I spent the first part of this week in Tromsø with John and his girlfriend Yoana. Although the weather was much duller than it was in Stavanger and Sørreisa, we still managed a drive out onto Kvaløya, which lies on the seaward side of Tromsø, over one of the arching, concrete bridges that are typical of the area. The sea was blue-grey under a sullen sky, with patches of turquoise closer to the sandy beaches, scattered along the rocky coastline.
This was an old schoolhouse in the village of Rekvik. The blue plaque says it was used as a school from 1916 to 1975, and it was used as community housing for evacuees in 1944-45.
And of course, a bit of local wildlife…
John, Yoana and I went out for lunch in a grill restaurant near the hurtigboat harbour in Tromsø on my last day. As with most meals, especially in the more northern parts of Norway, it was very meat-centric but delicious nonetheless.
I flew back to the UK on Wednesday and am spending the last few days of my holiday in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales. I have been madly taking photos because there is so much colour here. I hope you enjoy the contrast between the wild and austere Norwegian landscape and the cosiness of the Dales!
I finally made it out of bed on Monday, just in time to go back to work. By Tuesday, I was on the road again as I made my way to Edinburgh for a conference, where APHA staff from all over Scotland came together to meet and learn.
When I drove over to Stranraer, I was craving memories and was rather disappointed at the lack of familiarity. Although I grew up in Penicuik, which is not very far from Edinburgh, and that I went to university in Edinburgh, it hadn’t crossed my mind to hope for something similar. It hadn’t crossed my mind that our route wouldn’t take us on the featureless motorway network, but rather through a load of places that were embedded deeply from my childhood.
We passed through West Linton, then Carlops: familiar names and places from long ago. But it was when we reached Nine Mile Burn, where you can turn off to drive to Penicuik, that I had that sudden feeling of nostalgia.
My adult life has been interesting, but I was fortunate enough to have a very happy childhood. One of my sweetest memories is of climbing onto a low hanging tree bough and sitting in dappled sunlight with my friend, Sharon. We had been watching Robin of Sherwood, Sharon had pictures of Michael Praed on her wall and we were at the age when everything still seemed possible. If there was one moment in my life that I could go back and relive, I am fairly sure that would be the one I would choose as it is so unsullied. A young man fractured my mind at university and by the time I was 25 I’d had skin cancer twice and I think that’s why that memory of unsullied innocence is so precious. I’d love to relive it with Sharon, but she also got cancer and she didn’t make it.
Goodness, I hadn’t expected this to take such a sorrowful turn, but those sweet, sweet memories do come with a hefty dose of melancholy. Anyway, the road carried on past Nine Mile Burn and we passed Silverburn, where my parents once considered buying the farmhouse. It was run down then, but now looks very smart. And then the Pentland Hills were on my left and those really were my old stomping ground. I remember some names: Carnethy, Scald Law, East and West Kip. Scald law was the highest hill, but we more often walked up Carnethy, or took the path over between the hills to a wonderful waterfall, though I don’t remember its name.
Pentland Hills – I think this one is Scald Law, but feel free to correct me!
The hotel in Edinburgh was very pleasant, though very much a typical, identikit modern hotel, with no distinguishing features. I’m still at the stage where there’s lots to learn, so there was plenty of new information to pick up. I enjoyed the evening meal, although the milk chocolate cheesecake, which I expected to be a sweet and fluffy concoction was more like a dark chocolate brick of solidity that even I couldn’t finish.
The conference ran from lunchtime on Tuesday to lunchtime on Wednesday, then on Thursday I had to go to Ayr to have a mask-fitting appointment. This was to check whether I can use the FFP3 masks at work safely. This involved having a mask on, which was attached to a tube which monitored the air I was breathing, while performing various manoeuvres. As this involved marching on the spot, while moving my head around in various ways, and then counting out loud, while trying to breathe normally, it was quite a challenge, given that I am still coughing after being ill, but I survived without falling over, and now I am officially allowed to use a mask if I have to check out any sick chickens.
Much as I love travelling (especially those identikit hotels) and consider it a definite perk of my job, I am rather looking forward to next week, when the most distant visit I have booked in is to Castle Douglas.
I’ve probably gone a bit quiet about my house buying. Compared to an international move, it’s very low key, but I’m now at the stage when all the papers have to be signed, I have to show where the money for my deposit is coming from, and I have to arrange to shift my accounts with all my providers from one house to the other, while leaving an overlap as I don’t want to move everything on one single day. I’m quite excited about buying a house, but it doesn’t quite seem real yet, even though the intended date of exchange is less than two weeks away.
You know, I write these blogs mostly to keep in touch with people, but I sometimes think they will end up being a bit like a diary. Maybe one day in the future, I’ll look back and all the memories will come flooding back. My mind feels odd at the moment. Part of me is chugging onwards, being quite competent, learning lots of stuff, but it’s overlaid with a feeling of there being too much going on. It’s not perturbing me too much, but I do have a sense that there is chaos rushing all around me, while I just wander through it, waiting for everything to settle. I write this weekly and I can’t tell whether any of that feeling is coming across, or whether what I write is as scattergun as it sometimes feels. This week, I volunteered to work as a vet at the Royal Highland Show, and I can’t yet tell if that will turn out to be a marvellous opportunity or a daunting responsibility. Maybe both! Still, you know me. I tend to grab what comes my way and worry about the consequences later.
Anyway, as usual, thanks to anyone who made it this far. I hope you have a good week, and I will leave you with a couple of pictures of Biggar, where we went on school trips to the street museum. I was intrigued by the tiny scarlet door in the first building. I presume the road and pavement have been built up over the years, but anyone using that door would really have to watch their head! See you next week.
A few more things have been sorted out this week. I checked my UK bank account last weekend and my first paycheck has arrived in the bank. That meant I could go into my local branch and set up a standing order for my rent. The teller did point out I could have done it online, and in time I will work on that because I know I’ll have to, but for now it’s a novelty to have an actual branch I can go into and people I can speak to that doesn’t involve a thirty hour drive to get there.
I’m enjoying the small things. I stopped at Tebay services on the way up the M6 and drank a coffee looking at the view. By the time I turned off the motorway and onto the A75, the sunset had turned into a line of liquid fire on the horizon, so I stopped for a moment and stepped out of the car into the frosty evening to capture it.
I completed my first welfare case at the beginning of the week. Hopping from tuft to tuft in a churned up field on a (fortunately) frosty morning taught me how unfit I am. The animals were in good order though, which is the most important thing. My colleague C came with me and she did something I had never once done in Norway, which was to ask the farmer if we could feed back our findings to the person who had complained.
So for the first time ever, I sent an e-mail message to the person who had sent in the report, explaining that what we had seen was normal for extensively farmed animals in Scotland. Muddy fields may not be ideal, but given the climate, they are inevitable and the animals are probably still better off outside. Housing them brings different problems. The law is different here regarding shelter. In Norway, some kind of building with walls on three sides was required. Here the shelter can be from dry stone walls, trees and features of the landscape and that is because the weather here is not so harsh.
C has been taking me out and about and has also been taking me to a few local haunts for meals along the way. We’d headed out so early for my welfare visit that I hadn’t eaten breakfast. We stopped on the way back to the office and I had coffee and an almond croissant in The Frothy Bike Co. in Dumfries. I’ve never been in a combined bike shop and cafe before, but there’s a first time for everything!
I also did some socializing, meeting up with old friends and new. On Monday evening, I drove up to Larkhall to meet Lara. I worked with Lara before moving to Norway and though I we hadn’t met for years, she was with me online at various significant moments, including helping me to write during Covid and being with me on Facebook messenger as I shakily typed in my first bid on the house I bought. We took a punt on a bar I found on TripAdvisor – the Applebank Inn. The food was good, the company great. Hopefully there will be a repeat performance in due course.
I also attended a writers group on Wednesday. It’s six months since I did any writing other than this blog and I made a pact with someone else who was struggling to make a start before the next meeting in two weeks time.
Yesterday I finally got Wi-Fi at home, and along with it, Netflix. Last night, I binge watched Fool Me Once., though I haven’t reached the end. This weekend will be the first time I’ve stayed in Dumfries, rather than heading down to Yorkshire. I have made myself a shopping list, which includes items like measuring jugs and a chest of drawers. Half my life is still in boxes at the moment and I need to find a cooking and eating regime that works for one person. I suppose I’d better buy in a few stock food items as well. They keep threatening snow on the weather forecasts and though getting snowed in here is highly unlikely, I’d look a bit of a numpty if I moved down from the Arctic, only to go hungry in Southwest Scotland because I didn’t buy in a few cans of beans.
After days and days of rain, I woke last Saturday to one of those beautiful wintery days when the fields are pale with frost and the low sun glows golden over the world. Triar and I set out to walk along Watery Lane, which as you can see, lives up to its name.
Watery Lane runs between two, mossy dry stone walls and is lined by trees, which were mostly bare, though the floor of the lane was thickly strewn with fallen leaves.
We turned past the barns onto Lodge Lane and as we descended towards the road, a farmer drove by in his tractor. To my surprise, he grinned and waved cheerily as he passed, which improved my day even more.
I had asked my parents to take me to a garden centre. I wanted to grab a bit of Christmas spirit before the end of my time off, so they took me to Holden Clough near Clitheroe. Having previously visited Stephen H. Smith’s Garden Centre in Otley, which was filled with baubles and tinsel, like a series of Christmas grottos, Holden Clough was distinctly up-market, but cheery nonetheless.
Tuesday was another fine day and Triar and I walked through Settle, which by now, had a few decorations of its own.
We then headed up Constitution Hill and along the aptly named Highway, which runs along the side of the valley with views over Ribblesdale.
Dad took me to look at a car on Wednesday. It was an X3 like the one I had to leave behind in Norway, but I took it for a test drive and although the engine sounded sweet, the steering was behaving very oddly. I suggested I would go back and test drive it again, once they’d fixed the tracking (which was his theory as to what the problem was) but was told the car wouldn’t be fixed up until someone bought it. As I was unwilling to buy a car that I wasn’t certain would be fixed by the proposed changes, I decided to pass. On Thursday, I had planned to have a nice, easy drive to Dumfries before starting work on Friday, but having found another X3 for sale in Glasgow, I took a detour there to look at it and this time, I decided to go for it. It went for its MOT yesterday and will be serviced next week and hopefully, I will collect it next weekend.
Yesterday was my first day in my new job. I met my new boss, K (though she corrected me to line manager when I asked) who helped me with getting set up on my new computer and together, we made a plan for the coming months. There are some courses I will be taking before I start to tackle the challenges ahead. There’s a lot more work with notifiable disease in Scotland than there was in my remote corner of Norway, so I’ll be learning how to tackle bird flu first and then TB. It sounds like there will be a lot to get my teeth into. I met G, who’s an animal health officer of eighteen years standing. He seemed very knowledgeable and also makes a mean cup of coffee, so I quickly felt at home. I also met L, another animal health officer, and she’s in charge of the stores. She has sorted out my new kit for me. It looks quite extensive and I am very glad the car I’ve bought has quite a sizeable boot.
There was also this rather scary looking hood, which I will have to use if I’m on a farm with suspected or confirmed avian influenza, until I get a properly fitted mask. After watching the horror show arguments about equipment in the UK during Covid, I’m very pleased that the agency seems to take my protection very seriously.
I went to Donna’s house after work. Donna and I met thirty years ago when we were both working in Stranraer, so it was wonderful to catch up and I immediately felt at home, which is just as well as I’m staying with her and her husband, Will, next week. My furniture is still somewhere wandering on the other side of the North Sea, but I’ve been offered a comfortable bed in her lovely cottage, so I’m already looking forward to going back.
For now I’m back in Yorkshire and Triar is asleep on my feet. It feels like a good start to the weekend.
It’s been a crazy week! It started well, with me returning to work and feeling much more like my normal self. I’ve a couple of cases I have to complete or pass on and I am working with Ingrid to go through as many of the semi-routine tasks she will be taking on as possible. She is learning so fast that I can see that she will soon outstrip me, which is wonderful as far as I am concerned. My aim was always to get the public veterinarian things running as well as possible and I had made a start, but I can see she is the ideal person to complete the process.
There were also two students in the abattoir this week. Amanda and Glenn are at university in Hungary (I think – no doubt someone will correct me if I’ve got that wrong) and are on the various rotations that usually come in the last year of a vet degree. Amanda is Norwegian but Glenn is from Ireland and they met at university. I haven’t been much involved with the students before – there are some most years – but as team coordinator, it was one of my jobs to ensure they completed the tasks they have to achieve.
It was great having them there and I was able to ramble on a bit about my favourite theme, which is creating and maintaining chains of information between separate teams within Mattilsynet and other agencies, in order to build up a kind of animal welfare map of the area. They seemed both interested and enthusiastic and told me that before they came, they thought Mattilsynet could be boring, but that they were impressed by how wide ranging and important the job we are doing is. As far as I am concerned, my job was done then, even before I ticked off the boxes and put my signature to the more routine things they had to learn about. Hopefully they will consider Mattilsynet as a career, even though they intend to start out working in practice in Ireland.
On Wednesday, my pleasant last week was severely rocked when the team from the removal firm phoned and told me they were coming that day and not on Thursday as planned. My objections that I was not ready were swept aside and I was told it had to be today as they had to be somewhere else tomorrow. Thank goodness for my wonderful colleagues. Trude immediately calculated an alternative plan for who could do what and told me I should go.
The call came in at twenty past eleven. I rushed home and quickly put the last few things in the dishwasher and switched it on. Most things were already organized, but there were a few last minute tasks. As well as the dishwasher, I had to pack clean clothes for the last few days at work and my ten day journey to the UK and I intended to go through each room to remove the last of the items which were to be left behind or thrown away.
On the phone, I had told them I finished work at three, so I thought I had a bit of time, but the lorry rolled up at one, before even the dishwasher was finished. They decided to make a start on the bedrooms while I worked in the kitchen. They were super speedy at dismantling the beds, not so good at wrapping everything up, as they were meant to. I took a picture of the half-packed van and on checking it just before I started writing this, I can see that my lovely light-colored bed bases, under and over mattresses have been put uncovered into the van. Given that the beds were the most expensive items and the ones I most wanted to take to the UK as they are made my a Norwegian company that doesn’t sell products in the UK, I am even more underwhelmed than I was on the day. They also put my electric keyboard in, unwrapped, but unfortunately I don’t have a picture of that.
They were also barely filling the boxes at the start, then when they came to the last room, they told me I had too much stuff and they were running out of boxes. I was booked in for ten cubic metres, they said, and was already taking up fifteen. I asked if it was likely I would be charged more and they said it was quite possible.
By that point, I was seriously starting to feel quite panicky. The move was already costing £6,000. If they charged me half as much again, it was quite possibly going to end up costing more than it would have done to replace everything. They were urging me to come in and decide which items were most important. This was in the last room, where I had actually already sorted everything out from the garage and other rooms, so everything in there was really non negotiable. Ignoring their urging, I walked away, found the Pickford’s e-mail, copied down the phone number and called them. To my relief, someone answered immediately. I explained the situation and he assured me he would find out what was going on and would get back to me. He also told me that he could immediately tell me that the information they had given me was wrong as I was booked in for twelve cubic metres.
I can see from my phone records that I called them shortly after three in the afternoon. Given that they weren’t meant to arrive until three and this was them packing the last of my stuff, you can probably imagine the whirlwind that had rushed through my house. The man from Pickford’s called me back half an hour later, by which time the van had departed. He asked me what they had told me when they rang to say they were coming a day early and I told him. Apparently they had told Pickford’s that they had called and asked me if it was okay to come today. I assured him that wasn’t at all how the conversation had gone. He also said I had been booked in for twelve cubic metres and the final load was fourteen, and that the extra was no problem at all. My furniture will likely be placed in storage until I can find a house, so he said he would arrange for the first month of storage to be free.
After the call ended, I sat down on one of the kitchen stools and spent a few minutes looking out at the snowy mountain and the winter trees, pulling myself together. It felt like a sad ending to my life in Fagerfjellveien. I had expected to spend one last night in the house and that had also been taken away from me, along with the unwrapped beds. I had messaged Shirley at quarter to three so ask if I could stay the night. She messaged me back to say yes, just before four. Abandoning all thoughts of any more tidying, I set out to Shirley’s house. Wonderful woman that she is, she opened a bottle of wine and fed me comfort food, then installed me in front of the TV to watch Hearbeat with a dog on my knee, before going out to a prearranged yoga class.
I spent Thursday (which I had booked as a holiday so I could supervise the removal company) sorting out all the things that had been left behind and trying to empty the house. John came after work with a friend’s trailer and we took the washing machine and some broken furniture to the refuse centre. Then after that, I made my way along the icy backroads to Konstantin’s house. He is cat sitting for Ann at the moment, but had agreed to give me a bed for the nights when I have to be up early for work the next day. I made myself a lovely curry and then went to bed.
Friday was another enjoyable day at work, carrying out the routine live animal inspections as well as tidying up a few loose ends . To my delight, Ingrid sent out next week’s rota and summarized the week at the weekly are Teams meeting. She is already integrating herself into the team, joining Trude and Konstantin in being efficient and really getting things done. Thomas also said in the meeting that he hoped I would come back, which was lovely.
Last night there was a party in Finnsnes. We had lovely tapas and Hilde summarised my time with Mattilsynet and presented me with a beautiful book with photos and descriptions of Senja. It was a lovely end to a mostly pleasant week and also a celebration of my time spent here in wonderful Troms in the north of Norway. And while this will be my last dispatches from the far north, I will carry on blogging for a while. I hope you will all come with me now on my new journey.
This is going to be another brief post. We moved into the new house last night. None of the new beds have arrived, so currently I’m on a camp bed, Andrew is using my old bed and John has a mattress from his caravan. Despite that (and despite Triar sharing the tiny camp bed with me) I slept better than I have over the past few days with the move hanging over me.
Our new house still feels more like home than the flat ever did. The landlord decided to increase the pressure a couple of days ago, sending me a list of cleaning tasks that included cleaning the windows inside and out, cleaning out all the extractor fans, and worst of all, emptying out all the drains/u-bends under the sinks and shower, in addition to the more usual tasks, such as washing down all the cupboards, pulling out the cooker and cleaning behind it. I’ve spent much of the past year wondering how to clean the drain under the shower. It seems to involve dismantling the base, which I am reluctant to do in someone else’s flat, where breaking it might mean having to pay whatever the owner chooses to charge me. The fact that they felt the need to send a list after I had spent so long getting the flat spotless before they showed the potential new tenants round is a reasonable indicator of the nature of my relationship with our soon-to-be-ex landlords. Lying in bed on a Sunday morning with the curtains open to look out at the lovely view quickly became impossible as they were always in the garden. The flat was sometimes untidy and I could feel the waves of disapproval. It’s very common in Norway for families to rent out the cellar as the rent paid is tax free, but as I’ve discovered, it’s not always comfortable having your landlord breathing down your neck. Still, I only have to clean the flat now, and then it will be over.
For anyone that missed the midweek update, there was nothing on the MRI that would explain the symptoms I’ve been having, though eating low-fat seems to mostly keep them under control anyway, so I will continue for now without pursuing it further.
So hopefully, for now, life will become a little more stable. I am about to undergo something of a job change. Long term readers might remember that Ammar, who used to work in the abattoir and with the OK program, carrying out routine visits to test for notifiable diseases or banned substances in milk, took a year’s sabbatical. I am going to be moving into his job, which will be more a change of emphasis, rather than a complete new start. I have sometimes been quite surprised by my own enthusiasm for ensuring the welfare of animals that we are about to kill for their meat and the wish to feed back important information we pick up about chronic welfare issues to other vets working in the field, but I am looking forward to it.
So for now, I’d better go. There’s a flat to clean and various things I need to find. See you all next week!
Temporary screen arrangement with speakers and fake plants
I’m now back in Norway, but I have some wonderful memories of my last day with Anna. We spent the night in Portsmouth. On Saturday morning, with blue skies overhead and a cooling breeze to counter the heat of the sun, it was the perfect day to walk to Portchester Castle.
We passed through the gate and paused for a milkshake in the outer bailey. It’s years since I’ve had a milkshake that was actually made from milk, rather than ice-cream, and it was surprisingly refreshing. But the castle was calling, so braving the determined friendliness of the gatekeeper (who came close to selling me fifteen months membership to English Heritage, even though I live in Norway) we started to explore the ruin.
The entrance to the inner bailey
Does everyone find peace stealing into their soul as they explore ancient ruins? I find the old stone beautiful. Empty window frames filled with blue sky, doorways leading to nowhere, that will never be walked through again. Standing in what used to be the kitchen, gazing at the gaping hole that was all that was left of the fireplace, my mind was filled with a childish wish that some magic would take me back in time and I could see what it looked like then, to see the people who lived and worked here. What was it like for them? Were they happy?
The great tower that dominates the landscape still has a roof and we entered in and found a spiral staircase. We climbed up and up and up and emerged onto the leaded roof with shaking legs, happy hearts, and a small queue behind us of people who were fitter than me!
Going down, we took different stairs, and found a few small exhibits, like this map and the birds flying above it.
There was also a notice about prisoners and nails hammered into the beams. The explanation about what the nails were used for had a very different ending than that I expected!
Having explored everywhere, we returned to the shop at the entrance and I bought gifts of castle keys and medieval shot glasses for John and Andrew, and a wooden bow and arrows for Anna. Then we returned to the outer bailey and wandered over to St Mary’s church, which stood in a corner, within the castle walls. In search of good British food, we decided on a cream tea and a curry pie. Sadly all the curry pies were gone, so we plumped for a corned beef hash pie instead. Never let it be said that English cuisine is not the best in the world!
It was almost Easter, and there were beautiful flowers in the church.
And beautiful flowers and trees outside too, where we waited for the taxi we had ordered to take us into Portsmouth. For me, having left the rather grim and dirty end-of-winter melt, it was a welcome reminder that spring really is on its way.
Anna and I started with Starbucks on Good Friday. I’d forgotten the ludicrous mug sizes, so unwisely ordered a medium. Norwegian coffee temperance has obviously invaded my soul as I would have preferred less than half the amount, but with the mindless illogic of someone brought up by waste-not-want-not parents, I drank it anyway.
We took a bus into Winchester and took a whistlestop tour of the town centre and the cathedral. It’s a gorgeous old city and we were basking in warmth that felt like summer to me.
We went into the cathedral. There was to be a service shortly, so there were no official tours. Anna has been in Winchester for three years and hadn’t been in before, so it was a new experience for both of us. We were handed a leaflet as we entered. Had I opened it, I might have seen that Jane Austen was buried there, but being a philistine, I didn’t. So I have probably walked over Jane Austen’s grave without being any the wiser.
There were, however, a great many doors in the cathedral, ranging from huge to tiny. I presume people were smaller when the cathedral was built, so most would require careful navigation by tall people. I may have got slightly carried away with photographing them.
I also loved these wonky pews and modern carved altar in one of the side chapels. I feel cathedrals should be living places and not merely monuments to the past.
There were many carvings, of course, in wood and stone.
Stained glass? Of course!
Beautiful cushions to sit on. I found myself thinking about the (probably) women who sat and lovingly embroidered all of them.
There was also a statue of a diver. Anna obviously inherited her love of quirky things over higher forms of knowledge from her mother, as this was the one historical figure she was aware of. If you check the top of the page, he even had a pub named after him. After diving down into the foundations of a thousand year old building, he probably deserved a pint.
In the afternoon, we boarded a train to Portsmouth in preparation for a visit to Porchester Castle the next day. Having witnessed a lot of muggle history in the morning, in the afternoon we plunged ourselves into the wizarding world. Variety, after all, is the spice of life.
I flew out over the snowy mountains around Tromsø in the early afternoon on Thursday and at twenty past seven, I caught my first glimpse of the UK since December 2019.
Bottom corner of England from the air
As I flew over, I was struck by how green it all was. There were so many small fields, with hedges as their boundaries. There were also mansion houses scattered among the fields, dotted with swimming pools and tennis courts. It is so different from Norway!
As the wheels touched down, I found myself smiling, then there were tears in my eyes. Being back in the UK after so long was very moving. I love Norway, but there’s something very special about returning to my homeland.
Anna met me at Gatwick. It was wonderful to see her again. We bought marmite pinwheels and chilled raspberry mohitos from Marks and Spencer and had a mini-party on the station at Clapham Junction.
Anna
I’m posting this belatedly, as the available internet for the past couple of days has made posting impossible. There are more photos to follow, but for now, I want to celebrate the memory of coming home.
A Vet’s Life 