Tag Archives: Fiction

Stories and Mist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Songs and Horrors

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take care.

All Change

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Things have changed since I last posted. So much so that this is the first time I have been able to sit down and record it. On the calendar downstairs, back on the 24th March, written in pink felt-tip pen, is the name of my nearest veterinary clinic. To distract my mind from my echoing e-mail box, I had wandered in off the street and asked (in my best Norwegian) whether I could come in and “see practice”, just for a week or two. The smiling receptionist, looking bemused promised to get the boss to call me, and I left, feeling, to be honest, like a bit of a tit. After all, I could have made that contact over the phone couldn’t I? Still, later that day, I received the call, and at 9a.m. on Monday morning, I presented myself.

I confess that the first question confused me somewhat. Peering into a cupboard filled with uniforms, Kari Anna (practice nurse) asked me whether I was a small or a medium. How to reply? I was obviously neither. Promising me that the medium was VERY stretchy round the waist (yes but what about the bum?) she handed over the medium overalls and commanded me to change. Shovelling me into a pair of green clogs (more on those later) she started to show me things on the computer. Obviously it was all written in Greek… or maybe Latin. Actually I might have understood those bits, but the rest was a mystery. Being me, I set out to solve it, and armed with a trusty pen and a post-it note, I gradually began over the course of a fortnight to decipher the runes.

I also made some new friends. So much for the much-fabled Norwegian stand-offishness; we spent the next two weeks laughing. And on the Thursday of the second week, I was offered a job. Dagny, the scary boss lady said I should talk to my husband… who of course said “What are you waiting for. Get signed up immediately!” So I did, setting out to work two days a week. The past fortnight has been a whirlwind of bank accounts and tax office visits ( yup, I didn’t have the former and have never paid the latter here) and getting the paperwork together to try to get myself authorised to carry out veterinary work in Norway. Currently I’m working as an assistant, which suits me down to the ground as I am helping out without having to consult (without knowing all those crucial anatomical words) and in the meantime, I am gradually picking up more Norwegian, though there is the terrible temptation to revert to English, especially as some of the clients immediately start to chat to me when they find out where I am from.

It’s a wonderful feeling, picking up the reins of something I used to be good at. Some things come back so quickly. Others are filled with fog. I suspect that when it comes to real knowledge, I have always been very reliant on books, and for the moment, I don’t have the right ones to hand. The BSAVA Manual of Emergency and Critical Care was my constant companion for all the years working in the emergency clinics. It’s at the top of my shopping list as even though there aren’t so many emergency cases during the day, I seem to recall it had a lot of fantastic tips on how to work cases up in the first instance. I’m slowly regaining knowledge, refilling the blanks, remembering the things I was never good at (I can take a mean x-ray, but I have never been on a course to learn to use ultrasound). I am learning new things as well. Who knew that it was illegal to castrate a dog or spay a bitch in Norway without good clinical reason? Apparently they have to be allowed freedom to explore their wild-side, though how that works when using drugs to prevent ovulation I have no idea. Bang goes the idea of opening a spay clinic in my nearest city!

This week started badly. I tried to anaesthetise a dog without having the machine fully switched on. Never a good idea. Worse still, it transpired that the green clogs actually belonged to the boss lady. Well I always did like to walk in shoes that were hard to fill. I’ve bought my own now. And Dagny has not yet used the whip on me that I took in for Irene (fabulous receptionist) to use on Jan-Arne (crazy vet).

Been out walking (the picture at the top is taken from south of our village, looking up the coast) and skiing, both downhill and cross-country. I would like to say that I didn’t fall over once, but sadly I can’t. Still things are looking up on all fronts. There might even be some movement on the book, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself so I’ll leave that for next time.

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