Sunrise/sunset: 04:46/20:49 Daylength: 16hr02min

This is going to be another brief post. We moved into the new house last night. None of the new beds have arrived, so currently I’m on a camp bed, Andrew is using my old bed and John has a mattress from his caravan. Despite that (and despite Triar sharing the tiny camp bed with me) I slept better than I have over the past few days with the move hanging over me.

Our new house still feels more like home than the flat ever did. The landlord decided to increase the pressure a couple of days ago, sending me a list of cleaning tasks that included cleaning the windows inside and out, cleaning out all the extractor fans, and worst of all, emptying out all the drains/u-bends under the sinks and shower, in addition to the more usual tasks, such as washing down all the cupboards, pulling out the cooker and cleaning behind it. I’ve spent much of the past year wondering how to clean the drain under the shower. It seems to involve dismantling the base, which I am reluctant to do in someone else’s flat, where breaking it might mean having to pay whatever the owner chooses to charge me. The fact that they felt the need to send a list after I had spent so long getting the flat spotless before they showed the potential new tenants round is a reasonable indicator of the nature of my relationship with our soon-to-be-ex landlords. Lying in bed on a Sunday morning with the curtains open to look out at the lovely view quickly became impossible as they were always in the garden. The flat was sometimes untidy and I could feel the waves of disapproval. It’s very common in Norway for families to rent out the cellar as the rent paid is tax free, but as I’ve discovered, it’s not always comfortable having your landlord breathing down your neck. Still, I only have to clean the flat now, and then it will be over.

For anyone that missed the midweek update, there was nothing on the MRI that would explain the symptoms I’ve been having, though eating low-fat seems to mostly keep them under control anyway, so I will continue for now without pursuing it further.

So hopefully, for now, life will become a little more stable. I am about to undergo something of a job change. Long term readers might remember that Ammar, who used to work in the abattoir and with the OK program, carrying out routine visits to test for notifiable diseases or banned substances in milk, took a year’s sabbatical. I am going to be moving into his job, which will be more a change of emphasis, rather than a complete new start. I have sometimes been quite surprised by my own enthusiasm for ensuring the welfare of animals that we are about to kill for their meat and the wish to feed back important information we pick up about chronic welfare issues to other vets working in the field, but I am looking forward to it.

So for now, I’d better go. There’s a flat to clean and various things I need to find. See you all next week!