I’ve been unwell and mostly at home for the past two weeks, so there isn’t much to write. I’m definitely on the mend now though.
I still haven’t managed to get a plumber out and now they are all going on holiday. It was similar in parts of Scotland when I was growing up. There were “trades holidays” when almost everyone involved in building work of any kind took time off and it became almost impossible to get anyone out. At least it’s for a set period, though here it’s four weeks, rather than two. I spoke to someone on Thursday who has placed me on a waiting list and said they will call when they get back. He seemed relatively reliable, so fingers crossed.
John’s friend Bowen has been coming round to cut the lawn. That is a huge boon as he has a sit on lawn mower and the garden is a bit too big to easily cut with a normal mower. When I moved in, the grass at the back of the house hadn’t been cut for a long time. John strimmed it before winter came, but now I’m hoping Bowen can get it back in shape. Now there’s a fence and a definite line between the cut lawn and the wild growth outside!
Unfortunately the fence is not animal proof yet. This means that I cannot, yet, let Triar run free in the garden. It also means that the beautiful foxes we see now and then can poo wherever they like. Triar has an enormous love for fox poo and delights in rolling in it whenever possible. The ecstasy on his face is quite a sight to behold. Not so much his face when he’s in the shower afterwards, but he does have a very compelling sad face when he’s all wet afterwards. Is it worth it? I guess it must be!
We have twenty four hour daylight at the moment. It’s quite difficult when you wake up and the sun is shining around the blind and you really have no idea whether it’s one a.m. or four or eight. Everything is now growing. The contrast with winter is incredible.
Anyway, as you can probably tell, I don’t have much to say. Normal service will (hopefully) resume next week. Take care!
Anna and Lauren arrived on Monday afternoon as planned. There were a few things to juggle while they were here. Andrew’s oral exam was on Tuesday and he had a concert on Wednesday evening, when he would be playing piano. Brownie the guinea pig also had a lump under her chin, which I had hoped would be seen on Monday, but the earliest they could fit her in was Thursday. And I was working Wednesday, but I hoped we would fit a few other things in and the end of the week would be clear.
We decided to meet up with Andrew after his exam and have a picnic lunch out in nature. Given that the weather wasn’t entirely favourable, we walked up to a lake where there was a wooden shelter, but even there, the wind was blowing in straight off the water and though we managed lunch it wasn’t a day to linger. When we got back to the car, I asked whether everyone wanted to go home, or whether they would like a tour to see some of Senja and the consensus was that they would like that. Anna had asked the evening before whether I knew somewhere there might still be snow, as Lauren had never really seen any proper snow. As we drove across Senja, it struck me that the most likely place might be on the road to Skaland. There is a tunnel, right through a mountain, and to get to it, you drive high up to a bowl where there is a small lake surrounded by steep peaks on three sides. Most of the way up, everything was dauntingly green, but I could see the summits were still snowy and, to my pleasure, though there was not a complete covering, the lake was still mostly frozen. The mountain tops were wreathed in clouds and the bare trees made a kind of sepia wasteland that, if not a classic winter wonderland, was certainly distinctly arctic, given that it was the middle of June.
As you can see from this second photo, the melting ice was still very thick in places.
Having taken photos, we got back in the car. I didn’t want to drive much further, but Anna suggested we should go through the tunnel to the other side of the mountain. It was worth it to see the contrast. Everything here was green, though the mist still shrouded the peaks.
On Wednesday, I had to work and on Thursday, I took Brownie to the vets. The lump, which I had suspected might be a benign fatty lump, turned out to be an abscess. The vet lanced it and gave me antibacterials to give her. With hindsight, a surgical approach might have been better than lancing, but for now, I’m giving the medicine and trying to keep the hole open so it doesn’t refill.
With a clear weekend ahead of us, I was looking forward to Friday. I went to bed and went to sleep, only to be disturbed at midnight by Anna knocking on my door. Sorry to disturb, she said, but Andrew was having an asthma attack and was struggling to breathe. There are some words that, as a mother, certainly wake you up quickly. I made a very quick assessment (concerningly wheezy: still pink) threw my phone at Anna, asked her to call the legevakt (emergency doctor’s clinic) and got dressed. There was no reply from the legevakt, so I bundled Andrew into the car and broke the speed limit as I drove into Finnsnes.
I managed to stay surprisingly calm. I guess several years of working in emergency and critical care back in the UK has had an effect. They hooked him up to a machine, and when I saw his oxygen sat. was 87 (ideally it should have been between 97 and 100) I merely commented that it was a bit low. They hooked him up to a nebuliser and gave him ventolin (which acts to open up the airways) twice, but even then, his oxygen levels were still less than optimal and his heart rate was much higher than it should have been. He also had a temperature.
The doctor was very good, at least. Having listened to Andrew’s lungs, he made a tentative diagnosis of pneumonia. There was then discussion about whether Andrew would have to go to Tromsø or whether he could be treated locally. By now, it was around 4am and if Andrew was transferred to Tromsø in an ambulance, there was no way I would be fit to drive behind them, so I was very relieved when we were told he would be kept in overnight in a short-stay unit in Finnsnes and x-rayed there in the morning. I left him in a very pleasant single room with a very attentive nurse and a nebuliser on the stand at the side of the bed. He was also given penicillin V and prednisolone tablets, and was already looking significantly better than he had when we arrived.
I drove home and slept briefly and he called me at quarter to ten to say he could go home. Friday was a write off. We had intended to go to Polar Park to see the animals, but it wasn’t only Andrew who needed a day of recovery. Yesterday, John took Anna and Lauren to Tromsø, while Andrew and I stayed at home. Unfortunately, I seem to be coming down with whatever virus it was that triggered Andrew’s pneumonia, though I am hoping the effect on me is a bit less dramatic. I think John, Anna and Lauren might make it to Polar Park today, but I won’t be going with them. If I rest plenty, I might be well enough in time to return to work on Tuesday! Ho hum!
And if, at the end of all that, you’re still wondering about the title, last night, shortly after midnight, we had a visitor in the garden. I heard him when I went to bed as he was so close to my window. I went through and told Anna and Lauren, and so Lauren, on the second last day of the holiday, was introduced to a moose after midnight.
I scrolled back to last year to find out how I had formatted the immortal words “Sunrise/sunset: Up all day.” and I see that this time last year, I was excited, having just found an agent for my book. It seems unlikely at this point, that Ger will find a publisher and I haven’t made much progress in writing anything new. There has been altogether too much going on and I haven’t been in a good frame of mind for writing. It’s always hard to write without deadlines anyway, but there has been way too much time spent clearing snow and on other distractions. So for now, there’s not much likelihood of publication any time soon, though several of the publishers said they’d like to see new things from me. There was, in fact, quite a lot of good feedback, but it seems that, without romance, women’s fiction of the type I’ve written is difficult to sell. At some point, I will get started again, but I will need to work out a new strategy.
Returning to the north was difficult after a week of sun and warmth in Yorkshire. I arrived back in Bardufoss at 11:30 at night. It wasn’t dark, of course, but it was very chilly and raining. At one point, as I drove back, my car pinged me to give the ice warning it gives when the temperature is 3.5°C. I had taken Monday off, so I drove Andrew into school. He is doing his final exams at the moment. All the written exams are over, so now he is waiting to do a final, oral exam. Both John and Anna did International Baccalaureate, so this is our first experience of the Norwegian exam system, which seems to be somewhat bizarre. I knew from before, that the written exams are oddly long. You can come in any time between eight and ten, then sit in them all day, if you like, though you can walk out after ten, all of which sounds enormously distracting.
But the oral exam tradition is even weirder. Over the course of three weeks, all the students will have one oral exam in one of their subjects, but they are not told the date or the subject in advance. At Andrew’s school, all the students who haven’t yet had their exam, have to go in on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each week. When they go in on Monday, some of them will find out that they have an exam on Wednesday, and in which subject. Those who have an exam stay and get some general extra tuition from the teacher on the Monday. On Tuesday, they are told the topic within their subject that they should prepare for and on Wednesday, they sit their exam. The rest of the students who weren’t selected for an exam, are free to go home, but of course for Andrew, this means waiting for a bus as there are only a few each day. Why they can’t just alert the students by text the night before, or early enough in the morning that they can go in if they need to is beyond me.
We’re currently at the end of the first week and happily, Andrew found out yesterday that he has been selected to have his oral exam in history, which is the subject he wanted. It also means that, once his exam is over, he will be finished and won’t have to go back in. There will be a graduation ceremony, but for me, as well as for him, it really will be the end of an era.
On Wednesday, John and I went to Ann’s to shear her sheep, at least John sheared them and I started and stopped the shearing machine. Despite it being quite chilly in the barn, John was quickly sweating. Shearing sheep is a very physical job. Goodness knows how it feels to be a sheep with winter-thick wool that is taken off all at once, but I should imagine it is both something of a shock and a relief at the same time.
Anna and her girlfriend Lauren are coming here on Monday, which I am very much looking forward to. I considered taking time off as flexitime, but having had to work the last time I booked that, I decided to take a holiday, just to be sure! It was odd being back at work for four days and hard to get my teeth into anything, though it’s great to see that my new colleague, Ingrid, is settling in well and picking things up very quickly. It looks like it is going to be a bit warmer this week, at least, which is good as it would be a sad introduction to the North of Norway for Lauren if it was still snowing in June, as it was on and off, right up to the end of May. And so, I am going to sign off as there is lots to do. I hope you all have a good week.
This is going to be something of a scattergun post. I’m sitting in the SAS lounge in the international area of Oslo Airport, though not in the true inner sanctum of the Diamond and Gold cardholders. I bid for an upgrade (it seems several airlines do this now) and got it for my Oslo – Bardufoss flight. As upgrading that flight was cheaper than upgrading the Manchester – Oslo flight, I thought I’d be limited to the domestic lounge, but cheekily tried the international one and, to my surprise, was waved on through. There’s unlimited food in here, so with nine hours to kill, it’s probably cheaper than paying for a couple of meals and drinks.
Anyway, most of this post will be photographs from my holiday. I don’t have my computer, so I’m not going to type much, but I hope you enjoy a whizz through of a walk along Water Lane and a tour of Skipton Castle.
Firstly a walk with my dad. It was a gorgeous evening and we wandered across green fields and over stone stiles to get to the lovely, shadowed Water Lane.
There were birds singing in the trees, and though we didn’t see them, I stopped to identify some of them using the Merlin birdsounds app. There were chaffinches, blackbirds and a robin, which I wouldn’t have known without the app. I recommend downloading it, if you’ve ever wondered which bird was singing.
We left Water Lane and turned onto Lodge Road. So many flowers, though as a vet, I definitely wouldn’t recommend making hay or silage with all those buttercups.
Skipton Castle was interesting. There are very few ancient buildings in Norway, due to the custom of building using wood. I love exploring old, stone buildings, especially in summer, when the thick walls and small windows make for cool, shady protection from the sun.
We stopped for a very English cup of tea in the Castle grounds. With hindsight, I should have stuck to plain Yorkshire Tea. Instead I plumped for Chai tea. I think there was a bit too much water for the single teabag…
Add in a book fair:
And some Elderflower Cordial (beside attractively presented bird and insect supplies) in the garden behind the Victoria Hall, where the book fair was held…
It’s been an interesting week. I’ll start with an update on the water situation. The temporary fix with the tank and pump failed on Sunday due to an airlock. Sunday wasn’t great, but the main concern was still that it might be tough and costly to get the problem sorted out.
On Monday, the representative for the insurance company came back and quickly fixed the airlock (this time I remembered to ask him how he did it. After that, he went off to speak to the owner of the house nearest the well. He called me back about an hour later. Apparently the other house owner had actually begun to run out of water on Friday evening, but despite having our phone number, he hadn’t thought to tell us. There was an ice bridge blocking the stream further up, which meant the well had gradually emptied. Our water disappeared first because our pipe was highest up. So the mystery was solved and (thank goodness) no major digging works were required. So all in all, a bit inconvenient, but several lessons learned about where everything is and what to check if it happens again!
We had an interesting case at the abattoir on Wednesday. Some animals were sent in that were thin enough to set the alarm bells ringing, not only in me, but in the abattoir workers that work with the live animals. It’s almost a physical punch to see animals that are so obviously struggling. It’s quite a big job when we start to document such a case. I took a number of photographs while the animals were still in the pen, though I was worried enough about them that I didn’t go in and stir them up. The last thing I want to do is cause any additional distress.
I asked the animal handlers to call me back when the time came for the animals to be slaughtered. That way, I could photograph and handle them when they were already restrained. I then went back and sent messages to Hilde and Thomas. This case was serious enough to warrant immediate follow up.
I came back to examine the animals as they were being brought onto the line. It wasn’t reassuring. Close up, the animals were distressingly thin. The animal handlers obviously felt the same as I did and while it was upsetting, at least I was doing my utmost to make sure we had plenty of evidence.
The farm where the animals came from has been on our radar for a while, but things had been improving, so this was a real blow. But there was a curveball on the way, because after the animals had been killed, it was discovered that quite a large percentage of them had very unpleasant looking lung lesions.
Having spent some time inspecting the lungs, it was obvious we needed to find out what disease this was. So having photographed the carcasses and the lungs (evidence of everything must be recorded) I sent off various samples to the lab. It doesn’t sound so much when I write it down, but with all the extra tasks in addition to my normal work, it ended up being a ten hour working day. I spoke to Hilde and Thomas after I had finished and Thomas had already set up a visit for the next day.
I had been planning to catch up on some paperwork on Thursday as Ann was coming in to cover my morning shift, but I really wanted to be involved in the follow-up and so, mentally casting aside the reindeer overtime fees calculation checks I had been sent, I asked Thomas if I could join him and he agreed.
Though the thinness of the animals had been distressing, the farm visit was actually somewhat reassuring. There were thin animals there as well, and though things weren’t perfect, various steps were being taken. The grass is starting to grow now, so some of the problems will resolve once the animals are back outside and major plans for improvement are under way. But now we also have to throw in the possibility of some kind of infection on the farm. Once we know what caused the lung problems, then we will have to work out how to manage the problem. That could involve anything from a new vaccination program, right up to mass culling. Either way, we will be offering whatever support we can to the farmer, who has already expressed himself as being very grateful for any insight we can give on what’s going wrong.
This is the kind of work I signed up for when I chose to be a vet. I know there are times when it is incredibly heavy work, but at the end of the day, this really is what I want to be doing.
But as you can see from the photo at the top of the page, I am now a very long way from all that. I flew into Manchester yesterday, into the chaos of a failure in the electronic passport system. Having survived that, I am now back in beautiful Yorkshire, where the summer is coming in. There are fat, healthy cattle in the field behind the house and everything in the garden is beginning to bloom. And now I can hear that mum and dad are up and the kettle is on, so I will drop a few photos here and then go and join them. Have a lovely week everyone!
Sunrise/sunset: 01:04/00:24 Daylength: Up all day from today
There were two bank holidays this week, on Wednesday and Thursday. The first was 17th May, which is Norway’s national day. This was my first 17th May as a Norwegian citizen, so perhaps we should have celebrated in style and gone out to watch a parade, but it was raining heavily in the morning when we got up and so we decided to celebrate at home. There was a Norwegian flag in the house when we moved in, so we put it into the flag holder near the front door, then we had a relaxing day and ate Norway’s standard fare on 17th May of hotdogs and ice cream!
John’s girlfriend, Joana, came to stay overnight and celebrated with us and she and John made the hotdogs between them, including toasting the rolls, which I confess, we normally never do, but it did add an extra dimension of deliciousness.
On the evening of 17th May, I noticed a concerning change in the water pressure of the taps. I went to bed, hoping that it was a temporary blip and would all be okay in the morning, but it wasn’t. Instead, the pressure fell further, to the point where the toilet cistern didn’t fill and there was only a trickle coming from the taps. Given that it was still a bank holiday, we decided that we would probably be okay until Friday.
Though it was relatively easy to get some drinking water, I was in something of a dilemma about the toilet. I was trying to work out whether I should walk to get some buckets of water from a stream, when I remembered that there was still a source of water, right there in the back garden. Though most of the snow has melted, there was still a pile behind the garage. And so I went out with my bucket and spade, and for the last time this winter, I started digging snow.
Despite the heated bathroom floor, it took a surprising amount of time for the snow to melt, but when it did, we were able to flush the toilet again, thank goodness!
Friday dawned and then began the chase to try and find a plumber who was working. As you can imagine, with bank holidays on Wednesday and Thursday, a lot of people in all walks of life took the Friday off and the local plumbers were no exception. I messaged a few when I woke in the morning as some of them didn’t start until ten, even on a normal Friday, but I got no response and the ones I did phone didn’t answer, even though it was in their normal Friday working hours.
Fortunately, one kind plumber, Hugo Nordaas, actually rang me back. He was working all day in a shop, he told me, but would come out afterwards. I asked him whether I should continue trying to find someone else in the meantime, and he said yes, but to let him know if I still wanted him to come out. I had barely had time to start, when my phone rang again. Hugo had contacted someone else, who was on their way to me.
The young man who arrived didn’t seem very confident, but he assessed the situation and came up with a solution, which, I think, he checked with a colleague on the phone. I guess I’d better explain a bit more about our water system before going further, because I’m assuming the vast majority of you reading this have mains water, so if the supply dries up, workers magically appear and start trying to fix the issue. There is no mains water, out where I live, despite it being on a main road. Our water supply is private and comes from a “well” on someone else’s land. I hadn’t realised, until we went there, just how far away we were from the water source. I guess my house was built when there were very few other houses in the valley, so building a pipe from another house’s well was still probably cheaper than building a separate well.
You are probably wondering why I have put the word “well” in quotation marks the first time I used it. I don’t think there is really another translation for “brønn” than “well” but it isn’t a well in the way I would think of one. In the UK, a well is dug deep in the ground until the ground water is revealed. Usually it’s circular and very deep. Here in Norway, it’s common for water to be taken from an inlet in a stream or river, and that is what our “well” is.
And so, with thoughts that the long pipe bringing water from the well the house might be blocked, the plumber’s first action was to return to base to collect a pump and some water. He then pumped water back up the pipe in the hope that, if it was a frog or a mouse in the pipe, it would be pushed out of the top end and (hopefully) washed away. I thought, for a moment, as water gushed back out of the pipe, that he had been successful, but after a fairly short time, it slowed again to a trickle and we were back at square one.
The next step, he explained to me, was to go up to the well and check the inlet valve, to make sure it wasn’t blocked up with anything. That was a likely scenario, he said, as there has been so much meltwater in recent weeks. The snow certainly has melted fast this year and there was a lot of it. He was going to go away now, he said, and once I had checked, I should call him back if there was still a problem.
I got into the car and drove along to the house of the well owner. We had been there on Thursday and they had told us their water in their house was running as normal. They had also told us that the well might not be easy to access yet, as there could still be snow. It was also Friday now, and a working day, so I wasn’t sure there would be anybody in. Under these circumstances, which meant it could be several hours before we could get an answer, the plumber going away seemed not unreasonable. Quite unexpectedly though, the young man who opened the door told us that he had actually gone up and checked the well. Everything looked okay with it, he said, the entrance to our outlet pipe included.
I had expected it might be hours before we found out (I didn’t know where the well actually was, so we couldn’t have checked it ourselves) but in actual fact it was only a few minutes. Knowing that the plumber wouldn’t even be back in Finnsnes, I called him and told him the news, but instead of coming back, he told me he didn’t know what to do next and would have to consult with colleagues.
I waited for an hour and a half, but hadn’t heard anything. Given that it was now Friday afternoon and the weekend was coming up, with the thought in my head of having no flushing toilet and only a trickle of cold water all weekend, I sent him a message, asking whether he thought we perhaps needed to contact someone with a camera to check the pipe or even just that he could perhaps come back with someone more experienced, but despite the fact that my phone said the message had been delivered, after another hour and a half, I hadn’t heard anything back.
Had he been older, I might have waited longer, but I can remember being a young vet with not much experience, trying out my limited skills and, on not finding a solution, sending the clients home with something to try, and then booking them back for another evening when I wasn’t on duty, so that someone else would (hopefully) deal with it. I understand that feeling of being out of your depth and hoping the problem will resolve itself, and also the lack of client skills that make it easier not to call with updates, even if you are trying to organise something. I didn’t know which it was, but I thought that if I left it, I might well find myself stuck. It had been almost impossible to find someone earlier, and time was getting short. And so I rang the one number that I knew would result in action, which was the emergency number for the insurance company.
Last time I discussed Norwegian insurance, I raved about how good they were and how much better they were at paying out than UK insurance companies. My faith was slightly shaken after the last time, as they decided the problem with my drainage pipes had happened before I bought the house, and therefore they decided that they weren’t liable, however experience said that they would certainly get things moving and indeed they did.
They provide an advisor, who will get in touch with the relevant people for you. They know all the numbers to call and probably warrant more attention from busy workers than an unknown number. In no time at all, the young plumber was back and this time he had someone from another company with him. Now they had lots of water, which I understood they were going to try to pump through again, which I think they did, to no avail. But having not resolved the problem, this time they set up a temporary solution. We now have an 800L water tank in the garden and a pump outside my bedroom window to pump it into the house. It isn’t drinking water, but at least we have enough now so that we can flush the toilet and have showers over the weekend.
Working through the weekend was probably out of the question. I think most British people will probably be raising their eyebrows at that, but in Norway, lots of things have to wait, and here in the north, the pace of life is much slower, even than in the south west of Norway, where I used to live. They did give me a future outline this time, which is something a client should never be left without. On Monday, the advisor will come out and will hopefully explain more about what’s going to happen. It seems that the likeliest scenario is that there has been some shifting of the earth, which has resulted in the pipe becoming kinked or possibly broken. The plumbers seemed to think it might be necessary to dig up the entire length of the pipe, but I am hoping that there will be a better solution. There must be means for finding where pipes run, other than digging all the way from one end or the other. Hopefully on Monday, I will find out.
But for now, as I said before, there is a pump outside my bedroom window, with a plug leading through the window. I have to switch it off at night, but while it’s on, the window has to be open. I’m hoping that they find a better solution before the first big wave of man-eating mosquitoes arrives.
I guess that living up here, with the extremes of the weather, there will always be more wear and tear on property than in more temperate climes. There’s always a risk, buying a house, but it would be a near impossible situation if I end up with a bill running into tens of thousands of kroner, or worse. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the insurance will cover it. I also go on holiday next Friday and John is going away to do some lambing for the weekend, so I hope that I won’t have to leave Andrew on his own without everything being under control. I will keep you updated as things unfold, but for now, I wish you a happy weekend.
There’s only a week and a day to go until we have 24 hour daylight again. I just counted the number of weeks between Polar Night and Midnight Sun and it was only seventeen weeks. No wonder life here is a whirlwind of changing light patterns. The snow is in serious melting mode. There’s a lot of mud now, and puddles, rushing streams and brown, brown grass. The trees are still bare and, until a couple of days ago, it looked as if everything was dead. But in those couple of days, there has been a subtle change. Wherever you look, if the snow has been gone for a few days, there are signs that the regrowth has begun. The coltsfoot flowers at the top of the page are first to arrive, but as well as their yellow, there are tufts of green grassy plants and patches of ruby red. It will still take a bit more time to get going, but by the beginning of June, everything will be growing rampantly. Sadly, this will include mosquitoes that grow to the size of elephants, but you can’t have everything!
I got in touch with a dear friend of mine from Scotland this week and was terribly saddened to hear that she is going through something unimaginably tough right now. I could feel her pain and I so much wish that I could be closer. If you are reading, my friend, you have been in my thoughts all the time since we spoke. It did give me a sense of perspective however, over my own problems and yet my wonderful friend still found the time to say how frustrated she had felt on my behalf in recent weeks. I have made some amazing friends over the years and I its at times like this that I most wish I was back in the UK.
It’s been generally a good week at work, though I had a day and a half off on Monday and Tuesday as my left eyelid suddenly swelled up and turned red and hot. Norwegian doctors are rightly reluctant to hand out antibiotics, but I rolled up at the surgery mid-morning on Monday (as I had started to feel more generally unwell) and I was given topical antibiotics in the form of chloramphenicol eye ointment. I had half expected to be told to try paracetamol (given that physiotherapy – Norwegian doctors’ other staple – probably doesn’t apply here). The ointment does seem to have helped, though my eyelid looks a bit red again this morning. Hopefully it will do the trick, though having smeary gunk all round my left eye for half the day isn’t the best look.
Anyway, back to the rest of the week, I was delighted to be working alongside my new colleague Ingrid. Ingrid has taken over my old job in Finnsnes and will be spending some of her time at the abattoir and some of her time out in the field with Thomas. I hope she’s enjoyed her week with us as much as I enjoyed having her there. Obviously working in an abattoir isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but we try our best to be friendly and welcoming and I am doing my utmost to ensure she gets plenty of help and guidance. Starting a new job can be incredibly tough if you don’t get enough support. She wasn’t originally planning to come back next week, but I invited her to come a couple of days to work with Konstantin and she has agreed, so we must have done something right!
I had one of those 24 hour blood pressure tests done from Thursday to Friday. Surprisingly, having my arm squeezed every half hour didn’t disrupt my sleep too much. I confess that I took a sneak peak at the results and I’m fairly sure the doctor is going to tell me I have to do something about my blood pressure as it’s a bit higher than it ought to be. I hope he will give me practical advice and help me lose weight, get de-stressed and exercise more, rather than going straight for drugs, but I guess it will depend on how bad it actually is. I’ve been comfort eating more than I should in the past months and have been virtually hibernating through the snowy winter, so it’s not that surprising, but working out how to tackle it, while theoretically easy, will be mentally difficult. Still, if anyone needs an incentive to lose weight and get moving, it’s me. I know that if I do, I will feel better. Get the whip out and give me a hand please!
It’s only a couple of weeks now, until I’m going on another holiday to the UK. I am visiting Mum and Dad in Yorkshire, so hopefully we will spend a relaxing week exploring castles and trying not to eat too many fish and chips. April and May have so many bank holidays in Norway that they usually seem to fly by. This coming week, we have Wednesday and Thursday off. Wednesday is 17th May, which is Norway’s national day and Thursday is Ascension Day, which is quite a random day to have off, but no complaints from me. It’s supposed to get up to 19 degrees this week, so hopefully we have had the last of the snow for this winter. I will need to go and get the summer tyres put on my car, and other celebratory summer things!
I have the strangest feeling, at the moment, that the river of life is plunging forwards while I am treading water. Everything seems to be happening at speed and I feel as if I’m being carried forward. I’m keeping my head above water and have been doing so for some time, but that is all I have the energy for. It probably sounds horrible, but somehow it isn’t. I am being carried in a direction I want to go, and if I keep treading water, I will get there.
That probably sounds odd or fanciful, but the reality is that I was dragged quite low by the winter and the whole Mr Abusive saga, but I have coped and now things are heading in a better direction. Having lived quite a long time now, I recognise these feelings: though getting older certainly intensifies the tiredness. When I was younger, it would have taken a much longer time to analyse and recover, I think, but I know that this is what life is like. There are ups and downs, and sometimes we have to ride through them.
There has been so much to do at work recently, that there hasn’t been time to do anything but the basic tasks that keep everything ticking over. I think I touched on the number of people who were signed off sick a couple of weeks back, but my two trustworthy and knowledgeable colleagues, Trude and Konstantin, were both on sick leave at the same time and that was in addition to two other colleagues who have been absent for a long time. So over Easter, I was was first in line with responsibility for everything that went on in the abattoir. All the routine tasks that normally are done without me really noticing them, were mine to remember. There were checklists and post-it notes everywhere!
Konstantin unfortunately become sick with Covid during his holiday. He was due to come back on Tuesday, though I hadn’t put him in the rota until Thursday as I thought he might need travelling time; he had driven home to Latvia, rather than flying. On Monday, I had intended to work in the Finnsnes office as I had a dentist’s appointment, but I knew that if any animals had been emergency slaughtered over the weekend, I would likely have to drive to the abattoir to check them as there was nobody else to do it. When the message came in that there were four cattle that had been brought in over the weekend, it became a certainty that I would have to go. Four is the maximum capacity for the room where the carcases are hung, so leaving them wasn’t really an option. Driving to the abattoir and carrying out post mortem controls on four animals would have taken a massive chunk out of my working day.
Imagine my surprise then, when Konstantin’s face appeared on the screen in the Teams meeting first thing in the morning. He had come back a day early! With Konstantin back, he would take the emergency slaughter cattle and any other bits and bobs that aren’t very big or difficult, but nonetheless are time consuming. There were a million things I probably should have caught up on, but having gone to the dentist’s (my teeth are in good order, apparently – very well cleaned!) and seen what a lovely day it was, I decided to take the afternoon off. The picture at the top of the page was taken on my way home. Not that I did much, but it was lovely just to kick back and relax.
And now, with Konstantin and Trude back, I finally have some time on my hands again. By happy coincidence, Mattilsynet have finally got their act together and have completed the training course to become an Official Veterinarian in the abattoir. The abattoir is officially not meant to run without one, so I have been acting as one anyway, but it will be lovely if I can finally qualify! There are suddenly four new modules to get through, most of which I can tackle in between other work, but the last module was a task that was only announced recently. As part of the role, I will perform various annual audits in the abattoir and this year’s is a hygiene audit. Though I’ve passed the auditing exam, I need to observe at least three audits before I can qualify. I’ve been struggling to find any to observe and so, when I saw the task in the last module was to observe a hygiene audit, I was quite worried that I wouldn’t manage it before the August deadline.
Happily I have contacts down in south west Norway, where I used to work part time for Mattilsynet. I contacted my old boss, who sounded very pleased to hear from me. Better still, there is a hygiene audit next week down in Egersund and so, on Monday I am flying down to Stavanger, then taking the train to Egersund, where I will meet up with some of the lovely people I used to work with. It will be spring down there, I think. I’m hoping for some sunshine. I’ve already started looking through some of the paperwork for the audit and I think I’m going to learn a lot.
The big melt is underway. It has been above zero for more than a week now, although there has been an overnight blip. I woke this morning to a light dusting of snow. I know some people reading this live in snowy places, but most do not. My mum asked me a couple of weeks ago, after a few days of warmer weather, whether the snow was gone yet and I had to tell her that it was still higher than the car roof. It takes weeks for it to go away and afterwards, another couple of weeks for the earth to begin to warm up and for plants to grow, despite the already long days.
The picture at the top of the page was taken yesterday morning, behind the house. It was difficult to photograph, but there is a newly formed river and lake just beyond the garden. No wonder, with the amount of rain that has been coming down. Coupled with the melting snow, there is going to be a significant amount of water gathering for the next few weeks.
Of course, as with any such major change, there is a lot of work to be done. Not particularly for me (I have to decide when to change from winter tyres to summer, which is always a lottery as it can snow into May) but for those fixing the roads, which are badly cracked this year, and also builders and anyone else whose jobs are limited by the weather, the next few months will be crazy. I will have to contact the plumber again soon, to see whether he can fit me in while entry to the foundations is not blocked by a metre of snow . I’ve also contacted an electrician, who hopefully is coming out to look at my museum-piece fuse box, with a view to installing something a bit more up-to-date! The current one is not as old as Per and Tor, as the house was only built in the early 80s, but perhaps they’d have been more familiar with its design than I was when I moved in!
I don’t really have much idea how much it will cost, and perhaps it won’t be possible now, but there are a few fixes I would really like to get done, and this is one of them. At the moment, we can’t run the washing machine twice in a short period and if we use the oven and plates too enthusiastically, dinner ends up being very slow.
I’m going to give what will probably be the final update in the Mr Abusive saga. I didn’t mention last time, but about ten minutes after the electronic letter arrived, Mr Abusive’s wife sent a demand for the money on my phone. This, I recognised, was the first part of a process, by which they have to give various warnings before contacting the bailiffs. As far as I can work out, they have to send a demand first, with two week’s notice, then a warning that they will be referring me for debt collection, with another two week’s grace. That is the minimum, but they are allowed to send various letters, ramping up the charges with each, and for every day I don’t pay, interest would be added on. The bailiffs in Norway are the police, and they have the power to take money from my bank, so Mr Abusive had the full force of Norwegian law and power behind him, based entirely on Husleietvistutvalget’s faulty decisions.
I hope you are not bored, but when I say faulty, I do mean it. The clearest example was that, for carrying out cleaning himself (rather than employing a professional company) he charged me 600kr per hour. This seemed a huge amount, when an inexperienced cleaner in Norway only earns 210kr per hour. My feeling that this was off, was backed up when I read various other Husleietvistutvalget cases. Most landlords only ask for between 200 and 250kr per hour. In another case, the landlord asked for 350k per hour and was firmly told that was too high. His fee was reduced to 212kr per hour. The other decisions were also faulty. For example, Mr Abusive alleges he had to throw out a rug because of ingrained dog hair, but the picture he staged (presumably by emptying the vaccuum cleaner over it) showed a mass of unvacuumed hair and dust. Legally, he is required to attempt to clean it before throwing it out, but there was no evidence he had. It really was like that through the whole case.
Currently, a group of students in Oslo have the papers and I hope they will give me their thoughts on the legalities, but I will be making a complaint, one way or another. Not that it is easy to do so. Every letter I send out from Mattilsynet contains details on how to challenge the decisions I’ve made. There is literally no official pathway to complain about Husleietvistutvalget, and even the information about which government department might have some responsibility for overseeing it is carefully obscured. That the only official channel for challenging it is taking it to court means that those without money are unable to get justice. I hadn’t expected to find myself here in Norway. There’s an assumption that tenants (and women) are well protected here, but this is the second time I’ve found out that I am not and I can’t deny that it has changed my view of Norwegian “justice”.
Anyway, unless my complaint results in something positive happening, I won’t be updating again. Though it’s enough to have an impact on what I can do to improve the house, I am not about to go bankrupt. I will move on, given time, but that’s a story for another day.
It’s not a very beautiful time here, when the snow is melting, but I took some photos anyway. As the huge piles of scraped snow melt, they turn black as the grit that was scraped up with them is left behind. There are a lot of septic tanks around here (I have one) and I should imagine that, as the water levels rise, they must all flood. There was something very brown deposited on the ice in a melting river I found yesterday. No smell, but I did wonder. Snow is beautiful. Its retreat: not so much!
Back in January this year, the day before my birthday, I received an unexpected request through the “Comments” function of this website.
“Hi Sarah.” it read.
“I’ve been following your blog for quite some time now and look forward to seeing your posts to start my weekends.
“I’m sorting through old papers and have found an illustrated book called Norge I Fest that my mother was given in 1945 by a Norwegian friend who was in London during WW2. If you would like it, I’d like to send it to you as you are probably the only person I know who would appreciate it!”
I was very touched by this. I know that many people reading my blog are family and friends, but there are also a number of people I have never met who pop in every week to find out what I’ve been up to. It’s a wonderful feeling to know that what I write is interesting enough to draw in people with whom I have no previous connection. I love reading the comments people leave and especially those who come here regularly, but this was something new.
It was signed “Kind regards, Mary” and invited me to get in contact and so I did.
Due to a cyber attack on the Royal Mail, it was a few weeks until Mary was able to send Norge I Fest, but it was sent in early February and right at the end of February, I was able to pick it up from the post office.
I opened it to find that Mary had sent me the most beautiful letter of the kind that I’ve only really ever read about in books: on proper writing paper, creamy white and thick with neatly printed paragraphs and a handwritten signature.
Mary wrote:
“My mother came from a large, predominantly Irish family in London; mostly women (mothers, aunts, sisters, cousins) and very strong, even formidable ones at that! But it was a warm and loving environment, where all the households welcomed the ‘boys’ serving in WW2. Amongst these young men were two Norwegians, Per and Tor. I have no idea about their surnames or even whereabouts in Norway they called home. My mother talked fondly of them but there were no romantic feelings on her side – I always got the impression though that Tor in particular was rather keen on her.”
This wonderful, background information added so much colour. Norge I Fest, I had found before the book arrived, started with a photograph of the German surrender to Norway and then followed with pictures of the festivals and parades that followed in May and June, 1945. The real thing, when it arrived, was so much more.
In the front of the book was this inscription.
I turned the page, and found that Tor had added a translation of the title. I was interested to see that he translated it as “The happy Norway” rather than “Norway in Celebration” which is how I think it would be translated now.
As I flipped through the pages, I was touched to see that Tor had gone through and translated many of the captions of the pictures. Normally writing in a book would seem like sacrilege, but here I was, reading words, written over seventy five years ago, by a young man who had been stationed in the UK during World War Two, who had gone home when the war had ended and had felt enough for the young woman he had met to send her a book from his homeland.
A few pictures from the book; this one, “The Homeforces on parade for H.M. The King.” is the only one that is in colour.
And this one documents “A historical moment. The Germans surrendering to the Homeforces at the Fort Akershus.”
There are many different photos of the festivities around Norway as King Haakon VII and Crown Prince Olav toured the country, from the far north, right down to the southern tip. Here are pictures of the crowds around the distinctive town hall in Oslo, a parade headed by a car in Stavanger and the celebratory scenes in Bergen.
There are also some phtos that were taken much closer to home as the Crown Prince visited Tromsø, passed through Bardufoss and Sørreisa to Harstad, then on down to Narvik.
As I read the book, I found myself wondering how Per and Tor must have felt during the war. Norway was occupied by the Germans from the 9th April 1940 until the 8th of May in 1945. Would Per and Tor have been stranded in the UK? How homesick must they have felt? It is hard to imagine, so long ago, when any communication could have only occurred by post or telegram.
Would they even have been able to write home or receive news of their families? How wonderful though, that they found some comfort amongst the strong Irish women in Mary’s family.
On looking through her mother’s photo album from the war years, Mary found something even more precious: a picture of Per and Tor with Mary’s mother’s cousin Norah, taken in Hyde Park in 1945.
It’s not certain which is Per and which is Tor. Though Mary’s mother generally wrote the names in order when labelling photographs, there is a handwritten inscription on the back of this one with the names the other way round.
And so, I will probably never know any more about Per and Tor, though of course if anyone recognises them, I would be delighted to hear. But I cannot express how happy it makes me to have been sent this wonderful piece of history, with its fascinating back story. The the photograph and the lovingly translated, handwritten comments make it feel so much more personal than if it was only the book itself.
So thank you Mary. I know you will be reading this. I hope I have done it justice. And though I know it is highly unlikely, it would be wonderful to find out what became of these two young men after they returned home. I hope that they had happy and successful lives after the end of the upheaval. If any of my Norwegian friends wanted to share the post on social media, I would be very grateful.
A Vet’s Life 