Treason, treason I hear you shout, for today I was a Frenchman in St Helena. At 12.20pm I found myself, head bowed standing next to the tomb of Napoleon having just laid a wreath next to it on behalf of the French nation and all on the Duke of Wellington’s birthday as well. All jest…
I recently had the good fortune to have a four month leave period. Four months. Working on a remote island means that leave is taken in large bulks, and as part of my 3 year stay here, most of my leave entitlement was condensed into one large chunk. Being back in the UK was at…
I have blogged about the weather on Saint Helena before. But being British it’s obviously a pretty much inexhaustible subject and always a conversation saver. The musically educated amongst you will also recognise yet another song title here and Crowded House themselves seemed to like singing about the weather, particularly using it has metaphors for…
I’ve blogged before about the Saint language, it was however relatively brief and didn’t touch on many of the great phrases and different ways of using language that makes up the local dialect. There is now a book called ‘Speaking Saint’ which describes the language in a much better way than I ever could, if…
Originally posted on Dark Sky Diary:
This blog post is a copy of one which I wrote for the Guardian Science blog, posted there on 13 April 2012. The small South Atlantic island of Saint Helena is about as remote as any place on Earth gets. It lies 2000km from Africa and 3000km from South…
Due to the fact that we are the 2nd most remote inhabited island in the world (after sister island Tristan da Cunha) but also reasonably sized with more facilties and activites Saint Helena can lay claim to being the remotest at a lot of things. We have the world’s most remote golf course, distillery, cricket…
When I was at school I had, for a short time, the nickname of Norm. Based on one of the greatest comedy characters of all time, Norm Peterson from Cheers. This was because, at the tender age of 16, I was already a regular at a local pub, (The Fox and Hounds in North Hykeham)…
I have quite a sad tendency to name my blogs after song/film/book titles and for the last few days the brilliant David Bowie song has been wirling around my head. Thankfully it is a great song, I hate those days when you hear an awful song first thing in the morning and you can’t get…
I was told the above quote yesterday and I have to admit it I was amused by it. I had been intending to write a blog about the islands famous visitors throughout its history and thought that this quote would be a great title. The first bit is certainly true and with due respect to…
It has to be said that since arriving on the island 18 months ago I haven’t realy suffered from home sickness much. I think that’s always been the case for me, when I went to Uni I don’t really recall feeling homesick at all. There were a couple of moments, usually to do with the…
Yesterday afternoon an emergency ‘all ships alert’ was put out from St Helena to any ships within a 200 mile radius. The reason? A young child needed life saving treatment that she couldn’t recieve on the island and therefore had to be taken off the island as soon as possible. The RMS St Helena isn’t…
I think by now you’ll realise that this place is pretty incredible in many ways, but also, as you’d expect from a small island thousands of miles from the nearest continent it has its own peculiarities. This island is within the Tropics of Capricorn obviously making it a Tropical Island, this conjures up thoughts of…
I was asked to contribute to a footbal blog http://southatlanticoceanfootball.wordpress.com the remit was anything to do with football and Saint Helena. So I thought I’d start with following football from 5,000 miles away. Being a football fan on a remote island isn’t all that different to being a football fan anywhere else in the world,…
Yes yes, I know, the Desolation of Smaug was Part 2, not Part 3, but I tend to think that as Peter Jackson has basically told the entire Hobbit story in the first 2 films there really isn’t much to say in the last one. I haven’t seen it yet but having read the book…
In a bout of work avoidance (I’m meant to be reading about governance in global social policy) I just came across a poem that was written for me when I left my last job to move here. It was written and performed by Dave Roberts, a member of the team who as well as being…
Notes from a (very) small island 