Falklands Diary — week three

This is the story of the third week of my first month in the Falkland Islands after moving 8000 miles from London. This week saw some memorable firsts. 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 15th August

Over the weekend I watched a cargo ship draw up alongside the port, which I can see from my garden. On it were eight boxes shipped safely all the way from Islington, and tonight I got to bring them into my new home and see what I thought, three months ago before I even set foot here, I would need the most. The majority of my belongings won’t arrive until October, so this delivery is supposed to see me through.

As well as winter coats, gloves and scarfs, and winter work clothes — all very much appreciated — I packed:

• A bamboo wood cheeseboard my brother and sister-in-law gave me
• A drawing of a walrus by my talented friend Debbie
• Photos of my grandparents
• Two paintings of Petra, my beloved bunny rabbit, now dead some years
• Candlesticks and candles
• A set of rush baskets for storing things that need storing
• An array of novels, all by female authors, all read before
• My flute

This is what I chose to bring with me to the next life.

Tuesday 16th August

The day is unbelievably still, the harbour like a millpond. The cormorants take advantage, sunning themselves on an old jetty. I walk down the pontoon and hear something crunching under my feet. It is hundreds of fragments of shells, dropped there by gulls and other seabirds after the occupant has been devoured. It is all stunningly beautiful and calm, despite the evidence of destruction clinging to my shoes.

I have been invited for dinner at Government House by the new Governor and the Deputy Governor. There will be a few of us, mostly new to the islands, as the Governor herself is. I wonder what she is making of it here, after serving as a diplomat in Islamabad, Kabul, and many other places? The house is a big Edwardian pile with a drawing room full of sofas that she tells me she keeps on re-arranging, trying to make it feel like home. The evening is lovely, and we barely talk about work despite everyone there being in some way connected to the government. We cover home and holidays and other British Overseas Territories — I get some new ones to add to my must go list. The dinner is the best meal I’ve eaten since arriving here. I look around and think how unlikely it would be that I would have dinner with such a group of people in any other context. I hope the Governor felt like it made her house a bit more homely, having us there.

Tonight the sky is purple.

Wednesday 17th August

We all wake up to snow — only a light dusting but coming in horizontally thanks to the wind, making up for yesterday’s unnatural calmness. For once I don’t want to walk to work and am grateful for a lift, even if it means having to wrestle open a frozen car door. The sky is a weird pink-grey and the sea has disappeared into a haze.

I am going to have to get better at phoning people. I always prefer an email or text but here people call. After complaining about the only milk in the supermarkets being UHT a colleague has given me the number of a local farm that delivers fresh milk. There is no commercial dairy here — the last one shut some years ago, although someone points out the sheds to me, still standing not far from town. Driven to it by a desire for a decent cup of tea, I call the farmer. Initially I think she is suspicious of me, but after explaining what I want I realise I am wrong — she is delighted to help. From now on I will get a litre of milk on the doorstep once a week, billed twice a year. All thanks to a phone call.

Thursday 18th August

This week is less exhausting than the last. I’m meeting people every day and some of the team are starting to ask obliquely when I will be giving direction rather than asking questions. Not yet, is the answer. There is too much to do to get it wrong and have to reverse direction. Everyone has their own views on what needs doing first/differently/not at all. But even in all that noise there is a restfulness that I am beginning to think comes from work ending before the day does.

I was never very good at living in London; or, at least, I always felt like I was doing it wrong. I struggled with the crowds and the noise. A person whom I for some time erroneously called friend once asked me if I was autistic. I’m not, but my response to audible stimuli has always been extreme. I once had to leave a shop because the sales assistant was humming the store music under their breath. The noise — which they probably didn’t even realise they were making — went right through me, leaving me nauseous. London was too full of those experiences. People playing videos or music out loud on their phones, without headphones, on public transport nearly pushed me over the edge.

Arriving in the Falklands felt like that moment when the thumping music — so loud you can only hear the beat, not even the tune — is turned off. Last orders, ladies and gentleman. Only the echo of all that noise remained, reverberating silently in my head for days.

Friday 19th August

I have been working here for two weeks and feel like I am starting to see the picture on the front of the box come into focus. This heap of stones once was, and could again be, a building.

Other bits of life continue to prove tricky: I buy two lamps from the ubiquitous facebook bring and buy group (in lieu of many shops the trade in used goods is brisk to the point of competition). I pick them up, taking the chance to drive round a part of town I’ve not been to yet. Then I find that the hardware shop is out of the type of lightbulb they take. I will wait for the next delivery of lightbulbs, whenever that may be. For now they are purely decorative, at least until it gets dark, and then I cannot see them because I have no working lamps. All in good time.

A delivery that does work out is the milk, which is there on my porch, in a re-used Johnnie Walker whisky bottle — recycled and recyclable packaging, very sustainable. It is delicious milk. I have weetabix even though I don’t much like them — there was a box with the food parcel that the housing team left for me — and enjoy it. The picture I take of my alcoholic milk packaging makes everyone I send it to outside the Falklands laugh.

After work on Friday we go down for drinks and traditional squid and chips at a local bar. I’ve worked my way through most of the local gins but am holding back on declaring a favourite. It is a lovely evening, even though Covid and flu have both impacted on numbers. The bar and the people are colourful and again I have that shifting sense that things are starting to fit together.

Saturday 20th August

John Ruskin wrote “I find penguins at present the only comfort in life. One feels everything in the world so sympathetically ridiculous; one can’t be angry when one looks at a penguin.” My friend had this printed onto a tote bag and gave it to me before I left — I take it to the shops often.

I wasn’t feeling angry in any case, but this afternoon watching gentoo penguins — one of the breeds that are here all year round — on Yorke Bay beach was superlative. The charm of these little birds appears endless, testified to by the excitement of two of my companions, both of whom have been here for years without the excitement dimming. They are both leaving soon and we plan several other trips before they do. They realise that the chance to experience this world of up-close wildlife will leave them when they leave these shores.

Even if there were penguins on beaches in Kent, Cornwall, Pembrokeshire, or swimming in Rutland Water, do you think in the UK it would be as easy to drive to see them and be the only people there? It isn’t just the wildlife, it is the permissiveness of a place with so few people and so much space that intoxicates me.

I text the Governor so she can come and see her first penguins, too. She turns up with the Commander of the British Forces in the South Atlantic Islands. Under his leadership we strategise how the penguins can evade the seal hunting for them in the breakers, as they come in from the sea to their night time rookery. Success — all make it in, although we were prepared to sacrifice one if needed, to safeguard the others.

Penguins are indeed a comfort in life. And I will be coming to see them frequently, whatever my mood.

Still a Sunday after Trinity — 21st August

It takes me 20 minutes longer to walk to church than it does to walk back, because going there I am walking into the wind. I can’t think in high winds, my thoughts are dashed against the sides of my mind. The cathedral of the Falklands is also the parish church of here, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and the whole of the British Antarctic Territory — likely the largest parish by geographic area anywhere in the world, but with so few parishioners.

By mid-afternoon the gusts have risen to over 50 miles per hour and the sound makes the house whistle and feel as if it should be rocking. It is warm inside and wildly, outrageously stormy outside. Even Falkland residents tweet to say that this isn’t quite the worst they’ve seen, but… It is a joy to come home and curl up with a book, watching the storm between pages. I love this space I have been allowed to create.