It’s now 5 months since I became the owner of a second-hand Mitsubishi Pajero, a car that to be honest I bought as a “sensible” choice, but not one that makes me smile and appreciate its looks when I walk past one in the street. I spent a couple of months thinking about buying a Rover instead and selling the Pajero; or even buying a Rover as well and having two cars.

However, the Rovers that occasionally came up for sale were not quite right – too cheap or too expensive and so I carried on with the sensible, vast, unprepossessing Pajero.

Then we went West for a long weekend and I drove it, because being able to take it almost anywhere was one of the reasons I’d bought it. I’d been to the West two weeks before in an old government Rover which shook and bounced on the untarmaced roads and refused to go into low ratio when we needed it to, it wasn’t an endearing car. In comparison the Pajero was a star – comfortable, fuel efficient and quick. It ate up the distance with no trouble and I didn’t even need to have it in 4WD. It went up in my estimation and I decided that it was definitely a good thing to keep it through the winter and see how it does on snow and ice.

And then this weekend, it revealed a previously hidden secret to me.

I was in the car, waiting for a friend, randomly pressing buttons on the steering wheel to see what they do. I pressed Mode and it started changing through Audio modes – FM1, FM2, AM and then something called Music System.

A pause and then the sound of melodious Japanese pop filled the car…. I burst out laughing at the unexpected, ridiculousness of it and spent the rest of the weekend demonstrating the car’s party trick to anyone who got in it. So far we have tried a playlist called Love Stories and I’ve found something that appears to be a Christmas playlist and some Beatles!

I need to go back to Google to find out what on earth is going on – but I rather love the fact that my awkward looking, brick of a car has brought a bit of Japanese culture into my life with the ethereal, whimsical sound of J-pop. I’m not sure any Rover can top this…

Well actually it’s not yet – it’s March, which is effectively autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, however, ever since I arrived here I have heard the following phrases:

• Wait until you’ve done a winter here, it’s really hard
• It’s so dark in winter, it’s dreadful
• It’s very cold
• You need to find things to do in the long evenings, to get through the winter

And ever since the solstice on 21st December people have been saying… the nights are drawing in.

Now, not to get too optimistic about my view of all this:

a) THE DARK – I’m from a country which is the same latitude north, as the Falklands are south – and I’ve looked up sunset and sunrise times here and for Oxford (same latitude as Stanley more or less) and the summer days are similarly long and the winter days are similarly short.

I’ve even spent some time learning about twilight and why it’s light longer after the sun has set in the summer, than it is in the winter. But that happens in both hemispheres as well.

So really I’m expecting it to be very similar to the way it gets dark in the UK, which I understand is distressing if you’re from Australia or St Helena or other places without the same level of change in daylight, but I do not think it is going to be like Finland or Iceland.

Remind me of this bold statement if I start to moan about the dark.

b) THE COLD – it isn’t going to be that cold. It is going to be colder than the city centre of Southampton and there may be more snow around than I’m used to and certainly more than my warmer weather friends are used to, but I think it’s going to be a bit like northern Scotland and Shetland. It is not going to be like continental winter in the USA or Canada or Europe – no one is going to find their eyes frozen shut because their eyes watered and their eyelashes got stuck together, which is an American friend’s yardstick for cold.

c) Will I need more things to do in the evening to occupy the hours of darkness? I don’t know – but I do know that I struggle to fit everything in at the moment and I have hundreds of photos to sort out, so I feel like I shouldn’t get bored. And I’m used to going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark, so I think it will be ok.

On the plus side:

I’m looking forward to finding out how much less windy it is in the winter – apparently it is, everyone says so, so it must be true (but then they also talk about the cold and the dark….)

I’m also looking forward to finding out which wildlife stays around and what leaves – I think King Penguins and Gentoos stay and I know the beaches look really good against dark, moody skies – so more photo opportunities perhaps!

And I’m looking forward to easier night sky viewing – because it will be dark early. A benefit of the Southern Hemisphere is that we look directly into the centre of the Milky Way (I heard Professor Brian Cox say that, so I really believe it to be true) and on a clear night it is really astonishing and gorgeous to look up into a carpet of stars – more of that will be very good.

So now, having belittled all the dread predictions about winter in the Falklands, I just have to wait and see and next September when spring arrives, I need to revisit this post and tell you what really happened.

Or apparently more often in the Falklands! This year has been quite odd – firstly it was because of strikes in the UK, which meant that many many Christmas parcels were delayed.

For me this meant that most of my presents arrived post Christmas but at the start of January. Then Royal Mail were hit by a ransomware attack, which meant that for weeks and weeks we got absolutely no airmail at all. Every time a plane arrived, there’d be a sad little message on Facebook from the Post Office to say that there was no airmail on the plane again. Reactions went from cross, to sad, to jokes, to forgetting about it.

And then the glorious day came when airmail started to arrive again and Christmas reappeared! I got my final Christmas parcel from my parents this week and various things that I’d ordered have been turning up over the last two weeks – the dates posted range from late November to end of January. The date posted in the UK seems to have little relevance to the order they’ve arrived in!

And today more cards arrived in the post. So it may be March, but the cry of “Merry Christmas” is ringing round the Falklands once again. I wonder how long it will last? Perhaps until FIXmas, but that’s a post for another day.

As it’s my first year in the Falklands, I thought I should spend Christmas here and enjoy a southern hemisphere Christmas. It took me a while to feel Christmassy, as I was missing my usual cues – days were getting longer, not shorter; there were no endless Christmas songs in shops (until the final week or two); the shops didn’t convert to Christmas the instant Halloween was over but only became really Christmassy once the December supply ship arrived, with all the Christmas goodies.

I also had to be more organised than usual in buying Christmas cards and posting them to the UK, as the last date for airmail was 1st December. I slightly failed on that and certainly didn’t factor UK postal strikes into the mix, so some people will be receiving Happy New Year cards by the time they make it there. Lesson learnt for next year!

Work stopped at lunchtime on 23rd December. I made my first food shopping stop in one of the public car parks, to collect some lamb and carrots direct from the farmer and then tested out my butchery skills, with the aid of helpful Australian Youtube videos on how to butcher lamb! Needless to say I did not have the right tools for the job and it wasn’t always easy to see what the experts were doing but I did manage to produce some recognisable cuts of meat – not entirely sure I’ll be doing it again!

The other thing that happened on the 23rd was Christmas food shopping and it did look like Armageddon the way everyone was stocking up – but to be fair, here the shops were generally closing on 24th and not reopening for several days, so there was some excuse for the laden trollies.

Christmas Eve was notable for ear splitting sirens shattering the peace of a calm afternoon. It sounded like Stanley was burning down. I went to my front door and sniffed – could I smell smoke? I went to the back door to see if I could see anything. I met my neighbour who was similarly mystified.

And then round the corner, in the street below us, came Santa …. on his way to the Town Hall to meet local children and being taken there by the Fire Service, with all of their sirens and blue lights going full blast.

And so to Christmas Day – it coincided with a very low spring tide and we were able to walk out to the wreck of the Lady Liz at the edge of Stanley Harbour – a real “Oh wow” moment, given that one is normally looking at lots of water between the shore and the wreck.

And then off to a lovely lunch, kindly hosted by Jo and Gaynor using both of their houses. We all brought a contribution, which at one point looked like we would only be eating puddings, however after some reorganisation we had a feast of several courses. Champagne and pumpernickel bread (Canadian) and crackers and dips (South African) outside in the sun and then turkey, ham, lots of roast vegetables and sometime later lovely puddings and cheese. Followed by a number of silly games, until eventually it was time to leave our hosts in peace and go home to bed. A memorable Christmas Day.

A perceptive friend said recently “I suppose the thing about Wind is, you can’t see it in photographs” and she’s right, it’s hard to see in photographs.

This is a shame, as it’s true that a defining feature of the Falklands is wind. I’m learning that a calm day is a treat to be enjoyed, and that a calm, sunny evening should be taken advantage of at once. Going to see the penguins at Yorke Bay on their sandy beach on a windy day is an exfoliating experience and you end up chewing sand for some hours later.

Wind has to be taken account of in all sorts of everyday living – I first thought about this while hanging up a duvet cover on the washing line to dry. My rookie mistake (and an embarassing one as a sailor, who should know better) is that you absolutely need to be upwind of what you’re trying to hang up. You need ultra grippy clothes pegs and lots of them.

You also need to open car doors very carefully, holding on to them and if possible park into the wind, so your doors aren’t wrenched off their hinges or banging into other cars.

So to give you a feel for Falklands wind, here is a screenshot from the Windy app recently (speeds are in knots – 32 is a gale).

Looking at Windy now the next few days looking forward are quite good, with quite a few bits of blue (calm) and green (pleasant breeze) and no red until next Friday night. Although everything can change quite quickly.

The moral of all this, is that the Falklands is not somewhere to live if you care about your hairstyle and any hats need to be very firmly on your head, which might explain the general preference for beanies and bobble hats!