Oh my gosh I am in the Arctic. It’s my third day here and I am still a little overwhelmed. And cold. We just went out in a motorised dinghy and I saw my first ever glacier. As we approached this giant wall of ice, there was a sudden explosion, a loud crashing sound, followed by a mini avalanche and a minor tsunami as a large section of ice cracked off the glacier.
This is dramatic stuff, but I couldn’t help but notice that it’s really quite cold. I don’t think my feet have ever been so cold. I’m thinking maybe we should do something about it and warm this place up a bit. Maybe we if we just all made the effort to let out a bit of extra CO2 gas into the atmosphere, it might just have some kind of warming effect and we could increase the world’s temperature a little. I mean come on, these polar bears must be freezing. We could call it ‘international warming or ‘global heating’ or something along those lines. Anybody with me?
Anyway, yesterday was one of the highest ranking days of my life in terms of sheer awesomeness. Ludvig, our Inuit guide, took us through a snowstorm to Uummannaq, his home town. For me, just a little bit of snow is a pretty exciting concept. As a child, the idea of there being even just a trace of untouched snow (i.e. that has not already been thrown at someone) was pretty rare. So the excitement of seeing pure white snow as far as the eye can see, completely untouched and about half a metre deep was a little overwhelming. I felt my mental age suddenly plummeting. Suddenly I was six years old again. The mass snowball fight was inevitable, but the local Inuit kids were clearly way more experienced and gave us quite an embarrassing pummelling.
In the evening we put on a special birthday gig for one of the kids from the local orphanage. The line-up was quite something. Imagine KT Tunstall singing lead, with Jarvis Cocker doing rhythm guitar, a backing vocal trio of Martha Wainwright, Leslie Feist and Vanessa Carlton, and of course myself as the walking rhythm section.
After the gig I taught a few beatbox sounds to an excited Laurie Anderson. I am now training her up for the Big Beatbox Battle Showdown between herself and Marcus Brigstocke, who does an impressive impersonation of Donald Duck (if he’d just accidentally swallowed a drum machine).
Later on today we are hoping to step out onto a glacier. I actually cannot wait. But I think I might wear a fourth pair of socks.
