"It's Chriiiiiissssttmaaaas" -- Noddy Holder

Just a quick one!!!

To all those that come and

To those that leave;

To those that are taken

And leave us bereaved;

To the many who linger and

Those who ultimately stay

By the carrier pigeon, phone

Or computer each day;

To those who are always

at the end of a line;

To tell us that everything

Will be just fine;

To those that chuckle and

to those that laugh

At this hastily written

And bad epitaph;

To those that have raised

A drink to their friends

And give a smile and a wink with the

thoughts that they send,

I hope that good things all come to pass

On this, a very merry Christmas!!

---Ross, Antarctica

"Come dance this silence down through the morning" -- Mr Jones, Counting Crows

I have a checklist of things I wanted to see while I was in Antarctica. Penguins and whales were two of the principle items. I've been here less than a month and I can already tick them off.

Take this little bugger for example. We rounded a corner on a walk around Rothera point, and found Pingu here lying around posing. Not a care in the world, and just waiting for his picture to be taken.

This may have been the same penguin that appeared near the runway a few days ago, but I never got this close to him then. Today, there were four or five of us armed with cameras, and he was more than willing to oblige.

This fella was a little less photogenic, as he was lumbering his way along the ice's edge while we were trying to get a snap of him. I believe it's a Weddell seal , but my knowledge of the local wildlife is currently slim at best.

The base is littered with various species of seals such as the Weddell seal, Leopard seal, and the Jabba-The-Hutt-esque Elephant Seal. All of them seem to be a cruel joke of nature when seen on the ice. They seem to exert tremendous effort to hurl their entire bodies a few inches along the ground. I am told, however, that they come into their own under water and are incredibly elegant.

We diligently observe a "five meter rule" when approaching wildlife. This was taken to the extreme when I had my first glance of a pod of Orca off in the distance.

I'm slowly learning to keep my camera on me more often.

"D'you know, I put so much petrol in me car the other day, I couldn't get in!" - Vic Reeves

I've been in Rothera for about ten days now, getting to grips with daily routine, doing essential training and observing some fantastic scenery and wildlife. I saw my first penguin the other day. It was an Emperor, which is apparently quite rare in these parts. It stayed for hours in the same place, stood up at some times, then belly flopping down into its tobogganing position. I suppose I'll get blasé about all this one day, but I hope it's not too soon.

I am finding it a bit hard to concentrate at the moment. I received some bad news from back home, which I would be remiss not to mention. One of my oldest and dearest friends, Karl Jones, passed away two days ago. We grew up together, went to school together, and when I first moved away from home, we shared a house together. This news is quite cutting, and despite the grief, I agree with the people who tell me to concentrate on all the happy memories we shared together. Like him being the first person to use the words "Obi Wan Kenobi" in my presence when we were kids, so anyone who gets tired of my Star Wars obsession knows where it comes from. Or the times we spent playing Goonies 2 on Nintendo, and I just couldn't work out how to flick that yo-yo. Or more recently, the time we went and

pestered for our photo to be taken with some guy in the pub who bore an uncanny resemblance to Rick Parfitt. There were a lot more, but boys will be boys and some tales are best kept between few people!!! I appreciate the fact that grieving is a personal thing, and some people may not agree with the fact that I've mentioned my friend here, but I feel that this huge hearted person, who once told me "my friends are worth more than gold to me", could never be given the mentions he deserves, even if tomes were written by each of his many many friends. I will miss him very, very much.

"Zero hour....9 am" -- Rocketman, Elton John (but in this case, the William Shatner version)

Here it is then. I leave the UK tomorrow afternoon, and so leave sunny Wrexham in the morning. I've said my goodbyes to friends and family, sorted out documents, packed my bags, and booked train tickets.

I've spent the last couple of weeks on embarkation leave, or "sort your life out" leave, so most of that has been spent in North Wales, getting in as much of the colour green as I can. Pre-deployment training ended well with a lot of climbing up electricity pylons as preparation for climbing up radar masts. The above photo belongs to Emma Philpott, and was taken during one of our mast climbing days down in Somerset.

Coed Llandegla is a great place to go in North Wales if it is necessary to soak up some nature before, say, going on some sort of mad polar journey. I spent a bit of time wandering around the area and annoying passers by with my camera.

Ah well, they can't catch me now.

"After a hard day of basic training, you could eat a rattlesnake" -- Elvis Presley

Being hurled off the top of rock in high winds isn't something I previously thought of as fun, but as it turns out, it's a right laugh.

Trouble is after putting so much faith is the tiny pieces of metal that are keeping you from falling to your doom, you then have to remove them, in order to climb back up the rope (after first securing the necessary climby-upy bits)

A large part of my job will be Meteorological Observations, so I've been training on the subtleties of cloud types and the proper format of recording weather, optical phenomena, and other met info, in a way that can be universally understood and fed into forecasting models used by the Met Office.

Oh. And here's a picture of me posing on a mountain.

The token balloon launching photo. Lost the opportunity to strike a proper pose though.

"Long hair minimizes the need for barbers; socks can be done without; one leather jacket solves the coat problem for many years; suspenders are superfluous" -- Albert Einstein

I thought I should give my thanks to my good friends and ex-colleagues at the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, Cambridge who chipped in and got me the means to get this lovely jacket and environmentally friendly wind-up torch/radio. I did have to put an extra 73p to it though!

Preparations are ongoing. Essential winter survival kit has been packed (deoderant, DVDs, books, and nice comfy jumpers), vaccinations have been organised (I may be ill very soon), and teeth have been pulled (am sat here in pain as I type this!)

This next week sees the start of the pre-deployment training period, where I will be busy at conferences, first aid courses, field training and a large amount of cloud gazing.

The picture hanging on the wall is of my grand parents, by the way. Olive Blanche and John Preston.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" -- Confusion.

I started this blog with the intention of keeping friends and family up to date with the amazing adventures that I will have while employed down in the Antarctic. Unfortunately, the start of that trip is still a couple of months away, and yet the blog page I set up has been itching to be written on. So I'll explain all about the training I am undergoing in the various disciplines that I'll be working in.

My role will apparently be an even split between engineering and meteorology. Now the engineering side of things is OK -- I've been doing similar work since I started my apprenticeship 11 years ago. I'm comfortable with taking things apart, replacing stuff and putting them back together with copious amounts of sellotape, and hoping that they still work. Now the meteorology is completely new to me. Not only that, but they tell me that the observations I will make will be used in forecasts for the Met Office and also used to assess flying conditions for pilots flying near the base. And I had trouble saying "meteorology" a few weeks back. Still do actually. Hence, "met".

I've been attending quite a few talks by various BAS people over the past weeks, and it quickly becomes apparent a) how little I know, and b) how lucky I am to have access to the knowledge of these people.

My favourite new word is "palaeoclimatology".

A talk by Dr Martin Jarvis whetted my taste for Middle and Upper Atmospheric Physics. For example, some of the research being carried out at BAS (and so by the experiments at Rothera which I will be looking after) are heightening the understanding of how the Earth's climate can only be fully understood by considering the entire atmospheric system such as how totally separate layers in the atmosphere interact with each other, and even further afield, how the sun interacts with the atmosphere via the solar wind.

Exciting stuff for a geek like me.