The Subtle Art of Running in Small Circles

 

We’ve been in the Falklands for 26 days now, and we are still very much here.

 

Onward travel to Antarctica has been delayed due to the runway conditions down on station. We have no choice but to wait for the 6cm layer of consolidated ice to melt out. There’s a sense of irony in the fact that, on this occasion, it’s the ice which isn’t melting that is causing us the problems. We must remain in group/bubble quarantine, but at least we have had a change of scene – we moved out of the hotel a week ago. The ten of us (known as Dash 3) have been split across three houses in Stanley. I’m at 9 McKay Close with Dee and Poppy. The outside space/garden is bigger than the exercise yard at the hotel – we can now run a continuous 100-meter loop. We can also go outside whenever we like, there is no rota, and there is a trampoline. It is a self-catered house, so we get food ordered in and cook for ourselves. Life has the feel of being a little more normal here. Sure enough though we still get looks from the neighbours and passers-by when they see us running and walking in endless circles around the garden. The looks always seem to be somewhere between pity and amusement. They always wave though, and that cheers us up. Everyone waves here – in part because they seem to be friendly folk, and because with an island population of around 3,000 there’s a fair chance you’re going to know the person. It’s a warmth that reminds me of being out and about in Cumbria. We are hoping that the owners of the house don’t mind too much that we have created a new feature – a perimeter garden path. Even after the first 5km run, after 50 laps of the garden, we had made a noticeable dent in the mossy grass. It seems that over the past couple of years I have had to learn to perfect the subtle art of running in small circles. Some of them have been very small indeed. I have now spent 45 days in quarantine in the Falkland Islands, and then there was the 5-week journey home by sea earlier this year. That’s a lot of laps of gardens, exercise yards, and ships. It’s good head space, but it’s not good thinking space. Perhaps that’s the reason why I’m so compelled to push through the monotony of it – because it’s a time to switch our brains off amidst so much time where it’s easy to overthink. I’ll listen to music, I’ll focus on the movement, focus on each step, and count the laps. I usually change direction after every kilometre. If I chose to walk instead of run, then I’ll listen to a podcast. I downloaded a whole selection before leaving the UK. Perhaps my favourite is a podcast called ‘Never Strays Far’ (in all its different guises) by Ned Boulting and David Millar. It follows the world of professional cycling, the Grand Tours, the Classics, the Worlds, etc. You get to hear what the weather is doing in Spain, you get the latest traffic updates from Brittany, and what the hotels are like across Italy. You get to hear about Ned’s dreams, and David’s interpretation of them, and every now and then you’ll even get to find out what has been going on in the bike race. I like the tangents, the segues, I like the observations and details from a world which is currently so different from my own. All those things seem utterly fascinating to me when I’m quarantine, when I’m down on station, when I’m on a ship for days on end. It’s a reminder, and a perspective of a life beyond your own. It’s easy to get caught up in wherever you are, and it’s easy to stop looking - not just outwards but also beyond. In fact, it feels like I’ve reached a point here where it seems easier to stay rather than to go on. It’s hard to imagine life existing in any other way. We were talking about this the other day – that it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility, certainly not beyond the realms of imagination, that we might just get forgotten about here. We would carry on much the same, just waiting for updates, and it would only be months later, even years after the travel corridor had opened again, that they remember we are still here. We joked that it would be some big news story, on the same sort of scale and interest as when they discover a human who has been raised by wolves.

While I do miss having more and varied social interactions, while I do miss riding my bike or putting on my running shoes and just taking off somewhere, I wouldn’t say that I’ve been bored. I am quite happy in my own company, happy losing myself in a book, or in a drawing. We’ve also found other ways of keeping ourselves amused. Once we had completed the 14 days self-isolation quarantine at the hotel, we were then able to spend our outside time together as a group of ten. I’d brought a football down with me, which on the slanted, tussocky exercise yard made us all look utterly useless. I’d liked to have seen how Messi would have coped with it – it was worse than a cold, wet night in Stoke. I think there were very few of us, perhaps even just one of us, who would even dare to venture to describe ourselves as a footballer. Catrin, for example, while not lacking in enthusiasm, could frequently be heard saying, “I just can’t work out which leg I should use to kick it with.” It’s something of a miracle that we never lost the ball, broke a window (sorry Hannah, Sam, and Pete), or broke ourselves – although competitive crab football came pretty close. Meanwhile I was there still holding onto the wild dream that someone would walk past and scout me for the Falkland Islands’ international football team. I was fairly certain that I’d been in the country quite long enough to qualify. Hopes and dreams are interesting things, and they come in different forms. For some, hope is bad for they hope but never do, or never say, and so their lives are wished away. Others pin too much on it, they may even build their world on it, but what then when it comes crashing down, and all they are left with is disappointment. For others still, it may be entwined so closely with their breathing you couldn’t say which of the two was keeping them alive. And a hope like this, a hope so enduring, it may do as well to call it love - for what else is there in this world that could never falter? And then there’s the hope, where hope is a luxury, when nothing too much depends on it, but a great joy is found in the belief that just about anything might be possible and you go around with a smile of wonder fixed upon your face.

The Quarantine Gallery

 

The story of how the most exclusive art gallery in the Falkland Islands was created.

 

It can quite quickly feel like a soulless place. You get told the number of your hotel room, pick up your bags, walk along the corridor, and shut the door behind you. And save for two 25-minute slots outside in the tiny exercise yard, that’s it for 14 days. There would be people who you travelled down with, people you’d spent 19 hours with on the same MOD flight who you now wouldn’t see for two weeks. The outside time was definitely something to be grateful for, though. It gave a little structure to each day if nothing else. We were buddied up for that time, keeping strictly two metres apart - absolutely forbidden from licking each other. But even that social interaction was short lived – each of us left again to shrink back into our own isolated existence. While of course I can only speak with authority about my own experience – an authority which became murky at best – I think it would be generally true to say that most people had good and bad days, and on the bad days one of the prevalent feelings was that of being disconnected. I find it interesting to think about the fact that there was nothing actually stopping us from walking out of our room, of walking out of that hotel, and finding ourselves down by the sea, saying hello to every passing stranger we meet. The barriers and the walls we put up were therefore effectively all in the mind. We knew that if we broke quarantine, we would have to start the 14 days again, and if we couldn’t face that, then we would have to go home – there could be no onward travel to Antarctica. There was also the added incentive not to break the 5-day test-to-release quarantine imposed by the Falkland Islands Government – that came with a hefty fine, a prison sentence, or possibly both. In our darker moments we wondered if they would knock the days already spent in quarantine off our prison sentence. Any sense of humour we had left to muster became a little warped. It made me think about and question how I defined freedom, and in doing so I was hit by a realisation which I felt physically in my core. What an incredibly fortunate life I have lived that I have not had my freedom impinged upon enough to ever need to really define what freedom is. Of course, the word comes with vague and general ideas – some of which may have become somewhat lazy in their meaning and application. I do not believe that freedom is the same thing as doing whatever we please, or at least not without both accepting and taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions. We are also responsible for how we deal with and cope with the actions of others, and we are responsible for how we respond to external events and things. I suppose it all comes down to the choices that we make, to have the freedom to chose between one thing or another, and sometimes the choice that we make is not the one that makes us feel the most free.

 

I have noticed, over the past 18 months, that the times which have been characterised by unusual levels of isolation and disconnection have brought out a greater need to express myself creatively. It was during the first lockdown of 2020 that I really started drawing, and I would write letters to friends and family with greater frequency than before. I found the communication and connection offered by social media, while not entirely useless – was largely inadequate. But in times of uncertainty, and in times of feeling scared, we reach out for anything, and in social media we get quick and easy words. You’re desperately searching for what you want to hear – something to give a sense of meaning and to restore a sense of place. They are words which are easy to be misinterpreted though, and words which can be misleading. This invariably leaves you feeling just as empty as before - in fact, it sometimes deepens the sense of separation and despair. So, while not abandoning social media entirely, I do find that I am spending less time on it in favour of slower, more thought-out forms of communication - in search of better, and more human ways. The beauty of a handwritten letter for example, is that you have captured a moment of your life on a physical piece of paper, and that moment and that piece of paper ends up in the hands of someone else. It is not hidden behind a screen, it’s not to a world which you can never see or feel; it is a tangible thread which joins two people, and the magic of it is – you just have to pull that thread towards you. It may be as simple as that to regain a sense of our humanity, and our connection to other people.

And so, in reminding myself of this and rediscovering my conviction for it, after a few days had passed in quarantine I unpacked my pens and started drawing. I was also left a whiteboard and a pack of whiteboard pens outside my room for the purpose of writing messages for everyone in quarantine to read. This has become something of a regular fixture down in Antarctica over the past couple of years – and while it is something which on occasion can feel quite time consuming and almost a burden, I know the difference it has made to people, and therefore how important it is. It’s also something which I usually enjoy doing – both the process of doing it, and the conversations and connections it creates. Initially it was just the whiteboard which I planned to leave by the entrance/exit to the exercise yard – the one place where every individual person would get to pass by and see. Gradually though I started to put up some of my drawings as well, and the occasional thought which I had jotted down on a scrap piece of paper. I asked and encouraged other people to get involved, to add and to contribute their own material. I thought that it might help people to feel less disconnected, I hoped that it might bring a little soul to the place. And so, The Quarantine Gallery was formed – perhaps the most exclusive art gallery in the Falkland Islands. It was wonderful to see it develop over the days and weeks; there are drawings, poems, crocheted animals, and the latest addition was a ship made from tin foil (saved up from the meals which are left outside our rooms three times a day). And there’s no end point to it – it is left to grow and develop throughout the Antarctic summer season, something for every person who comes through quarantine in the Falklands to see and to be a part of. Perhaps, it’ll still be there even after we all start to head back north again, as we head home for the northern hemisphere spring.  

 

A Return to Spring

 

Day 15: Some thoughts from quarantine

 

Although we have completed our minimum 14-day self-isolation quarantine period and returned 3 negative Covid tests, we have now entered group/bubble quarantine, and this will remain in place until we reach Antarctica. There are 10 of us in this bubble – we travelled down to the Falklands on the same MOD flight.

The thoughts that appear in this post are loosely based on the content of a letter which I recently wrote to a friend. I trust that he will not mind. Sometimes, it is only afterwards that we even begin to understand.

 

It occurred to me recently, that by the time I fly into Rothera this season I will have spent close to, or even just over 40 days in the Falklands during the past two years. It is somewhat strange to have spent so long here and yet seen so little (save for the inside of this hotel room). Or at least, that’s the face value way of looking at it I suppose. The truth is – when viewed in a different light – I have seen a lot, I have seen something that no one else in the world has. I’m aware that, in taking this view, it requires tilting one’s head at such an angle that will almost certainly incur a strain to the neck. And it’s an outlook that on some days has seemed so clear, but for a good proportion of the time I simply haven’t bothered to look.

The view is slightly different from this hotel room to the next, and whoever was here before me and whoever follows after will see a different world, a slightly different time of year. I must admit, that I was fully expecting it to be the same and to feel the same as last year – I was here for 18/19 days then. I even spent Christmas Day here, in hotel room by myself. And to really add to the occasion I had succumbed to food poisoning late on Christmas Eve. Thankfully, it was only a 24-hour bout, and we were able to board the ship on Boxing Day as planned. Not that a 5-day journey which included crossing the Drake Passage did much to improve my stomach. And while I hoped that particular episode would not be repeated, I couldn’t imagine that the oh so small existence of life in quarantine could be any different one year to the next. It had not even crossed my mind as a possibility – there simply could not be the scope for it to change. I came into it this year believing that I knew exactly what to expect. But too many different things and too many different people have passed this way, and I myself have passed through many different days and different places since. It’s not the same world, not the same as I found it then, nor the same as anyone else will find it from now on. If nothing else – we’ve grown a little older, and perhaps a little wiser, too. But what is this wisdom that we speak of – surely, it’s nothing more than the realisation of all that we do not know.

There is always so much to see. From the birds that peck at crumbs in the carpark, to the dandelions which open wide and brightly in the sun. And then there are the daily habits of where people park their cars, and which of them get locked and the many that never seem to worry. Without a doubt though, my favourite thing to look at and watch is the garden across the way - the garden with a few pots of daffodils. I forget most days what time of year it is here having left the U.K. in early October as the first signs of autumn were well underway. In normal, pre-Covid years, we would pretty much be straight down to Antarctica, save perhaps for a night or two in southern Chile. This transformation was easier to make sense of; it made sense to leave in autumn and to head into colder (albeit it much colder) climes. It won’t surprise you to learn that a summer in Antarctica bears absolutely no resemblance to a summer back home. It rains less for starters. Anyway, I keep forgetting that it is spring here, and the daffodils are such a delightful reminder of that. Every year, when the spring unfurls, I say to myself and to those around me that daffodils are my favourites - such a happy looking flower. And while this is the absolute truth, I then say the same thing when the bluebells appear and turn large swathes of woodland and the low reaches of the fells a vibrant purple. My truth changes yet again when the wild poppies and oxeye daisies colour the Eskdale valley road.

The house that the garden belongs to is the house which I picked out last year as being my favourite, and that is still the case. It has walls of a delightful turquoise, and the roof is the colour of warm terracotta earth. Most days, you can usually see the couple who live in the house pottering about in their garden. The man, who has a distinguished white beard, puts on a red coat when the weather turns colder in the wind, and he looks every little bit like Santa Claus. One weekend day will stick with me more than most, though. It was a Saturday morning, and the woman picked a bunch of daffodils and took them back inside the house – to put in a vase on the kitchen table, or on a windowsill, presumably. To me, it seemed as if she was carrying the most valuable treasure in the world – and I could not take my eyes away - not even for just a moment. And although that treasure did not belong to me, to simply witness it felt like treasure enough alone. In fact, I’m thinking now that perhaps true worth is seeing it in the hands of others rather then our own. Possession can seem so incredibly cheap sometimes – the things of greatest worth are, after all, impossible to own.

A Series of Dreams

 

Perhaps by way of a short introduction – rather than simply launching straight into my dreams:

I’m currently on Day 11 of quarantine in the Malvina Hotel, Falkland Islands. I’m here enroute to another summer season down at Rothera Research Station, Antarctica. It’s a 14-day minimum quarantine before heading south onto the continent; the reality (for one reason or another) is going to be more like 23 days. Last year I was here for 18/19 days. It is for that reason perhaps that there has been an 11-day delay in updating this blog – something which I had every good intention of doing from the outset. There seemed to be little new about quarantine life which I felt sufficiently inspired to write about. Or at least, that was what I kept telling myself. In truth, it was likely a combination of two things. The first being that I really struggled with the initial few days here, and all my words and all my thoughts were focused on trying to get my head around this. An internal battle of sorts which leaves no space for the observation of anything else. It’s interesting to me how these kinds of struggles can often surprise us, and how we also usually try everything possible to avoid them. Life is of course a continual process of figuring things out, of getting things wrong, learning how to do better, and how to be better. And while it can hurt like hell, it’s through the tough times, the challenging times, that we learn the most, and grow the most. I would not exchange the first few days (and moments since and yet to come) of this quarantine period for 23 days of untroubled bliss.

The second reason as to why I’m only now getting around to doing some writing is without a doubt the most fundamental reason of the lot – in fact, it’s the only reason every time. In order to write something, you actually have to start writing! I didn’t start; it’s as simple as that. It can be a daunting thing of course – what if you sit down and there are no words to write? But there are always words, and where there are words, the thoughts will follow sometime after. It is perhaps not the way round that we think it should be, but it seems to be the case more often than not. In fact, I don’t think it can happen in any other way. Words precede thought, and we probably need to give ourselves a little time between the two – or at least give ourselves time to consider and get used to something new.

So here are the words that I started to write; an account of the dreams that I have had the last three nights.

 

Dream 1

 

I was at my mum’s house; I woke in the night needing a wee. When I sat down on the toilet, I realised that my mum and stepdad were also in the bathroom, and they were trying to have a conversation. They said it was a good place to have difficult conversations, because conversations generally seem less scary compared to having a wee in front of someone. But if didn’t make me feel brave - I just sat there saying nothing, unable to wee.

 

Then the scene suddenly jumped, and I was up in Scotland somewhere for a running race/event which my friend Dani had convinced me to join her in taking part in. It was very informal, there didn’t seem to be a set start time, and people were just turning up in dribs and drabs and setting off when they pleased. I followed a group of three, and it soon transpired that it was an out and back course along an undulating approach trail. The path was strewn with big rocks, tufts of heather, and there were plenty of lochs dotted about. It was as I was running out that I saw Dani for the first time - she was smiling, and flying, dressed up in the latest top of the range Salomon gear. When I got back to the carpark, a couple had just arrived - they asked me what my time was. I looked at my watch and said, “10.26, but I don’t really understand how this race works?” They told me that I had to do 12 laps of the course, and that each lap was a marathon in length. They asked if I’d really run it in 10 and a half minutes, I replied “don’t be silly, that’s just the time in Peru.”

 

As I headed out for the second lap, I started to notice more and more things. I noticed how happy everyone was, and that there was music coming from somewhere and most people were singing along. I also noticed that a woman, who was clearly not part of the race, had set up camp just off the path. I thought to myself ‘how funny - on any other day of the year this would be a perfectly quiet place to spend a day or two. But as fate would have it, she chose the day of the 12-marathon race.’ She had hung a pair of trousers and a jumper over the low branch of a tree, and I realised that she must have just returned from the nearest loch for a swim or a wash. I took a diversion down to the shore and got my camera out to take a photograph. It was beautiful. A moment later something big appeared above the surface of the water - about 10 metres out from where I was. I couldn’t work out if it was a small whale or a big dolphin. I started yelling to attract the attention of the other runners, and soon a small crowd was gathered. Shouts rang out, 

“It’s a whale!” 

“It’s a dolphin!”

“Welcome to Scotland!” 

And then from a little further away - “It’s a haddock!” 

They were being serious, and everyone else started laughing. But as I was taking photos, the silhouettes of more whales and dolphins started appearing out of the water at the far end of the loch. At one point I was convinced that I saw the long silhouette of a giraffe’s head and neck. This made me wonder if perhaps there was also a haddock in there somewhere, too. 

 

And then I got woken up by a knock on the door, and there was a small pot of cold porridge waiting outside. 

 

 

Dream 2

I was walking to Booths supermarket; it was early evening but already starting to get dark. When I got there, I searched every aisle but all they had in stock were discounted multipacks of Milkybar chocolate, and Ritz cheese biscuits. I didn’t fancy eating either of those, so I rang my mum to tell her that they had nothing suitable in. But when I rang her, it connected me to a phone call that she was already in the middle of, and all I could do was listen to the conversation between her and someone from an energy company about the cost of this month’s electricity meter bill. So, I just hung up and started walking home.

 

 

Dream 3

 

I returned home to the hostel after six months of being away. I was greeted by Mick and the dog, Moss. Moss seemed to have retained all his usual characteristics and mannerisms, but it was inescapably obvious that he had, in fact, turned into a cat.

I had changed rooms, electing this year for the pokey room that was situated on the left just as you go inside the front door. The door to the room didn’t close properly, let alone lock, and it was so small that there was not enough space for a bed except if you assembled it last thing at night. But even then, I knew it would be a struggle, such is my ability to turn even a small number of possessions into an insurmountable mountain of junk within seconds.

The biggest problem with this room though was that everyone thought it was Reception. This meant I had a whole string of people popping by to ask me questions. I explained to one woman that this wasn’t reception and besides I’m not even working. This did not deter her. “Oh, it’s not a question about work, I just wanted to ask you a few questions about the Beijing Wall?” I looked at her for a couple of seconds before replying, “What? What do you even mean by that?”

It was a busy evening; I suspect it might have been the busiest evening on record. There was a seemingly constant flow of people, and I wondered briefly how there could possibly be room for everybody. There were no less than four people staying at the hostel that night who had previously climbed Everest. Not one of them was Kenton Cool, but Kenton Cool was all any of them seemed to talk about, and they were looking for him everywhere, convinced that he must be here, too.

At some point, it must have been the following day, I managed to escape the madness and went out for a bike ride with my friend, Ali.  She punctured on the road between Drigg and Seascale – in my absence they had turned this section of the road into a long strip of cobbled stones. Ali explained to me that this was Cumbria County Council’s idea of re-wilding. They thought it was an innovative way to get on board with the latest trend. Then Ali changed the punctured inner tube quicker than I’ve ever seen – she said the trick was having a little sandstone pebble with a hole drilled through it tucked inside the wheel rim. You’d tie a thin bit of string through it, and that way you could just pull the damaged inner tube out while leaving the outer tyre in place. When she showed me how she had done it, it all made perfect sense.

I knew straightway that I needed to implement a similar system, and I just happened to have a friend who was a world leading expert in drilling holes in tiny sandstone pebbles. I went to him almost immediately to ask for his help. John was very busy with work though and said it would have to wait. He apologised and showed me what he was currently working on – and it looked very complicated indeed. He was having to design these 3D certificates which involved superimposing people’s heads onto the body of Santa Claus. The latest inner tube replacement kit would have to wait for another day.