I handed in my notice at Inchcolm yesterday. It hasn’t been an easy decision. There are times when I can see that I could love this job, but before I began, the agreement was that I would be working from Dumfries, with a day in Dunfermline once a week. After two and a half months, I’m still living at Valerie’s, working full time away from home, and I don’t feel the communication and trust are there for me to work remotely. I could push for it, but I don’t think it would be easy. At two and a half months in, I feel this should be the honeymoon phase, when I have begun to find my feet, understand what I am aiming for and built up some rapport and understanding with everyone.

It’s wonderful how things work out sometimes. Just at the time when I decided I was going to leave, John called to say that he was buying tickets to come over. I’m still in probation, so I only have one week’s notice. John has ten days over here, so I will have the flexibility to spend time with him, whatever his plans are.

I don’t have a new job lined up, but there seem to be many possibilities opening up and I am looking forward, either to returning to something I’ve done before, or trying out something new. I’ve been in discussion with Dean at APHA. I’ve had a chat with Kelly, who runs a recruitment agency and is looking for locum positions for me, and next week, I will be speaking to someone from Hallmark, who fill temporary government positions at short notice. I feel that the future is wide open.

I’m not sure whether I have mentioned my new phase of Bible reading. Last year, I read the whole Bible for the first time. I was using an app that gives three different portions of the Bible each day, two Old Testament and one New Testament. While it was an interesting exercise, my mind found it difficult to keep track as I moved between the portions, so this year, I am reading the first of the three portions daily and reading around it, so that I can follow better and understand more. Until yesterday, I was reading Judges, which describes a turbulent period in Israel’s history.

At the lowest point, in Judges 19, a man is travelling with his concubine (a kind of secondary wife) and stays overnight in a stranger’s house. A bunch of marauding men demand that the man comes out to have sex with them, and rather than defending the household, he throws his concubine out to them. The marauders rape and kill her and leave her on the doorstep.

I opened the app this morning, expecting more horrible tales and found instead, that I have moved onto the book of Ruth, which is already one of my favourite stories in the Old Testament. When I came to it the first time round, last year, I found the source of the wonderful, “Intreat me not to leave thee,” passage that I had known from reading My Friend Flicka as a child. This time round, I can see the comfort Ruth found in following God. I’m almost afraid to write that I am also finding comfort in following and trusting in God, as professing faith is uncomfortable to me, and frankly, I’m afraid to lose friends, but here I am, doing it anyway.

Moving on to an easier topic, I have been watching the latest series of Clarkson’s Farm with Valerie. If you haven’t seen it and don’t want spoilers, you probably shouldn’t read this part.

I haven’t watched all the series religiously, but have seen enough to think that Clarkson’s Farm speaks wonderfully for farmers. He shows the hardships of farming, the ups and downs, and the sheer resilience farmers need in current times as they navigate a world of rules and red tape, of low prices , conglomerates and cheap foreign imports.

The end of the series was desperately sad though, as one of his cows was tested for tuberculosis and came back twice as an inconclusive reactor. This meant that she was taken for slaughter, despite being in calf with twins. When she was taken to the abattoir, they didn’t find anything, so sent back a report saying, “no visible lesions.”

I was slightly frustrated at that part. I’m not sure what support Jeremy and his crew received from their APHA vet, but they misunderstood that report to mean that the cow didn’t have TB, which isn’t actually the case. I’m not sure how it works in England as the rules are slightly different in the various parts of the UK, but in Scotland, there would still be further testing, to see whether they could grow the bacteria that cause TB, despite finding no lesions.

And that is because, “no visible lesions,” doesn’t mean the cow didn’t have TB. It means that she did not have TB that was advanced enough for them to find lesions, which can take a long time to form, even when the bacteria are there. The fact that they had a number of other cattle with borderline results suggests to me that, even if none of the animals are actively infected, it’s likely there has been some contact with TB infection, because the skin test they did is an indicator of an immune response.

Valerie asked the same question that Jeremy Clarkson asked, which was why couldn’t they wait until she’d calved. If she had no TB lesions in her udder (those form very late, and would mean the cow would be very infectious) she wouldn’t be that likely to pass TB on to her calves, if they were removed quite quickly. However the cow is meant to be kept in strict isolation (which is already hard on her as cattle are herd animals) and they had already shown a film of her escaping. If she was indeed infected, the longer she is there, the more likely it is that she will spread the bacteria into the environment and on to other animals, including wildlife.

The reality is that, despite finding no visible lesions, that the cow might have been infected. The skin test is not very reliable in that it can sometimes miss infected animals. However, where the test is positive, it’s very highly likely there is some level of infection, even if they didn’t find anything to confirm it. In that way, it’s actually a very accurate test, when done right. If anything, vets are likely to err on the side of not sending away cattle unless it’s a definite reactor, which might be one of the reasons TB is rife in England and Wales.

And that is the reason why, after a reactor is found and culled, all the other animals in the herd will need to be tested again after 60 days. That will give them a much better idea of where they stand. TB can be in a herd for years without showing up on tests, and that is another reason it is so difficult to eradicate.

Jeremy also asked the very reasonable question, why are they not able to vaccinate. That one is also easy to answer, in technical terms, if not ethical and personal. It’s about international trade. Various diseases are classed as Notifiable Diseases and that designation is not a UK thing, it is agreed internationally. Notifiable Diseases present a risk, either to human life, to animal welfare, or economically. TB can spread between animals and people. Bird flu can too, but it is so nasty that the birds really suffer. Foot and mouth is another Notifiable Disease and that one doesn’t spread to people, but it is incredibly infectious and causes huge suffering to the animals. It has an economic impact as suffering animals don’t eat, and thus don’t grow or produce much milk.

So back to the vaccination question. The fact is that the skin test, which is the international standard test that is used, cannot tell between a cow that is vaccinated and a cow that is infected. If the UK decided unilaterally to vaccinate, it would prevent a huge amount of international trade, that would cost farmers and the country billions. They are trying to develop tests, but it is taking years and the scientific proof would need to be good enough to convince the groups that make the international rules. If you are interested in this topic, there’s a lot of good information here: TB Hub

So much as I love Clarkson’s Farm and think it does a lot to highlight how tough farming is, Irish someone had explained the TB situation to him more thoroughly. I have had to deal with farmers with TB outbreaks and I know how devastating it is, but the implication that the process is entirely unreliable and unreasonable is unfair. It’s a complex and nuanced problem and I’m not sure that the UK’s approach is working, but it’s being done with the intention to improve the situation. It’s far from perfect, but it wasn’t (in my opinion) unreasonable to remove the cow, even though I’m sure that was painful.

Anyway, this turned out to be quite long and I haven’t even touched on last weekend, when Valerie’s son Kyle came up with his lovely fiancée Candice. It was amazing to see Kyle. The last time I saw him, he was a teenager. We spend Saturday exploring the area where he and Candice are having a ceilidh in September (I’ve been invited!!!) and looking at campsites where guests might stay. We ended up on the banks of Loch Lomond, which was beautiful. Val and Kyle decided to take a paddle.

Anyway, I am very honoured to be invited to the celebration and I wish Kyle and Candice all the best.

I took a few more photos of Loch Lomond while I was there, so I shall leave you with those. Thanks for reading and have a good week all!