Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

on weight, although we were doing hard physical work often in the cold. We
decided to cut down to about 4,000 calories.
Some examples of my early menus were: tomato soup, meat pie with
cabbage, mashed potatoes, and semolina as a pudding; Cornish pasties, oven
chips, peas. On 15 April I had a busy time cooking and baking bread while the
others went out for a walk. I made a hot-pot-pie for dinner in an endeavour to
use up the suet and it was quite good. There was pastry pie for lunch and I
made jelly and put it outside to gel where it froze solid of course, so I had to
thaw it out. Next day I made Toad-in-the-hole and frozen pears for dinner.
Next time round on 6 May I spent the day cooking sponge cakes - chocolate,
plain and marble cake, and in the more usual preparation of meals.
23 April l948 was my birthday, 22 years old that day and, according to my
thinking at that time, with only 8 more years to live. But if the next two were as
eventful as l948 I should have no grouse! Derek gave me a pair of slippers that
he had made - white with leather sole and black pom-poms so that I felt a bit
like a circus clown when wearing them. Ralph produced a chocolate and cream
sponge cake for tea but better was to follow. For dinner we had seal liver, peas
and potatoes followed by trifle and then a large iced birthday cake with six
Met. balloon candles and the inscription in chocolate: "Many Happy Returns,
Dick", a letter H on one side and a penguin on the other: definitely a culinary
masterpiece. I blew out the candles and Derek photographed the festive scene.
We had a bit of a celebration which included the others filling up a water
jug, in which there was by accident a little waste Bouin's fluid (a biological
fixative based on Picric acid). When added to their drinks it tasted bitter and
when we identified its origin I was accused of ‘fixing’ them! Later, as the
evening progressed, we went out determined to have an explosion for a bit of
excitement. This did have some point, as I wanted to blast a hole in the rocks so
that I could study colonization of a shore pool. In the howling blizzard we set
up two charges (of the black powder for harpoon guns) with detonators, all
from the old whalers' explosives store, and fired at the detonators from a safe
distance using a .303 rifle. Unfortunately the wind deflected our shots and we
had no explosion. I had a birthday message from David Dalgliesh in which he
said they were taking 4 dog teams up the glacier, lucky chaps.
Then 8 May, Derek's Birthday, came and I busied myself cooking and
preparing special dishes. I made some marzipan icing for the cake from butter,
sugar, flour and almond essence, icing sugar on top and a sponge cake model
of Napes Needle (Lake District), coated with chocolate on top; there was a
figure with ice axe on top and four candles at the corners. I put chocolate eyes
and mouth on my one successful meringue (made from penguin egg whites).
The cakes went down well - especially the marzipan icing and Ralph took
photographs of the two of us.
In June Derek produced a roly-poly stuffed with steak for dinner. We
decided to call it "time", because it hung heavily, as time was said to do in
winter down there. I already thought the long winter evenings when time
hangs heavily were a myth invented by past polar explorers seeking to arouse
public sympathy; we none of us ever found them tedious. 13 July was Ralph's
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