Return from the South Pole

Grey it is, cold, and above all windy. We are glad to have made it at least as far as the South Pole. The temptation was great simply to stay at home, lay another log on the fire and brew the tea as early as half past three. The South Pole is a crossroads, or rather: a fork: a small country lane feeds into a slightly larger one, which winds its way in serpentines across the land, connecting hamlets and the few small villages of the peninsula. Its width is just sufficient for one car. When two vehicles meet, the opposing parties must jointly manoeuvre towards passing places, or one mounts the verge with his Range Rover until the blackthorn, crowding close beside the road, begins to strike up its shrill scratching on the paintwork.

Potatoes are grown, grain, onions, and sugar beet of course in vast quantities, just enough for the Sticky Toffee Pudding at the pub.

At the South Pole, then, we turned back, the air was simply too cold. The wind was too strong and the sky too grey. It is mid-March, but of sun not a trace, only the camellias in the garden have erupted into a splendour of blossom that seems entirely out of place beneath this sky. Now, if one were to continue along the road, one would walk past nothing but fields. Every now and then one would come upon a farm. There is really nothing else here: fields and farmsteads. The few small settlements seem more alibi than of any actual use. No shop, no hairdresser, though a large playground, used primarily for dog training. The two rivers Stour and Orwell, which bound the peninsula, seem to breathe slowly and very regularly in and out. One can swim in them and sail on them, if one understands how to calculate the tides and the resulting length of the lines required to moor the boat. It is only a few miles to the mouth at Harwich into the North Sea, so that the tides here push upriver with force and six hours later suck the water back out again. Only trickles remain then in the middle of the channels, and the moored boats lay themselves down in the mud in fate-surrendered agony on their sides.

Were one actually to continue beyond the South Pole, one would also, every fifty yards or so, be frightened to death by pheasants screeching away in hysterical flight. These birds seem merely to pretend they can fly. With dreadful flapping they somehow screw themselves flatly through the air and then drop back to the ground out of sight. That is how I imagine it, at any rate; I have never seen one land. They are bred in farms illuminated day and night and then released en masse. What they do all day long through spring, summer and autumn is a mystery to me; presumably they simply exist and move in concentric circles, according to the state of their hunger, around the feeding stations at the edges of the fields. In autumn the hunters arrive in hordes. Or rather: those who would like to call themselves such, for of hunting there can be no talk. Businessmen, often invited in groups by their firm, and other somehow wealthy men are handed a shotgun in exchange for a day rate and blaze away at the overfed birds for all they are worth. The quarry is considerable, yet frequently not even gathered up, let alone eaten, for that is not the point. Not seldom does it occur during that season that the inhabitants of the peninsula find wounded pheasants by the wayside on their morning walks and must administer the coup de grâce.

Today we turned back at the South Pole. Set the fire blazing again and brewed the tea as early as half past four.

See you soon!

Markus

Suffolk, March 2026