Another Pair Of Eyes

10pm

These last couple of nights I’ve been going to bed at 10pm (okaymaybesometimesmorelikehalften) with the aim of getting some sleep, because I have an apparently terminal case of anti-sleep procrastination which otherwise kicks in and I end up on facebook at 1 in the morning.

I’d forgotten how awesome it is to go to bed at ten(ish) and wake up spontaneously at 7 the next morning with the sun shining through my windows (as it only ever does early in the morning, curse my almost-north-facing room). I like the concentration it brings to lectures, the feeling of getting a hold on my life and controlling it rather than just being along for the ride, being able to do work and focus. I like spending an hour reading a book that isn’t a textbook, before anyone else even stirs. I like being able to say I’m a morning person again.

It’s amazing what a difference some extra, good quality sleep makes.

Slumdog Millionaire

I just finished watching this, and it has got to be one of the best films I’ve seen in a while. Quite a while.

Don’t listen to me, go watch it if you haven’t already. That’s all I have to say. Fantastic.

Bones

Nope, not the TV show. I went out into my garden at home the other day to relax and try to chill out, and within 5 minutes stumbled on a complete, albeit headless, animal skeleton. This in itself is not unusual where I live, but what was unusual was the fact that it looked like a cat (or a fox at a stretch) skeleton.

Hmmm. I checked the relevant grave, it lay undisturbed.

This left me with something of a mystery. What would kill a cat, out in the middle of the countryside? It would seem unlikely for the cat to just suddenly have died and then had its head taken away, but the relative intactness of the skeleton suggests it wasn’t eaten. I haven’t put a photo on this entry, but you can see one here if you wish to do so. Forgive the hurried photoshop highlighting, its not perfect.

Ideas?

Galleries

Over the last few days some of you might have noticed a new tab appear at the top of this blog, entitled ‘Photo Galleries’. Those of you inquisitive enough to click on it will ahve discovered that nothing on there worked, but this is now FIXED! So as per request, larger copies of  photos now exist for your delectation. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Boots

The first concern of anyone doing anything adventurous ever should be boots. I know it isn’t, people are all wrapped up in tents and hand warmers and rehydration and food and shells/gloves/breathabe eva-fabric windstopper membrane-layer magic fleeces/base layers/cameras/bags/flights and whatever. But people should think about boots more, because ultimately that’s what you’ll spend nearly all day, every day, wearing. And if they aren’t comfy you’ll go through hell until they are. Boots are important.

“But enough about boots!”, I hear you cry, “and show me lots of holiday photos and regale me with all sorts of stories which at first will have a point but will just continue easily into the realms of ‘you had to be there’ before fading into absolute obscurity, much like this sentence!”

It turns out, of course, that this story starts with a pair of boots. New, shiny, black, semi-rigid cross-country skiing boots, in fact. I wore them to the exclusion of all other footwear for six days marching across frozen lakes, up icy slopes, down deep powder drifts and even in the chopper to the airport in Kusuluk, and for the first three days of wearing them they made my life hell. Rule number 1 – break the boots in. I had so much compeed on my feet I was basically wearing a second pair of socks. I was putting compeed on top of other pieces of compeed. It was a mess (although not a patch on the feet of my father – images of that are not for the faint-hearted). The latter three days were improved, but not perfect. Lesson re-learnt.

Anyway, nobody wants to hear the blow-by-blow account of the boots and how they wore in, or the travel (two days just to get to Anamagsalik, the island we were circumnavigating) or indeed the blow-by-blow account of very much at all, so I’ll give you a few of the highlights with some photos and few words, thereby saving everyone’s time. Of course, I suppose if you didn’t want to know what was going on in the icy wastes you’d not be reading this blog, so I can waffle a little bit…

This is Kusuluk International Airport. The hub of transport for the southeast coast of Greenland, and proud winner of the prestigious ‘Most Pointless Window 2009 Award’.

At some point our guide, an absolutely lovely inuit guy with a happy smile 24 hours a day and a dog sled spotted, white-on-white, a polar bear print about ten metres from where he was driving the sled. He stops the sled immediately, circles the prints, whips out a pair of binoculars and starts scanning the landscape. Pointing excitedly (he spoke almost no english) he jumps back on the sled, lets out ropes behind for us to cling to and then starts yelling enthusiastically at the dogs which leapt immediately to the fore. We ended up racing headlong for two polar bears, a mother and cub, being dragged behind a sled. I managed to take this shot (and I am mightly proud of this) with a 40-year-old telephoto manual focus lens, one-handed with the other clinging to a rope being dragged along by ten dogs over not-so-flat ice.

We visited an ice cave, on a kind of odd day trip – we all boarded the sled, leaving the bags and skis behind, and went off on a dog sledding morning before starting the day. It was beautiful, and at the back the floor was this glassy, smooth ice reflecting the polished waves of the ceiling. Ice is the most glorious blue.

Speaking of dogs, there were a great many of them. They slept outside on the snow, and dug themselves small hollows in which they would sit. The ten dogs in our guides team were not large, and yet they could pull (when chasing the bears) about half a ton of people and baggage. Forcefully. This was one of the fluffier and more excitable ones I came across.

Finally we come full circle (and this circle is not for the squeamish). As I said at the start, boots are important, and broken-in boots are even more important. I know you think blisters aren’t so bad, but there are blisters and there are blisters. I give you the worst feet of the trip, thankfully not my own.

Both feet. Both sides.

Ta’ra for now

I’m off to Greenland folks. I’ll see y’all when I get back. Until then, I leave you with this photo, which you can love or leave as you see fit!

Have a great two weeks.

Reunion

Today I met someone who I’ve not seen for over 15 years.

Wow. Take a moment to breathe that in. 15 years is a long time – I last saw this person when I was 6 years old. She was reminded of me by an everest acquaintence, and she found me last year through my old blog. Talk about obscure. It took us this long to arrange a time and a place. The place was one I’d not been to for a while. 15 years, actually.

It went well – I had my concerns that it would be awkward or whatever but as it happens, we got on like a house on fire. We were best friends for a couple of years when we were six  – I guess that must still count for something. Or does it?

Which is what we asked ourselves. We were much more chatty and comfortable and easygoing around each other than you’d expect strangers to be, but my memories of her are faint at best and hers of me only slightly better. Question was, and is, do you think those childhood years of getting on had any impact on this, or is it just coincidental? To what extent is the child you get on with the adult you get on with (still feels odd to call myself and adult, but I ran out of younger-sounding words when I hit 20)?

I guess we’ll never know, it’s just another variant of the nature/nurture argument. As it is, it was strange enough wandering about the places where I used to play and walk and live and go to school, seeing how much they have shrunk over time, etc. It was bizarre in a good way.

Today I put 15 years aside in an instant.