Sunrise/sunset: 06:30/18:48 Daylength: 12hr40min

My laptop is dying. It will be a sad farewell, because when I depart, I will leave it behind. If I wasn’t moving, I would probably buy a new one and pop this one on a shelf somewhere. It can’t be sent with my furniture, even if it was worth sending, as lithium batteries are not allowed. It’s heavy too.

If it was still working properly, I would take it, even though it will take me almost a week to travel by land and sea to bring Triar to the UK and all I take will have to be lugged around in the hand which isn’t holding Triar’s lead. I will have to carry his food and blankets and my clothes, as well as packing all my important documents, which you are also advised not to send with the removal company. Being attached to objects is pointless of course, but I have written six published books on this computer and have all my photographs stored for this blog and it will be quite hard to part with it, but part we must!

The season is in full swing at the abattoir. This years crop of lambs are coming in before the long hard winter sets in. Vaidotas and Ernestas have returned from Lithuania for a few months and the whole place feels fully alive. I’m still teamcoordinator and also the veterinarian who carries the responsibility for everything from animal welfare to hygiene, but now I am training my new colleague Ingrid to do all the tasks I’ve acquired over the last year. Hopefully, she will have a bit more idea what she is doing than I did as I felt my way through all the unfamiliar tasks after the season ended last year. She certainly retains information much better than I do!

Of course, I am juggling my job with all the logistics of an international house move, which is seriously interfering with my capacity to remember things. Last week I bought tickets for the overnight ferry from Stavanger to Hirtshalls. This week, I have bought the train tickets to connect up that journey with the ferry from Amsterdam to Newcastle. This will involve travelling first to Hamburg, where we will stay in a pet friendly hotel for the night, and then the next day, the shorter leg from Hamburg to Amsterdam. I also phoned a veterinary practice in Amsterdam and have booked Triar in for the Echinococcus worming treatment he needs before he can enter the UK.

The snowline on the mountains has been going up and down a bit. On Thursday morning it was minus three when I went outside to the car (and minus six at one point on the drive to work) but the temperature has risen again, and according to the weather forecast, will hopefully not drop below zero again in the next week.

This weekend, I need to get my car into shape. Selling it is the last big challenge and something I find quite daunting. There are instructions on the state highways website, which include a directive not to transfer ownership until the money is in your bank account. There’s also the small matter of needing a car to get around. I guess if it sells quickly, I can get a rental car for a few weeks. Hopefully the price I get will be enough to cover the expenses and there’s no doubt it will be a great weight off my mind, which is something worth paying a little bit for. I had hoped to sell to a dealership, but the price difference between what I could theoretically get selling it privately and selling to a dealer is so huge that it’s worth taking the risk.

The pictures this week were all taken on Thursday, when I went outside to find the world was sparkling with frost under a clear morning sky. It wasn’t quite hoar frost, but hopefully there will be some, before I leave. Have a good week all!