Category Archives: sherman downey

Tuesday 18th September 2018 – AND SO I WENT …

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
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… to bed quite early (and missed all of the excitement too!) and crashed out almost immediately. The record that I was playing Colosseum Live … "now THERE’S a surprise" – ed … was still playing when I briefly awoke, so I quickly turned that off and fell back into the Arms of Morpheus.

It didn’t take me long to go off on my travels and a big Hello! to The Vanilla Queen who made her debut. “Vanilla Queen” indeed, living up to her alter ego! The stress is clearly getting to me, that’s for sure.

With having to be up and about so early I was awake at about 04:30. And again at about 05:15. I couldn’t go back to sleep after that and so I Arose from the Dead and started to tidy up and pack.

We’ve now entered Kangerlussuaq, the “Big Fjord” and so I took a few photos. No sunrise today unfortunately and not really all that much else to see. So I toddled off to breakfast where I had a lengthy chat with Dave about Glasgow and GreenocK. Heather came to join us too for a short while.

Afterwards I finished packing my possessions and then I had to wait around for ages to see what was happening.

Before I could check out. We received a USB stick with all of the voyage details thereupon, and I was able to go back upstairs to upload the photos of Strawberry Moose in his kayak.

Eventually we were called down to the zodiacs and were transported to the shore. We passed by Linda, the cruise director, and I’m afraid that I couldn’t resist it. I said to her “I suppose you’ll give me that e-mail address tomorrow”.

I really am wicked! But serve her right.

A fleet of buses was awaiting us – some modern monstrous machines and also a couple of really elderly vehicles, including a Kassböhrer-Setra and, much to my surprise, a DAB-bodied 1984 Leyland bus.

We went past the ruins of Kellyville, an old American radar base and then up the hill to the old American submarine radio base. Long-since dismantled, you could see how tall the antennae must have been by reference to the concrete base and the size of the cable stays. They were massive.

Much to my surprise the diesel generators were still present – a couple of really old straight-eights. I was about to give them a good look-over but before I could do so we were summoned back to the bus.

Back down the hill again and past the cupola for the gun that defended the port installations and the runway for the airstrip at Kangerlussuaq in World War II. In (and out) of the town to look at the Pride and Joy of the urban area – the new bridge that replaced the one that was washed out in an ice-flood in 2012.

We were told of the volume of water that passes through the bridge at the height of the melt-water season and I can’t remember now what our driver said it was but it was certainly impressive. Today we had a floating plaque of ice that was jammed up against the culvert with all of the water passing underneath.

He showed us the site of the old bridge and explained that if we were to dig down in the collapsed morass we would probably be able to recover a digger that was swept away in the confusion.

Up to the top of the mountain on the other side.

There was a beautiful view of Kangerlussuaq from the top, as well as the old radio and radar installations from the Cold War. Some of the equipment is now utilised by the Danes to pick up the data that is transmitted from weather satellites that pass overhead.

And I found some beautiful glacier-polished rock right on top of the mountain. It looked really splendid.

Back down to the airport – the largest in Greenland with the longest runway – another Cold War legacy. Plenty of time to kill before take-off so I went to watch the Air Greenland planes take off. This is the only airport in which the big jets can land so they unload and turn round here and there are endless shuttles of smaller planes that feed the passengers in and out and on and beyond.

I took the opportunity to eat my packed lunch too. Not that it took me all that long. Laszlo and I clearly have different ideas about the size of my appetite.

Still hordes of people congregating around so I spent quite a while chatting to Sherman, Michael, Christopher and Tiffany. They were sharing out the crisps which I thought was quite nice of them.

Eventually we made our way to the departure lounge and I had another stand-off in what laughingly passes as “security”.

“Empty your pockets!” barked a woman with a badge.
“Would you mind saying ‘please’ to me when you address me” I replied.
This led to an extremely warm 5 minutes until she buckled under.

And now our plane is 90 minutes late. isn’t that a surprise? It’s so late that the second plane has in fact arrived first.

I thought that it would be absolutely awful watching the others depart before us, but they sat for half an hour on the tarmac without moving – and then the rood opened, the stairs came out and the pilot descended.

The cynic in me started to work out all kinds of depressing scenarios and in the words of JRR Tolkein “all are dark and unpleasant”.

We were later told a story of what had happened. Apparently some kind of aeroplane had come to some kind of grief on the runway. Our plane couldn’t land and so had flown back to Iqaluit.

But none of this explains why plane 2 had managed to land on the runway, and why another aeroplane from Air Greenland had managed to land. And why they hadn’t grabbed one of the towing dollies that I had seen in action earlier and yanked the plane off the runway.

20-odd years of working in the tourism industry has imbued me with a desperate sense of cynicism that will one day surely be my undoing. However, I am guided by the comment that “a cynic is someone who sees things as they are, not as they are meant to be”.

And seeing the n°2 aeroplane take off before our (earlier) one had landed did nothing to dispel my feelings.

The tour company offered us a meal of sorts. And after much binding in the marsh they managed to rustle up a salad for me. A blind man would have been pleased to see it, I suppose.

But the biggest laugh is yet to come.

After the meal they gave me a bottle of water – unopened and sealed – out or the restaurant so I strode back into the waiting area. And they wouldn’t let me pass with it and we had quite an argument about it.

But behind me were the tour managers with 200 of the identical bottles of water and they passed those into the security area, right enough. And so we had another argument about that too.

In the meantime, the clock in the waiting room had ceased to function. That’s always a handy stand-by when people are feeling the drag of waiting around. They don’t notice the passage of time if the clock isn’t working.

The plane finally arrived at about 20:35 – a good 15 minutes after the “latest update” time and well over 4 hours after its due DEPARTURE time. And in the meantime Sherwin had given us an impromptu concert to pass the time. One suspects that a certain well-filled brown envelope had changed hands at some point. We even had Latonia singing along.

And once the aeroplane had landed, they started up the clock again.

I really must develop a more positive attitude, as I have been saying for quite a while.

Departure time should have been 16:30. We took to the air at 22:15. That was me thoroughly depressed.

What depressed me even more was when I talked to the cabin crew. They told me that there had been a “maintenance issue” and that, together with the associated paperwork, had delayed the take-off

Clearly someone is being … errrr … economical with the truth somewhere.

And I felt really sorry for The Vanilla Queen. She lives in Iqaluit but was having to take the charter flight to Toronto, and then make her way home via Montreal. So where do you think that we stopped for a refuelling break?

Much to my surprise they actually did have a vegan meal on board. And even more surprisingly, it was quite reasonable too, as far as airline meals go.

But that was as good as it got. My good humour that had been slowly disappearing over the last few days – well, the last vestiges have disappeared into the ether now. As Doctor Spooner once famously said, “I feel like a hare with a sore bed”.

I tried to settle down to sleep but no chance of that. I shall have to stay wide-awake with only my good humour to keep me company.

I don’t think.

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Sunday 16th September 2018 – JUST BY WAY OF A CHANGE …

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
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… I fell asleep last night as soon as my head touched the pillow.

But not as long as I would have liked because by 04:00 I was awake again. Clearly my guilty conscience is acting up again.

However I did manage to drop off (figuratively, not literally) again until the strident tone of first David Bowie and then Billy Cotton dragged me out of my stinking pit.

We then had the usual morning performance and then off to grab a coffee and watch the sun rise over Disko Bay. Beautiful it was too.

Two of the crew came to join me for breakfast but they couldn’t stay long as the team meeting had been brought forward. So I ended up mainly on my own – the usual state of affairs these days seeing as I seem now to have upset almost everyone on board ship one way or another.

This morning’s entertainment was a ride out in the zodiacs. We’re right on the edge of Disko Bay where there’s a huge glacier that calves off into the water. The trouble is though that there’s a huge subterranean terminal moraine at the head of the bay and the icebergs are too deep to pass over it.

And so they have to wait until either they melt enough to pass over the moraine or else there’s a collision from behind that forces them to capsize so that they might float over the top

Consequently the bay is packed with all kinds of icebergs waiting for the chance to leave. And then they head north on the Gulf Stream until that peters out and they are picked up by the Labrador Current that floats them back south again past Ellesmere island, Baffin Island, Labrador and Newfoundland and on into the Atlantic for their rendezvous with the Titanic.

But if you want to see them, don’t wait too long. Global warming is such that the glacier here is breaking off and calving at 35 metres PER DAY. It won’t be very long before the glacier grounds out and then there won’t be any icebergs at all. It will all just slowly melt away.

However, I was feeling dreadful.

I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that there have been times on this journey where i really haven’t feel like going off on an outing, and today was the worst that it got. I was flat out on the bed with all of my issues to comfort me. I wasn’t going anywhere.

But our team was last out and so by the time that we were called I was able to at least struggle downstairs to the changing room and dress for the weather.

It made me feel a little better, being out in the fresh air, and we did have a really delightful morning out, weaving in and out of the icebergs in the bay. Some were large, some were small, some were high, and they were all spectacular.

We had to return for someone who had missed the boat but once we were back out we stayed out for more than 90 minutes, freezing to death in the cold weather. But the view – it was totally spectacular.

Half of the boat was missing at lunchtime. They had gone on into town for restaurant food like Mooseburgers, walrus sausage and the like, at the invitation of the Tour Director. “Running short of supplies, are we?” The cynic inside me mused.

I stayed aboard though and was accompanied to lunch by the garrulous lady from a week or so ago and, true to form, I struggled to fit a word in edgeways.

I hadn’t changed at lunchtime because we would be first off in the afternoon. Heading for the town of Ilulissat on the side of the bay.

It took an age to reach there though. Our rather timid captain didn’t want to approach too closely for fear of the ice, so were were about 7 or 8 nautical miles offshore. That’s about 12-14 kms out so you can imagine the journey that we had. And in the freezing cold too.

But judging by the mass of blood on an ice floe that we passed, our passage must have disturbed a polar bear’s lunch break.

I can’t now remember if Ilulissat is the second or third-largest city in Greenland … "it’s the third-largest" – ed … but I do remember that it has a population of about 4,500.

Another claim to fame of the town is that it possesses the most northerly football pitch that I have yet to encounter, with the “grandstand” being a large and rather solid outcrop of rock.

There was a shuttle bus running around the town to take us to different places, but I went on foot for a good look around. Amongst the exciting finds that I made was an old DAB Silkeborg bus – a type that I haven’t so far encountered. After all, it’s been years since I’ve been to Denmark.

There were several memorials to various individuals and events and as my Danish isn’t up to much, I shall have to make further enquiries about them.

The docks was the place to go so I found the bridge where there was a good spec and took a few photos, including one of a chain suspension pipe – not a bridge.

There was also an exciting find where they had been widening the road. They had been drilling down into the rock in order to weaken it to break it off, and the drill bit had become stuck. And there it was, still embedded in the rock even today.

The boardwalk was the place to go, though. Up past the shops, the petrol station and the football ground. And then past the field where they kept the sled dogs.

Everyone whom I met told me how far it was, but I kept on going on foot despite the offer of lifts; and had a really enjoyable walk. I was really striding out now and it seemed that my worries of the morning had long-gone.

There were some antique sod-house ruins on the way past. And I wasable to identify them, much to the delight of our archaeologist. And some really stunning views too. But I climbed right up to the top with Strawberry Moose who had come along for the day out.

He had his photo taken on many occasions, including a few by me, and we all relaxed and chatted at the top for quite a while.

On the way back we missed our trail and had to retrace our steps for a while. I picked up one of the staff who accompanied me and she pointed out the UNESCO heritage sign as well as a few other things such as the home of the explorer Knud Rasmussen.

The dogs took exception to our leaving the area however and set up a howling cacophony of noise as we passed by.

Back in town, I had quite a laugh. A couple of young girls had bought a tub of ice cream (in this weather!) and, not having any spoons, were scooping it out with their fingers. One girl was rather timid but the other let me photograph her.

Our departure from the port was delayed as a Danish warship called, would you believe, Knut Rasmussen wanted to enter (he wasn’t bothered about the ice). And when we eventually managed to leave the port we were treated to the sight of a couple of men butchering three seals on an ice-floe.

It made me wonder about the earlier blood.

There were whales out here – we could hear them – but not see them. And we froze to death yet again as we raced back to the ship to miss the storm that was building up.

The Naughty Table was rather subdued tonight at tea. We had a new member who had been everywhere and done everything, and wasted no time in letting us all know, even to the extent of destroying the stories of another new member.

In the meantime, Yulia the bar attendant had seen His Nibs on the way out of the boat earlier today and lay in wait for a photo-bombing session.

Sherman was on the guitar later and we all had a good evening listening and joining in when we knew the words.

But I’m thoroughly exhausted so I’m off to bed.

The photos can wait until morning.

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Saturday 15th September 2018 – LAST NIGHT’S SLEEP …

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
***************

… was probably the best one yet. In bed at 23:15 and flat out until the alarms went off at 06:00. High time that I had a decent sleep like that.

And I was away on my travels too – off once more to the High Arctic with a couple of the Inuit people on board the ship – and on several occasions too. But I have no idea where I ended up and what I did while I was there. It’s all evaporated completely out of my mind.

It was something of a stagger into breakfast this morning, and I shared my table with a couple of people from Singapore, now living in British Columbia. And I also had a good chat with the maitre d’hotel, to find out that we both shared the same opinion about something or other.

Back in my room I started to prepare Strawberry Moose and myself for our trip ashore to Uummannaq. This is a small town of about 1500 or so inhabitants, and His Nibs is looking forward to it as there is to be some kind of presentation involving the kids of the local orphanage.

If ever there was a day where I felt less likely than moving, I’ve no idea when it was. I crashed out on the bed and for two pins I would have stayed there all day. But I forced myself to move and made my way to the zodiac with Strawberry Moose.

I’m glad that I made the effort because it was all totally beautiful. The ride out there and back as well as the time on shore.

I found myself in Mike’s photography group and he gave us quite a few little tips (many of which I knew already), and then we went off to photograph certain settings that he suggested. And I probably took over 200 photographs in all.

Some of them were quite miserable but others came out fine. And patience was definitely a virtue in several cases. In one particularly noteworthy occasion, I waited for a husky to position himself perfectly, and he was immediately joined by his wife and offspring and it all worked out perfectly.

We all trooped off to the entertainment where a group of girls from the Orphanage entertained us (most of the boys were helping out at the fishing station). The place was crowded, the light was difficult and it took me a while to set up the camera how I wanted it, given the conditions. Usually I like to be in a venue beforehand to size out the light.

Condensation on the telephoto lens didn’t help much either.

And that was worthwhile too because I fell in love with one of the girls. She had the most beautiful smile that I have ever seen in the whole of my life. I would have taken her home with me in a heartbeat.

She could sing and play the guitar, and had written a few songs. And while I was listening to her and watching her smile, I remembered Vaino Tanner’s quote about Inuit girls from his 1944 book “Outlines of the Geography, Life and Customs of Newfoundland-Labrador” concerning his expeditions on 1937 and 1939,

  1. the Inuit girls are very keen to marry settlers of European descent
  2. they are the hardest-working of all of the Inuit people (and then goes on to list all of the household tasks that they are expected to do in the home)
  3. they have an extremely sensual nature

I always wondered how Vaino Tanner discovered that last little fact, and I was interested in doing a little scientific field research into the subject myself.

I had to wait for a good half an hour for her to get into the correct position, for her colleagues to get into the correct position and to give me one of her beautiful smiles but I FINALLY took the photo that I wanted.

And it worked so spectacularly that it is definitely THE photograph and I have set it as my desktop image on the travel laptop.

When the performance was over I went to chat to the girls, and I took Strawberry Moose for a good hug. And how he enjoyed it too, being passed around from girl to girl, allowing himself to be photographed.

I even managed a little chat with The Girl With The Smile. And I told her that I thought her smile so beautiful. No point in thinking complimentary thoughts if you aren’t prepared to spread them about. Being nice and polite is what makes the world go round.

We were so long there chatting that we almost missed the last zodiac (not that that would have bothered me over-much) and I had to scrounge around for a lifebelt.

Talking of being nice to people, I’d taken a photo of someone yesterday – a woman peering through her camera at some birds away in the distance and it had come out rather well. I tracked her down and showed her the photo, and let her have a copy.

Lunch was a barbecue on deck and the cynic in me immediately suggested that there had been a fire in the dining room this morning. I managed to find some salad. and to my delight, the roast potatoes on the ship are cooked in oil, not butter or lard. So I had a plateful of those too.

In the afternoon we went across the fjord to Qilakitsoq. This is another Thule village dating back to round about AD1475 +/- 50 with its sod houses.

There are a few graves too, but the crucial discovery was made here in 1972. A couple of Greenlanders clambering on the cliffs above the village looking for ptarmigan thought they saw skin and clothing through a crevice in the rocks.

Our Greenlanders called for assistance and the rocks were investigated to reveal 8 bodies, contemporary with the village, buried inside. And the conditions were so ideal that they had become mummified.

Archaeologists have studied the bodies and can say that there are 8 people, two childen aged 6 months and 4 years, and several adults aged from 20 to about 45. The bodies are so well-preserved that it was even possible to determine that they had been eating.

We clambered up onto the cliffs (it was something of a hike and scramble so I left His Nibs behind on the ship) to look at the site. It’s been excavated and cleared now, but it was formerly underneath an overhanging rock protected by an erratic boulder.

I managed the climb and the descent, and waited until I reached the easy, flat bit before I slipped over onto my derriere. Nothing was hurt, except my pride of course. But then that’s been hurt before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … so it’s quite used to it.

It was polar dip time for those who wished to take part. But not me. I went to my room for a shower and a wash of some clothes, returning to the deck just in time to see the intrepid plungers take to the hot pool to warm up after their efforts.

Of course, I would have been first into the polar dip had I not had this catheter in my chest … "of course" – ed …, but at least I take my hat off to those who did it.

For a short while at least I could stay up and about but it didn’t take long before ill-health took over. I ended up fairly sharply back in my room flat on my back and there I stayed for an hour.

I don’t remember too much about my sleep but I certainly remember a swb land-rover, light grey with a cream truck cap, pulling up at the side of the ship (which was quite remarkable seeing as we are all floating on water);

There was the usual briefing and as usual I missed the first 10 minutes while I gathered my wits (which, seeing how many I have, takes far, far longer than it ought to these days)

We were advised that lunch could be taken ashore the next day by anyone who felt the urge. People would have to forage for themselves in the town, where there were several restaurants. Once more, the cynic in me suggested to several members of the team that the kitchen has now run out of supplies, burnt out in the dining room fire of course.

But even during the briefing I was distracted. Heather wanted my contact details and then just at a crucial moment there was a glint of sunlight on a rock away in the distance so I dashed off to take a photo.

Not only that, the mystery about the flag (if you can remember from,a couple of days ago) is solved. It’s apparently the flag of the Bahamas, where the ship is registered, although it doesn’t look familiar to me.

Tea was taken once more at The Naughty Table. Natalie the Yoga Instructor came to join us and she fitted in perfectly. She and I had a long chat about nothing much in particular.

After tea, we played “Arctic Bluff” – a kind-of “Call My Bluff” with an Arctic flavour. And our team was rubbish. Not even Strawberry Moose could help us out here.

So now I’m in my new little perch from the other day, right up in the Gods, writing my blog and checking my photos. Not sure how many of the latter that I have but 200 would be a good guess and that’s something of a record for a day’s photography.

I’d better get a move-on.

But not for long though. Round about 23:30 I reckoned that it was hopeless to continue so I headed off back to my room. But on the way I was interrupted by sounds of merriment coming from the lounge. The hot-tub dippers were drying off.

I had a lengthy chat with Sherman Downey the musician about music and records and all of that kind of stuff, and another with Olimpia about potatoes from Peru, the conclusion which I drew from that conversation was that maybe Olimpia ought to put some more water in the next one.

That was the cue to head off to bed. I’d somehow managed to find enough to keep going for a whole extra hour.

Does me good to be awake and to mingle.

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Friday 14th September 2018 – WELL, WHAT A NIGHT!

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
***************

I was off on my travels yet again, and on a couple of occasions too. Up in the High Arctic with a couple of my fellow-passengers. And I wish that I could recall what was going on in there because it was certainly exciting and also very important. I remember thinking that I need to be able to recall this when I awake

But fat chance of that!

Up on the deck there were a few icebergs floating around. Flat top and sheer sides, just as they had calved off from the glacier. The ones with more extravagant shapes have been at sea for quite a while and have had the time to erode, either by sun, rain or wave action.

And while I was admiring everything, I suddenly realised that I had yet to take my medication. So I went back down to do it.

Back up here, I was just in time to see the light as the sun came up behind the mainland of Greenland. Nothing special unfortunately – we can thank the low cloud for that.

My bad night had caught up with me yet again. We had two lectures this morning – one of the Power of Observation which was really nothing more than an egocentric (of which there are more than enough on this trip) photo exhibition, followed by a talk on tectonic plate theory and the Movement of Continents. And I fell off to sleep on a couple of occasions.

But by now we had entered the Tasiussaq Fjord. This is our destination for today. Our rather timid captain managed to find his way in up to a certain point, despite how narrow it was, and we all enjoyed the manoeuvring.

I went for my lunch and ended up chatting to three people whom I didn’t know. And they didn’t stick around very long either. I have this affect on people, don’t I?

They ran out of zodiacs to take us ashore. There was an extreme hiking party out and also a kayaking group. That latter sounded exciting but it’s been 50 years since I was last in a kayak and that was on a canal. Sea-kayaking at my time of life with my (lack of) recent experience is maybe not the way forward.

We had to wait until the first load came back and meantime, I fell asleep. And I could feel myself rising out of my body and floating upwards, and it’s been years since I’ve last had an out-of-body experience.

However we were soon off and into a really impressive fjord. It’s been a long time since I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful.

On shore, we had a little climb up to the raised beach, and then it was something of a hike across the isthmus to the other side of the headland.

Over there, there was a Thule village of sod houses – some from about 600 or 700 years ago, one reasonably modern-ish Inuit sod-house and a couple of indeterminate age in-between.

The archaeologist with our party delighted us all by recounting a lovely little story about how she went on an exploration of a village of sod huts, going from one to another to examine them, and walked into one to find that it was still occupied! And the occupant offered her a mug of tea.

There were several caches for keeping meat – one cache for each kind of meat apparently including moose, and we also discovered what might have been some kayak stands or may even have been umiak stands.

Inuit and Thule houses, and even Dorset houses depend upon flat land and a sea view. And this sea view here couldn’t be better. There was even a little beach at the foot of it, but not the kind of place where you would be in your bikini or your cozzy.

There was an alternative way back, around on the far side of the lake so Strawberry Moose and I came back that way.

I’d forgotten to say that he was with me, and indeed he had had some really good photo opportunities. At least he had a good time.

And so did I. I bet that it was the first time that Everyone Is Everybody Else has ever been played in Tasiussaq Fjord. And the timing was perfection itself.

We managed the trip back to the ship without encountering a storm today, and I came up to my room to have a shower and a clothes-washing session. And at the de-briefing, I fell asleep yet again.

It’s been a long day.

For the evening meal I was once more at the Naughty Table and we all disgraced ourselves thoroughly, much to the chagrin of a woman who had come along quite by accident. And here I am, not fit to be seen out without a keeper and even I can’t keep up with the rest of them.

We have a very early start tomorrow so the little music concert that we had with Sherman Downey didn’t last too long, and Strawberry Moose was unlucky in that he didn’t get a dance. Mind you, no-one else did. it was one of those evenings.

Back down to the cabin to put His Nibs away, only to find that for some reason or another I’d managed to lose my room key. I was also ambushed by our Entertainments Manager about my ETA for when we cross back over into Canada, whenever that might be. It’s lucky that Rhys printed out a copy for me last year. I was able to brandish that.

A few days ago, Ashley, one of the Inuit girls on board, told us all an Inuit legend about a woman who could change herself into a fox in order to taunt her lover. Of course, Liege And Lief, and in particular, Crazy Man Michael sprung immediately to mind so I invited her to listen to it. And she enjoyed it tremendously.

Now, I have work to do in order to catch up with stuff that’s dragging. And I’m in a rush because it needs to be done fairly quickly for, as I said just now, we have a very early start tomorrow.

I’ll have to get a wiggle on.

And in other news, I’ve now gone well over the 1,000 photos for this voyage. I did that the other day and forgot to mention it.

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Tuesday 11th September 2018 – SOMEWHAT OPTIMISTICALLY, UNFORTUNATELY

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
***************

That’s the verdict after last night’s sleep – if sleep is the correct word. It was about 00:30 when I went to bed and the first thing that I needed to do was to confront the demons because they were at it again last night. In fact it took ages for them to calm down and go to sleep.

Once I went off, it was just until about 04:30 or something. The ship was slowly changing position and the captain was using engine power to maintain station. As a result, the engine noise was constantly increasing and decreasing.

That film had affected me too in some degree because I was off on my travels with a couple of my fellow-voyagers would you believe, scrambling through deck rails and onto the shore.

Despite being awake early, it was somewhat later than normal that I arose from the dead and with an early start this morning (breakfast at 07:00 instead of 07:30) there wasn’t much time to do as much as I wanted.

Breakfast was taken in the company of Chris the expedition photographer and Natalie the yoga girl. She freely admitted that it wasn’t my company but the company of Strawberry Moose that she was seeking, which rather spoiled my morning somewhat … "as if …" – ed.

Just as we were about to dress for our landing, it was announced that it had been postponed until later. Firstly there was too much ice, and secondly, there was a polar bear guarding the entrance to the beach. We needed to wait until he moved.

So we waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually it was announced that the bear had managed to make a kill out on the ice and there it was staying until it had eaten it.

Not only that, by now the tide had turned and the ice that was lodged on the beach was floating and being tossed about in the wind and waves. It’s not the kind of weather for going off to the shore in a zodiac so our landing at Grise Fiord was yet another event cancelled.

I tried my best to encourage some kind of intrepid voyage to shore but they weren’t having any of it. And once more, Lieutenant Skead’s words about Collinson came right into the forefront of my mind – “An ordinary yachtsman might have taken his craft east, and his wife and daughters to boot. I’m afraid to think of what we shall do if we meet with difficulty“.

It’s quite true that safety should be a very important requirement but this is an expedition, not a cruise. And we’re in the High Arctic, not the Gulf of Mexico. If people are uncomfortable with the conditions then they shouldn’t be here. They should go back to Hicksville and let the rest of us get out on an adventure.

Abandoning yet another good rant for the moment, we did end up going on a zodiac cruise around the ice floes. No shipwrecks and nobody drownding, in fact nothing to laugh at at all.

I took a pile of photos, although nothing like what I was hoping for. There were a few spectacular ice formations but nothing that really floated my boat. All in all I was rather disappointed.

What disappointed me even more was that having decided to leave Strawberry Moose in the cabin, everyone was asking me where he was. As I said the other day, he’s much more popular than I am.

Not half as disappointed as I might have been though, because we collided with several ice-floes and that vould have been extremely exciting had one had sharp edges.

Back on board again, and I hope that we don’t go out anywhere else today because while I was showering I washed all of my expedition gear seeing as it was still early morning. It might take a while to dry so if we do travel out this afternoon i’ll freeze,

If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed then Mohammed must go to the mountain. The Inuit people from Grise Fiord whom we were going to see over there came over here (in zodiacs, not kayaks) to entertain us. And it was all rather too touristy for me.

One of the original settlers here gave us all a talk on the origins of the settlement, and it was just as depressing as every other story that I’ve heard about the relocations.

I buttonholed him after the event. A 22-litre can of petrol costs about $25 – a subsidised price. I’m not quite sure why fuel up here would be subsidised when they have just cut the budget for the fuel boat in Black Tickle.

(looking back at this later on, I can see that for some reason or another I’d descended into a really wicked, bad mood. The first time for quite a while, isn’t it?)

Lunch was taken in the company of Latonia and a guy called Peter. I’m afraid that I rather upset him because when we were discussing the failure of this expedition and he said that we could always come back next year, I replied that I couldn’t come back.
“Why?” he asked. “Are you dying?”
And I’m afraid that I rather shocked him with my answer. But this is what happens when you are feeling irritable and in a bad mood.

I reminded Latonia once more that I wanted to talk to her about Labrador, and she promised once more to make some time for me.

We said goodbye to our visitors after lunch and also said goodbye to Grise Fiord. The most northerly permanently-inhabited settlement in Canada. Then I retreated to my room for some peace and quiet. And so peaceful and quiet was it that it wasn’t until 70 minutes later that I awoke.

And did I feel any different after my little rest?

I certainly did. I felt much worse.

We seem to be flying a new flag at the rear of the ship. I can’t be sure of course, but I don’t remember this one at all. I shall have to make enquiries of the crew at an appropriate moment.

There was a presentation on the Predators of the Northwest Passage and I caught the end of it, and this was followed by a little photography session. We were sailing past what looked to me to be like the farthest northern end of Devon Island and a couple of beautiful glaciers presented themselves.

That was enough for me though. I had nothing much to do really so I sat in the lounge and did it. This Peter guy with whom I had lunch came to sit with me and we had a really good chat and a natter about nothing much in particular.

Just to liven up the voyage, they had a singles party where the aim was for all of the people travelling alone to meet up. About a week or so too late in my opinion – this is the kind of thing that should be done on or about the first full day of the voyage. By now, it’s more than likely that you will have met someone, if that is one of the aims of your voyage.

At the evening de-briefing session we had the usual gnashing and wailing from the Septics on board about how badly-treated they were on this day a few years ago. And I walked out in disgust. The Septics still don’t understand how much the rest of the world hates them and their arrogant, egocentric narcissic ways. Not a word about Iran Air Flight 655 that the US military shot down in Iranian airspace on 3 July 1988 – the event that started off all of this.

This led us on nicely to the evening meal. I shared a table with a woman whom I had met a few days ago at the special table to which I had been invited and we chatted about loads of things, such as maple syrup. It was all go.

To wind up the day there was a sing-along concert in the lounge with Sherman Downey. We started off with about 50 people but by the end of the evening there was a stalwart half-dozen or so. But amongst the entertainment, Strawberry Moose took the floor and entertained the crowds.

It’s late now but I’m still here, sitting down and writing my notes and listening to Colosseum Live again.

And who knows? I might even have an early night too. But not before my midnight walk.

There’s a faint glimmer of twilight on the horizon but not enough to activate the camera. And we’re heading on a direction of 69° – that’s in a vague east-north-east direction.

It looks as if 80°N is not going to be reached.

0

Sunday 9th September 2018 – LAST NIGHT …

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
***************

… round about 00:35 I was just gathering up my things ready to go to bed when I caught out of the corner of my eye a strange reflection on one of the windows.

Turning dramatically round, I could see lights really close by on the starboard beam (said he, coming over all nautical-like)

Grabbing the camera I dashed outside and sure enough another ship, very likely a cruise ship, was sailing past not 500 metres from us in the opposite direction.

Forgetting that the camera was on a low-light setting, I blazed way and ended up with a horribly over-exposed shot of it as it sailed past. But by the time I had corrected my settings, it was already some way astern so that came out rather under-exposed. It’s clearly not my night for anything, is it?

But very strangely, I was asleep quite quickly once I finally managed to heave myself into my stinking pit, and that was exactly how I remained until the early-morning cacophony.

We had the usual morning ritual, and then up on deck where I hoped that a hot coffee would bring me round sufficiently to do more than grunt at people.

A thin sliver of land on the horizon away over to our left tells me that we aren’t quite in a sea as open as I would like to be, but nevertheless we are still going north. 74° 58’N on the AIS plot – rapidly approaching the magical 80°N, which is farther north than almost every explorer had reached 200 years ago before Ross and Parry, but it’s almost certain that whalers such as William Scoresby and countless others had pushed on well beyond this.

Their reports of “seas open one year, closed the next” which were dismissed by the Admiralty as total fiction but which proved to be absolutely correct cannot have been mere guesswork.

We had breakfast and this was followed by a series of presentations. And can you imagine how disappointed I was when I discovered that the “10:00 – Dog-Sledding in the Nautilus Lounge” was just a discussion.

But I really wasn’t paying too much attention. We’d run into an ice belt at one time during the morning and there were loads of stuff drifting by.

At one moment there was a beautiful iceberg off the starboard bow so I took up a really good position to take a photo of it. And then the captain altered course and it slid off in the distance to port.

But that wasn’t the best of it either.

There was a discussion on the health and welfare of the Inuit population. The speaker was talking about mental health and how something was “the tip of the iceberg”. And just as she said that, right on cue, a really large iceberg went sailing past. You couldn’t have had the timing any better than that.

I dashed out and took a photo of it, and then dashed back in again.

And this talk was quite interesting too for another reason.

They were talking about Inuit people being encouraged to keep their ethnic identity when they move out of the community and “go south”. That’s the kind of thing that contrasts sharply with the situation where people coming into Canada are expected to integrate into their new environment and leave their ethnic identity behind.

And if that isn’t enough to be going on with, they were discussing the new opportunities that tourism was bringing into the region and how this might help go some way towards resolving the chronic unemployment and poverty issues amongst the Inuit people. And here we are on a cruise ship visiting the High Arctic and being manned … "personned" – ed … by a mainly Filipino and Indonesian crew.

What might help the Inuit community would be if the Canadian Government, these cruise companies and tourists on board stopped treating the local people as nothing but tourist attractions but as people and actually engaged them in the economic regeneration of the region.

Lunch was the usual salad for me and I sat with Dylan, the pianist from last night. I complimented him on the event and we ended up having a good chat about music. He also plays the bass too but hadn’t brought his axe with him.

This afternoon we went off on another excursion. There’s an island in the Davis Strait off the coast of Devon Island called Philpot’s Island and our ship had never visited there.

It’s known to be a haunt of polar bear and, more importantly, musk-oxen, so we decided that we would all go ashore for an exploration. We tried to get into one bay but the wind conspired against us and heaped up the ice across the entrance so we had to find another bay.

The bay that we chose was apparently un-named on any of the charts that we could find, and so Tennyson’s “There is nothing worth living for but to have one’s name inscribed on the Arctic chart ” came straight into my head. Who do I see?

Cold comes in three categories – cold, freezing and Jesus! And this was Jesus! cold. We were wrapped up in all that we could fit on underneath our windproof and rainproof clothes and scrambled for the Zodiacs.

The sea was rough and churning too with a 15-20 knot wind, so we were told. And there was fog and a snowstorm too. But then again, if you can’t cope with any of that, you shouldn’t really be in the High Arctic.

By the time we reached the shore we were totally wet and bedraggled, and that was just the start of things.

We were divided into four groups, Expert, Advanced, Intermediate and Leisurely, with a few people who just stayed for a walk on the beach. The days when I could go off on an Expert hike and then go back and do it again are, unfortunately, long-gone, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall.

Instead I chose the Intermediate walk.

Off into the wilderness we went, in several long crocodiles as each group went its separate way, accompanied by our armed polar bear guards. Our way took us in a crescent-shaped circuit around the south-western quarter of the island.

And while we’re on the subject of crocodiles, I remembered the leader of our expedition telling us at one stage that he wasn’t going to tell us what animals he might see because that would be the Kiss of Death and we would never ever see them. And so the idea that was running around my head was that he should say that we would see crocodiles, lions, camels and the Loch Ness Monster.

And as for the polar bear guards, their guns are loaded with rubber bullets. But they do have live ammunition in their pockets in case the rubber bullets don’t stop the animals.

We picked our way through the snow, through the snowdrifts and the howling wind that blasted along our trail, stopping frequently to pause for breath along the way. I was going to say “and to see the sights” but you couldn’t really see a thing in this weather.

At one point we stopped and did some deep breathing exercises; And then our leader proposed that we lie down in the snow to meditate. Most people immediately refused, but I decided to give it a go. And so I lay there in a snowdrift and let all of the thoughts drift out of my mind – not that there are so many thoughts in there these days that it takes too long.

It was harder than I imagined but after a couple of minutes I could feel myself sliding off somewhere. There was an eerie wind and the patter of snow on my jacket but apart from that I don’t think that I’ve ever felt so peaceful. In fact I was so disappointed when he called us to order again.

We carried on, coming across some lemming tracks on our way but even though the tracks were fairly recent there was no sign of the critters who had made them.

At a certain point the sun looked as if it might start to come out and I took a photo of it. But all that I picked up was a pale yellow disk and a flurry of snow on the lens.

Eventually we arrived at our destination and the more athletic amongst us scrambled up the rocks to the top of the headland that overlooks the sea. And the ship was out there somewhere – we could vaguely make it out in the distance through the fog and driving snow.

Up there in the wind we scanned the horizon for any sign of wildlife but that was something of a failure. There was nothing to be seen. We loitered around for half an hour or so to see what was going on, but in the end we gave it up as a bad job and started back.

Pretty much the same routine on the way back, stopping regularly for breath. And our “long pause” was animated by Lois, an Inuit woman who was accompanying us who told us tales of life on the trail and how easy it is to become disorientated and lose one’s way in weather like this.

Back at the beach, we learned that at least one group had encountered musk-oxen. A shame that it wasn’t ours. We’d seen some musk-ox droppings, and fresh ones too, but no actual beast. Still, you can’t win a coconut every time, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed.

There was a long queue to go back on the zodiacs, so I went off and had another meditation session, lying almost buried in a snowdrift. And this time, as well as the feelings that I had had before, I managed to go off. I could see blue sky and smell something completely different, something that I couldn’t name. It was the most extraordinary feeling that I have had for many years, just lying there flat out on my back in a snowdrift in the middle of an Arctic snowstorm.

Hot tea was available before we boarded a zodiac. And you’ve no idea how quickly hot tea goes stone-cold in this kind of environment. These explorers who go off into temperatures of -40°C and try to make tea and other hot food must really be on a hiding to nothing. I don’t envy them for a moment.

I was last on the zodiac and so was put at the front on the side into the wind. And we hadn’t gone far before we were treated to an astonishing spectacle. An ice-floe calved off with a most enormous splash right in front of us.

We did a U-turn to go to look at it but we were far too late to take a photo of anything spectacular. But just then, I heard another “crack” from another ice-floe nearby. I swivelled round and clicked the shutter just as another calving took place and a huge lump of ice cascaded into the sea.

By now the storm had increased and we were in for a really rough ride. There was quite a swell running with waves of a considerable height. And being on the side into the wind, I got the lot. I don’t think that I have ever been so wet in all my life by the time that I was back on board the ship.

I shudder to think what it might have been like had I not been dressed in rain and wind gear, and I was thinking … "which doesn’t happen all that often" – ed … that it was a good job that I hadn’t taken Strawberry Moose for a stroll ashore.

Mind you, several passengers had enquired about his whereabouts. He’s more popular than I am, which is not really a surprise given recent events. In certain quarters I’m about as popular as a rattlesnake in the Lucky Dip right now and I have only myself to blame.

Strangely enough, as I was writing this, I was listening to some Wishbone Ash and we had the “One Hundred Years In The Sunshine Hasn’t Taught Me All I Need To Know”. I’ll “try again to fight another day”, so God help you all.

Back in my cabin I had a surprise. Strawberry Moose has found a friend – an Arctic Hare. One of the cabin staff clearly has the right kind of sense of humour and I appreciate that very much.

So a really nice hot shower and washed some clothes, and then came back upstairs to the lounge.

Now, I’m fed up of saying that it’s a small world and getting smaller all the time. There’s a couple on this boat – and elderly woman and her son – who speak French and I’ve been having the odd chat with the woman.

Today, it ended up as being quite a lengthy chat and much to my surprise, I discovered that she is actually French and comes from near Gueret – which is only an hour or so from where my farm is in the Auvergne.

And if that’s not enough, her son lives in St-Lô, which is just about 45 minutes from Granville.

With this astonishing news, we had an extremely lengthy and involved chat, which came to a sudden halt as two rather large icebergs came drifting past. I dashed out into the fog and mist with the camera.

Back inside, I tried to start work but my heart wasn’t in it and I was constantly drifting off to sleep. In the end I gave it up as a bad job and went and crashed out in my room for half an hour. I can’t get away from this, can I?

We had a briefing about tomorrow’s events, and I just about caught the tail-end of it too. It looks as if we are in for a storm at some time through the night and tomorrow but it’s not the kind of thing that we can do rush to shelter and heave to, because we have icebergs to contend with. We’ll have to ride it out in the open sea and keep going, which is bound to upset some passengers, and upset them in more ways than one.

For tea, I was one of the first in so I sat at an empty table. I was quickly joined by two of the elderly men with whom I sat the other evening. It looks as if we have become a regular feature, something like the Naughty Corner at Lierse SK where I always seemed to end up.

This evening there’s a film but with having crashed out this afternoon I have too much work to do so I need to push on and do it. I’m in one of the comfortable chairs in the posh lounge as the film is taking place in the room where I sit.

When I’ve finished, I’ll go for my half-naked evening walk and see how the storm is developing. I hope that it’s an interesting one.

And it certainly was. It was snowing fairly heavily and the sea was rather wild. But I’ve known it colder than it was too. Upon the bridge I stayed and watched the storms, and then checked the binnacle. 357° – or in other words, ever so slightly west of North.

I walked round to the back of the ship, and found a little group of people huddled there. That’s the smoking quarter and there was Sherman Downey !:the musician, Michael the young go’fer and a couple of girls. I joined them and we had a good chat for half an hour or so, and then everyone slowly drifted away.

I drifted away too eventually. It’s way past my bedtime.

On a totally different note, I’ve just heard that Burt Reynolds has died.

0

Saturday 8th September 2018 – IT REALLY DOES COME TO SOMETHING …

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
***************

… when a person living in an isolated Arctic community on a remote Island in the Far North tells you, without any prompting at all, that the British are totally out of their minds about Brexit.

But never mind that for a moment. I’m wondering what would have happened had I not had a severe attack of cramp round about 05:30 or so – the first that I’ve had for a few days. Whether I would have slept on until 06:00

However I did stay in bed until the alarm went off. No polar bears to entice us out this morning. And after the medication I went for a walk. Not without an element of some panic because I appear to have lost my woolly hat – the one that goes on my woolly head.

Not that that’s too much to worry about because I’ve lost count of the amount of things that I’ve lost already and then subsequently recovered in my room. Nevertheless it won’t be long before something goes missing completely. You can bank on that.

I took my evening walk to the bridge last night. Imagine me – in short sleeves at midnight in the High Arctic in September. Binnacle pointing to 180° – in other words, due south.

But no midnight sun last night. And that’s hardly surprising because for the morning we are swathed in fog again. This weather is really getting me down but then again what did I expect up here in the High Arctic? Some explorers have been stranded for four or five years by the capricious ice and, as we know, hundreds have failed to return.

If it were a cake-walk to come here, it wouldn’t be half the adventure that it is now, would it?

I had breakfast this morning with a couple of members of staff – Christopher the geologist and young Michael the ship’s “go’fer”. He’s excited because Pond Inlet is his home village and the captain has invited his family on board for lunch.

As for our plans today, I’ve no idea what they might be. This morning, anyway.

This afternoon we’re visiting an Inuit community – the one at Pond Inlet and that seems to be a waste of time in my opinion because not only is it not a traditional Inuit community but more of a modern resettlement town, but we arrived there on a plane the other day so we’ve been here. And there are still plenty of other places to visit.

The cynic inside me is once more wide-awake and telling me that maybe someone on board the ship has an aunt who runs the local gift shop or something like that.

But on the other hand, for the last week or so Chris Farlowe has been singing to me “Don’t Start Chasing Happiness – Let It Take You By Surprise. Don’t Go Casting Shadows …”. I suppose that I ought to be adopting a more positive outlook, even if I don’t feel much like it right now.

One positive outlook is the fact that we have seen yet another candidate for Ship Of The Day. It’s useful having an AIS beacon reader on board, so I was able to discover that she is the MV Golden Brilliant.

She’s a bulk carrier of 41500 tonnes, built in 2013 and registered in Hong Kong. She left Gijon in Spain on 26th August and is en route for Rotterdam, and taking a major deviation to a stop called “Camni” in the fleet database – clearly some port that doesn’t have an AIS logger.

Its AIS track puts it up here anyway, so it’s the correct ship, and someone in the crew tells me that there’s a mine out here – the Mary River Iron Ore Mine.

This would seem to place Camni at Milne Port Inlet, 71°53’N 80°55’W, so that seems to fit the bill.

Although I didn’t take too much interest in many of the proceedings today, there was a brief class giving some kind of outline of the Inuit language, so I wandered in for a lesson. It’s really quite simple and some kind of, I suppose, shorthand symbols for the syllables, of which there are probably in the region of 60 – 20 consonants each with three vowel sounds, ee, ah and ooh. And every word is made up of one or more symbols, with various accents to emphasise or detract the sound.

That took us nicely up to our arrival in Pond Inlet. We had a discussion about the town and were given a slide show of the town with the various buildings that might be important.

Pond Inlet is situated at 72’42” north. It loses the sun in mid-November, and you have to wait until February until it comes back.

It was named by John Ross in 1818 for John Pond, the Astronomer Royal of the period.

And good-oh! It’s the village brocante this afternoon. How exciting! Mind you, the cynic inside me won’t be at all surprised if this has been arranged because one of the locals has heard that a cruise ship is coming in with a pile of gullible tourists and the rest of the villagers have a load of rubbish that’s awaiting disposal.

What was this about adopting a more-positive outlook?

The most important, certainly for Strawberry Moose, is the fact that Pond Inlet is the home of the most Northerly Tim Horton’s in the whole world.

If that’s not a good destination for him to make a public appearance then I don’t know what is.

Lunch was taken with the couple who seem to be quite interested in me, the fools. It was nice of them to ask me over to sit with them. I don’t understand my popularity these days.

But only with certain people. I am definitely persona non grata elsewhere, something that is entirely my own fault. It’s a desperate shame, but it’s no use crying over spilt milk.

We all piled aboard the zodiacs and headed out to the town. There was some kind of ad-hoc immigration control in place on the beach but of course none of that prevented His Nibs from gaining a foothold ashore.

An Inuit lady called Joanna was there to give us a guided tour of the town, not that there was an awful lot to see.

The first thing that caught my eye was all of the shipping containers all over the place. In that respect it’s very much like South-Western Newfoundland where the bodies off the old Newfoundland Railway wagons were auctioned off and now litter the countryside just about everywhere.

True garden-shed engineering.

And I had quite a laugh at the bus stop too. As if you really need a bus around a community of about 1600 people. Especially when there are so many cars all around the place. That was also something that astonished me.

It is however the time that Arctic cotton is in flower and that’s a useful commodity out here. It’s really a bunch of flowery seeds rather similar to how a dandelion works, and they are used here to make wicks for qulliqs – the soapstone oil lamps – and similar things.

The Catholic Church was quite interesting, if not tragic. It’s apparently the northernmost Catholic church in the world and a comparatively recent construction too. It will come as no surprise to any regular reader of this rubbish who will recall the almost-inevitable fate of most buildings out here in Canada.

What is the tragic part is that when it went up, it took with it the Catholic priest, Father Guy-Mary Rousselière who was probably the greatest of all of the anthropological and archaeological amateurs in this region, along with almost every single item of his work. All that remains was whatever he had managed to publish during his lifetime.

We were shown a sled that was built up on another larger one and which was built up on a third even larger. It was even covered in. The idea is that in the winter the father of the family would tow it behind his skidoo and if he kept on going at full tilt he could leap over small crevasses in the ice and the sled with all of the kids inside wouldn’t ground out.

There’s an RCMP post here too and it has at one time held as many as 21 detainees at one time. This must be a record for a small town like this.

Another asset of the community, now long-closed and replaced, is the Hudson’s Bay outlet. It’s now being used for mechanical repairs and is guarded by a couple of large dogs who have clearly seen better days.

All of the stuff littered around in the wooden crates is the stuff that has come up in the recent sea-lift.

The biggest employer in the town is the Canadian Government and they have some offices here. These ones here are the offices of the Canadian National Parks Service for the Sirmilk region, which is where we are right now.

There are several traditional habits that are still carried on here. The mothers still carry their babies with them in the hoods of their parkhas and it was quite amusing to see the tourists surrounding one of the aforementioned in an attempt to persuade her to allow them to photograph mummy and offspring.

I’m not sure where the quad fitted in with the traditional habits though.

One of the attractions of the town is the half-built sod house that is used to explain to visitors how the original inhabitants of the area lived. Today, they use 4×2 wood to build the frame for the sealskin roof, but in the past they used whalebone.

Lying around were some bones from a bow-head whale, the type of bones that would have been used in the olden days before wood became available.

They were brewing up too and making bannock. The latter isn’t for me, seeing as they use lard in the peparation, and a new kettle of water hadn’t boiled yet. But I was discussing Labrador Tea with Joanna and she, ferreting around in the box, came up with a teabag of Labrador Tea. And I shall be trying that tomorrow.

Of course, Strawberry Moose had to have a photo opportunity at the sod house, didn’t he?

There’s an Anglican Church in the community too and Joanna was regaling us with tales of the religious wars that used to go on here as each church tried to pinch the other church’s congregation.

One of the guys with her told us a story about how the boats have “evolved” over the years. Up until almost maybe 50 or 60 years ago, the Inuit umiak, made by a company in Trois-Rivières, would be quite common. But people slowly moved over to more modern “European” boats made of industrial materials.

And now the race was on as everyone tried to out-do his neighbour with e bigger, better, more powerful boat.

But the problem was that the smaller and lighter the boat, the easier it is to haul it out of the water in the freeze when the Inuit were on their travels. But with the bigger, heavier boats, they can’t and they are losing countless modern, heavy and expensive boats being crushed in the ice.

There’s quite a big school here in the settlement, and it flies the Nunavut flag. There’s a red inukshuk on it that divides the flag into two – one half white and the other half yellow. I was unable to discover if the colours have any significance.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me complaining about the price of goods in Labrador but it has nothing on the price of goods here.

When you start to see a pack of toilet rolls, €2:49 in your average LIDL, on sale here at $36:99 you’ll understand the difficulty of supplying a remote community out here in the Arctic with just one sea-lift per year and the rest of the time flying it in by air from Ottawa or wherever. And this is just one example of countless similar prices.

But some other people don’t have the same issues. Pond Inlet is home to the world’s most northerly Tim Horton’s, and I unveiled His Nibs in here for a photo session. In no time at all we were surrounded by other locals who wished for a photo opportunity with himself. And I can’t say that I blame them.

What was depressing about all of this was the ship’s kitchen staff all congregating in a corner eating a bought pizza. What does that tell you about the cooking on-board?

I was told that there’s a scenic viewpoint here too and so I wandered that way to see. The North Pole is a mere 1932 kms from here and this may well be the closest that I shall ever be to it, unless things change dramatically.

It might also be the closest that His Nibs gets to it too, so he needs to have yet another photo opportunity too.

My reverie up here was broken by the sound of an aeroplane. Another Air Tindi plane has come in to land and presumably unload whatever it is that it’s bringing.

From here I went for a walk around the town (I decided to miss out on the brocante) and had a few chats with the very friendly locals. The number of times that someone stopped me to offer me a lift was incredible.

And it was here that I met my very vocal local yokel. He was renovating the old ice-hockey arena and had indeed been responsible for building the new one.

We discussed all kinds of things here and there, including the effects of a temperature of -50°C on engine and hydraulic oil and the monstrous folly of Brexit. I did also express my dismay that a cruise ship on a regular route around the High Arctic was manned … "PERSONNED" – ed … by Filipinos and Indonesians and the like, and not Inuit.

His opinion, which I simply relate without making any comment at all, was that the Inuit wouldn’t do the work, and he cited several examples from his own experience.

I carried on with my walk, found the health centre and the school (again) and ended up at the new arena so I nipped inside for a look. In the Community Centre there was an exhibition of Arctic sports so I stopped for a while to watch, but I was roasting in there so I went out for a walk.

At the Library and Information Centre a little girl fell in love with Strawberry Moose so her mother agreed that she could be photographed with him – provided that she could join in the fun too.

And why not?

A few other locals took photos of him too, and someone produced the Centre’s own mascot, a seal, who also wanted to join in the fun.

By now it was time to return to the ship so down we went, passed through Immigration which was now Emigration and sped back to the ship, having to do a U-turn as two of the passengers had forgotten their lifebelts.

I had a shower and washed some clothes, and then waited for the call for tomorrow’s briefing. But in the meantime crashed out and so I missed the first 10 minutes, of presumably all of the important stuff.

Tea was a riot though. The waiters were horribly confused and I’m still not totally convinced that I received what I ordered. And my table companions for today were extremely garrulous, which was very pleasant.

Later tonight, there was an impromptu concert. There’s a folk singer-musician, Sherman Downey, on board and one night he’d overheard another passenger playing the piano. A girl could also sing reasonably well so they had been rehearsing informally and decided to give a concert. I’d been asked but obviously with no bass on board it was rather difficult.

The surprise of the night was that we found another girl vocalist – Natalie who does the yoga. And while it was rather hit-and-miss, she had all of the emotion and it looked and sounded quite good. One photo that I took of her came out really well and really captured the emotion of the moment.

And if that wasn’t enough, we discovered a mouth-organ player in the crowd so by the end of the night we were all rocking away, and quite right too.

We have an elderly blind lady on board, and she had asked for a special request. So when they played it, I went over to her and invited her to dance. We did a kind of jazzed-up waltz which fitted the music, which is just as well because it’s the only dance that I know.

At one point we must have hit the open sea in the Davis Straight because we were swaying around quite considerably. It certainly added a certain something to the dancing.

My midnight ramble was once more taken in a tee-shirt (much to the astonishment of Tiffany wrapped up on the deck as if in a cocoon) and we are heading out at 4° on the binnacle. That’s definitely north, so if all goes according to plan we might be pushing on.

I hope so, because these continual delays are really getting on my nerves.

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