I’m going to start with some pictures of cattle I saw in Yorkshire last weekend. It struck me as I looked through my photos that two of them were of Highland Cattle and the other bovine close up was a Belted Galloway. Of course, there are other cattle in Yorkshire, so perhaps I only noticed the Scottish ones as they’re especially picturesque, but it amused me so, in addition to the lovely lass at the top of the page, here you go.
It’s been a good week at work. I revisted a welfare case and things haven’t improved much, but that is sometimes the way of it. We can only help people who want to change. We will continue working on it though, through various means. I have closed two of my TB cases. I say TB cases, but the disease was never confirmed in either. Two cows that reacted to a skin test were slaughtered. Their lungs were checked and nothing was found and the rest of the herd were tested.
The skin test is generally considered accurate in that, if the test is unequivocally positive, there is a high likelihood the animal has TB, but perhaps both were rare false positives, or maybe they were both in the early stages and hadn’t passed it on. Anyway, two good farmers, who have worked with us patiently through a difficult situation, have now been given the all clear. I can remember the days when there was no TB in Scotland. I hope we can get back there again.
I will leave you with some pictures of Blackbird Lane. It’s beautiful now, as autumn is beginning to approach. Thanks for reading and I hope you have a good week.
The week started well with a nocturnal walk at the local RSPB centre at Mersehead. My colleague, Cris, had mentioned it on Thursday and I jumped at the chance. We arrived at nine in the evening, when dusk was approaching. As you can see in the picture at the top of the page, the nature reserve has a few belted Galloway cattle on it for controlled grazing. That was the only photo I took, because the walk itself started in near darkness and ended at eleven, by which time it was properly dark.
Provided with hand held infra red cameras and instruments that converted bat sounds to a frequency audible to human ears, we set off for a wander. The first bats we heard, and then spotted, were noctule bats. I hadn’t seen these before and was surprised to see them crossing the sky at dusk, flying high, in straight lines. It took a bit longer to spot the more familiar pipistrelle bats, which flitted along the lane.
We took a detour into the butterfly field, where pathways had been cut through the waist high grass. There, our infrared cameras picked out a deer in the darkness. We watched for a while as it moved gently in the long grass. Back in the lane, more pipistrelles, then along to an old farm steading, where we failed to see badgers in the garden. There were barn owls in the shed on the other side of the lane though, letting loose their weird, screeching cries. They were sheltering high up in the corner, atop a pile of round bales, bright white outlines on the camera. Then on some more, a rabbit in a field, lolloping around, before a few drops of rain began to fall, then a flurry and before long, it was raining steadily. We made our way back to the centre. Our two hours had more than passed anyway. It had been a wonderful evening.
The builders moved in on Monday. They’re stripping out the rooms in my roof in order to put in insulation and hopefully a shower room and toilet. The rooms were light and bright before, with warm pinewood window frames and features, which I hope they can replicate, though I might end up with something more generic. I had thought that if the work went on into the winter, I could simply shut the doors at the top of the stairs to keep the heat in, but I was disabused of that misunderstanding when I came home on Wednesday or Thursday and glanced up the stairway to see a brick wall, wooden beams and the underside of the roof, stripped bare.
From this…
To this…
As far as I can see, that small amount of insulation in the last picture was the only insulation anywhere in the roof. Hopefully the difference in the heating bills will make it worthwhile.
With all that going on, and an uncharacteristically quiet week at work, I decided maybe it was time to use up some of the flexi time I had built up. Anna and Lauren had popped in to Dumfries at the end of their month-long tour of Scotland and were now back in Yorkshire, so I thought I’d join them for a long weekend.
So here I am in Yorkshire again. It’s mixed weather, but we managed a walk into town yesterday, as well as a visit to the cheese centre, which now features a pizza restaurant with a wood oven as well as the very stinky cheese shop. Annually in Settle, there is a plant pot festival, where people make models from plant pots. The three below my favourites, but I have two more days of the weekend left to find more.
Hope you have a good week all! Thank you for reading.
Last Sunday, in the evening, I met Donna and some of her friends for a picnic in the park. Everyone brought food and it was a great spread, with old favourites, like delicious egg sandwiches, to more modern twists, such as salty caramel shortbread. This was in preparation for a spot of outdoor culture – in the shape of a performance of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
It was a great evening. The makeshift stage stood in front of the Chrichton Memorial Church and the entertainment was occasionally enhanced by dive-bombing seagulls. Romeo and Juliet isn’t my favourite Shakespeare; I prefer comedy to tradgedy. Juliet’s mother’s big red beard and broad shoulders were an interesting diversion, as was Romeo’s habit of turning his back on Juliet when she was on the balcony (though I understand this was probably related to the combination of a limited stage and the difficulty of being heard outdoors) but it was a great evening and lovely to get out for some entertainment on a sunny evening.
Monday morning started with a visit to my new physiotherapist. I asked my GP to refer me recently when I heard there was a year long weight to see a neurologist for non-urgent problems. I can’t remember whether I mentioned that GP visit, but occupational health at work advised me to go in order to re-examine the neurological problems I had in 2017-19, which resolved to the point where I can work full time, but have never completely gone away. I had physio three times a week, back in 2018-19 and it made a massive difference in getting me back on my feet.
I could see my new physio was somewhat bemused by me. I suspect most patients she sees are significantly impaired, whereas what I want is to build muscle and get as close to full fitness as I can. I suspect there are differences in attitude from Norway. I was much worse, back in 2018, but I can recall being told to warm up for every session, then do three sets of eight, deep squats, three times a week, very early on. Here I’ve been asked to do five to ten, a couple of times a week.
Realistically, I’m more likely to stick with a gentler routine that I can build into my day, which hopefully should be my aim. She did ask me if there was something I wanted to achieve – a goal I could set. I couldn’t think of anything concrete on the day, but after chatting to a colleague, it crossed my mind that I would like to be able to go (downhill) skiing again.
For that, I would want to lose a lot more weight, as well as regain a higher level of strength and fitness, so it’s quite a lot to aim at, but hopefully a worthwhile goal. To give my UK readers bit more context regarding the differing attitudes in Norway and the UK my lovely line-manager, Kirsty, who retired yesterday asked me whether I wasn’t worried about breaking bones. I am, to an extent, but in Norway, most ski slopes have a policy that skiing is free for people who are 70 or over, and it’s not just set up that way as they know nobody will take them up on the offer.
Midweek, Donna and I drove over to visit a friend of hers, who is selling some cottages and (hopefully) some furniture. Assuming none of the people buying the cottages have prebooked sales, hopefully I will be buying three wooden bedside tables from her, along with a matching mirror. I’ve been struggling to find any I liked that weren’t too expensive, so hopefully that will solve that issue. The image at the top of the page is the view from the garden of one of the cottages she has sold, and while we were there, we also met her lovely pig, Dotty. It was a lovely evening.
Yesterday was a lovely day as I went over to Stranraer, where Kirsty was working her last day. Several of us made the trip and we had lunch together and then lots of hugs. She and I discussed Stranraer, where I used to work, many years ago. The office there is very small and much more cosy somehow, than the office in Dumfries. I do sometimes wish I worked there, though due to Donna, and various connections, I have a better social life in Dumfries than I would have over there. There’s also the not inconsiderable matter of Dumfries being a two hour drive from Mum and Dad. Stranraer would nearly double that journey.
Tonight, I have booked to go on an evening wildlife walk with my colleague, Cris. Hopefully the rain will hold off, but whether it does or not, I am looking forward to it.
I will finish off with some photos of the the fields around Blackbird Lane, with some cattle basking in the lovely sunshine we’ve had over the past few days. I wish you all an enjoyable weekend and good week.
This week has felt so long, and has been so full, that it was almost a surprise when I looked back at my photos and realised that it was only last weekend I went to the Northern Canine and Equine Therapy Centre in Rathmell, where they do hydrotherapy for horses and dogs. They had advertised it as a coffee morning and we did indeed purchase a lovely coffee from a van outside the centre, but the real attraction lay inside.
The horse hydrotherapy session was due first, so we walked into the part of the centre where the horses were kept. I wish that I had taken more photos, but it was a lovely place and I instantly felt at home. The centrepiece of the covered yard was obviously the pool (pictured at the top of the page) but around two edges there were stables for the hospitalised horses. Some were there for lameness, some for weight loss and conditioning. Others were there, not so much for treatment, but for pampering. Imagine sending your horse away for a spa weekend!
Having swum round, the pony in the picture was taken out, towelled down, then treated with oils to replace the natural oils that would have been removed from his coat. He then was walked into a solarium to dry out a bit.
After we’d seen the horse swimming, we moved through to the dog pool. There. We watched as a dog physio put her labrador through his paces in the pool.
She told us about the different conditions they helped with. Her own dog doesn’t need any therapy, but he does love swimming. It’s also possible to book a half hour fun session with your dog and I immediately decided I’d like to take Triar to see if he would like indoor swimming. I also found myself wishing I worked there, or perhaps was a vet who could refer animals to them. It felt like a very positive place.
We had rather a bombshell last Friday afternoon, which I couldn’t bring myself to mention last week. My lovely boss, Kirsty, unexpectedly sent out a message to say she was leaving and her last day would be early in August. I will be very sad to see her go, and by the outpouring of shock, so will many of my colleagues. Both Lindsay (my Veterinary advisor – one step up from me) and Sue, who has just taken on a year long post after locumming on and off, called me up, mainly to express their sadness. Though it feels very sudden, it’s good for Kirsty and I hope she gets some much deserved time to relax.
Back at work on Monday, I visited a chicken farm with my colleague, Aleks. I have to do three visits with other vets before I can go solo, and this was my third. Because everyone is so busy, it’s difficult to find dates when two of us can go out together, so I’m glad my third accompanied visit is done. I have three of my own to do, so now I can more easily fit them into my timetable.
I can’t even remember what I did on Tuesday. It all feels so long ago! I was due to revisit a welfare case on Wednesday with David, who works for the local authority with animal health and welfare. We often work together and the revisit was to a farm where we witnessed some serious welfare issues before. But when he arrived, he asked me if we could divert to a more pressing issue. A group of pigs had escaped from their field and had turned up in someone else’s farmyard. It wasn’t the first time they’d escaped, but the farmer, quite correctly, now had them coralled in a barn.
Other authorities, including the police and the SSPCA had been called out when the pigs had escaped before, but nothing had been done. These situations are complicated to deal with. Animals do escape from time to time, and unless they’re on a road or causing risk, it’s really the farmer’s responsibility to get them back and secure them in the field or barn. For David and me, it was essentially a welfare issue. It’s not safe for the pigs to be marauding round the countryside. All farmers have a responsibility to keep their animals safe and keeping them enclosed within a safe area is key to that.
After the big foot and mouth outbreak in 2001, various laws were brought in to try to reduce the risks of another big outbreak. These included standstill laws on animal movements. If cloven hoofed animals (mainly cattle, sheep and pigs) are moved onto a farm, then the farm comes under a standstill order and for thirteen days, no animals can be moved off the farm without special permission.
So pigs landing unexpectedly on someone else’s farm presents quite an issue to that farmer, especially if they were planning on selling some animals, which our farmer was, and imminently. Our first action was to find out if the sale could go ahead. The pigs had not, to anyone’s knowledge, been near the animals that were to be sold, but equally, they had been loose, so where they had been was anyone’s guess. The movement ban applies to all animals on the farm, so the sale had to be stopped. That was done before we left the office.
Our next action was to visit the farm. It was an hour’s drive, but when we got there, I was able to examine the pigs. They were healthy and being well looked after. The main issue that had to be dealt with (or so we thought) was that they were not where they were meant to be.
Having looked at the entrapped pigs, we then went to visit the pig owner. The remainder of the herd were in a separate field from the ones who had escaped. To get to them, we had to walk through the field where the escapee pigs had been. There were some green boxes that looked like the boxes supermarkets use to deliver produce, but I had walked past them, keen to see if the pigs were okay. David had gone to get something from his van and I expected him to follow immediately, but when I turned to see where he was, he was standing at the gate, looking round.
He joined us eventually and we went and looked at the pigs. They looked well and the field they were in was (in my opinion) the perfect environment, with a small shelter, long grass and rushes to hide in and mud in which to wallow when the weather was warm.
It was only when we turned and walked back, that David told me what he had seen at the gate. Across from the supermarket boxes, there was litter, lying about. And in that rubbish, which was mostly food packaging, he had found empty packages for sausage rolls, ham and bacon, along with bags for bread and hot dog rolls.
I mentioned foot and mouth and the rules created after the big 2001 outbreak earlier. In addition to new rules on animal movements, strict rules were brought in about feeding pigs. Feeding them any kind of human food or kitchen waste is banned. We asked the farmer about the packages. It wasn’t impossible they had been left by someone having a picnic, but he didn’t know where they’d come from and said he thought people sometimes came and fed the pigs.
So now we had a situation, where there were empty packages for pork products that the escaped pigs had access to, and worse, that it was possible the produce, including raw bacon, might have been fed to the pigs.
These are the kinds of situations that have immediately to be sent up the food chain. Even if I had dealt with such a situation before, I would still have to call it in, without delay. The upshot of my phone call, and the work I have been doing for the last three days, is that both farms have to be locked down, with no movements of live or dead animals onto or off the premises, except under special licence. All the animals have to be inspected every 72 hours for signs of disease for a week, then probably weekly thereafter, for another two weeks. There was also the matter of the pigs being on the wrong farm, which was resolved yesterday, after lots of negotiation and paperwork.
So a vist which I thought might be a little complicated to resolve has turned into a behemoth case. One thing I will say is that we have an enormous amount to be grateful for with the farmer who took in the marauding pigs. She did everything right from start to finish, including calling us in. Chances are, the pigs don’t have foot and mouth, but now we have everything under supervision, so if the worst happens, we are already on top of it.
Had she chosen not to trap the pigs and call us, but had shoo’d them away and sent her animals to the sale, the potential for us being faced with another 2001 was there. That was started by pigs being fed improperly processed food and the disease wasn’t spotted until it had been sent all over the country. I may now be faced with three weeks of visits and a ton of paperwork, but this is the kind of work that can prevent a world of pain for farmers and a devastating cull that costs the country billions.
So this is what I am here for. I’m only a tiny cog in a very important chain, and kudos to both the wonderful farmer who called it in and for David for his observational skills. Next time, I won’t be so quick to pass by litter to look at animals.
But if I have one final thought, it is that I wish the government could see what we are here to do and how important vets and animal health and welfare officers are to this process. There should be more of us on the ground and the pay for those of us who choose to do this should be much better. Staff come and go, or work quickly to get promotion as there is no pay progression in our part of the civil service any more.
We need experienced people on the front line, but there is zero financial incentive to come and stay. Maybe saying this publically could get me into trouble, but if so, so be it. The people responsible for removing progressive pay bands for these roles have put the health and welfare of the nation’s animals at risk.
I work alongside a few, faithful staff, who have years of experience, a network of connections, a load of invaluable local knowledge, who are asked to train new entrants on the same wage as them. That is both plain wrong and absolute insanity. We should be making sure those people have an incentive to stay, that they know they are valued and that they don’t have to move to a different job to be properly rewarded.
And on that cheery note (sarcasm alert for non Brits) I shall leave you to your weekend! Have a good week all, and see you next week.
A few “after the rain” photographs for those who love Blackbird Lane.
I had a wonderful weekend last week, with Valerie. Back when the children were young, I met Valerie outside a classroom door. Her youngest, Stacey, was in the same class as John. We were both newcomers to the area and she quickly became one of my favourite people. She looked after Andrew when he was a baby and none of the child minders in the village had space for him. We both worked nights, but when we had time, we used to go for lunch at Jimmy Chung’s – a Chinese restaurant that did a fantastic buffet.
Meeting up made me feel I had gone back in time. With some friends, even when you haven’t seen them for years, you can pick it up where you left off and it was like that. Effortless and joyful. There were some new things. Valerie has a hot tub and evenings in the water with a glass of red wine (thoughtfully bought by her husband, Charles) were a wonderful new addition.
We also visited the Kelpies, which are not far from where I used to live. I’ve seen them in photos before, so it was lovely to see them, and that also fitted in to the daily walks I am now taking.
Valerie still looks amazing, despite all those Jimmy Chung’s meals and a bout of long Covid, caused by working in the NHS, in the front line, with no PPE. I had more protective gear as a technician in a chicken slaughterhouse in Norway. The chronic underfunding of public services in the UK has been going on for many years now. I hope it changes. Treating hard-working staff badly is not a recipe for a happy and healthy workforce.
I was in Ayr this week, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. My colleague (Pilar) was duty vet and I was shadowing her. While I was there to learn, it was an instructive lesson. Monday was fortunately quiet, but the two queries that took longest to deal with were about primates and alpacas. She also was put under pressure by a very grumpy vet, who probably knew he’d done something wrong and was taking it out on our staff. It didn’t inspire confidence in me that the role of duty vet is going to get any easier.
I did have time to wander around Ayr though, which was interesting. It’s on the coast and there’s a tidal river running through the town centre. It no longer seems deep enough for ships: perhaps years ago it was dredged and deeper, but there are many signs that it was once a thriving dock.
On the town centre side of the river, over the old bridge, which is now used as a foot bridge, there are some new buildings, such as Marks and Spencer.
But on the north side of the river, there are older buildings that speak of sailors and ships and a different life for the town. These is the old bath house.
The seaman’s mission:
And while the oldest bar in Ayr still looks to be in use, the oldest restaurant seems to be falling into a sad state of disrepair.
I can be difficult finding good food in new places, but I happened upon The Stravaig while wandering in search of inspiration on Tuesday evening. They served me a wonderful beetroot and goats cheese salad, with pickled walnuts. It was properly delicious and I will definitely be going back.
I have been doing the Second Nature program, primarily to lose weight (I’ve lost 5kg/11lb so far) but the program encourages better habits and lifestyle changes, rather than concentrating exclusively on food and calories. There are articles each day and a theme each week. So far we’ve had Prepare for the Program, Reset Your Lifestyle, Nutrition – Focus on Meal Planning, Mindset – Develop a Positive Mindset, Exercise – Increase Your Steps and this week’s Stress – Start Deep Breathing.
While I think it is a good program, and hope I can stick with it, it has struck me this week that an awful lot of it is about managing stress. The obesity epidemic undoubtedly has a lot of causes, from too much sugar, high availability of fast food and so on, but as I have embraced trying to sleep better and get into different routines, it did strike me as rather sad that my life is indeed filled with stress that I have to manage, and always has been. I’m sure it’s true of a lot of people and perhaps the reasons for that should be explored. Working hours in the UK are much longer than those in Norway, for example. After three in the afternoon, I’ve already worked out I’m not good in front of a computer. Out in the field, I can keep going, but I don’t achieve more by staying those extra hours.
Living in Norway opened my eyes to the horrible work situation in the UK. I remember sitting in a hotel at breakfast, listening to some southern businessman pontificating to his friend about how he knew who to promote as it would be the person who stayed late and really put in the hours. Perhaps he should have looked a bit harder at those who managed to finish their work within the allocated hours and prioritized their home life over crawling up the boss’s backside.
I felt a bit smug sitting there, having escaped all that. Nobody in Norway thinks that way. And now I’m back and it hasn’t changed, but I am thinking hard about what I can personally do so as not to slide back into those attitudes. I’m not going to be able to change the civil service, but in time, I may be able to change my own pattern of working. Deep breathing is all very well, but it should be an add on in a healthy lifestyle, not a lifeline to cling onto to survive.
I will finish with some photos from Blackbird Lane. The hedgerow is filled with flowers and weeds and twined with different plants. I was struck yesterday by the bindweed, which is both pretty and efficient, though it achieves its height by strangling others. It isn’t just climbing through the hawthorn, but even engulfed a dead nettle and other flimsy plants. Anyway, they are all climbing towards the light and though it’s not been a warm summer, I still find new things there daily. The bees at the top of the page were there too.
I’m sorry I didn’t post last week, as usual. I have been unwell and took a break. I’ve been back at work since Thursday and am finally getting back into the swing of things. This is going to be a short entry as well as I am currently in a Travelodge beside Edinburgh Airport as I am dropping Andrew off as he is returning to Norway today. Triar is down in Yorkshire with Mum and Dad and afterwards, I’m going onwards to visit Valerie, a wonderful friend from years ago, before we moved to Norway. I’m very much looking forward to it.
Many years ago, back when the children were young, Charlie and I joined Historic Scotland. I have many wonderful memories of that time. We spent many happy weekends visiting castles, watching the children race around on the well trimmed grass and following them up ancient, spiral stairways to emerge among the crenellations to wonderful views over Scotland. Its name has now changed to the (rather clunky) Scottish Environment Scotland, but I have taken out a year long membership again. I am now looking forward to planning a few visits. We visited Caerlaverock last week, which felt like a good start.
I’ve also joined the library. Again, when the children were young, we used to visit libraries during the school holidays. I feel like I’m taking things back on board that I enjoyed a long time ago.
Anyway, I said this would be a short entry, and now I have to take Andrew to the airport. The Travelodge Wi-Fi isn’t really up to loading photos, so I haven’t managed to add much, but I will try to update better next weekend. Until then, have a lovely week all.
It’s been a busy week. On Monday, I made a revisit to a welfare case, Tuesday and Wednesday were spent catching up on paperwork and courses that I should have completed as well as having an appointment with a doctor from occupational health. Thursday I was third duty vet and yesterday, I inspected a chicken farm with a colleague up north of Ayr.
As some of you will know, I had some major neurological issues between 2017 and 2019. These mostly cleared up after I started physiotherapy and had some coincidental corticosteroid injections for a seemingly unrelated issue. I never received a diagnosis, but the problems I had still recur when I’m very tired, and I still tire very easily. My line manager referred me to occupational health as this means that coping with duty vet on top of my day to day work is currently too much.
The doctor has recommended that, though I will still cover nights and weekends, I will be temporarily relieved of the daytime tasks until I am more familiar with what needs to be done. She also recommended I should go to my GP and get myself rechecked. I imagine that could be a long job, involving lots of tests, quite likely with the same end result, but I will keep you posted.
With all that said, I was incredibly touched that another colleague from Lauder, who I’d never met before, invited me to come and do my first ever stint as third duty vet with her and doing it with someone else in the room with me, who was perfectly willing to help, was altogether a different experience. It might be difficult to organize for new starters to do this, partly because so many people still work from home, post Covid, but it would prevent a lot of anguish. So many people I have spoken to describe being in tears when they are stuck on duty vet that I have also reported it as a health and safety issue, but the reality is, we are understaffed and there’s not much that can be done.
Anyway, the best day of last week at work, was actually Sunday. I travelled through to the edge of Edinburgh on Saturday night, and at 07:45 on Sunday morning, I reported for duty as one of the official APHA vets at the Royal Highland Show.
Our routine remit didn’t sound too onerous. We were asked to walk round all the animals once to check on health and welfare. There were other vets at the show to deal with any front line injuries or illnesses. I did read our contingency plans before I went, which detailed what we must do in the event of a foot and mouth outbreak and other unpleasant scenarios, but fortunately none of them happened and instead, it was a lovely day out. The rest of this post then, is going to be taken up with photos from the show. I hope you enjoy them.
Quite appropriately, the most heavily featured breed in my photos is Highland Cattle. The amount of work it must take to have them clean and tidy for the ring is phenomenal. I chanced upon a young woman wielding a long hairdryer on hers and asked if I could take photos and she agreed.
I also loved the belted Galloways.
Though it must be a lot of work to present such beautifully turned out stock, the Highland Show is a real, family event. Again, I asked if I could take a photo, but here, the whole family were gathered around a calf that was being preened.
The Holsteins, for some reason, are shaved all over, before going in the ring. I watched someone carefully running their clippers along the spine, leaving some of the standing up hair, working to get a perfectly straight line, to give the best effect. I didn’t photograph that one, but it was interesting to compare the slimline, dairy cattle with the sturdy beef cattle. For obvious reasons, one of those is bred to not put on any flesh, but to direct energy into milk production, the other is bred to have as much meat as possible. I saw a breed that I hadn’t come across before – the British Blue – which has double muscles. I give you a baby Holstein, then a rump comparison, Jersey dairy cattle, vs a British Blue.
There were even more breeds of sheep. I don’t have so many photos of them, but I was struck by the fluffy cuteness of these black nose sheep.
And these fabulous horns.
There were ponies and heavy horses…
And right away, at the far end of the show, there were goats, alpacas and chickens.
All in all, checking out all the animals was a very long walk and by the end of the day, I had covered twelve kilometers. I felt very pleased though, at having such a wonderful day out as part of my job. I hope you enjoyed the picture and I will see you all again next week.
After a pleasant weekend in Yorkshire, Andrew, Triar and I returned to Dumfries last Sunday, but I didn’t stay there long. I had booked a trip to Ayr to go out on a welfare cross-compliance visit with a colleague who needed support. I drove up and we worked on the paperwork together on Monday. The visit was planned for Tuesday and I wanted to have plenty of time to go through everything, but it was also good to catch up with some other Animal Health Officer colleagues I had worked with before in Stranraer.
I stayed in the Mercure Hotel, which was clean enough and had a decent breakfast, though the bed and pillow were so hard that I was surprised that I managed to get a reasonable night’s sleep. The British obsession with hard mattresses stopped making sense after a few years in Norway, where the mattresses are all soft and it feels like you are sleeping on a cloud.
I awoke in the morning to a cloudy day and a rather noisy friend outside my bedroom window. I confess I had been quite amused the night before to see a discarded half bottle of some unknown liquor on the flat roof outside my room. It’s so very Scottish to see that. With apologies to my Scottish friends, Scotland really does have a litter problem, as well as a huge penchant for drinking. The streaking of my window with bird poo might have been a hint, but I hadn’t really expected such a close encounter with a seagull.
This was just before I was about to go downstairs and I toyed with the idea of bringing back a slice of toast for the interloper, but out of respect for the hotel windows, I decided any more encouragement was not a good plan.
As this was also my second week on the Second Nature plan and I had pledged to do fifteen minutes exercise each morning, I decided to take a walk before breakfast. Though it’s not obvious from the photo above, if you squint at the area, over the rooftops, to the left of the tree my room did technically have a sea view, so I thought I would walk in that direction.
Wandering the town near the hotel to find a restaurant, the night before, I had been rather put off Ayr. The place had a run down air, though the Tempura restaurant (which Donna had recommended) was very nice, with lovely friendly staff. As I walked down towards the beach, I saw another side to it. While still run down, it was obvious as I walked down the wide street, with its substantial, terraced townhouses, now converted into solicitor’s offices and charity headquarters, that this had once been an attractive and prosperous place.
As I cleared the end of the houses, I saw a building that I knew, before I rounded the end of it to see the signs, that it would be called The Pavilion.
To my left, there was a huge swathe of flat green land with pathways crossing it. I thought of Triar and wished he was there.
The Scoopalicious Ice Cream company was another nudging reminder of the golden age of Scottish seaside, west coast towns. An ice cream shop run by an Italian family was another staple in all the resorts that the people of Glasgow escaped to.
There was a pleasant sunken garden…
And a fountain, complete with a fairly traditional traffic cone.
Though the sky was filled with clouds, the mountains of Arran were visible across the water of the wide bay as a reached the sea. To my left and right, there stretched a broad, sandy beach, and again, I found myself wishing Triar was here as he would love to run free across that vast expanse of sand.
I was tempted to venture down onto the sand, but time was limited. Turning back, I was unsurprised to see that The Pavilion was indeed called The Pavilion and was fronted with another southern, Scottish west coast tradition, some rather tired looking palm trees.
As I walked back up the road, I felt that odd sense of sadness and nostalgia such places bring me. Ayr and Largs were not part of my childhood, but many of those my age from Glasgow and other smaller west coast towns can remember visiting those places as children, when they were still popular holiday destinations. I found myself thinking I might come back sometime, for a weekend, and set Triar free on that beach to run.
The rest of my day was taken up with work. The welfare visit went well and I hope I left my colleague with a clearer view of how to carry out an inspection. Back in Dumfries, I have spent the rest of the week catching up with cases. I have written the first draft of a witness statement for a welfare case that might go to court and carried out a disease and cost risk assessment to allow one of my farmers with a TB breakdown to bring a new bull onto the farm.
We can’t go to Yorkshire this weekend as tomorrow, I will be working at the Highland Show. I spent yesterday reading the contingency plan for what we would do in the event of an outbreak of serious disease in the animals at the show. I understood the plans, but found myself hoping we wouldn’t have to implement them as it would be a huge undertaking, trying to sort animals, people and vehicles into groups that could leave and groups that couldn’t, with various stages in between involving gallons of disinfectant and chaotic queues.
I will finish with some photos from Blackbird Lane. There are cows in the fields now and different wildflowers growing in the hedges. The hawthorn bushes have lost their spiky, white blossom and are beginning to form berries, that for now are a muted, brownish red, but will become bright and red as the autumn nears.
One of the things I enjoy about working as a government vet is travelling to different places. It hasn’t happened yet, but at some point, I will be sent to do detached duty, where I can be sent anywhere in the UK to deal with any emerging notifiable disease. Even in my region though, I get around a bit. On Monday, I am going to Ayr to accompany a colleague on a welfare inspection. She has only been out to one such inspection so far and I’ve already done my three, so hopefully I can help her to do a good job.
I’m also going to be one of APHA’s vets at the Royal Highland Show next weekend, which is exciting. If nothing happens, it’ll be a lovely day out. It’s a long time since I’ve been, but it was always an enjoyable day out. If something happens that I have to deal with, it will be… interesting. Imagine how the day would change if we discover one of the animals is showing signs of foot and mouth. There are contingency plans, which I should get next week. I will make myself familiar with them and keep my fingers crossed that the most exciting thing to happen will be visiting the freshly cooked doughnut stand.
Not that I will be doing that. As I mentioned last week, I have been signed up to a weight loss program called Second Nature by the NHS. So far, it’s been very good. Its focus is on changing habits and not on counting calories, which is appealing to me. I can’t get on board with weighing out food for the rest of my life. It relies on encouraging exercise, eating more vegetables and cutting down on carbs, without cutting them out altogether.
I was meant to do lots of meal planning this past week, but bought pick and mix salad every day from my local supermarket, which handily is a ten minute walk from my office. In the evenings, Andrew and I have been using a delivery service called Hello Fresh. Both Anna and Donna recommended it, so we decided to give it a go. Each week, we select four meal plans, they deliver ready prepared ingredients, and we cook the food together when I get home from work. It’s been quite easy to modify the Hello Fresh meals to fit the Second Nature recommendations, so it’s all been very easy and I love not having to decide what to eat while standing in the supermarket.
I also signed up to an online service called Borrow My Doggy and this week, for the first time, someone new took Triar out for a walk. It did make me realise that he’s not the easiest dog to handle. He’s never been placid – quite the opposite. Also, I’ve not taught him very good manners on the lead.
It went off fine though. I’m hoping to find someone who would be able to take him at short notice if I have to go away unexpectedly for work, but I’m going to have to engage more to do that. I’ve just booked a holiday in November, so perhaps I need to concentrate my efforts more. Triar has never been in a kennel and I’m not sure I really want him to start now.
These are some photos from the bottom of my garden, which is running absolutely wild. The garden is full of insects and birds, which I love watching from my kitchen window. I made my way down the broken steps this week and was pleased to find that the overgrown roses have the same, wonderful scent that I remember from the roses in the garden when I was a child. So many these days seem not to have any aroma. “Stop and small the roses” is a good principle in life, I think. We’re down in Yorkshire for the weekend, so I’m going to start with a cup of coffee and take it from there. See you next week!
Andrew and I were in Yorkshire last weekend, which feels like a lifetime ago, but it was a lovely warm day on Saturday and we went on an ice cream hunt, which on the face of it wasn’t very successful. The firstly place we went to was styled like an American Diner, but it was so noisy and there were so many children leaping about that we turned and walked back out. The next place we tried, after consulting the Oracle of Google Maps was a small, village shop, but the only parking we found was in a field, which some canny farmer had mown and was charging £10 per day to enter.
We ended up doing a big circle back to Grassington, where fortunately, we bought a cone, but it wasn’t quite the ice-cream parlour experience we’d been searching for! Grassington is very pretty though and the drive back was too.
On Tuesday afternoon, I met up with some women I met on social media. We’d been chatting online and they were part of a women’s group I wanted to join, so we met for a coffee. I’ve been worried about Andrew being here for the summer with nothing to do, and to my delight, it turns out one of the women owns a small media company in the area. She does some work with young people, so later this morning, Andrew has been invited to a scriptwriting workshop in a cafe in town. He’s read the script they’ll be working on and has some ideas, so hopefully he will enjoy it. If Andrew wants to work in film, the most difficult part might well be finding a way in, so any experience and contacts he can form are a good thing.
I was through in Stranraer again this week, on one of my TB farm cases. We’re still waiting to see if TB is confirmed, but it’s looking more likely and so my Veterinary Advisor and I went to the farm to assess the boundaries and history of animal movements on and off the farm. If TB is confirmed, we will need to move quickly to start tracing where it might have come from and where it could have spread to, so now we are prepared to move to that stage without delay.
I was driving back to Dumfries, when I found myself in a queue of traffic. It’s a fairly difficult road for overtaking long queues, and this one was particularly frustrating as it was going slowly round the bends and speeding up for the straight parts. Seeing a sign for “Holy Cairn” I made a snap decision that this might be a good moment to go and explore one of the historic monuments that are scattered along the A75.
This is a hit and miss activity. Sometimes you can follow side roads for miles and find nothing, or you do arrive, only to find you’re looking at two stones on a hillside. This time, however, I found a good parking space and went through a small gate to find what looked initially like a circle of standing stones…
… but which on closer inspection, had been the spectacular entrance to a chambered cairn.
There was an information block in the corner of the enclosure, which told me a little bit about the cairn and its excavation, but the best thing it told me was that there was another cairn, further up the hill. I followed the track up, to find another, rather different cairn. The entrance to this one was a little less spectacular, but it was sited in such a beautiful place that I could only stand and gaze.
I read the information here too. Long-time readers might remember my trip to Stonehenge where I was amazed to discover that animal herders came down from Scotland to celebrate the winter solstice. I found myself wondering whether the people who used these cairns were among those who made that trip.
The plaque told me the cairns dated from 4000 BC. When I looked up Stonehenge later, it is thought to have been started in 3000BC, so these beautiful cairns were in use a thousand years before Stonehenge was begun. As ever, I felt the wonderful calm feeling that I always get when viewing something ancient or ageless. It’s always a wonderful reminder of how short and insignificant my life is in the grand scheme of things.
And finally, I had been gradually gaining weight, ever since I moved to Arctic Norway. Winter hibernation is all very well, but when winter lasts from October to May, it’s a large chunk of the year to take a break from walking, which was something I had done to keep myself healthy for years. I had hoped to break the bad habits when I came back to Scotland, but there is far too much temptation and I haven’t lost anything at all.
I asked at my GP clinic for help and they have signed me up for six months on an app called Second Nature. It tells me it’s going to help me break my bad habits and form some new and healthier ones, so I will be starting that on Monday. My main hope is to lose enough weight so I can start to go up hills again without creaking to a standstill within a few yards. There’s no weighing and measuring foods or calorie counting, which is good as I can never be bothered with all that. I’m also glad they didn’t offer me drugs. I want to improve my lifestyle, so hopefully this will help. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Of course, I am back in Scotland, and true to form, my colleagues in Stranraer, on hearing this, convinced me that it was essential that I should make the most of the last few days before I began, so this was the result. Have a good week all!
A Vet’s Life 