Charity Do

"We'll have lashings of alcohol and then I hope to see some reckless bidding." Loud voice from an older British guy. Chum leans over and whispers in my ear "he's terribly ex-army". I asked "what does that mean?" "Well, he's been to Sandhurst, he's very organised, and he's just a good egg."

The talk started with an advertisement: "hazardous journey...bitter cold...long months...constant danger...safe return doubtful."

"This is the advertisement Ernest Shakleton used, I put it in the paper and got an enormous response."

Guy gets up to do his presentation and although he sounded like Prince Charles, he wasn't a wuss like Prince Charles is. "Our next trip is to the four North Poles, nothing has been done like this in a hundred years. There will be 400 miles of arctic travel. It's a great British endeavour. We will be measuring the ice for NASA, we will be followed comprehensively by the BBC and there will be daily reports."

Me: "Will anyone be blogging?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know what blogging is."

Notes:

There are four north poles - Geographic or "True North", Magnetic - "a moving pole", Geomagnetic - "the most important, on top of Canada at the moment" and the Arctic pole.

"We will be going to the real one, on the edge of the darling peninsula." Darling is underlined in my notes.

"Negative 49 most days."

"People always ask - how do you poo in the Artic, I always say 'very quick'."

"The sun doesn't go down, it circles round you."

"You do see polar bears. They actively hunt man. If it comes to it, if you can't get rid of it with noise, flares or pepper spray, we had a high velocity rifle."

www.ice-warrior.com

Lots of money was raised. Very charming, very British, including an auction for fortnights in holiday homes around the world and for various framed pictures including "a watercolour of the Cotswolds."