Halley Diary — July 2011

31 July, 2011 Halley

So what went on in July?

To be honest with you I’m now writing the diary and its the end of August so I’m having to trawl the memory banks and photo collections of everyone on base, time is going so quickly, the weeks are flying by! After the time off over mid winter July bought a return to routine for everyone. The light levels outside started to increase with each passing day a true indication that we’d reached the mid point and were on our way towards sun-up and summer. The weather was decidedly good for Antarctica with little in the way of snow and blow but plenty of low temperatures. Some amazingly clear nights, lots of stars and a few auroras led a few of us to brave the low temperatures and get out with our cameras to try to capture it all.

Events kicked off with a ‘colder than −40°C BBQ’ on the 10th organised by Frank and Chris.

My birthday was next on Wednsday the 13th but we postponed the full celebration till Saturday 16th when we had a get together and Jenny presented me with my birthday cake.

On 17th we held our own table tennis tournament, each of us enjoyed at least a couple of games but in the end the ping pong skills of our ultra competitive GA won through and he was crowned overall winner!

On the 22nd we had a ”skype” hook-up with Rothera base so we could humiliate our rivals at darts… and we did!

A big chunk of our freetime in July was devoted to filming. The Antarctic film festival would be with us at the end of the month and as well as an ’Open’ entry (a 5 min film about anything) there is also a ‘48hr’ entry which has to be scripted, filmed, edited and submitted within a specific 48hr period. It also has to have certain things in, this year the film had to contain the following: a saw, a chocolate bar, the character Popeye, a dripping tap and the dialogue “I imbibed rapaciously”

Our ‘open’ film, scripted, filmed and edited by Jenny and Ian, was a story of an Antarctic bobsleigh team and their daily training regime. To go with the film we recorded our own version of the hit “Perfect Day” by Lou Reed, all credit goes to the recording engineer, Andy, He made us sound rather good!! Please feel free to watch and hear the fruits of our labours.

Watch Carpe Diem (Halley 2011 Open Category)

Our 48hr film entry “The Halley Hairstylist” was great fun to film. Again, Andy had major input writing, storyboarding and then starring as Taylor la Seylor in a ‘Romantic Antarctic comedy’ about a hairdresser sent to improve the look of BAS staff on base. This film was voted top in the best acting catagory by all other participating Antarctic bases, which made us all very proud of our acting skills!

Watch The Halley Hairstylist (Halley 48hr Film)

‘So did you do any work at all in July??’ I hear you say… well yes, I pushed some snow…

Jenny used all her medical knowledge to extract a rather nasty metal splinter from Pauls finger…

Brett did a ’Sunday cook’ in the kitchen.

And the others all did their bit to keep the Happy world of Halley Humming… so to August!!

James
(vehicle op/mech winter 2011)