Well, this is a long story that is coming your way very soon…

Surprise!

Through an unusual and unexpected turn of events I have been asked to be Concordia station’s physician for the over winter period, in addition to my current role as Research MD for the European Space Agency.

The Italian doctor who was lined up will return home- for unknown reasons (I felt it inappropriate to ask) – and the French and Italians have at the very last minute recruited a very experienced nurse who is an anaesthetic assistant.

So I have come down to McMurdo, with a french patient evacuated from Concordia and for a crash course in dentistry and medical training. So far so good.

It turns out I wasn’t here for a haircut after all. I must work on my Italian…

Though among ice cream, two bars, a coffee house and more at McMurdo, there is a hairdresser… so I may pop in.

Here is an interesting and useless fact that everybody already knows, barbers and surgeons used to be under the same banner- red and white as still found outside most ‘ye olde Barbers’- red for blood and white for bandage.

Unfortunately, I am neither a barber or a surgeon. But I am nearly a dentist.

This is Antarctica after all and anything can happen, as I am beginning to learn, fast.

It’s hammer time.