Monday 18 April 2005
A day in the life
8:20am
Got up, had a quick shower and some breakfast while talking to the nightwatchman just before he heads off to bed. Cornflakes and a cup of tea if you must know.
8:45am
Checked email on Laws and looked at the weather monitor in the computer room. It's -20C today with 11 knots of wind coming from the south giving a wind chill temperature of -28C - pretty typical for this time of year. Headed over to the Piggott platform where I work. On top of my indoor clothes I put on a set of padded overalls, my VHF radio, a ventile windproof top, a neckie for covering my neck and face, my 'mad bomber' hat, a pair of clear ski-goggles, some padded boots and two pairs of gloves. That's my standard going out clothes in the winter and with the addition of 'bearpaw' mits instead of gloves that's enough to stay out for a couple of hours without getting too cold (even in -40C). It sounds like a lot of hassle but when you put it on every day you get used to it and it takes less than a minute to put it all on these days. Most of the sky is covered by cloud so it's pretty dim for my 10 minute walk to work, with only a thin sliver of orange light on the horizon where the Sun will rise in an hour or two. We are losing light rapidly now and in another couple of weeks it will rise for the last time in just over 3 months.
9am
After taking all my gear off again I do my daily checks, which involves checking on the status of the many scientific experiments that we look after. I need to make sure that they are all running as expected, and that the data servers that log the data are working okay (showing the correct time, have enough disk space, etc). All this information is available through a set of web pages which is linked into an alarm system that warns us if something major has gone wrong (at any time of day or night!).
9:20am
With the daily checks out of the way I can get on with whatever project I'm working on at the moment. One of the advantages of being down here is that you are free to organise your time however you see fit. We are given a set of winter tasks to complete during the year but when and how you complete them is largely up to you. This morning I decided to work on fixing a problem with one of the data plots. A new experiment, the Search Coil Magnetometer was installed this summer and the live data visualisation is not yet working correctly. I worked on that most of the morning, except for a tea-break at 11. It was pretty quiet on the Piggott platform with Jamie popping by to do his daily heat and ventilation checks, Jeff working at his computer in our shared office and Bryn tinkering with a circuit board the electronics lab.
1pm
Returned to the Laws platform for lunch. Normally Kev our chef cooks our meals for us but this week he is on nightshift so we are all taking turns cooking for a day. Today Dan is covering, and he's made us Leek and Potato soup and some excellent bread rolls (homemade - as always!). After lunch we usually make a pot of tea and sit around the table chatting for a while. Other people choose to read a book or magazine in the lounge or have a couple of games of pool.
2pm
After lunch it's back to the Piggott. I was going to make a start on my annual indent this afternoon but I'm making good progress with the Search Coil Magnetometer so I decide to keep working on that for a while longer.
5pm
Matt and Steve popped in for a cup of tea having just finished 'Flubbering'. We use aviation fuel to run the generators which is stored in large rubber bladders called flubbers in the tunnels beneath the platforms. Every so often when they get low more fuel has to be transferred from our bulk fuel tanks on the perimeter down into the flubbers. This is done with a transfer tank mounted on a sledge. Steve was standing at the top of the shaft operating the pump while Matt filled the flubbers below. They managed to get three runs done today so the Piggott flubbers are now full, giving us enough fuel to last another 90 days.
5:45pm
Managed to fix the problem I was working on so I decided to call it a day. On returning to the Laws I signed back in and moved my tag to the 'in' position on the board. We do this every time we leave the Laws platform so that if there was a fire we would quickly know where everyone was. It's easy to forget when you first arrive but now after a year and a half it's almost second nature. It will be quite strange going home and not having to sign out or carry a radio!
6pm
Get back just in time for dinner. Dan's made lamb curry with angel delight for pudding - magic! Not many people around the dinner table tonight. Some are working late, others in the gym or out running. With only 16 people in our world it only takes a few to disappear and the place can seem like a ghost town. The gash person (cleaner for the day) puts meals aside for those missing which they can heat up at their leisure.
7pm
Get out the sewing machine and fix a rip in my windy top. They're pretty thin ventile cotton and the take a bit of a battering from daily use and UV damage during the summer so they tend to tear quite easily. Mine is looking more like a patchwork quilt than a jacket these days. They cost £175 each though so repair is definitely preferred to replacement!
8pm
Watched a couple of episodes of the third series of "24" on telly. We've got a TV schedule set up with weekly showings of a few series that we have on DVD. In between the two episodes we have a short break so the met person on call can do their three-hourly weather observation and everyone else can grab a drink and a snack.
10:30pm
Head for the computer room to write a few emails, quickly check the servers are okay and to type up this entry. A quick check of the live all sky camera shows that it's cloudy so no aurora to see tonight. Time for bed I think!
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