Falklands Diary — week four

This is the fourth installation from my diary of my first month in the Falkland Islands after moving 8000 miles from London. I haven’t edited it much since I first wrote it. The photos are all ones taken at the time and I make no claims as to their greatness, only their immediacy.

Monday 22nd August

This is the first day since I arrived that I have taken no photographs. The weather was grey and misty after the storm so the views of the harbour were missing. The only thing in my online photos storage for today is this screenshot, the context of which immediately leaves my mind:

My plans for my third week at work are to construct a plan for September involving re-establishing team meetings and setting out how we plan for the next round of budget-setting. Although it can feel overwhelming I enjoy that feeling of an empty sheet of paper — although of course it never is really empty, already marked by previous plans, political ideas, opinions and expectations. Still, it is something real to get to grips with.

In the evening there is a public meeting about a major infrastructure project my team is managing. It is crowded and poorly timed — we cannot share key information yet, the contract doesn’t allow it. Despite this I feel proud of the team who prepare and present, and gain some idea of how much public opinion matters here, in a place where everyone wears multiple hats and nothing can happen anonymously.

Tuesday 23rd August

The storm of the weekend is a distant memory and today is glorious. I get to join one of the local pilots on a flight out to Roy Cove, on the farside of West Falkland, over an hour’s flight, and then down to North Arm on the southern part of East Falkland, before completing the triangle back to Stanley. It is two and a half hours of noisy bliss. The pilot is expert, knowledgeable and generously willing to share what he knows — a combination of sightseeing, history and technical descriptions of the plane we’re sitting in.

At the airport the staff recognise me from my previous orientation visit, arranged in my first week, and I go into the control tower to catch up and have a cup of tea. It will take a while for me to get used to planes being just another — indeed the only — form of public transport, rather than a novelty. Passengers stroll up with minutes to spare and everyone gets weighed, with any luggage, to work out loading. Being weighed purely for a practical purpose takes any anxiety out of it, at least for me. It is information needed for a calculation, not a judgement or a threat.

In the settlements the airstrips are maintained by the local community, and all are on private farms except for one at Fox Bay that the government looks after to ensure a link with the West. If people living elsewhere want the plane to come in, bringing people and supplies, then they have to keep the airstrip in good condition.

One one leg of my trip a small boy, maybe 7 years old, is put in the plane and strapped in to travel by himself to meet his dad at the next stop. Everyone involved knows he will be cared for and he is a far more experienced traveller on these routes than I am.

On the way back we fly along the harbour and I see all of the town. A Jubilee City of under 3000 people stretched along the waterfront, colourful roofs and no town centre to speak of. I can see my house from up here. It is a strange place that I have ended up in, especially for someone who loves ancient buildings. Strange but, in today’s sunshine, rather wonderful.

Wednesday 24th August

Today I bought a tiny car, a 1.3l, three-door 4x4 that ‘will get you anywhere you need to go’ according to the salesman. As with everything here things aren’t quite what they seem. Many people buy their cars from the Facebook group, or from someone they know who has one for sale. Adverts there range from claims of someone selling a top of the range SUV for cheap through to clapped out bangers with 100k miles that go for a few hundred pounds. I take a different option and pop in to the only car salesroom in the Islands. I know nothing about cars and feel that I need some advice. Also, I haven’t driven a manual car since before I moved to London in 2007, and as most cars here are manual I need a confidence boost. The car salesman has been teaching his partner to drive and offers me an impromptu lesson. I am amazed when I find I actually can do it, under his calm and cheerful tuition. I stall only once when I forget to depress the clutch whilst reversing. I surmise that this is the universe telling me not to go backwards, or something.

I had forgotten I knew this. I buy the tiny car in an exuberant celebration of a skill remembered.

Thursday 25th August

At lunch today I meet a colleague who is soon to return to the UK. I think she is looking forward to it but neither she or I is completely certain of that. I buy the last tuna salad in the cafe and afterwards tweet that competing for salad wasn’t a part of Falklands life anybody warned me about. There is a paucity of fresh fruit and vegetables here, and what there is sells for much more than anywhere else I’ve ever been. It is a very nice salad.

Despite my lunch date, the office day felt so long and I am done in. After work I drive to the beach with two colleagues, who pick me up and bring a pair of boots for me to put on with my work dress and tights, to navigate the sand dunes. It is freezing, windy, and perfect. We stay for an hour and watch the penguins. First they are fishing just offshore. Then they are in packs on the water, patrolling the beach, assessing the situation. Then, with a signal they know and we don’t, they surge in and up onto the sand. They are elegant in the water, sleek and fast. On land they become ridiculous, adorable, waddling their way up with flipper-wings flapping. Some of them rest as they climb the dune to their rookery, flopped on their bellies in the orange rays of the sunset. I am not done in anymore. I have all the energy needed to climb back to my rookery.

Friday 26th August

There is a divide on the Islands that is often spoken about but seen very differently by different people. I am trying to decide if I need to make my mind up about it, or if I can simply accept it. Many government roles, especially more senior and specialist ones, are filled by external contractors, mostly from the UK but also from St Helena, the USA, Australia. With such a small population running an entire country it shouldn’t be surprising that external help is needed. Some (few) contractors stay here long-term, but most are on four year contracts, like me, or even just two years, a time period that is surely far too short to get anything done.

The people I meet up with in the bar on Friday nights are mainly contractors, connected through work. There is no deliberate separation of ‘us and them’, or a hard-and-fast rule, but that is generally the way. Many of them have fascinating life stories — either of life on the Islands or how they ended up here. Many are here alone, having left family elsewhere to pursue either a job or a dream. We swap stories like trading cards.

Why did I come here? I get asked a lot and never give the same answer. Some versions:

• Brexit and Covid — all the assumptions you make about where life will go and the opportunities you will have can be turned on their head in a heartbeat. Don’t hesitate, take the risk.
• Resetting my life. I was exhausted all the time in London, and work was most of my identity. I didn’t want it to be that way. I needed to find balance and an island where the water turns the other direction was just the place to start again.
• My own life story. I will never marry and never have children. I have never wanted those things. After a certain age it becomes impossible to explain that; people simply cannot comprehend it. They make their own assumptions about dashed hopes and personality flaws; and their own predictions about loneliness and regret. Some are at least on the surface envious, but from a safe and smug place of never having to really think about it. I will make my life make sense by showing that it can be lived in other ways. My big day will not be a wedding or a christening, but it will happen nonetheless.

This week’s milk turns up in a tequila bottle. It makes me happy.

Saturday 27th August

It snows overnight and on and off for much of the morning. The flight to Chile cannot come here today and the ice hockey team, which the Islands have despite having no ice rink, have to come home from the airport, to try and get to their tournament again tomorrow. The flight to the UK has been cancelled twice this week, once for weather and once for technical difficulties, although one plane did make it in from the UK, so we have our airmail. This makes me realise how cut off this place can be; no flights north means missed weddings, appointments, family events, work, holidays. There is nothing we can do and no alternative but to wait.

Someone posts a thanks on the Facebook community group, to the police and fire service. What disaster befell them, I wonder? Their cat got stuck in a frozen pipe and needed professional assistance to escape. That is a real emergency.

Strong winds again so I stay in — although there is the draw of the local darts tournament, with over 100 entrants down at the Town Hall. Nevertheless. I watch strange and disturbing films so that I have a justification for feeling strange and disturbed. I read more books. I finally iron some clothes that have needed it for a week, immediately augmenting my scanty work wardrobe, although I am realising that nobody here would bat an eyelid if I turned up in the same outfit several days running. I would notice though.

Sunday 28th August

A plaque in the Cathedral says it was erected to the memory of a woman ‘by a few of her godchildren’. At present I have six godchildren, as well as two nieces and a nephew. How many of them is ‘a few’?

When I get to church the priest has a bag for me, containing two parcels sent via the military post and passed to her from the Padre up at the base. There is much speculation about what they contain, especially as I know nobody in the military who might send me things. In response to their not-at-all contained curiosity I open one box before the service. It is a collection of things from the shops of English cathedrals, collected by the senior lay staff, known for some reason as the Administrators. These people were my colleagues for nearly ten years in my previous job. I am overwhelmed. That they not only thought of me but put the effort in to collect all this together and post it in this way. I pack up the box, to be able to unpack it properly at home, in my own time. When I do I am much richer — half a dozen tea towels, coasters, fridge magnets, prayer cards, soap, bookmarks, a cuddly cathedral cat, window stickers and Christmas decorations. I am richer to a value far exceeding what these things cost. I don’t know what to say to express the value of this collective effort, the value of this generosity.