilidh. Yes, cities have grown this way because enough people have actively chosen this life. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all.

In retrospect, this may seem a little theatrical. But at the time I truly felt that I had been chasing this mysterious species for four years, day and night, had sacrificed my life and happiness for it in fact, and to no joy. I thankfully had a thoughtful supervisor and after four years of drowning in a mud pool and banging my head on a brick wall he and my examining committee found it within themselves to take pity on me, and allow me to submit a negative thesis. Two hundred and forty-four pages on how not to measure hydroxyl radicals.

But I loved my project, I truly believed in it, I saw the potential it had to physically expand our knowledge base and thereby our understanding of atmospheric chemistry around the world. I did indeed dedicate my life at the time to this doomed technique, and proving it would never work was sodden with mixed emotions. I was glad that no-one would ever have to repeat all those terrible experiments pointlessly, but I was also gutted.

Hydroxyl radicals are great, so informative about the immediate air composition, and the method we were developing should have made them cheap and simple to measure everywhere in the world.

Our method involved bubbling air through soluble aspirin and then analysing the final solution. Hydroxyl radicals in the air react with aspirin to form a product (2,5-dihydroxy benzoic acid if you must know) that is extremely fluorescent. Separating reactants and products is relatively simple and the concentration of the final product should be able to tell you how much hydroxyl is in the air providing you know how long you bubbled for and what the flow rate was. It really was that simple.

The two-hundred odd pages I mentioned above were dedicated to all the other things that also react or interact with aspirin to produce the same result. Light, ozone, bacteria, you name it. Even when we had got rid of most of them, there was still an interference left and so, regrettably, we gave up. For what we wanted to do, the method was rubbish.

Unfortunately for me, the best methods to measure atmospheric hydroxyl radicals are still big and flash and expensive. They are actually wonderful instruments, fascinating and amazing, but their cost necessarily means that there aren’t many in the world.

Hydroxyl radicals, in contrast, are everywhere. Or a tleast they’re everywhere that there’s any chemistry kicking off. They are present in tiny concentrations: fractions of a part per trillion (that’s one hydroxyl in 10,000,000,000,000 anything elses) but they are crucial to keeping the chemistry happening. Where there is pollution, they break it down and in so doing are themselves destroyed and created. Where there is light, they are the mechanism that perpetuate photolytic chain reactions. They are sometimes known as the dustbin of the atmosphere but I prefer to think of them as little pac-men, munching their way through the ever changing game. In fact, these are the same things that we are told we have to control inside us by taking lots of antioxidants like tea, red wine and garlic. Oxidising the air: good in general. Oxidizing your stomach: not so good. They themselves aren’t good or bad, they’re molecules. They are however, extremely powerful and effective. And better yet, a great indicator of everything that’s going on around them.

Because of their low concentration and short lifetime (less than a second between being produced and reacting with something else), they respond incredibly quickly to changes in atmospheric composition. During the solar eclipse a few years ago, for instance, the Leeds FAGE machine got some stunning data showing an immediate drop-off of hydroxyl radicals when the sun disappeared and an immediate return to their prior concentrations when the light returned. So they’re good indicators of what’s going on in real time on a second-by-second basis. Which is why I was so keen to develop a method that was cheap and cheerful,- so we could get this data at every monitoring site from Halley to Weybourne.

Well, I may have not yet seen a global hydroxyl measurement network being implemented for the cost of some pain-killers but I have seen hydroxyl measurements in Antarctica. And that for me was pretty special. The ultimate combining of two dreams I guess. To be honest, it was special for everyone concerned, and not only for scientific reasons. First the ship didn’t get in so the project was postponed by a year, then the ship did get in, the lab got built but we didn’t think there would be enough energy for this beast to run in the second summer when it was due to arrive. Then the beast got in, the power supply was sufficient but the ice was weak and it looked like the beast may never get out… from beginning to end, getting FAGE to the Antarctic was an investment of nerves and faith as well as money.

There was an inherent risk even if the logistics would have run smoothly, too: weather. As I said before, hydroxyl radicals are around in small concentrations on the best of days. The best of days are sunny, clear, calm and long. On foggy, windy, stormy, or icy days it was unlikely there would be enough radicals around to measure them at all even if the machine stood up to the conditions. And we didn’t know what kind of conditions it would withstand. I had been told clearly at the start of last season that if we got two complete days of data, that would be fine. If we got a week, that would be great.

As it turned out, the FAGE boys collected the longest data set from the instrument ever, anywhere: 5 weeks of continuous measurements. And that in one of the most remote and technically challenging places in the world. Everyone related with the project should be rightfully proud.

Our culture consumes us. All that energy that goes into simply existing,- what to wear (will I get sweat patches, would make-up run), how to get about, packed diaries of events planned weeks in advance still being juggled on the day, mobile phones ringing and bleeping, news to digest, scheduled exercise.. and that’s not to mention buying food, washing, sleeping, eating and having fun. The world I care so much about feels very far away despite being right under my feet.

It would be difficult to convince anyone right now to not travel in an air-conditioned car for 45 minutes instead of this 2 hour commute although it probably matters even more on a day like today. Really truly, will that one journey make any difference? Really truly, in the grand scheme of things? No. Will any of it make a difference? I don’t know. Is it too late? Maybe. These aren’t the answers you want to hear from a committed environmentalist and they aren’t the answers I want to give. In many ways, the whole field of climate research is incredibly dissatisfying: the more we convince ourselves that climate change is real, the more we are doomed. I do believe it, most definitely, and not only because I want to and that the science I have studied is convincing. The thing that has probably persuaded me most is meeting well respected, senior, eminent scientists who have been convinced by the data. Unlike me, these people didn’t enter the field as idealists and environmentalists hoping to find a solution to the world’s problems. These men (mainly) were pure scientists, kineticists, physicists, chemists, biologists and mathematicians whose expertise was called upon about 30 years ago to try and figure out if the climate was changing and, if so, how. They had no vested interest in the result: moral, political or economic.

The application of pure and applied sciences to climate research first grew within the individual disciplines. Then, more recently, a whole new interdisciplinary field grew, commonly known as Earth System Science. Applied science has always existed but the focus shifted from trying to understand the intricacies of a particular field, now, to trying to predict what may happen in the future.

I am an atmospheric chemist: we look at chemical processes happening in the air. Because it’s only possible to know so much, we generally represent the air as a box with arrows in and arrows out and the stuff we are really interested in happening in the middle. Often chemicals leave our theoretical box and are deposited to leaves (hand over to biologists), water (oceanographers), the ground (earth scientists) and the ice (glaciologists). To figure out how the chemicals are entering our box, we need to know about wind (meteorologists), radiation (physicists) and emissions from the cryosphere, biosphere and oceans.

Every other discipline does the same but only in the last few years have we reached the stage where we can stack these boxes, in all dimensions necessary to overlaps sides with everyone, and see what happens when you try and simulate the whole world. We have also only recently had the computer power required to run simulations of this world into the future and back to the past. Inevitably, the models often go wrong at the interfaces of the boxes since these areas have had less attention in the past: we know less about what happens here.

This is where interface studies come in, like the one that sent me to Halley. We were studying the interface between the snow and air (cryosphere and atmosphere). Understanding these processes should help the big picture in lots of ways, from interpretation of ice cores (a common record for past climates) to better guesses at processes occurring in high clouds that are made of ice particles. Similarly, there are people studying the interface between the air and oceans, forests, cities, deserts and rock. All of this information is incorporated into models that simulate the world, try to reproduce the past and present and predict the future. And the more data comes in from a wide range of areas, the more certain we become that our climate is rapidly changing and is doing so due to man-made influences. But sitting on this overcrowded train on the hottest day of the year, I don’t feel the relevance of any of this to me.. or of me on it. I don’t care. There are more important things to worry about, like what I’m going to have for dinner tonight or when I can see my friends.

There is no beginning or end, just a story spiralling ever inwards and outwards, over itself and through the gaps in the middle. People know lots but no-one is ever sure of anything. That’s the whole beautiful premise of science. But equally, in our society, it’s somehow seen as fact, as Truth, as having the Answers. And the answers are held within, they’re out there for the finding.

I visited a primary school a while ago to talk about Antarctica and was introduced as an explorer. It made me smile, but this was the way the teacher had managed to fit me into the national curriculum; explorers were the topic of the week. Initially we decided that I kind of was an explorer, yes, since I was going to Antarctica and that was an exciting place that not many folk went to. But as the classroom chat developed, and the kids asked more questions about my work, we learnt that I truly was an explorer and that one way of being an explorer today was to be a scientist. (I would argue that any academic, or independent thinker is an explorer by the same premise but that discussion wasn’t entirely relevant to the 6 year-olds in front of me.) Anyway, it suddenly made it feel exciting, and relevant. The discovery of things we don’t yet know, the pushing back of knowledge boundaries. Exploring unchartered territory. And then I felt very underqualified and returned to the safer topic of what we did with our poo.

Going to the Antarctic as a scientist was another a very humbling experience. Until then, I had done my thing, taken courses, read books, splashed around in a lab happily confident that nobody really cared about what I was doing and that in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t very important. To me it was life-changing and misery-making, but that’s the nature of a Ph.D. The rest of the world didn’t bother with details, they were content as long as I jumped through and over the various hoops and hurdles necessary to qualify. And then I got this job with BAS.

I’d like to say that the work suddenly became important and relevant because it was important and relevant. Because it was crucial to our understanding of climate change. Because it was cutting edge and would ultimately save the world. These things might well be true and have certainly been argued convincingly (well, maybe not the world-saving bit) which is why we had the funding in the first place. For me, however, the scariest bit was the faith my colleagues on the ice seemed to have in the value of our work. Sometimes it was justifiably skeptical faith (‘bloody beakers’ was not an uncommon phrase to have directed at us) but the entire infrastructure nominally existed to make science programmes possible. On some level, therefore, everyone justified their existence by the science that happened there. And again justifiably, they wanted to know what they were going to all this hard work for. Builders, plumbers, electricians.. everyone but scientists really, would ask me for bite –sized explanations of the point of our lab. And seeing as we’re government-funded, that’s not an unreasonable demand.

So why do I shy away from talking about it? Why didn’t it crop up the whole time on this website while I was down there? Even strangers sent me emails asking for a description of the science I was doing!

Well, firstly, it was my job and it was hard work and often not much fun and at the bottom bottom level of field science that we were working at it seemed to take all my energy just to keep kit running, let alone explain and understand its greater purpose. I knew I had known it once and been convinced then and that was enough. At the time, it was my job to get the numbers and someone else’s to do something with them. I didn’t have the energy or interest to do any more.

Secondly, it’s incredibly daunting to speak authoritatively about anything scientific because I’d probably get it wrong, or not entirely right. I’d far rather rant about something I know nothing about (politics, capitalism, the relative merits of golf) than about something I am meant to have studied in depth but actually have just realized how much there is to know and how little I know. I have known bits at times, generally the night before an exam, but I have a memory like a sieve and get myself in a terrible muddle when trying to piece the jigsaw back together. Plus, people ask questions that I quite simply don’t know the answer to. Is using chip fat a good idea as a new fuel for cars? Is nuclear fuel bad? Are the objectives set in Kyoto achievable? What’s the truth about climate change? Are your results good news or bad?! They’re good questions and I’m getting better at answering them, realizing that educated banter is an acceptable response, but my information source is often exactly the same as that used by the questioner. So often I just wish that one of the wise people I look up to was there to produce the Right Answer. Or at least make us believe there is one.

Anyway, Science at Halley is extremely important. Not only for itself, as itself and for what it sets out to do, but also for the psychological peace of its inhabitants. Most of the guys I wintered with might not agree with me on this but it did on some level keep the base going, keep us going, give us the tiniest hint of a sense of purpose. Without the greater umbrella of our work, I would have struggled hard to justify the imprint we were leaving on the continent. In fact, I did often struggle with our existence there and came up with a variety of bluffs to keep me happy. Sometimes I saw myself as a park warden, other times convinced myself that the science we did had the potential to be really helpful, more often than not, I settled on the thinking that if we weren’t there then someone else might be and they could easily be exploiting the land even more than we were. And anyway, isn’t the whole Antarctic presence thing just political?

Since getting back I have been approached to consider turning my web diaries into a book. Initially I didn’t really see the point. They’re on the web after all and were never meant to be anything other than a way of keeping in touch with my friends and family as well as recording memories for myself. As a collection of stories, they might have been fun to read at the time but I still don’t know exactly what the allure was to people I have never met. Why did you read and why would you read? Or what would you read? As they currently stand, they lack something. They lack a lot and are incredibly lopsided. Most obviously, they don’t tell anyone else’s story and they barely mention the daily work we did.

I can’t change the bias that they are my experience and mine only. And I can’t and won’t tell someone else’s story or pretend that anyone had the same year that I did who was there at the same time. Some people hated it. Some people were not moved either way. For many, I have no idea what they thought. We weren’t on summer camp, we didn’t sit around and discuss out deepest philosophies on a regular basis. We won’t become one strong cohesive group in the future, one for all and all for one. But we had a good year. We had a great year. Or rather, I had a great year. And I’m thankful to every winterer, and summerer, who made it so good.

So I’m a bit stuck. It has been suggested that what I could perhaps add, and which might provide some glue between the diaries, is some background, some science. There are a number of grand arguments for this: maybe I could inspire young people to become scientists or help shake the stereotype of my profession, maybe people reading the entries might inadvertently learn something about climate change and remember to turn a light bulb off, once, after reading that one chapter.. maybe maybe maybe… but I don’t think that’s why you read this far or why you’d buy the book. Or is it? So instead of chasing my tail I’ve decided to come clean and ask you straight, those of you who have read this far, why did you and what else would you like to see added? Or, and be honest now, have they had their time and place and should they be gently left to the multifaceted archive that is the internet.

As expected, daily life and daily people have changed very little and I slipped back into a routine of work and play like I’d never left it. I have however met two eight-month old humanoids who hadn’t even been conceived before I left and found good friends in new homes without a moving box in sight. My dad is no longer in his job and has retired via a fairly nasty legal case, two close family friends have been through cancer therapy and recovered, my brother has got engaged and bought an apartment. These are all events that I would like to think I would have been more of a support through had I been here.

Instead, I have been living in a wonderfully simple bubble. One life. Time moving at exactly the speed it’s meant to. Or rather, people moving at exactly the speed of Time. Back in the ‘Real World’ (as locals like to call it), we cram in far too much and rarely appreciate the clouds. It’s obvious, of course, but all this juggling is exhausting.

I don’t even mean high-pressured jet setting or living the high life. Kensington-Victoria-Dulwich-Brixton-London Bridge-South Bank confused me enough. We climb into a transport time capsule and emerge in a whole new place, scenery, and social dynamic. Add to that the mobile phone that instantly transports you to some entirely other place, and I feel torn apart. At the pub I meet distant friends who I haven’t seen for eight years coupled with those I have thought of regularly during the last year. This weekend I have met up with people from seven very different but fundamental times in my life. Most Londoners do this happily within a day, every day. So, the multiplicity of our lives, that is something, though known, that has surprised me. I can do it… but I don’t particularly enjoy it.

Other things I have noticed, in the 10% of the time that everything isn’t really normal.

• The world has a lot of glare. I wear sunglasses on cloudy days (and other ex-winterers report the same).
• I have lost my social filter. Talking to strangers or friends is fine but people-I-don’t-know-but-should-show-an-interest-in (i.e. friends of friends) is a disaster.
• So much consumer choice is just silly and doesn’t give you any more freedom.
• Cash and pin numbers are both wonderful and ridiculous.
• I can only do about three things in a day before losing interest in everything.
• Stars are still beautiful, even in the northern hemisphere, even in cities.
• When it gets too much, turning off the mobile phone and not answering the door is liberating.
• I can’t tell a story without it taking at least half an hour via twenty three amusing (to me) diversions and at the end there is generally no punch line. Or point.
• I don’t think I’m any different from before I left but I’m going to milk this bubble for as long as I can.
• Shoes are torture. Even the most crunchy granola brands. Birkenstocks and Ecco have both led to pain. Tell me, is it my foot breaking the shoe in or the shoe, the foot?
• Faces are fascinating. Especially twins or any familial resemblance for that matter.
• I feel colder on wet, miserable days in Britain than I ever felt in Antarctica. It’s true: there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.

Oh, that first splash! Water all around me. And in a bikini, outside! I splashed around like a six-year-old. But the best bit was if I floated on my back and looked at the stars. Orion was there, smiling down on me, and I was happy to know that Halley wasn't so far away after all. (My favourite time is still star time, the place I can escape to when the world all gets a bit too ridiculous.)

The bath was good, but not up to expectations. No bubbles, and I had to hold my legs in the air in order to lie properly down. Far too short.

Expectations, another thing I've realised. The things I was most looking forward to: baths, mangoes, carrots, wine, etc etc, were all of their absolute finest in my imagination, and often first attempts did not live up to standard. But I persevere.

My second bath was in Buenos Aires. This was much better. Still too short, but in an old ceramic tub with cracked tiles, in an ancient hotel with a story to tell. I didn't realise, but I had missed history. Every year, a new Halley is created by a new layer of snow. I love that. But history... In Santiago I found myself drawn inside an ancient cathedral: dark, old, so many stories. A queue for confession with the smiling priest. If I spoke Spanish, I would have gone to him myself. Religion. Now there's something I hadn't experienced for a while. I left out of a different door to the one I entered, and for the next two hours walked west and north, right off the tourist map, when I had intended to go north and east, into the center of town.

The next day, I discovered markets. And then, overwhelmed by bustle, smells, colours and people, escaped to the massive park, with a mango. I am pleased to report that the mango lived up to expectations. (I find myself going out of my way to walk past flower stalls: the smell, downwind, so entrancing and novel. Especially if there are fresias on sale.)

My third bath was on the lush island of Waiheke in New Zealand. After a 14-hour plane journey, the chaos of commuting, and sensory overload of a hundred colours of green in the rainforest, I yearned to submerge myself into steamy oblivion. The water was brown and smelled of mud. I later discovered the only water source was from rain, and the tank was low. Oops. From then on, I reverted to Halley showers. The bath was good, though, a kid obviously lived in the house, so I felt happy splashing about, and the wonderful comforts of a real home seemed to surround and await me.

The next baths, if you can call them that, were in the sea, and I floated for many days in the water, with endless boundaries. The sea. Swimming in the sea. Salt. I have missed the sea.

I had my fourth bath of the year, in a motel in Dargaville, a town that lived up to every stereotype that the name suggests. Nothing to report, except the spa. With my toes touching one end, I could stretch out, under water, as far as my neck. What it lacked in history, it compensated a hundred times in size. And bubbles of air. Yes, at last, a bath up to my expectations.

I now write to you from Sydney. My friends left me in their house for the weekend while they go to a wedding and I get to be entartained by my brother. Their bath, though tiny, was the best yet. Porcelain, chipped, lemon verbena bubble bath, miaowing cat, cup of tea and book not far away. While Felix is hurrying with the rush to do nothing all day, a phenomenon most New Yorkers apparrantly struggle with for atleast a week, I still need a couple of hours to build up to the idea of leaving the front door. He amuses me with his entanglement of media contraptions and the constant demands that they place on him while he laughs when I speak the first thing that pops out of my brain, independant of tact, timing or relevance to anything. We make a good team... and it's wonderful to see him. Ultimately, the only thing I have really missed is the people who know me best and who I love the most.

We’re talking ice, ICE, 30m high at the end of the glacier and that’s just where it pours off the rock. Glaciers everywhere it seems, to my uneducated eye. And cliffs, mountainous, peaks in the clouds, towering around us. I couldn’t really cope with the scale. From our little dinghy it all seemed very big but then, when I got back on the Shack, it all seemed even bigger.

Tall, straight cliffs plummeting into deep aquamarine milky blue glacier water. The spray of salty ocean in my face, the taste, the smell of seaweed and cry of birds all around us.

All these great memories overwhelmed by the magnificence of the land around us. The Fjord is long and deep, as you would expect, but reasonably wide. Wide enough to hold many bays each with it’s own glacier pouring into the ocean. From a bird’s eye view it could well have all been the same glacier with many outlets but I didn’t have a bird’s eye view. I was at sea level in an inflatable boat, loving the waves. At the far end of the first end we visited (that I at the time thought was the only end to the fjord), were hundreds of little storm petrels floating on the surface, below the ice cliff. Like flies, but pretty. Further back, a bunch of giant petrels gathered around us, trailing water as they ran and flapped in an attempt to become airborne. A few penguins, camouflaged on the black and white scree. The occasional seal, loafing. But these were the jesters giving scale to the land, the ice, the rock, ice pouring on ancient timescales, splashing into the bay beside us.

The last fjord we visited was called Larsen Harbour. I don’t think any of us jolly merchants knew where we were going at this point, or what to expect. If the main fjord was a motorway, this subsidiary was the lane you leave on. (I can’t even remember the words for these things!) It was thin and quiet, sheltered, the cliffs towering and vertical. And long. We explored, our little boat and the fibreglass rescue craft, continually expecting an end in sight. And it kept going: deep, thin and quiet. Oh yeah, and cold. Our skipper stopped the boat at the far end and out we climbed. That’s right, we climbed out. The first rock I have stood on for 14 months. Not a bad re-introduction I would say.

The above happened three days ago. Since then we’ve spent two days at Grytvikken and are now floating off the coast of Bird Island. My feet have been re-introduced to land! And how luscious it feels. Soft soggy green moss that bounces underfoot, rocks, hard to touch, warm wind. Falling asleep outside in the sun after eating a packed lunch. Entire days outside without having to fear the inevitable cold encroaching. T-shirt weather. Hills.

South Georgia was still as beautiful as ever and the people and wildlife as friendly. King penguins, elephant seals, juvenile furries, albatrosses, petrels and blue-eyed shags. The South Georgia pintail: beautiful innocent looking carnivorous ducks. Annoying prickly stickly burnet clusters that stick all over your feet and legs. Men playing football on the old pitch set up by the whalers early last century. The old church, I rang the bells, tiny star-shaped flowers in the dry grass, tussock grass hiding fur seals and other dangers, a king penguin with freshly hatched chick. The rusty whaling station and old dam for hydroelectric energy. A crashed helicopter, a WW1 gun, wildlife overtaking them all. If any of you out there reading this ever consider an Antarctic cruise, make sure this island is on the itinerary!

I'm not sure why I'm destined to love one of the most remote and inaccessible places in the world. Perhaps it is just one of those quirks of character that define who you are and which, try as you might, you can't change. I could avoid it as an impractical dream or, helped by good fortune, obey.

On Wednesday I was craned onto the RRS Ernest Shackleton, my once-was home, and waved goodbye to the friends we are leaving on the shelf. This time there were just six of them, tiny spots on the massive sheet of ice, immediately separated from the ship by an ever-increasing space of cold blue. Everyone present at the scene knew instinctively which side of that gap they wanted to be on. And most were satisfied.

Gut reactions teach you a lot even if outward displays of emotion are often discouraged. Leaving Halley, and pulling away from the ice that day was one of the hardest things I can remember doing. Not hard like difficult, since I had no choice so in fact it was very easy. Hard like gut wrenching. Hard like "I don't want to do this". Just hard.

Simon's sister left a message on my last blog saying she thinks I'll be back. Thanks, Alice, thanks for your faith in me. As for Simon, I'll miss him lots but I know I'll know him for much longer than either of us are at Halley. Leaving him, and leaving the others here, isn't the most traumatic aspect of the separation. Leaving the ice and the moment that can never be repeated was the wrench. Knowing that there is a possibility, even a likelihood, that I'll never come back.

Judging by my gut reaction just now, however, I guess I'll have to return to something like this.

The ship was moored at N9. No, was sitting at N9, not moored as it couldn't get close enough to the edge of the ice. Sitting in what seems like a big cul-de-sac of water, surrounded by ice shelf on three sides. Ice shelf with cracks. I dozed for most of the white journey to the ship and realised that I haven't slept in the back of a ground-based vehicle for years!

The ship was, I must confess, in a majestic spot. Nestled in a bay, surrounded by ice cliffs. We assembled our clatsch, chatted for word of direction, turned around, and boom – there in front of us was a great big iceberg that I could swear hadn't been there before. The cliffs were literally crumbling around us. A large tabular berg floated on past, oblivious that its latest bump with the shelf had created another loner in the ocean. This is the land where icebergs are born.

We were craned onto the ship, hanging onto the Wor Geordie, a big net that floats, across the ocean gap. I didn't want to join the ship; I didn't want to leave the ice. For the rest of the day I kept a low profile. The next day was a real treat, however, and slowly I was reminded that there are other good things in the world too. We sailed up and down the coast, investigating potential creeks where we could collect the remaining people on Friday. Into creek two, creek five, creek seven, nuzzling the ice, stepping back and watching the coastline,- the formation of creeks and their source at the Rumples. Halley in context.

To many short-term visitors the creeks must have all looked the same, but to us, each one was a new discovery. And in the evening? Sea smoke. The Earth System doing its damndest to remind me of the continuing revelations that are out there. Sea smoke. Magical. Pouring off the cliffs, hitting the warmer water, floating and surrounding us. The sun set and the moon rose. You can't ask for more really!

Friday really was our last day at Halley. We picked the remaining people up at creek 7 and a few lucky ex-winterers, myself included, got to go on the ice again. It was possibly the most picturesque spot yet and appropriate to be manhauling food and bags as a final task on the ice. It felt really good to be back there again, one last time.

Once all were aboard, we cruised around to creek 2 to wave goodbye to the wintering crew. The ship was sailing across water that we drove 7 tonne containers across only a couple of months ago. The sea ice has gone completely, the cliffs have crumbled. That crevasse I explored on my winter trip – now open to the world. Bizarre.

Seeing the winterers one last time was fantastic, so close we could shout across to them and had to dodge flares they sent our way. They were happy to see us go, I know that, as happy as I was last year, and will have a fantastic year. Strange as we sailed away though, seeing these 14 small spots and knowing they were the only humans around on all the ice I could see to the horizon and far beyond. Within a few hours Antarctica was barely a stripe on the horizon, within a day the occasional iceberg was all that I had to remind me of where we had been.

The vehicles are due to return today or tomorrow and then repeat the journey on Wednesday with the remainder of us. I wangled a few more days here in the name of keeping an eye on special stow cargo and ice cores that will hopefully be flown to the ship tomorrow, but everyone knows I'd do anything to stay an extra minute here. I'm not sure what it'll be like to leave, I have no choice, which is probably a good thing, but it still hasn't gone in. I am far too comfortable here!

Looking back over this summer's blogs (which I can now do!), I realise how much I must take for granted. The things I haven't mentioned stand out more than anything. The arrival of the Canadian operated, huge Russian plane (DC-3 for those in the know) investigating potential opportunities for tourism in the future, my jolly flight to Berkner Island, getting stranded there overnight due to bad weather at Halley (what a shame), and with it the opportunity to fly a twin otter over Antarctica. A trip to creek two caboose one last time, and a night at beloved Wonky. A flight along the coast to remove some monitoring equipment on the Lydden Ice Rise. Our Argentine neighbours visiting by chopper again, and two more visits from the Germans after their initial arrival in November. The light changing as the sun drops, and first sunset behind the CASLab. The CASLab itself, loud and noisy, hissing, spitting, pumping, crammed to brimming with machines that churn and fry, flow gases around the ceiling manifolds, flashing lights indicating a fault on the gas detection system, inlets, exhausts, people climbing over each other to reach their machines.

The CASLab empty and three full sledges of cargo – sixty-odd full size gas cylinders, one ISO container and a hundred large boxes. The making redundant of oneself. And still I want to stay.

The ship arrived last night. Every time there is a storm, the sea ice changes, the cliffs change and the chance for getting our cargo out of here changes. A few weeks ago it would have been totally unworkable. Last week it was almost ideal, or as ideal as an N9 relief can be, today, it's not good, but it's not terrible. There is a tongue of ice sticking out below the surface that prevents the ship mooring up. I guess they'll have to have one officer continually holding the ship steady, using the thrusters, while the crane reaches across the tongue to the cargo on the other side. I guess. One thing I have learnt here is that there is almost always a way. Even to do the impossible.

So, I'm on my last few days. I'm packed, I'm as ready as I'll ever be. I want to stay.

There's all sorts of things to report, it's been a great summer so far. And busy. Busy for us at the lab, more instruments arriving and a final push to have a 'summer intensive campaign' that will produce data to justify our year down here and the five years it's taken to plan it. Plus, CODIS is moving in and the impact might be similar to the years when dogs left or women arrived. Everyone here knows what CODIS means, but no-one knows what it stands for. It means internet, it means cheap phone calls around the world, free email with unlimited attachments, privacy from BAS and more personal websites, news at our fingertips and on-line shopping. Independence. Or another step away from isolation? Who knows.

I went inside the big white sphere where the satellite sits the other day and it really is impressive. It's a big white ball that's empty but for a huge satellite dish and a locked box with electronics inside. So I guess, in your world, it might not be that impressive at all. The thing that impressed me most however, was the angle it pointed at. And the cool echoes it gave off when you shouted into it. To all intents and purposes, it was pointing horizontally, not up at the sky as you might imagine. To be precise, it sits at an angle of 5 degrees from horizontal. And that gives line-of-sight contact with a satellite thousands of miles above the equator. Once again, a moment of thought to realise quite how far south we really are.

Ok, ok, the penguins. It was cruel of me I know, shows how hardened I must have become this year. Cruel but funny. And true. The penguin chicks are all dead, those that hadn't changed fluff to feather by about a fortnight ago. All the sea ice at Windy Bay has gone. And I mean all of it. Right back to that cliff that we climbed down to reach them. All that ice, that at one point stretched beyond the horizon and doubled the size of this continent, all gone. I'm not sure which I miss more, the ice or the penguins but I think it's the ice. I do feel for the penguins though, it was a particularly windy winter and then such a warm summer. I don't think the ice usually dissappears this early. In fact, I know it doesn't. It's my third summer down here and in some ways that means I know more than many but in others it means I am realising just how little you can make wild sweeping comments about this place. Summer zero, so much ice that the ship never even made it in. Summer one, not much ice at the beginning of the season and none at the end. Summer two, a thirteen kilometre relief at the start of season and a good few ks at the end too. Summer three, well, it looks like a warm one again.

The lack of ice has implications. It means that any penguins that couldn't swim will have drowned. And as far as I'm aware, they don't have the ability or knowledge of how to swim as long as they wear fluff. I guess they don't need it. More selfishly, it also means that sno-cat after sno-cat won't be able to carry cargo down to the ship at the end of the season. And I have about 8 tonnes of cargo that, in an ideal world, I would like to see on that ship when I leave. If push came to shove, I guess we could get it down to 5 tonnes of 'essential' stuff. And if we can't put it on a sledge behind a sno-cat, most of it could be broken into smaller units that we could handball individually. Could take a while though! First, though, I guess we should focus on getting some science out of this kit.

Another very cool thing about this summer is the arrival of representatives from the three companies competing to design Halley VI. They're here for a fortnight, along with the co-ordinator of the competition, and seem to want to know everything about this place. They've shown us their plans and in return want to know what is and isn't viable, what our grumbles are, what we love about this place, whether melt-tank is as bad as it sounds and if we really need as much space as everyone bid for.

They have a budget of £19 million and all say it's going to be tight. Corners must be cut, glitz lost, to fit within that budget. So today, they had a tug of war between two bulldozers. How much can a dozer really pull? How wide could that ramp be? How much weight can the sea ice take? How reliable is the relief operation? The winner will be decided at the end of this year and then they'll have a year to finalise and commission their plans, two summers to supply and build the new site and one summer to move the science across before handover to BAS in 2009–10.

It's a ridiculously tight timescale on a fairly restrictive budget but these boys are keen and it's great to watch the zeal with which they attack each new day. They've had, or will have, a day or two each with the science platforms, the plumber (tunnels), electrician (fire), garage (vehicles), field assistants (relief and logistics), steel team (legs) and chef. They ask about personal space, work space, colour schemes, hydroponics, buildings that walk, auroras, bar games and boot rooms. One told me recently that he thought the new environment would attract more women and improve the gender ratio but I said it wasn't really a problem. In fact, I was quite surprised when he said he found it a very male-dominated environment. I don't. Shows how long I've been here. That, and the fact that I enjoyed watching bulldozers playing tug-o-war this evening on tv and was seriously interested in the loads they could pull. I've come a long way, and I've got to go back a long way too before I'm half the girl I ever used to be.

Yesterday afternoon, as I was helping peel spuds in the kitchen, Kev asked me if I was looking forward to going home. It was tricky to answer honestly as I'm obviously looking forward to seeing people and I'm not psyching myself for the coming winter here so yes, I guess I am. At the same time, I'm very comfortable here, very happy, the lifestyle suits me and I feel very much at home. Flying back from the skiway last week on the back of a skidoo driven by Ness, having received the first load of ice cores from Berkner Island, my only regret was that this lifestyle isn't possible under more sociable circumstances. Perhaps I should move to Alaska.

Last weekend was New Year's Eve and our first weekend after Relief. It was a good party but the male:female ratio was still a bit too weighted against me despite the arrival of eight more women with the ship, so I slipped out early. The next day we went to see the penguins en masse, 17 people in our group and about 27 the following day.

It'll have been my last trip to Windy I should think but I feel like I've seen the complete cycle now. Our first trip in August was extraordinarily cold, the penguins huddled to stay warm protecting eggs and tiny chicks on their feet. The intermediary visits were more tolerable in temperature and the pengus still stayed in loose groups as the chicks grew up and became a bit more inquisitive. The last two visits have shown the end of the cycle – chicks spread out, fat and moulting, cooling their bellies on the snow as it's now too hot in the sun. The landscape is completely changed now as well – the sea ice has melted and broken up, open water is only about a mile from the cliffs. Birds fly around overhead, skuas hunting for weak chicks and storm petrels looking for nesting sites. The ice itself is lumpy, brown and covered in melt water puddles, entirely formed by the presence and residue of thousands of penguins. Little penguin motorways now run between the very rutted ice and the birds walk single file as nowhere is it smooth enough for belly sliding anymore. While newcomers were amazed by their numbers, I found it almost sad to see how many fewer penguins there are now. But the ice won't be around for much longer so if they're going to survive, they'd better learn to swim pretty soon!

What I really missed was the welcoming party, those adolescents, a year or two old but still too young to breed, who used to come right up to us during our visits. They're all off playing in the ocean now, feeding themselves up for the next winter. All that is left are fat moulting chicks and a few adults keeping an eye on the crèche. None of them are particularly interested in us and the little ones are visibly disturbed if humans get too close. It's more as you would expect I guess.

Here on base, the season has been going very well. Relief was smooth and quick and the weather, until recently, has been superb. On Friday a storm arrived that has almost died down now. A few days of 20-40 knot winds is a good experience for the new folk though and not setting us back too much this early in the season. The CAS Lab is noticeably less stressful than last year, a combination of Stéph and I having more of a clue what's going on and there being four others out there to help the campaign, all of whom are experienced and keen.

I've seen the full cycle of penguins and am now also experiencing the full cycle of living here: the new summerer, entranced by the magic of the ice, the new winterer, nervous but excited by the prospect, the winterer, at home in the dark and cold, and now the more experienced summerer, fully at home and loving this place for everything it is. Able to stay in on a Sunday and enjoy rugby and tea as much as skiing around the perimeter. At the end of February I'll get on a big red ship and sail to the Falklands. After that I'll travel and meet up with a few friends before returning to Blighty and slotting back into the world of work and green in Cambridge. After that, who knows.

Last year I was driving across the sea ice, this year I'm at the Halley end, a winterer who has seen this before. With all these fresh faces around overflowing with enthusiasm in glaringly bright new orange overalls, I am reminded of myself last year, the year before, and it's ok to see the change too. I'm more competent, I know my way around, I know how things work and get done, this is my home. I can start a skiddoo on my own and take people where they need to go, I can lift heavy boxes and dig snow so it makes a difference. I am still a girl on base and ask for help when I need it, but I've learnt when I need it and when I don't. No-one is offering to carry those boxes for me any more or start my skiddoo. I live here. But it's their new home too.

The ship made it in with little difficulty and the Relief exercise this year has so far been very smooth. The major anxiety for me was in receiving our scientific cargo, one component of which is a very expensive 7 tonne ISO container on the weight-limit threshold for the kind of conditions we had last year. It, and the rest of our boxes, arrived before my first night shift had even begun. And all before christmas. Already, we're off to a good start.

The ship also brought with it post. POST! Letters and cards, packages and parcels. My dear friends out there know me very well. Presents for my thirtieth, five months late but not a minute too soon, and one big box from my family that I opened today full of chocolate and moisturiser, more chocolate, pates, biscuits, chocolate and shower gel. And some more chocolate. At this stage in the year, all I want is consumables and it seems I'll be doing a lot of consuming during the next few weeks!

A few friends, unasked, sent me underwear.. made me laugh as you have no idea how welcome that is! That's something else I've noticed: everyone who has been here for the winter suddenly looks more shabby. Or rather, new folk look more preened. New colours have appearred in the building – bright purple hats and brightly coloured t-shirts. T-shirts that are really white. Without noticing, everything we own has faded and been worn to extreme. Everyone has holes and patches in their outer clothing, but it's more a mark of recognition here than carelessness.

We have fruit as well. I thought I would miss fresh fruit and veg so much but I haven't. It's nice to see an orange again and bite into an apple but really, the earth didn't move. I wanted for nothing, which somehow makes the presents even more indulgent.

It's christnmas eve. I shall try and phone my family later today. I imagine I'll either work or sleep through most of the celebrations but it's the best time of summer to be here. When the action really happens. Boys and their toys in the biggest playground in the world. Bulldozers and cranes, skiddoos and sno-cats, masses of space to build and lift and dig and drop and move and do all those things kids dream of. It's a living dream, for me anyway.

Merry Christmas.

PS. The penguins have grown right up now. Like fat adolescents instead of cute kids. I wrote a little blog when I went to visit them last but it's in my room where my room-mate, on dayshift, is currently sleeping. Photos attached anyway!

On Tuesday, we had record warm temperatures. I am almost ashamed to admit that temperatures soared above freezing to +0.3C. There was water on the platform, beads of condensation drops dribbling down windows, snow so soft it was soggy and you sunk into it wherever you walked. It felt like a rainy day, we were all too warm, and it was not in any way pleasant. At the lab, we had to open all our doors and windows to stop overheating and all my lovingly collected snow samples melted before we could get them to safe refuge in the tunnels. I had to analyse the samples all evening for those molecules that undergo chemical change during melting. Nothing I wore was suitable and I was dripping with sweat after walking home from the lab.

Water! We were not impressed. We will ofcourse be even less impressed when the truly cold temperatures return as everything that got wet will freeze solid. Only then did I realise how much we take this dry environment for granted. Everything that's solid is happily left outside. The only real dangers are freezing or being buried by snow. But it's dry snow. Toolboxes, skis, items of clothing, bags of rope, cardboard boxes, waste food, sleeping bags even.. stuff you would never leave outside at home is regularly left out on the platform or the base of steps before being moved on elsewhere. This week, for the first time in at least a year, things got wet outside.

On Thursday the melt-tank was completely drained for its annual cleaning. Gallons and gallons of water just being thrown out. The melt-tank at the summer accomodation was filled, washing machines were in continual use and, my favourite, we were allowed long, hot showers. I was looking forward to it all day. A shower more than 2 minutes long, not having to turn the taps off while sudsing up, being able to stand and soak. But you know what, I couldn't do it! And I wasn't the only one. Try as I might, rational reason that there was, I couldn't keep the water running while washing my hair. I just couldn't watch all that fresh snowmelt go down the drain even though I knew it was headed that way anyway. I made up for it though by running it about 5 times between soapings and staying in there until my fingers went wrinkly. The start of the winter was marked by our melt-tank party, the end by long showers. This for me is still the ultimate luxury.

On Friday night our clocks went back by three hours. Three extra hours in bed! Halley is fairly close to the meridian so GMT actually suits us fine and there really is no need for us to change clocks since we have continual light. We change for logistical reasons, to be in synch with Rothera and the ships, and I guess the 24 hours of sunlight means we shouldn't really be bothered either way. It doesn't affect me too much but I know the met-folk who have to launch a weather ballon every morning such that it reaches a certain height by midday GMT are less than pleased! Anyway, the special thing was the extra three hours. Summer is coming.

And now that you have a taste for the things that make my life special down here, I'll tell you about the really extraordinary thing that happened. A tourist ship popped by! No, really. The first one ever. And not just any old ship, this ship has zodiacs and helicopters (yes, plural) and as far as I can tell is stuffed full of rich fat americans. It's a terrible stereotype but I'll be able to tell you the truth of it in about an hour. The organisers of the tour have been great, I can't fault them, they've invited us to the ship, offered to fly us there even and put on a barbeque for us, anything we ask. BAS said no but only after lots of excitement and anticipation had built up as you can imagine. Something to do with fraternising with the tourist industry or some such nonsense shrouded in arguments around health and safety. I don't fault or begrudge anyone along the line but really, this is an unprecedented opportunity. I went to the airstrip last night as the first group left and climbed inside the chopper just for a look around. Climbing out is one of the hardest things I've had to do all year ("no-one will miss you for a couple of hours will they", Danielle, the South african expedition leader, asked with a wink). No, they wouldn't, and I could. It's just a sign of what a great winter we've had, and how much resepct I have for Russ, our winter base commander, that I didn't. And no-one did.

The next day we had a hundred yellow jacketed toursit on base. One asked me if I felt like an emperor penguin,- all that solitude and then all these cameras and tourists? As vivid as an imagination as I have, I must admit I had no answer. Another asked me when women were introduced to the base since he couldn't see any females in any of the winter photos on the wall that date since 1958. I said it was around 1995 but that after a winter here the women look like men so you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. He replied "oh, really?". But there were rays of light as well. The first dear I met was 83 (41 years in Germany followed by 42 in England she told me as she ran up the steps while her companion nearly had a cardiac arrest behind her) and reminded me of all my most loved relatives. She was petite and spritely and inquisitive, interested and so alive. She held my hand and kissed my face and asked really good questions and told me about having to pee into a bottle when she went ot the South Pole. Around this time I realised that these folk weren't on a trip of a lifetime (not a unrealistic assumption at $25,000/month) but rather had almost all been on several similar crusies previously, if not every year since retirement.

The Halley visitors book started in 1999 and on Saturday morning had three pages filled in. The first was dated December '99 from the "first ever Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition". The second was November 2000 by three tourists who arrived by plane between Rothera and 'Blue One'. The third was February 2004, the Argentines who arrived by helicopter last summer. We now have five more pages filled with autographs – thirty-eight in all, representing the hundred odd folk who came through. They all seem happy to have come here, they all know it's something special. My favourite says: Having worked in isolation myself, may I observe that you do not need to be crazy to work in a place like this, but it certainly helps.

We didn't get an amazing jolly, it's a shame, but we did get fruit. Oh yeah, and in the madness and mayhem a plane arrived from Neumayer carrying three BAS personnel who have since stayed. I guess they were expecting a fanfare welcome but instead they just got shimmied along with the masses. Winterers are supposed to be "woken up" gently at this time of year by a select group of folk who speak to us in monosyllabic words and absorb rants like sanitary pads. I prefer our method – a hundred tourists, a box of wine, a fresh apple in the morning and many happy, if bizarre memories. If that doesn't wake you up, nothing will!