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

irthday. The birthday cake was very tasty and we had ginger snaps and a rich
cream sponge cake.
In November we made several trips to Gourlay Point to collect penguin
eggs for eating, bringing back about a hundred eggs each time, which were
stored in flour; in the second year a preservative coating called Oteg arrived.
But one problem was that we had nowhere warm to store eggs and we lost a
large proportion from their freezing and cracking, not from going bad in the
usual way, but after they thawed. Two of my specialties were ‘Toad-in-thehole’
and ‘Dead-man's-leg’, both quite stodgy and one evening I produced both
for dinner.
My birthday came around again and Derek shot a Dominican gull for
dinner - its stomach full of bacon rind! Charlie spent some time trying to get
another, but although one was circling around he had no luck; I drew a cartoon
to mark the occasion. Derek prepared a fine dinner of five courses: Soup,
Asparagus, Roast Gull, carrots, chips, apple-sauce stuffing; fruit salad and
cream gateaux. We had beer (one bottle), sherry, gin, whisky and rum, to
choose from by then, an advance on our first year. Remembering my last
birthday we took it easily and then sat around and talked, feeling very full.
That year we celebrated Derek's birthday a little late. I made the cake and a
small additional cake in advance; the large cake took 9 hrs to cook! Next day I
made marzipan icing for the birthday cake, shot and skinned a Dominican gull
and made some bread. There were other preparations for the birthday and
washing and mending took up plenty of the time. On the day I spent most of it
cooking and preparing for the party. I iced the cake and decorated it with
sledging scenes cut out in silver paper. Also baked scores of éclairs, finished
baking the bread and made some cream. For dinner we had roast gull and
stuffing, apple sauce, green peas and mashed potato, followed by trifle.
So it went on over the two years, punctuated by a few winter sledging trips
(camping) and very occasional visits from ships when we experienced
professional cooking in civilized surroundings aboard, and received
supplements of fresh fruit and vegetables and sheep carcasses from the
Falkland Islands. Once our weights had stabilized - after we had built up our
muscles by hard physical work and exercise and later deposited a blubberlayer
as a response to the cold - they remained fairly constant over the months.
My own weight stabilized at about 13 1 2 stones.
Cultural activities and values: We spent a great deal of time outdoors, but on some
days we were confined to the hut by the weather. Activities then were unchanging,
whether during the day or in the evening. We usually put in more time during the
day on maintenance activities and similar work and paperwork was more of an
evening activity. After supper we usually sat writing up the day's work, and any
diaries that we kept. Specimens I had collected were dealt with or put into jars or
trays for attention next morning. Frequently one was too tired to do more than sit
and listen to the gramophone or radio, or perhaps read a little. But on the whole the
days were pretty full and there wasn't much time for relaxation. In the winter, time
was almost as short as in the longer days of summer.
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