Well, I haven't been a very good little blogger, have I? But I have been incredibly busy and with my mind on a lot of other things so I hope I'm forgiven.
We had a short break from ship visits (and consequently I didn't have to give any talks to ships' passengers) over New Year, so we had time to recover from the Christmas rush. I had a good idea(!), to cook a Hogmanay supper for everyone who lives here - I think there were 19 of us - so in the morning I went over and got started. We had cock-a-leekie soup (though cooking with frozen watery leeks wasn't as good as with fresh leeks!), chicken Balmoral (or a version of it - a chicken breast wrapped in bacon and cooked in the oven, and served on a large spoonful of haggis, with cream and whisky sauce) with roasted veg and brocolli, and I tried to make cranachan, but the cream we have down here didn't whip up and I had to use toasted porridge oats instead of oatmeal, so after a trial batch of 8 I gave up on that - and panicked! But Matt, the BAS facilities manager, had some strawberry sorbet he'd made in the freezer so I made some shortbread and some raspberry coulis and decorated the sorbet with raspberries (frozen and defrosted); and Lynsey made a big gooey chocolate cake and I did a huge jug of chocolate sauce to pour over it, so instead of having a disastrous pudding we actually had a choice of three!
We adjourned to the bar afterwards and at 10pm (UK and Bird Island time) we toasted all our families and friends, and again at midnight when Rob played Auld Lang Syne on his fiddle and we sang and kissed everyone (mmm!!!)
We supposedly had 2 days off on 1st and 2nd Jan and most people went walking in the hills around the base, but I had a lot of work to catch up on, with one thing and another, and I wanted to perfect my presentation so I didn't have to read from my notes, so stayed close to 'home' and just had a break out in the sun from time to time. There was always the fur seal puppies to watch - the dear little things! It's a shame they are born ferocious because quite a few of us here would like to pick one up and cuddle it, like Ewan used to on Bird Island, but judging by the very sharp bites the pup-weighing crew recently got from these little creatures, it's a good job we didn't. I got in a couple of little walks along the shoreline to see my friends the elephant seal babies, but they were gradually dwindling in numbers as they went off to sea for the first time. I will be very sad when the last one goes. It was also a good time to just stop and chat with our friends on the visiting yachts, Thies and Kicki on Wanderer III, and Keri and Greg and their passengers on Northanger. It's at times like this that I wish I didn't suffer so badly from seasickness and that we could have a yacht and sail the world!! But I shall have to kit out my van to become a little travelling home and make do with that ... a land yacht!!
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