Category Archives: Writing

Stories and Mist

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As I opened my iPad to write this, I noticed an email had come in from one of the short story competitions I entered. I was excited to enter as I was very pleased with what I had written. The competition was called Aurora and my story was set under Arctic skies. Having read the previous year’s winner and looked over a couple more, I felt less confident mine would go anywhere as they were so unlike my style, but I gave it a go anyway. Sadly, my feeling was correct and I didn’t even make the shortlist of 25.

I suspect as well, as with all writing, if I really want to win anything, I would have to do a lot more research to find a competition that suits my style (if such a thing exists). My time is limited, as is my patience for doing that. To me, good writing is good writing, but I know from past attempts to read Booker Prize winners, there are times when pretentious writing is rewarded over good. Maybe I’m just not cut out for this writing thing, but I shall plod on, because I like what I write. I really want to share my story here, but until the three competitions I’ve entered are over, I can’t.

The early part of the week was sunny, with misty mornings. I took some photos from Blackbird Lane as I love the effect, with white haze hanging over the dewy grass and shining drops glistening in the low-slung sun.

Triar and I were out early that morning as I spent the day over in Stranraer, carrying out a disease risk assessment in a new TB breakdown. In a couple of weeks time, I will be over there again, when all the animals are tested so we can find out how many other animals may be affected. It can be devastating for farmers and at this stage, we don’t know what’s coming, but I am hoping we can get it sorted out without too many losses.

The middle of the week was a bit stressful. My big investigative case and the attempts to finally complete my witness statement for the awful welfare case had to take a back seat to the two TB cases and also to training in imports of live animals. There are more horses coming into Prestwick on Tuesday and the VA in border controls was supposed to be overseeing me as I processed them. I asked her a question and she directed me to the Ops Manual, so I wasted a good two or three hours trawling through that, without finding an answer.

I discussed this phenomenon with another colleague and we both agreed, the Ops Manual on almost any given topic is so complex and sprawling, that finding anything in it, when you’re not sure which section to check, is nigh on impossible. After a year doing TB cases, I can now usually find the part I need, but with imports, I’m just setting out. In my opinion, while the Ops Manual can be great to check when you are doing a task where you know your way round, but haven’t done for six months, it’s worse than useless as a training tool.

I did eventually beg the VA to link the actual documents I should read. I really don’t have time for trawling. The most useful document she sent was actually not in the Ops Manual at all, but in a much clearer document, specifically about procedures at Prestwick, written by the previous Border Controls VA. Having read that, I felt much more confident.

But on Thursday evening, Mum rang. Dad wasn’t particularly well and had seen a consultant about his heart. She was worried he might need to go to hospital to get some fluid drained, presumably from his chest. Whether that would be needed depended on a new prescription he’d been given and whether that worked. This all sounded worrying, so on Friday morning, I spoke to my line manager who said I should come down to help. Working for the civil service isn’t particularly well paid at the moment and there are a lot of problems, but they are still great about giving time to carers when it’s needed.

So I won’t be going to Prestwick after all as I will work down here in Yorkshire until I go on holiday, next Wednesday. Dad’s prescription seems to be helping, which is a relief, but there’s a lot of get sorted out, so I am very relieved to be here. I can work from here and have permission to do that, but can do other things in between. While I am building a great life in Dumfries, I do sometimes wish I had got the job in Skipton I originally applied for.

Autumn is fast setting in with storms and rain, but Blackbird Lane was lovely this week, so I will end with a couple of pictures from yesterday morning, when I was trying to work out what to do and took to send to my parents while I did. Next weekend, all being well, I shall be in Brighton,so I’m not sure how the Wi-Fi will be. This website doesn’t function well for writing and uploading photos when it’s limited, but I will update when I can. Thank you for reading and have a lovely weekend.

Arctic Lights

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I said at the end of last week’s blog that I was going to talk about the apps I currently use to manage my FND and I will, but first I should mention that I’m at Valerie’s for the weekend. Val’s daughter Stacey and son-in-law, Llewelyn, stayed here over the summer, while Stacey was having a baby. They went home a week and a half ago and, to my great joy last Sunday, Val invited me and Triar up for the weekend. It couldn’t have been more perfect for me. I’ve a few things booked in early October, so weekends are limited and I wasn’t expecting to come here so soon. But yesterday evening was spent on a sunset walk around Airth, listening to the amazing sound of the geese that are gathering in the fields, followed by gluhwein in the hot tub. As Valerie said, “Let Autumn begin.”

As regulars will know, I was recently diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder, or FND. While the diagnosis was recent, I’ve been having neurological oddities going on in my body for years. My life and job in Arctic Norway was sometimes physically tough, but for three years I was able to manage my symptoms. They occasionally came back, but then I would rest until they went away again.

The physical and mental stresses I’ve had since returning to the UK had destabilised the situation and I went through a period in the spring and summer of this year, when the symptoms had returned on what seemed like a semi-permanent basis. They weren’t awful. Some tics and body jerks, days of waking up exhausted and odd sensations, mostly like insects crawling on my feet, though the feeling of a knitting needle jabbing into the top of my right foot was sometimes quite unpleasant.

While getting enough rest is crucial, there are other things I’ve been doing which seem to help and they mostly revolve around apps on my phone. Sometimes I think constant access to the internet and to smart phones has brought some very negative things into the world, but there are some real positives as well. I try to ensure I get enough sleep, for example, and though partly that’s about putting down all my devices as bedtime approaches, I do monitor how much sleep I get, and the quality of that sleep in the Autosleep app, which is linked to my Apple watch. While it doesn’t directly help me sleep, it does remind me that I feel much better when I do sleep well and helps me monitor what works to get there.

As well as Autosleep, I have been using WalkFit. I’m not sure I would recommend it. It’s quite expensive for something that’s not quite as good as it should be, or at least that’s my opinion. It got me on board with false advertising, telling me I’d lose weight quickly, but then not giving me explicit guidance on how to do that. To be fair, I knew before I started that rapid weight loss from a walking app was unlikely, but it did tempt me in. Then the first three months cost £25 and I assumed that would be the ongoing price.

After the first three months was up, they charged me £66 for the next quarter, but by then, I was well into the program. I may not have lost much weight, but I am regularly doing a whole lot more exercise because of it, so while that is working, I shall continue. It suits me quite well as, on the mid-level activity program, the daily target is 7,500 steps. You can have two days off in any week without losing your streak. I’m now on 139 days and I don’t want to lose it. There’s also a set of exercises you can do inside, if you are struggling to get steps on wet days. I would do more of those if they were 20 minutes long. They used to be, but now they’re nearer half an hour and the music is a bit tedious. As I said before, I wouldn’t entirely recommend it. It would be better if there was more flexibility to choose the length of your exercise session, but for now, I’m sticking with it.

The final App I’ve been using is Headspace, which I get through work. I used to have Calm, which had some lovely Sleep Stories, which tended to send me off in minutes, but as work were offering to pay, I changed over to Headspace instead. What I hadn’t expected (and which now, has unfortunately changed, it set me up a day’s itinerary, with tasks that it ticked off as I did them. The day started of with five deep breaths, moved onto a two to five minute chat on how to handle the things life brings, then a ten minute meditation session. There was a very variable afternoon task, that was sometimes physical exercise, sometimes music and sometimes a short wildlife film, the to end the day, it recommended a sleep story, which it calls a sleepcast. I’d added in a mindful eating course, which it added on and marked off when done with the rest.

I’m glad I joined up while that itinerary was in place as it’s now changed. Those things are still there, but in a much busier screen with “Recents” at the top, then some of those previous “Daily Essentials” as a line underneath you have to scroll along. Some are missing though, so I’m now using it less, ironically. Pretty sure that wasn’t their aim. My mindful eating course is now in another line called, “Picked with you in mind.” Well you didn’t pick it, did you? I picked it! Anyway, I digress. I’m still using the app, but it’s now much more difficult for me to track whether I’ve done each element over the course of a day.

It’s taken me some time to find sleepcasts that I like. There are certainly plenty to choose from. The Calm ones that I liked best told a story, where you walked alone up a mountain, or along a beach, then lay down somewhere and did some meditative activities. The Headspace sleepcasts paint pictures, sometimes of quite busy places. Maybe some people find those helpful but I don’t. I have found some though, that describe scenes where you find a comfortable place and I am using those more often. Now and then, I try a new one and last week, I tried one called Arctic Lights.

I was looking forward to a scene, with the aurora overhead, and that was in there, but I must confess, most of the rest, I found unrelaxing for all the wrong reasons! There was something about a breeze and snow on the ground and the sounds of a waterfall in the distance and that had me bristling. I mean, I guess it’s possible, but in the Arctic where I was, all the streams and waterfalls froze quite early in the winter and often before the snow came. There were sometimes wind, but most of my memories of aurora were on utterly still nights, where the sky was clear and there was an ethereal silence as everything was solid ice. So instead of the lovely relaxing experience I’d hoped for, I was lying there in bed going, “Well! That’s not right!”

The last straw was when some deer passed by and went to drink by a lovely lake. Why deer, I thought, my mind in glorious outrage. I never once saw deer up there, other than reindeer and far more often, there were moose! I mean there were deer there! I inspected a carcase once that a hunter had shot, but only one in three years. Of course, if I hadn’t had all those ore-expectations, I probably would have found it lovely. Instead, I grumpily sat up and selected a different one. Ah well, I’ll just have to write my own Arctic stories instead!

Anyway, Valerie is now up and it’s time for me to go down and join her, so I’ll leave you there. Hope you have a good week and thanks for reading!

Do Not Attend

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I am finally inspired to work on my story based on the Norwegian song/poem Tir n’a Noir again. I have decided it shall be a short story – different from what I usually write. I have also signed up for a scriptwriting course and am waiting for that to begin. I think it will benefit me trying out different formats. A novel takes so much time and concentration and I am in short supply of both those things. My day job takes too much energy.

That said, I’ve had a good week at work. On Monday I was out with Lauren, one of our animal health officers, training her to blood sample sheep. With only minor instruction from me, she quickly got the hang of it and took blood from twenty sheep in no time. I enjoy teaching people how to do things I’ve spent half a lifetime learning.

On Tuesday, I was learning myself. I was up at Prestwick Airport again, checking two beautiful horses that had flown in from the US. It was a broodmare and her foal and they were blue blood in the racing world. Absolutely stunning. Another colleague recommended I took the Castle Douglas road on the way back and I did. The normal Ayr road is rather boring, so I was delighted to find myself driving through some gorgeous Galloway scenery. There are mostly rolling hills here, rather than mountains, but I passed through spiky fir forests and by lochans and burns.

As you can see, the sky became quite spectacular and shortly afterwards, it began to pour. I was reminded of a summer long ago, when we holidayed in New Galloway and went walking every morning, but made sure we were back in the cottage in the afternoon as the rain started each day at about 3pm.

On Wednesday, I recorded the training on the Disease Report Form that I had given in front of an audience the week before. To do this, I was told to set up a Teams meeting with my mentor, Josephine. “Mark it, ‘Do not attend’” she told me, so I gave it that title and then began. I muffed it a couple of times and I wasn’t sure how to delete, so I decided to quit that meeting and set up another. This time, I thought I would give her a giggle and gave it a rather tongue in cheek name.

That time, the recording went well and I laid down a perfectly respectable piece of training. What I hadn’t realized was that when anyone accesses the presentation, what they would come to was a video with the title of the meeting it was recorded on in broad letters at the bottom of the page. And so, you guessed it, I have created a piece of training on a serious topic, with the title that will be there in perpetuity – Do Not Attend Again – The Director’s Cut.

I don’t have any real plans for this weekend so far. Last weekend I went for a walk with Belle, who is one of the women who will be teaching me about scriptwriting. Her dog George is very laid back, and he and Triar seeem to get on fine. Triar did shame me slightly by disappearing into a massive field, filled with long grass and rabbits, and failing entirely to return when I called him. Belle and George were fortunately very laid back about the whole thing and Belle even suggested that, as Triar enjoyed it so much, we could come back another day, but bring a picnic instead of aiming to go to a pub for a drink. Sounds good to me!

Have a good week all and thanks for reading.

Golden Hemorrhoids and Sticky Toffee Pudding

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At the start of this week, I was quite tense. I’ve explained before that I am trying to work towards a bonus payment, which requires a lot of hoop-jumping and I am attempting some of the hoops right at the last minute, given that the deadline for submitting my activities is Monday coming. On Tuesday last week, I was meant to be presenting training on Foot and Mouth Disease and an update on Bluetongue. On the morning of the presentation, I received a message to say it the meeting was cancelled. I confess, I was rather relieved, though hopefully it won’t undermine my case.

On Wednesday, I gave my Disease Risk Form training to some of the vets. It was given at our regional meeting and I fondly looked round the room at the three or four vets in attendance and thought there was nobody there that would worry me to present to.

When the time of the meeting arrived, Josephine, my veterinary mentor told me we were linking in by Teams, and slightly to my horror, I realized that there were vets at all levels, linking in from the whole of Scotland. Still, I didn’t have any time to worry, and apart from wishing I’d thought to bring a glass of water for my dry mouth, the whole thing went off pretty well.

I must say though, that Josephine herself had given some training on Bluetongue (the situation is unfolding fast – we’re trying to keep it out of Scotland) which she made much more fun than anything I have produced. As you can see below, the cow on the Lipton’s tea van is leaving England and crossing the yellow border into Scotland and we were learning about the special measures the farmer would have to undertake. Suffice to say, there won’t be a lot of English animals at Scottish shows this year and vice versa.

Not sure whose the Coke bottle is, but clearly it should really have been Irn Bru for the sake of consistency.

Wednesday night was the summer meal at my writing group in Lockerbie. The hotel we use does food and they are responsible for the sticky toffee pudding at the top of the page. As regular readers will know, I’m a bit of a foodie and the beef stroganoff, for my taste, had too much Dijon mustard, to the point where that was the principal flavour, but it was pleasant enough.

On Thursday morning I woke up feeling a bit more relaxed, with all my training done for now. I’ve mentioned before that I am reading the Bible and I have an app that gives me three readings each day, two from the Old Testament and one from the New. My first Old Testament reading was Samuel and I was bemused to read that, having stolen The Ark of the Covenant, the Philistines were blighted with “‘emerods in their secret parts”.

Of course, I had to look this up. There are sometimes words I don’t fully understand and sometimes I don’t check, but these emerods were coming up, over and over, and moreover, when the Philistines sensibly decided that the safest thing was to swiftly hand the Ark back to Israel, the priests and diviners told them they had to give it back with an offering that consisted of five golden mice and that they had to make images of their “emerods” from gold and hand over five of those as well.

So when I checked, it turns out that the word “emerods” is actually an old word for hemorrhoids. I must say, the Bible does throw up some truly bizarre things now and then! As it was my friend Valerie who encouraged me into the Bible reading, I tried to send her a message, “Golden hemorrhoids? I’ve heard it all now!” But having sent it, I realized a minute or two later that I had sent it instead to another friend. Fortunately, I managed to delete it before she saw it, but I had a laugh and shared that with Valerie too. Let’s face it, that would be quite a message to wake up to, without context or explanation!

I shall leave you with a few, wonderfully overgrown pictures from Blackbird Lane. Thank you, as ever, for reading. Hope you have a good week.

.

Projects

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I am working very slowly on my writing projects. Various sources advise would-be authors to set themselves a routine. Write every day, they urge, or at least consistently. But there are days and weeks when work is taking almost everything I have and when I get home, I cook, eat, watch TV or read, and then I fall into bed. I think, if I had a project with a deadline, I would manage, but without that, I am writing very slowly, when I feel ready and whole.

This week at work has been more measured than the preceding weeks and for the past couple of days, I have been contemplating my Tir n’a Noir story. It starts with Black November: a man watching the raging sea as he declines into the pains of age and the ravages of a long life. That part is written in the past tense as he tries to catch the echoes of the long-ago summer, when Mary came to him.

He catches the echo and falls into a memory. While the current world is grey, the memory is rich with the green of Arctic summer, with its day that lasts for months, when the primitive plants are rushing towards the light. This part, I have written in the present tense. Though it is only in his mind, somehow, this is more real to him than what is happening now. Among the nature, he hears the sound of laughter and is so filled with energy and fascination, he runs towards it.

And that is as far as I have got. I have been waiting and wondering what Mary looks like, playing with ideas in my head. She’s Irish, but I don’t want the cliche of red hair and green eyes, beautiful as those things are. It came to me that I wanted her to remind him of a bird and I started to look up Arctic birds, but nothing really fit.

But for the past couple of days, I have been batting ideas around with my friend Shirley. I met Shirley in the boat terminal in Finnsnes as we queued for the fast boat to Tromsø. She and her friend Linda were speaking English and it was such a rare event, that I spoke to them. Some decisions just turn out to be right, and that was one of them! Anyway, I digress. Shirley took me to Dyrøya in May last year, and that visit inspired me to set my story there.

ToThe snow covered mountains of Senja, from Dyrøya

So having inserted the boat that brought Mary into this scene (a traditional pine-built fishing boat, obviously) I told Shirley our main character had seen the boat, but not yet Mary. I was assuming Mary was already on shore, but I hadn’t said so to Shirley, who assumed she was still on board. We were also discussing cormorants – not the most elegant of birds, but I want Mary to have dark hair and bright blue eyes, which fits better than the Arctic warbler I had been considering. Shirley suggested Mary was standing with outstretched arms, and from that, I saw her with her dark hair and bathing costume, diving neatly into the calm, clear water.

So now I know how Mary will enter the story. I just have to write it and try to find words as striking as the image. I can tell this story is going to unfold very slowly, but if I am in the mood for writing, I can return to my other book, which is about two thirds finished – at least the first draft is two thirds finished. Maybe, one day, I will complete both of them.

So that is project number one. Number two, for the first time in my life, I am working through reading the Bible. Valerie (another no-regrets friendship, wonderfully rekindled) is Christadelphian, a Christian group that puts a great deal of importance on studying the Bible. She sent me an app, which gives three readings each day, two from the Old Testament and one from the New.

Like many people who (have) attend(ed) a traditional church, I am much more familiar with the New Testament than the Old. I know I tried years ago to read it, but stuck on the long lists of names and genealogy. This time, I have pushed on through and am currently reading Numbers. I watched a Netflix show, Testament, which is about Moses. It shows and discusses the plagues that God brought on the Egyptians as well as showing Moses leading the people of Israel into the wilderness.

I confess, I am struggling with the Old Testament God, who seems fickle, angry, and vengeful in comparison with the God that Christ preached about. But it was the same God that Christ was preaching about and that seems very clear.

I guess these are not new struggles. I am never going to be a Bible scholar, though in some way, I regret not having learned more years ago. I find Christian forgiveness and the bonds with community that faith brings to give me a stability that is difficult to find, in this modern world.

But I am trying to find a pathway that combines those easy things with the new knowledge about how God is presented to us in the Old Testament. I don’t want to rationalise it away – pick and choose the bits to believe and pretend the rest is irrelevant or false. I will add here, that Testament showed Moses leading his people through the Red Sea, but Numbers details that there were 600,000 men (and there would be women and children too) and so the idea that there were a million people, living in the desert, picking up their holy tabernacle and moving the whole encampment round…

Well you can understand why I am having difficulty with that concept. The arguments about realism tend to focus on Genesis and creation, but this part seems more impossible to me. I can only persevere and hope that I can find some place of equilibrium.

I did start searching online for one of the cleverest Biblical Scholars I have come across in my life and I found a wonderful video of him talking about the lead up to Christ’s crucifixion in the gospel according to John. I shall share it here, for any Bible Nerds who may be interested. He’s a Monsignor now, but he was Father Patrick when I attended his church, years ago.

My other projects are more prosaic. The house and garden. I have even less energy for those, but will probably end up doing my work to pay for others to do the jobs that need to be done. I just need to find the energy to keep the garden under enough control that it won’t cost thousands more to fix it, when I’ve got the house into better shape. Sometimes it seems there is just too much to do and maybe I should have bought a well maintained apartment!

Work continues apace. I have a new welfare case and another TB suspicion. There’s a bonus available if I can prove that I have certain skills… and there’s another project. The whole of life seems to be a massive juggling act. But for now, I have the weekend and a little oasis of time to spend. I will share a few more images from my garden, which is starting to burst into flower, though I suspect some of the bushes would have benefitted from some pruning at the appropriate times, which is definitively not now. Its wild state is attracting the birds and I’m not going to do anything that will drive them away.

Have a good week all, and if you’ve persevered through my ramblings, thanks for reading!

More Song, Less Horror…

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To continue what I started yesterday, Tuesday and Wednesday were broadly taken up with meetings about Monday and follow-up actions. When faced with something complex that requires careful handling of many different aspects of care, there are always things missed that need to be rectified, and follow up questions and investigation.

Not entirely coincidentally, I had an appointment early on Tuesday morning with the doctor from Occupational Health (OH). We had a good chat and discussed some things that I found helpful. For example, she suggested using flexitime to take days off when I am tired in the immediate aftermath of something that takes a lot of energy.

There were other suggestions my mind rebelled against. For example, she suggested I could try anti-depressants, partly on the grounds that they wouldn’t interfere with any neurological examination because “half the population are on them”. That doesn’t strike me as a good thing. I know some people find them very useful, but I’m not depressed.

I said as much and she suggested some of my symptoms mimic anxiety symptoms. She also said the tingling in my hands and feet (which I was experiencing during the meeting) were not due to anxiety as I was speaking (and therefore breathing) normally. That’s quite a useful observation actually, because it’s been suggested before that some of my symptoms might be anxiety, but I have never been breathless in that way, even when my symptoms were at their worst.

Anyway, having driven through Tuesday and Wednesday on adrenaline, I woke up on Thursday and my mind and body rebelled. I had noticed, on my flexitime sheet that the extra hours I’d worked on Monday and Tuesday had taken me over eight hours, so I called my line manager, explained what the OH doctor had suggested and, to my relief, he agreed. My shoulders immediately dropped several inches, so I knew, at once, it was the right thing to have done.

I didn’t do much that day. I wrote a bit of my new story and immediately came upon a conundrum. Setting it in Dyrøya is all very well, but if the man who fell in love with Mary McKear is old now, he must have met her some time ago. So I need to know about Dyrøya’s past. It’s now an island, connected to the mainland by a bridge. So knowing when Mary arrived… and how… is important. More than that, what is a young Irish woman doing on a remote island in Arctic Norway anyway? It’s going to be the first thing he asks, surely?

Leaving all that aside, it was time to take Triar out. I set off to go down Blackbird Lane, and halfway there, decided to look if there was somewhere else I could take him in the car, that wasn’t too far away. Google led me to Castledykes Park, which was only a few minutes drive. We wandered slowly round the park. I know vets are meant to despise extending leads, but this was the perfect time to use one, because then Triar can zoom about, while I meander.

It was warm and sunny in the park. We looked at the trees and flowers and Triar did what dogs do on trees and flowers, and quite shortly, I found a nice bench. It was warm enough to sit down and close my eyes and hope that Triar wasn’t eating a dropped bar of chocolate or rolling in fox poo as I listened to the birds singing.

There was, yet another meeting on Friday morning, but much of the day was spent on a refresher course about handling animal welfare cases. It all sounds very peaceful when you’re talking about the legal framework and the form filling.

And so, yesterday I went to another mini-writing retreat and I used the time to delve into Mary’s background. She now has a history – a Norwegian grandmother, who escaped from Norway in World War 2. Maybe she came over in one of the boats that are coming to Shetland when I’m there in May!

Anyway, that’s me up to date now, after my busy week. If you’ve read this far, thank you. Take care!

Songs and Horrors

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Last Sunday, having not written anything on my novel for a good few weeks despite good intentions, a new idea thrust its way into my head. There’s a well-known song by folk rock band Vamp, called Tir n’a Noir. It has a beautiful melody, and when I came to understand the words (they’re in Norwegian and also dialect) they are, if anything, even more beautiful.

On a stormy November day, an old man is reaching for memories of a beautiful summer from his youth, when he met and fell in love with Mary McKear. His remembrance is dim, there are hints he has been melancholy and seeking solace for a long time, sometimes at the bottom of a glass. I like to think, a glass of Irish Whisky, as that’s where Mary is from.

Tir n’a Noir is named in the song as the place he met Mary, but it is, I believe, a reference to Tír na nÓg, which is a mystical land in Irish mythology, a paradise of everlasting youth and beauty.

Towards the end is a hauntingly written verse, which I will try to translate for my English readers, though I won’t be able to do it justice and I’m not going to cast aside meaning for rhyme or rhythm.

Så når kvelden komme og eg stilt går ombord,
Og min livbåt blir låra i seks fot med jord,
Seil’ eg vest i havet te Mary McKear i
Det grønna Tir n’a Noir.


Then when evening comes and I silently board,
And my lifeboat is laid six feet under the earth,
I sail west on the sea to Mary McKear in
The green Tir n’a Noir.

I’ve just seen on Norwegian Wikipedia, about this song, it describes her as his wife, but (unless I missed something in my translation) it’s unclear whether Mary was his wife, or how long she was with him. We only catch a glimpse, where his grey life now is contrasted with the wonderful green summer when he felt fully alive as they laughed together. It’s suggested it was long ago, as he remembers her, as if through a mist, over horizons that slide and crumble, or wither.

Anyway, the urge came to me that I wanted to write their story, showing those contrasts, between the dim present and the wonderfully remembered green land, when he was young and filled with love and hope. I want to explore and reveal his story, or at least my own interpretation at how he might have arrived at the point where he sees his coffin as a lifeboat.

In researching and translating the song, I found reference to the fact that the words were actually a poem, by a Norwegian poet: Kolbein Falkeid. The lyrics are written in his local Haugesund dialect. So I hope my Norwegian friends can forgive me the imperfection, because I want to set my story in the North of Norway, where the winters are long and dark and the summers are so intensely green that I can imagine them as the green paradise where he met her.

I don’t know where the story will take me, though ideas are already arriving of how he ended up taking to the bottle. It’s melancholy in it’s beauty but the song steers very clear of being a dirge, and I want my story to have a similarly haunting beauty. Of course, I look at what I want to achieve and know it’s beyond my current writing skills, but I can only start and hope that I can come close to the vision that has arisen in my head.

I’ve a lot to say this morning. It’s been a long week and I may run out of time as I’m going on a mini-writing retreat, which meets at 10:30, so I will write what I can, and if I run out of time, I can finish later or tomorrow.

These flowers were given to me by a colleague (Lauren) along with some scones on Tuesday. Another colleague (Lisa) ran me home on Monday evening and brought me back the morning after. By some miracle, Donna must have felt my pain as she invited me for dinner at 17:35 on Monday evening.

As regular readers noticed, there was a two week gap in this blog. I couldn’t face writing and it was due to uneasiness in my mind. I was dealing with a welfare case. Sometimes, with experience, there are factors which ring alarm bells in your head, and this one has been sounding in mine, loud and clear. I feel a bit like Miss Marple, remembering people and drawing parallels. My parallel this time, was to an awful case in Norway that I wasn’t involved in. Rather, it fell to a close colleague. I only read about it: a report I couldn’t read in one go as the horrors were too much. It made the national news and the farmer went to prison for two years.

The day before I missed my first blog post, I had seen the farmer take an action which meant that, in theory, the animals should be easier to look after, but also had the effect that they were now entirely reliant on that person. They had been outside, where to an extent they could forage for themselves, though there wasn’t a huge amount of grass. Now they were shut in. The animals in Norway had been shut in too. So uneasy was I that they would not be properly looked after, that I went back out the day after, a Saturday morning when I shouldn’t have been working, but I hadn’t slept and knew I wouldn’t unless I put my mind at rest.

That trip out, did put my mind at rest, to an extent. I saw the animals had been fed and they had water. It’s difficult with cases where the extent of the problems can’t be easily predicted. You have to put a plan in place, then trust that the farmer will follow it, but follow up yourself within a timeframe that’s not too long, in case he or she fails to follow through. I guess, if I did one thing wrong, it was that three weeks was too long, but visiting too often can be seen as micromanagement or even harassment.

It is some consolation to me, that a private vet had been out in between and said he hadn’t seen any real cause for alarm. And though it was bad, I am aware that it could have been a lot worse. Because of the actions we took on that day, most of the animals have now been moved to somewhere where they are safe. We have done what we can to ensure those that remain are not at risk… they are now back outside, but still with access to shelter.

And I discovered how thoughtful my colleagues and friends are. I’ve said before that I find great support when surrounded by a circle of strong women, and somehow, my circle is getting stronger as time goes by.

I’m going to go now as there are a couple of things I have to do before going out, not least to take Triar down Blackbird Lane, but I will return, probably tomorrow, to write about the rest of the week.

Take care.

Neurological Fatigue and Ice Cream

Blog, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Vet, Writing, , ,

Hello again! I’m going to start this week’s post with an apology and with thanks. It’s been three weeks since my last post and I know that was unusual enough that Mary, who reads it regularly (and once sent me the wonderful Norge i Fest book) was worried enough to check on me. There have also been others looking out for me, both at and outside of work, and to them, thank you.

Per and Tor: Norge I Fest

I’m not sure if it was Valerie who introduced me to the concept of neurological fatigue, but she works with patients within a physiotherapy and occupational therapy department in the NHS and she has spent some time working through a course to help me deal with it better. Those who read regularly will know I’ve been affected by some odd, undiagnosed neuro problems for eight or nine years.

Most of the time, it’s not visible to those around me, but it never completely goes away and sometimes, it returns with a vengeance and becomes highly visible as I twitch and stamp my way around. Because it means I struggle sometimes at work, occupational health want me to try and get a diagnosis, so I am now seven months into the year-long NHS waiting list.

I can see that, in my last blog, I mentioned the welfare case that has, most likely, been the biggest trigger in this episode. With the best will in the world, dealing with sad and difficult cases is always mentally exhausting. I finally got out there two weeks ago on Friday and on Saturday, the whole thing was preying on my mind so much that writing anything here was beyond me.

It’s weird, because my body went on functioning. I went out for afternoon tea for a friend’s birthday on Saturday afternoon, then down to Mum and Dad’s as Mum’s 82nd birthday was coming up. I did comment to Mum that, when I took Triar for his daily walks, I did worry that I would collapse at some point. Not sure what she made of that, not sure how much is wishful thinking (it would push me up that waiting list, at the very least), but I have, twice in the last year, had one of my legs simply give way when I tried to take a step, so I ended up sprawling on the pavement.

I should probably have taken time off work the week after that visit. Had I done so, I probably would be fine by now, but with the prospect of formal attendance meetings, and in the knowledge that I probably could function at work, at least, I pushed on through. I’d actually taken Monday off as a flexi day and normally would have enjoyed the shorter week, but I actually didn’t notice it was shorter. By then, I was on autopilot.

I feel I’m not describing this well. I think, up until a couple of days ago, I was managing to function at work, to the point where most people wouldn’t know anything was up. The noticeable changes were at home. I’ve been working on building good habits: eating more healthily, writing a bit each day, walking for half an hour. One by one, those stopped.

Other things stopped too. Wiping the kitchen surfaces and clearing away is something I normally do as I go along, but my kitchen was starting to resemble a student flat. I didn’t like seeing it, but couldn’t find the energy to do anything about it. It’s really difficult to describe, but work was simply taking everything I had and in between, I was barely existing.

At what point, in that scenario, do you take time off? Logically, and indeed in Norway, the right time to stop and rest was as soon as I became dysfunctional at home, but in the UK, the pressure to work until you literally can’t is quite high. That day came on Wednesday this week as I woke up and could barely drag myself out of bed.

Even on Thursday morning, having spent Wednesday mostly lying down, I was swithering as to whether I should try to work from home. Again with the comparison with Norway – there, if you are on sick leave and feel like doing a bit of work, it’s allowed. So on Thursday, I wrote up some details of what I was working on on Tuesday afternoon, in case someone else had to take over that case, and I replied to a couple of easy e-mails, because that was no hassle and would mean that coming back to work would be easier.

In the early hours of Friday morning, I was plagued with a blinking session. I have looked this up and found out what I was experiencing was called blepharospasm. I’ve had it a few times before, but it’s never been a significant symptom, but it’s disorienting and tiring and it kept me awake, so there was no chance of me working yesterday. That said, by yesterday afternoon, I found the energy to tidy the kitchen, which is honestly a load off my mind, every time I walk in there.

Slightly worrying is that blepharospasm has to be reported to the DVLA, so I guess I’m going to have to go to the doctor next week and ask about that. Just another complication to add to the list. It’s not an immediate suspension from driving, but the doctor will have to decide that one, I think.

My line manager, has been very supportive, thank goodness, though I imagine we are going to have to go through another formal attendance meeting. I’ve already asked him for another occupational health referral as I need to know how I can handle this situation. I want to work, but when I need to rest, I would like to do so without worrying I’m going to lose my job. Preemptive rest twice a year is better than crashing. I know some people abuse the system, but the system needs to work for me as well as them.

So where does the ice cream come in? I went to Valerie’s last weekend and rested there. Getting there was difficult. Even though I knew where I was heading, my mind was plagued with intrusive thoughts (another distressing symptom which I’m not going to describe – my Norwegian doctor told me a long time ago to ignore them as they are not dangerous) as I drove up the road.

It was worth it though, as Valerie and Charles offer me a wonderful haven where I feel surrounded by peace, not least when sitting in the hot tub with a mug of hot chocolate and Bailey’s! Saturday afternoon, the ice cream van drove round, playing his tinkling music, and Valerie suggested an ice cream. We were sitting in the garden at the time. Charles had lit the chiminea and we were listening to the birds and when Valerie heard the ice-cream van, she suggested buying one and I agreed. This is what she came back with! A lovely, whippy ice cream with a 99flake. I haven’t had one for years and it was delicious.

So, I hope that was all coherent and not too weird, but that’s where I am. Hopefully by Monday I will be back at work, though I will need to address some things, such as a doctor’s appointment. I can recommend afternoon tea at the Hetland Hall Hotel, though the bitter soup in a coffee cup was a step too far, that would probably have been better forgotten!

Have a good week all and thanks for reading.

Muted Sunshine

Blog, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Vet, Writing, , , , , , , , , ,

Last Saturday I had an emergency trip to the opticians’. On Friday, or perhaps Thursday, I’d noticed flashes of light in the corner of my left eye. I thought it was a reflection from the headlights of a passing car catching the edge of my glasses, but when it happened again in the darkness of my back garden on Friday evening, then again when writing this blog on Saturday morning, I knew it wasn’t.

Having looked up what flashes of this type could mean, I called the opticians’ as soon as they opened. The receptionist asked lots of questions and said they were fully booked, but that she would speak to an optician and call me back. She did so within a few minutes, telling me they were going to fit me in and to come right away.

I was seen very quickly and fortunately, she didn’t find anything untoward. As a part of the aging process, the vitreous humour (the jelly like substance filling your eye) becomes more liquid and can pull away from the retina (made up of cells which capture the light and send information to your brain allowing you to see). As it pulls away, there’s a risk of tearing. Either the retina can be torn away from the back of the eye altogether (meaning you lose sight over whichever area becomes detached) or blood vessels can tear, with potentially the same effect if the cells of the retina die. Fortunately, my flashes were most likely caused by the edge of the retina lifting a little as the vitreous humour separated. Most likely it would stop in a few days, she said, and it seems to have done just that.

There was another unexpected surprise when I went to pay. I was expecting a fee of maybe £100 as she’d spent a lot of time looking at my eyes and used a lot of sophisticated equipment, but apparently the whole examination was covered by the NHS. Many of its services may be broken, but this one worked exactly as it ought to. A reminder then, that sometimes peripheral functions can be provided by the private sector, even if central services really are better served in public hands.

It’s been a good week at work. I inspected chicken farms on Monday and Tuesday and felt I was beginning to provide a useful service as my knowledge is growing over time. Once I have been doing it for a little longer, it would be a useful experience to recap by joining another more experienced vet on a visit, if I am allowed to. When you first visit with someone else, you pick up some knowledge and can grow your own as you work, but sometimes going back and watching someone else once the basic knowledge is in place can mean picking up on the subtler aspects that you maybe missed in the steep learning curve at the beginning. I’ll have to discuss it with my line manager though. One of the problems with being chronically understaffed is that there is little spare time for anything beyond the basic.

On Thursday, I had lunch with Fran, the minister of the church I’ve been attending in Lochmaben. It’s been my intention for a while to ask her whether there is anything I can usefully do in my (admittedly limited) spare time to help in the parish, but instead, we got talking about Shetland, where she worked for a few years, and then writing. It seems that she also writes and was very enthusiastic when I suggested she could come along to the writing club I belong to. I will ask about helping out later, but in the meantime, I seem to have made another friend.


The best things come to those who wait, or so it is said. Over the past years and months, I have had so many things to sort out (moving internationally is incredibly intense) that all kinds of other things have ended up on the back burner. A colleague and I had talked about getting a coffee machine at work, but somehow, I’d never got round to it. I had a lovely meal round at Donna’s last Friday and it came up that she had one, barely used, that she was going to take to a charity shop. I guess I should probably make a donation to charity now to cover what they’ve lost, but she gave it to me instead. It is now installed at work and I will buy pods and try it out next week. I hope my colleague is pleased!

I’ve also been putting off making any decisions about the garden, which needs to be tidied, but is taking a firm second place to the building work in the house. I had a gardener for a while, but he sacked me as I was never home. I had vaguely looked for another, but they aren’t easy to find. David, one of the local authority inspectors I work with, unexpectedly offered me gardening tools that were left in a rental house he part-owns and oversees. So now, without lifting a finger, I have a lawn-mower, a strimmer, a hedge cutter and various hoes and spades. Part of what put me off doing my own gardening was the expense and time it would take to go out and buy everything I need, and now I don’t have to. Though the last few years have been incredibly tough, and there are still struggles I’m going through, there are shafts of sunshine in my life that are beginning to break through the clouds.

Most of the pictures this week were taken on the way back from lunch on Thursday. The cafe was in Lochmaben and the road back to Dumfries tops a hill, then drops steeply away, giving marvellous views over the plain where Dumfries lies. As I drove over, I got glimpses of the sun, which was shining through cloud, creating a wonderfully dramatic sky. The village of Torthorwald is halfway down the hill and I often drive past it and look at the ruined castle, clinging to the hillside. This time, I couldn’t resist. Stopping the car, I got out, climbed over the gate and made my way over the muddy stream to see the ancient stones in their wonderful setting. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed my wander.

And last, but not least, after the long, Arctic winters, where everything is silent and frozen for months on end, I was amazed to see that, even after the deep chill of last week, there were snowdrops growing in the shelter of the hawthorn hedges in Blackbird Lane. The birds are starting to sing again as well, on still mornings. On Wednesday, blackbirds vied with robins and greenfinch, as well as pink-footed geese and collared doves in a wonderful morning concerto. It was a reminder that spring is not too far away.

Thanks for reading. I hope you have a lovely week.

Belated Puddings and Watery Sunshine

Blog, Food, Hillwalking, Holiday, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Writing, Yorkshire Dales, , , , , , ,

John and Yoana have returned to Norway. 2025 is here and in a couple of days, I will return home and to work, but for now I am making the most of the time I have with my parents. I roasted a chicken on New Year’s Day and cooked lots of green vegetables to eat with it, though my efforts were slightly undone by dad’s suggestion, that we took up, of eating one of the Christmas puddings.

I can’t lie, it was worth it – utterly delicious in its caramelly, fruity luciousness. I managed to get through much of Christmas sticking to my Second Nature instilled habit, “Avoid products with added sugar,” but I have rather fallen off the wagon this week, or rather, as Second Nature would prefer to think of it, I haven’t been voting so much for my healthier self. I will be back to voting for less sugar and filling half my plate with vegetables when I get home. For me, it’s easier to control what I buy than to resist cakes that are lying around. I haven’t brought my scales, so I’ll have to wait and see where my festive voting has taken me when I get home.

The weather has mostly been grey, with clouds swathing the tops of the fells, but on Thursday, I woke to blue skies. Despite the fact that Watery Lane was bound to be living up to its name after all the wet weather, I headed there and from there took a little side gate that led me up the lower fellside, through the gorgeous, green fields with their endless dry stone walls and picturesque barns.

The path, such as it was, took me out onto Lodge Lane and Triar and I turned and walked downhill until we reached the farm steading, where Lodge Lane and Watery Lane meet.

The choices here were to turn left back onto Watery Lane, which leads along a bridleway, between walls through the fields, or follow Lodge Lane down to the B road that leads into Settle. The latter would have been the drier option, but given I had my sturdy winter boots on, I thought I’d risk the Watery diversion.

It was dry, at the beginning and I took some photos of the sheep that were basking in the warmth of the sun.

But the further I walked, the wetter it got, until there was a diverted beck actually running along the bridleway. I guess the horses wouldn’t have minded!

Here, it was stony and Triar and I picked our way through the shallows, but the next section was so muddy that the risk of slipping was too high. We made our way back to a gate that was difficult to open. I guess the farmer doesn’t want people walking through the fields any more than necessary, but we made it through, and finished our walk through the drier field. It was a lovely walk, but even Triar was glad to get home and relax on the sofa by the fire.

There are more weather warnings for this weekend. They feel endless at the moment, but so far, none of the threatened snow has arrived and this morning looks grey and damp. I have spent the spare moments of the last few days writing and will continue with that into the weekend. It’s lovely to be able to concentrate on the story and I have started to consider the edits I will need to make, even though I will still only be two thirds of the way through by the time I get back. Still, my writing group are meeting on Wednesday next week, so at least I can say I’ve been writing. For much of last year, I was too busy to get much done. I hope 2025 will be a turning point.

Have a lovely week all, and thanks for reading.