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

fortunate, as apart from a few novels (Dickens, Jane Austen, Hardy, and others) the
base library was very low-brow. Even the thrillers weren't thrilling and we had titles
like ‘Tales of the Turf’, by Captain X".
That autumn I read a number of Bernard Shaw’s plays, for relaxation. My diary
notes that "Shaw does write a lot of tripe about vivisection & biology in general. He
has all the superstitions and cant of an uninformed bricklayer, and judged on this
work is as far behind the times now as he was ahead in the l890s. It is quite amusing
if the illogicalities & quibbling criticisms are ignored"; how pompous! Over the
months other books that left an impression were ‘Madame Bovary’ in an American
translation, Pater's ‘Marius the Epicurean’. Through the months ahead my reading
included Ruskin on mountain form; he had good descriptions of rock colouring, but
his geology was antique; Janet Whitney's biography of ‘Elizabeth Fry’; G W Young's
‘Mountain Craft’. ‘The Right Place’ - delicious prose, but I didn't note the author;
appropriately I read Anatole France' ‘Penguin Island’, which was amusing; ‘Candide’
and ‘Famous Trick’ (whatever that may be). In December I was re-reading Apsley
Cherry Garrard's ‘The worst journey in the world’.
At the beginning of l949 I read ‘The Horses Mouth’ by Joyce Carey - very good;
‘Journey without maps’ (but my diary doesn’t state the author); ‘Anna Karenina’ (at a
time when John I noted was immersed in ‘Forever Amber’). Then a batch of
biological works which I had brought with me: F S Russell’s ‘Behaviour of animals’;
Charles Darwin on Sexual Selection and Polygamy; Scholander's diving experiments
on seals, whales and penguins, and others. In April I was reading ‘The Fifth Seal’ (not
a book about seals!), more Shaw, Butler's ‘Erewhon’. And so it went on, but as time
passed I seemed to do less reading and more of other activities.
Skiing and other experiences: At the beginning of April we decided to go skiing on the
ice slopes at the head of Moraine Valley, which we expected to have a coating of
snow, but unfortunately we found the snow very hard and discontinuous with bare
ice in patches. It was hardly the best surface for skiing, let alone learning. We all took
some hard tumbles and were stiff next day. Ralph had Kandahar bindings, and Derek
Alpina like myself; these bindings were not sufficiently tight and together with lack of
metal edges, reduced control considerably. We found some quite good powder snow
later on a steeper slope, but it too was discontinuous. The others left for the Ob. and I
left my skis by a prominent rock and strolled down the glacier munching the biscuits
that were my lunch. This was my first day's skiing ever and I enjoyed it very much.
We continued skiing on suitable days and gradually built up some proficiency, if not
style.
One day at the end of April we decided to have a bit of fun, so went down to the
point after the Ob. taking three black-powder explosive charges and .303s. Ralph
placed the charges, one on a floe, one in a crack and the other between two large
rocks. Then we fired at them. One fell into the water when a bullet chipped away the
ice I exploded the next one at my fourth shot and it burnt with a big flame and cloud
of blue smoke but otherwise without much effect. The third charge we hit and
turned over but it didn't explode - a bit of an anti-climax and all rather juvenile.
One day in the middle of May, Coronation was very clear at daybreak, clouded
over during the day and was again clear at sunset. After the afternoon Ob, the peaks
of the ridge were a cold matt-white broken only by the black of rock exposures; the
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