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Sunrise/sunset: 08:50/16:11 Daylength: 7hr21min

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.

Blissful Ignorance

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Sunday this week: a lovely day, and the day I had arranged to go out and “see practice” with Jan-Arne. I had been hoping to do this for a while, but it had proved difficult to arrange. In the event I ended up seeing only one patient, though Jan-Arne did all that he could to drum up some additional business, first by telephoning the previous days clients to see if they needed a follow-up call, and secondly by driving me around the entire district in a vain attempt to run over an animal (or cyclist).

The single call was to a cow with mastitis. I walked into the barn and as with the small animal clinic, had an immediate feeling of coming home. I miss farm work so much. I love the sense of peace that I experience when I am in the presence of dairy cows. These large animals are so docile; they allow us to stand so close and rarely object to being handled, except now and then when they need to protect their calves and even that is mostly done with a doe-eyed gentleness. But there is also a sense of community in farming that is so very different from city life. Years ago in Scotland, working in a dairy practice, I felt almost (only almost) as if I belonged. I wasn’t born to it, and yet as a vet there was a sense of integration. I was wanted and needed within their society, and it is that feeling of belonging that appealed to me, almost as much as the animals themselves.

There were some interesting differences. Norwegian farms are strict on biosecurity. I was fascinated to see the gigantic pair of wellington boots that the farmer’s wife brought out from a cupboard. They fitted right over Jan-Arne’s trainers and he clomped around with feet like those of a yellow elephant. I had to make do with special plastic wellington boot covers. I had the tremendous feeling that I could just walk back into that lifestyle. It all felt so similar to the old days that I could almost see myself there.

Any delusions about that were shattered later when we visited a farm where Jan-Arne was friendly with the family. We looked at a couple of their bottle-fed lambs and all the time the conversation was rattling on around me. I couldn’t follow a word and the farmer couldn’t speak any English. They had a lovely young daughter though, who kept grinning at me conspiratorially. She wanted to show us her pet lambs and tried various methods to capture them, including an attempt to entice them with some food. Afterwards, she raced around the field chasing them, a streak of pink in a pair of purple wellingtons, childish hair flying everywhere. Finally she managed to catch one, a sturdy black lamb of a traditional Norwegian breed. My biggest regret of the day was that in my haste to leave the house I managed to forget my camera. Jan-Arne very kindly offered to take some shots of the field and the child and the sheep and here they are…

Jan-Arne's Sheep 1

Jan-Arne's Sheep 2

Jan-Arne's Sheep 3

Always difficult to get a good action shot, but it was a beautiful setting on a wonderful day.

The biggest revelation occurred when we got back to the practice where I had left my car. Jan-Arne pointed to the house next door.

‘I wonder if Magne and Gerd are in there, enjoying their day off,’ he said. ‘Did you know they lived there?’

Did I know they lived there? My mind was screaming.’Magne and Gerd are married?’ I managed to croak it out at last.

‘Didn’t you know?’ He was laughing at me.

Amazing the things I fail to register. Everyone else knows presumably and maybe they just forgot to tell me, but more likely I missed it. Perhaps they stand and chat at the desk about what they are going to have for dinner. I have no idea because after so long in Norway, my brain just switches off when other people are chatting to one another. They could be talking about me, and I would remain in a happy state of oblivion.

I realised recently that this was, in many ways, a blessing. When I return to Scotland, it always comes as a shock to overhear conversations which my mind automatically processes. There are so many preconceptions based around accent and word use, instant frustration at the banalities of life. Here I escape all of that. I wouldn’t change it, even if it means that occasionally things pass me by. I wondered recently whether this must be like for a young child, having a mind that passes over incomprehensible things that don’t really matter.

When I discovered Magne and Gerd were married, it leaped into my head that I should be worried about whether I had ever said anything reprehensible about one to the other, but of course I was able to dismiss that in an instant. I just don’t have those kinds of conversations. I would love to say I have never said anything offensive about anyone, but of course, there is Scary Boss Lady. Apparently the other staff found “All Change” so amusing that they had to tell her and she read it. Since then, she has tried to convince me she isn’t scary. She even appeared one day in a poncho with the words “Love Me” woven into it. I left no doubt, she told me over a mammary tumour, that it was her I referred to. In case there was any confusion, I had clearly stated “Dagny, the scary boss lady”. She tells me that it will follow her now. Even at the Christmas party, she is in no doubt that her name-tag will read “Scary Boss Lady”. Still, she can’t have been too offended. Apparently she told her friends in the cycling club about me on a train journey. I can imagine their wide-eyed shock as they asked her, “Did she know you would read it?” Of course, I didn’t know. But I was aware it was possible, because I had already friended some of the others on Facebook. Ah well, it’s always a good idea when starting in a new job to begin on good terms with your boss!