Feeling a little better today; this morning, someone set up the piano, so the ship was filled with a kind of jangly music as the ship leaned and listed, throwing the rolls off. It's one of those pianos fitted with an automatic player. For a while there it reminded one of being at a London music hall while drunk.
The men have been establishing nicknames.
There's "Birdie" Bowers, for example. Obviously on account of his enormous beak of a nose. He doesn't seem to mind it.
We have "No surrender Oates," too. Apparently he refused to give up despite being wounded in the leg in battle. Quite the hero. He's an army man, 6th Inniskilling Dragoons. Hates women. Should be good with the ponies though. Had the nerve to ask me what my nickname is! He must have forgotten his place, which is as a member of my crew aboard this ship, and not a bloody aristocrat, like he is back home.
So I told him: Con. It's short for Falcon, my middle name. Only Kathleen and my family call me by this name. It makes me feel like a child. I can't avoid it.
You can't choose what people call you. I'd love to be known by a name that had a sense of grandeur about it, one day. I suppose a photograph of myself planting the Union Jack in the South Pole will do it. Can't fail this time; I'd be a laughing stock.
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