The world outside KEP has had quite a weekend with the Royal Wedding on Friday and Osama’s death on Sunday. The picture above was taken on the Clyde by Matt Boat (I think) of the celebrations on the actual day in the Petty Officers mess.

For the Osama news we even had a special 2 page addition this morning on top of our normal mini newspaper. Whether or not his death makes a difference to terrorist attacks it has a psycological impact on all Americans drawing a line under the events of 911 for all the families affected – similar to a serial murderer being brought to justice. It is the end of an era as one friend put it – similar to the ”end” of the Troubles in N. Ireland – which unfortunately continue on a lesser level today (I hasten to add for individuals still effected it is not a lesser level). This doesn’t seem the time to let any guards down and I am not so sure about the necessity to ‘dance’ on the grave but than that is probably my British side coming out. I have friends with all different opinions we are lucky to live in a society that allows freedom of expression and everyone should respect that.

On Saturday Alastair downloaded the highlights of the wedding which a group of us (more boys than girls!) watched. There are a few people who don’t believe in Royalty so they didn’t watch however, I believe it to be something the British should be proud of. The Royal family is a large part of culture and heritage of Britain and for the 63p per year (according to my brother) it costs per person in Britain I would say it is well worth it. The amount of money that poured into London over the weekend I am sure more than made up for the costs. Besides that the pagentary is something that I feel proud to see and hope continues! So this weekend I was in a great position with my dual nationality as I was able to say that both countries did me proud.

Meanwhile as it was yet another bank holiday weekend the weather was atrocious with 60 knot winds blowing snow horizontally so I decided to postpone my monday off for a better day and worked instead. Hopefully we will have a nice sunny day soon to go back to exploring the local peaks. Instead we have been hitting the gym hard and now lead the 6000km race across Antarctica by 1698km which is over double what the distance the second place team has gone so far! We are over half way across the continent with 7 weeks left before midwinter. So much easier than actually manhauling to the South Pole and on across!