reviews and articles

Living the day dream

the first six months as a full-time writer

The film Sliding Doors begins in a London flat. A swish looking young woman leaves her fella in bed and puts on her business suit. They discuss progress on the Great Novel he is writing. She heads for the City. He is not alone for long, in comes his other girlfriend for the day-shift. As I watched this, my toes curled in embarrassment, and I reached for my partner's hand. Fortunately she was laughing. Earlier in the we day we had agreed that I would give up my day job and do what I really want, write.

For over twenty years my day-job was a chartered town planner. At night, I wrote. Even when I was a beginner, it meant more to me than nine tenths of any of the work I did in the day, worthwhile though much of it was, poor as my early writing was. But planning paid the bills.

I was over half way through a book on two journeys I had made through Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica. It was flowing, but I'd been that far before, with novels. Then, however disciplined I was with my time, there were spells where writing had to give way to other demands. Completed, the novels were good enough to get me a London agent, but not good enough to publish. I did not want to add another manuscript to my pile of oh-so-nearlies. I had a publisher willing to read it but no contract. If I gave up the day-job, there was no prospective income at all.

Now, thanks to the right personal circumstances and a timely redundancy, I've bought time to write full-time. What's it like? Normal, is perhaps the first thing to say. In the past, I have written novels in eight months while holding down a full-time job and renovating a Victorian house. Now I just have to write and renovate another Victorian house, life isn't so different, just less exhausting. The big perk is having quality time to think, read and write. I suspect if I am successful this may shrink, but at the moment I can set my own agenda.

In practical terms, I have fitted a room out as a study, it has a phone, computer and email. I go into the study with a coffee at eight o'clock. By mid-afternoon I realise a headache is nagging me because I have forgotten to eat, again. I am dragged reluctantly out when Elaine came home at six. If she goes out during the evening I sneak back to work.

The book was easy, I knew what I wanted to do, and I buckled down, working about ten hours a day, taking turns at writing, proofing, and research. As a night class student I could join the Cardiff University library and have access to valuable periodicals not in the public library. For a pleasant afternoon I believed my carefree life had made me very attractive to female students. Then I realised it was the beginning of a new academic year and all the students smiled in case I was a lecturer.

Then the weekend came round. I was supposed to stop work and pursue a hobby. The hobby had always been writing. I carried on working.

Building new writing work began slowly, I had already written careful letters to magazines, presenting my credentials to write certain articles. I targetted the top-paying Daily Telegraph. Despite an impressive list of travelling to out-of-the-way destinations, I earned only polite refusals. I compiled a list of related work I really wanted to do, such as working as a lecturer on a cruise ship, researched the travel firms' needs, and sent off cv's. Then I rang or emailed them fortnightly. Four months into the new career it was Christmas, and I had not been published in a single new outlet.

I bought a book by Guy Marks, Travel Writing and Photography, because it had the necessary subtitle: 'All you need to know to make it pay'. I learned no one pays for you to travel until you are experienced and trusted. No one agrees to an article on Easter Island, or wherever, just because you've been or are going to go. They want an angle so they know broadly what you're going to say and ensure it won't be like the last time they covered it.

Meanwhile, after more five months and a hundred and thirty thousand words, my book went to a publisher. The manuscript parcels for the novels were doorstops with a five pounds postal charge. Now it was a floppy disk in a bubble pack. Into the post box, wish it bon voyage, back to the study. It had been five years in the preparation and writing. I did not know what I was going to do next.

The phone rang the same morning. Could I lecture on a three week cruise from Tierra del Fuego to Antarctica, leaving in three weeks time? It paid a little, but on the back of it I wrote to the Daily Telegraph, saying I was going to be there, and would they like a travel article? I suggested the positive effects of tourism, enclosed a brief extract from my book, and showed tham all my planning medals. They said yes. I was learning how to sell myself.

There are tricks to learn about income, a travel article needs photographs, if they use mine, my fee can go up 50% to 100%. Just one picture, in a top publication, will more than pay for all the sixteen rolls of film I took in Antarctica. And of course when I was salaried, a three week luxury cruise in Antartica was three years' holiday money.

I don't miss the office and being my own boss is a pleasure. Bosses are a mixed bunch, and what some of mine were mixed with I can't imagine. I wonder if genetically modified material has been with us longer than anyone admits.

The downsides include a lack of traditional security, I can't spend money on impulse knowing there will be a paycheck in the account at the end of the month. But few jobs really have that anymore, this was my second redundancy from supposedly secure employment. I spend so much time alone I am even more absent minded than I used to be, and often imagine other people want to hear about my day's research on the seven part life cycle of krill. (Did you know the number of diatoms an adult has eaten is similar to the age of the universe in seconds? I thought not.)

I also get to meet all the beggars and oddballs who come to the door. Unfortunately our Dobermann died shortly before I switched to work at home. In her day, no one stayed to finish a sentence with her foaming at the mouth, barely held back by my white knuckles on her collar. They didn't know she only wanted to lick them, but I haven't had to give to charity at the door in years.

I am always in for telephone sales calls. I am tired of being asked if I am Mr Brennan (my partner's surname). I tell them he is moved, and I have just been released as part of Care in the Community. Would they like to call round and see my new tunnels?

There are unexpected bonuses. I once again know what my own town, Cardiff, is like during the working day, and I do not attempt to find shops which shut six months ago. Parcels actually get delivered instead of taken to Fortress Post Office, Penarth Road. This Spring I put the clocks forward on Saturday night, not Monday morning. On the computer, I can play Solitaire and FreeCell whenever I like, and God doesn't that get boring without the fear of discovery. What I really need is a hobby. Any suggestions?

Whiter than white?

John Harrison challenges the orthodoxy that tourism threatens Antarctica

Antarctica was not discovered until 1820, and not crossed until 11 years before man stood on the moon. Under the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, territorial claims by nations have been set aside for fifty years. An area the size of USA and Mexico combined is reserved for science and conservation.

When natural environments seem everywhere to be under threat, Antarctica remains, for many, a cold Eden where development is unthinkable. For thirty years it has also been the ultimate holiday destination.

I have just completed a three week tour of the Antarctic Peninsula, and its outlying islands sailing from Punta Arenas on the Magellan Strait, Chile's principal city of the south, and returning via South Georgia and the Falkland Islands to Ushuaia, Argentina's oil-boom port on the Beagle Channel.

Antarctica is truly spectacular. The day we arrived, we sailed the 3,200 ton Caledonia Star into the flooded volcano of Deception Island. This stone horseshoe, seven miles across, forms a natural harbour almost as large as Rio de Janeiro's. It is still active, the tell-tale legacy of eruptions in the 1960's and 70's is a line of steam along the shore, where hot springs meet the icy ocean.

Then things got even better: forty-ton humpback whales surfaced next to the ship. The shore was guarded by seals as heavy as elephants. The motionless wings of albatrosses carried them over turquoise icebergs like fairy-tale sets.

At South Georgia we saw half a million king penguins in a single rookery. Once nearly extinct, Antarctic fur seals gambolled the way Captain Cook had seen them before the hunters' slaughter, the seamen's oars striking their backs.

I first went there two years ago, as a tourist. I now returned as a cruise ship lecturer, telling stories of how real voyages shaped famous fiction. The real albatross behind Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner was shot off Cape Horn.

Between my trips I often heard people say tourism was already ruining the Antarctic environment. One Green activist asked me if the snow was covered with cola cans. No it isn't. And it's tourism you have to thank.

There are no hotels in Antarctica. Nearly all visitors arrive by cruise ships. Most carry fewer than 200 passengers and bring all their own food and drink. They process all garbage, bag it, and take it back to port. The ship has its own mini-sewage plant and discharges only pure water back into the sea.

Captain Leif Skog recalled the early days of tourism when there were just two ships, and complete freedom to go wherever you wanted. 'Things have changed drastically. Now there's lot's of regulations, lots of restricted places, Sites of Special Scientific Interest. We have our Bible, the Antarctic Conservation Act 1978.' He waved a thick folder of regulations at me.

For each voyage they must submit an Environmental Impact Statement similar to those required for major planning applications in Britain. But people can be harder to control. The tour operators send every passenger 'Guidance for Visitors to the Antarctic'. This is backed up by lectures when they arrive on board.

Tom Ritchie, an expedition leader for 21 years, stressed 'We really try to ingrain into the passengers that as members of the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO), we take control much further than the obligations of the Antarctic Treaty itself. This tour operator takes it further again, IAATO requires 1 guide for every 20-25 passengers. We never have less than 1 for every 13.'

One requirement is that animals should not be approached in ways that cause them to alter their behaviour. The main problems I saw were people moving too quickly and alarming penguins, and not noticing fur seals.

Tom could not foresee a time when tourism could be a threat. 'Who better to promote the conservation of Antarctica than passengers coming down here without a vested interest? They just want to enjoy the beauty of the place.'

There have been numerous studies trying to assess the impact of tourist visits on penguins. In every single case the population of birds has not just stayed the same, but increased. 'When you see a penguin colony in full activity it's a very loud, boisterous place. We're just more big penguins.'

I later checked this out with David Burkett who looks after the British Port Lockroy base, which is visited by 6,000 of the 11,000 tourists who come South each season. They are the most visited destination in Antarctica and each year his assistants continue long-term monitoring of penguin breeding. His answer was simple, 'There is no adverse effect.' Indeed they are so relaxed, one pair of gentoos nests under the ramp leading to his front door.

It's important to remember who comes down here. Most visitors are mature, often retired. My shipboard neighbours included a retired senior UN official, a professor, and a lady whose Norwegian grandmother had an affair with Roald Amundsen. These well-educated passengers are here precisely because it is special and unspoiled.

I found one lady distraught after a shore visit. She thought she must have dropped a plastic bag and two batteries. I glumly pictured a supermarket bag bowling along with two jumbo torch batteries in it. Next day she came to me all smiles. Between finger and thumb she held up tiny button batteries in an inch-square plastic bag.

Of course there were exceptions. I watched birds and seals retreat when stalked for a close-up photograph. A few seemed to have no ability to read an animal's reactions.

In Central and Southern Africa, the great wildlife tourist destinations on land, tourism has been credited with providing an economic incentive to protect wildlife, in both the short and long term. In Antarctica it provides a political incentive. So are there any threats at all?

Whaling and sealing left ruins in a few locations. These are now generally regarded as heritage, and left alone.

Captain Skog credits tourists for highlighting rubbish-strewn research stations. Scientists said "We have all the dollars in the world for science to bring equipment down. But we don't have a dime to bring things back." Burning rubbish or dumping it in the sea was normal.

'So for years there was garbage outside every station. When we took tourists, they took pictures. That suddenly put pressure on different Governments to clean up the stations, otherwise I'm quite certain we'd have oil drums and junk sitting there, frozen in.'

How would the scientists reply? Bernard Stonehouse is attached to Cambridge's Scott Polar Research Institute, but frequently works at the Polish Arctowski Base on the impact of tourism.

He is a veteran of an incredible 52 seasons in Antarctica and has just completed a ten-year programme, testing some of the assumptions about what happens when visitors go ashore in Antarctica.

'They trample the vegetation - well no, they don't. They don't normally go anywhere near vegetation. They frighten the animals - no they don't. They generally keep their distance. 'They behave badly - no they don't, they follow codes of conduct and behave extremely well.

'On the whole they behave better than scientists and support staff. They get lectures and briefings on the way down and they love it - gives them a sense of participation.'

Scientists had not set an example because they were working in Antarctica long before conservation became a popular issue, they were too busy just surviving. In the early days the conservation ethic was never adopted as policy at scientific stations. It is now, especially since the Protocol on conservation was added to the Antarctic Treaty, but it costs money and depletes science budgets.

Bernard confirmed Captain Skog's story about early tourists shaming governments into clean-ups. 'But I could still show you derelict huts, rotting forty gallon drums, dilapidated navigation beacons and rubbish tips, none of which is the responsibility of tourism.

'Not that we can afford to relax. We are planning for a future, none too far away, when there are twice as many ships, tourists and landings, perhaps with a dilution of the tourist ethic, and increased hazards to wildlife. We want to see more and more effective management under the Treaty, that is the current objective of our research.'

And litter? I did find one discarded drinks container. At remote Brown Bluff, a small novelty whisky bottle had been seized by a penguin to decorate his stone nest, now empty. One passenger, Geoff, was retired from the scotch trade and knew the man who made them. The bottle will arrive in his post, any day now.

I crouched down near some gentoo penguins, my arms across my knees. One chick came over to investigate. In two minutes it popped up inside my arms, its beak investigating my stubble.

Such experiences will bring me back, with a clear conscience, for as long as the wildlife keeps walking towards me, not away. If, on the other hand, the public has no stake in Antarctica, what Government will act to protect it?