Monday 20th January 2025, 1.35pm (day 4,897)
Ascension Island is, nominally, a dependency of St Helena and lies about 800 miles from it. Whereas there are many friends who think that when I come here (St Helena, that is) I am swanning away to some ‘desert island’, it’s not like that, as my photos make clear. But, as far as I can ascertain, Ascension really is such a place. The plan is that I will be going there in early April, all as part of the same research project that I’ve been working on since 2021.
But Ascension may well be the most bureaucratically impenetrable place I have ever tried to visit. It might be depicted on maps — this one hangs in a corner of Anne’s Place in Jamestown — but does it officially exist? In practice, can your average person actually set foot there? About these things, I am not yet convinced.
Being 42 