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

The long winter evenings when, it had been suggested, time would hang heavily
on our hands, proved all too short. Consequently we didn't make use of the chestexpanders,
cards, dartboard and other items which had been provided for our
amusement! We had few entertainments except music and reading, although there
was always a game of cards or chess to play as a last resort. That first winter Ralph
made exquisite model furniture from hardwood packing cases; I painted from my
sketches and Derek read, wrote or translated.
Our gramophone was an HMV wind-up model, 78 rpm with steel needles. The
selection of records supplied was biased towards popular tunes, with a few classical
recordings; FIDS provided only one new near-classical record for our first year. The
existing selection was eclectic, records ranging from chamber music (string quartets)
to orchestral music (symphonies and concertos), some lieder recordings, selections of
operatic arias, Gilbert and Sullivan and other light opera and what we thought of as
Falkland Islands music (pop music, cowboy songs, country music etc.). The better
recordings were rather worn. Some of my abiding and most evocative memories are
of Joan Hammond singing "Oh my beloved Father" and "Visi d'Arte", Schubert's
"Unfinished", [Sibelius' "Voces Intimae"?]. However the gramophone was worn out -
literally - and on 8 September l949 John spent the morning trying to mend it and
found that the worm-gear was worn through. We had no spare, couldn't make a
replacement and were left without a gramophone for the last six months – a tragedy.
Fortunately South American radio stations don't confine themselves entirely to
South American music and we heard some symphony concerts; we also listened to
many of the seasonally broadcast Promenade Concerts - the Proms - on the BBC
Overseas Service although the radio reception was variable.
Photography was another absorbing activity both outdoors and one which filled
many long evenings. We all had cameras and FIDS had supplied an old wooden
bellows camera - 1 2-plate size - and some plates. Derek had an enlarger sent out from
home for our second year and it was excellent, even though we had no darkroom. I
was able to enlarge a number of my negatives and intended to print a selection for
my parents, but later the breakdown of the generator scotched that (see later). My
Leica camera had amply repaid the money I spent on it and I don't know what I
would have done without it. I just had the one Elmar 35 mm lens, but Derek had a
Trinol 100mm, which I borrowed from time to time. On 13 November, l948, I took my
first Kodachrome colour photographs: Sunset in Marshall Bay. I had only two colour
films, which was all I had been able to afford on my foreign currency allowance in
Montevideo and I had shown great discipline in not using them before.
Bad weather activities were legion. A typical February day was one when for the
last few days we had been in the grip of a particularly unpleasant spell of weather.
Though the temperature had been high (ie had not fallen below -7°C), the strong
wind made it rather chilly outside. This prevented me from doing any bird work,
because it upset the weighing balance, and no seal work was possible because of the
high seas, which prevented me from getting across the mouth of mouth of Shallow
Bay. Consequently I would be painting and catching up on letter writing. I'd just
done a painting of a Snowy Petrel on its nest in a rock fissure, and one of a Wilson's
Storm Petrel paddling near an iceberg - plenty of blues and greens in the reflections.
These were the first two "full works”, as opposed to sketches, that I ever painted
(February 1948).
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