Live from Antarctica: Monday 8th December

Alain brough over some more supplies to the glaciologists' camps on the way back, and is now at Utsteinen back in the building business. Although nothing has really changed here, the atmosphere is perceptibly different. It feels a little like the first day of school on September 1st.

However, the weather not permitting it, we still haven't been able to carry out a full scale working scheme.Very bad weather today: strong winds and drifting snow.

This puts us on duty clearing away the snow every couple of hours. And if you really want to get on someone's nerves, let him/her do the same work thrice a day with the feeling each time that nothing has been done before. Our carpenters, who are putting up the basements for the garage extensions, are fed up with riding the small bulldozer and Prinoth tractor to clear the snow away from their work. The base camp also needs a makeover every 3 hrs or so. We've even started to consider that we should be carrying out ritual incantations to a potentially offended weather god. As for the inside work of the station: we are still scraping the wood.

Nathalie Pattyn