Tag Archives: life

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.

Arctic Lights

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I said at the end of last week’s blog that I was going to talk about the apps I currently use to manage my FND and I will, but first I should mention that I’m at Valerie’s for the weekend. Val’s daughter Stacey and son-in-law, Llewelyn, stayed here over the summer, while Stacey was having a baby. They went home a week and a half ago and, to my great joy last Sunday, Val invited me and Triar up for the weekend. It couldn’t have been more perfect for me. I’ve a few things booked in early October, so weekends are limited and I wasn’t expecting to come here so soon. But yesterday evening was spent on a sunset walk around Airth, listening to the amazing sound of the geese that are gathering in the fields, followed by gluhwein in the hot tub. As Valerie said, “Let Autumn begin.”

As regulars will know, I was recently diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder, or FND. While the diagnosis was recent, I’ve been having neurological oddities going on in my body for years. My life and job in Arctic Norway was sometimes physically tough, but for three years I was able to manage my symptoms. They occasionally came back, but then I would rest until they went away again.

The physical and mental stresses I’ve had since returning to the UK had destabilised the situation and I went through a period in the spring and summer of this year, when the symptoms had returned on what seemed like a semi-permanent basis. They weren’t awful. Some tics and body jerks, days of waking up exhausted and odd sensations, mostly like insects crawling on my feet, though the feeling of a knitting needle jabbing into the top of my right foot was sometimes quite unpleasant.

While getting enough rest is crucial, there are other things I’ve been doing which seem to help and they mostly revolve around apps on my phone. Sometimes I think constant access to the internet and to smart phones has brought some very negative things into the world, but there are some real positives as well. I try to ensure I get enough sleep, for example, and though partly that’s about putting down all my devices as bedtime approaches, I do monitor how much sleep I get, and the quality of that sleep in the Autosleep app, which is linked to my Apple watch. While it doesn’t directly help me sleep, it does remind me that I feel much better when I do sleep well and helps me monitor what works to get there.

As well as Autosleep, I have been using WalkFit. I’m not sure I would recommend it. It’s quite expensive for something that’s not quite as good as it should be, or at least that’s my opinion. It got me on board with false advertising, telling me I’d lose weight quickly, but then not giving me explicit guidance on how to do that. To be fair, I knew before I started that rapid weight loss from a walking app was unlikely, but it did tempt me in. Then the first three months cost £25 and I assumed that would be the ongoing price.

After the first three months was up, they charged me £66 for the next quarter, but by then, I was well into the program. I may not have lost much weight, but I am regularly doing a whole lot more exercise because of it, so while that is working, I shall continue. It suits me quite well as, on the mid-level activity program, the daily target is 7,500 steps. You can have two days off in any week without losing your streak. I’m now on 139 days and I don’t want to lose it. There’s also a set of exercises you can do inside, if you are struggling to get steps on wet days. I would do more of those if they were 20 minutes long. They used to be, but now they’re nearer half an hour and the music is a bit tedious. As I said before, I wouldn’t entirely recommend it. It would be better if there was more flexibility to choose the length of your exercise session, but for now, I’m sticking with it.

The final App I’ve been using is Headspace, which I get through work. I used to have Calm, which had some lovely Sleep Stories, which tended to send me off in minutes, but as work were offering to pay, I changed over to Headspace instead. What I hadn’t expected (and which now, has unfortunately changed, it set me up a day’s itinerary, with tasks that it ticked off as I did them. The day started of with five deep breaths, moved onto a two to five minute chat on how to handle the things life brings, then a ten minute meditation session. There was a very variable afternoon task, that was sometimes physical exercise, sometimes music and sometimes a short wildlife film, the to end the day, it recommended a sleep story, which it calls a sleepcast. I’d added in a mindful eating course, which it added on and marked off when done with the rest.

I’m glad I joined up while that itinerary was in place as it’s now changed. Those things are still there, but in a much busier screen with “Recents” at the top, then some of those previous “Daily Essentials” as a line underneath you have to scroll along. Some are missing though, so I’m now using it less, ironically. Pretty sure that wasn’t their aim. My mindful eating course is now in another line called, “Picked with you in mind.” Well you didn’t pick it, did you? I picked it! Anyway, I digress. I’m still using the app, but it’s now much more difficult for me to track whether I’ve done each element over the course of a day.

It’s taken me some time to find sleepcasts that I like. There are certainly plenty to choose from. The Calm ones that I liked best told a story, where you walked alone up a mountain, or along a beach, then lay down somewhere and did some meditative activities. The Headspace sleepcasts paint pictures, sometimes of quite busy places. Maybe some people find those helpful but I don’t. I have found some though, that describe scenes where you find a comfortable place and I am using those more often. Now and then, I try a new one and last week, I tried one called Arctic Lights.

I was looking forward to a scene, with the aurora overhead, and that was in there, but I must confess, most of the rest, I found unrelaxing for all the wrong reasons! There was something about a breeze and snow on the ground and the sounds of a waterfall in the distance and that had me bristling. I mean, I guess it’s possible, but in the Arctic where I was, all the streams and waterfalls froze quite early in the winter and often before the snow came. There were sometimes wind, but most of my memories of aurora were on utterly still nights, where the sky was clear and there was an ethereal silence as everything was solid ice. So instead of the lovely relaxing experience I’d hoped for, I was lying there in bed going, “Well! That’s not right!”

The last straw was when some deer passed by and went to drink by a lovely lake. Why deer, I thought, my mind in glorious outrage. I never once saw deer up there, other than reindeer and far more often, there were moose! I mean there were deer there! I inspected a carcase once that a hunter had shot, but only one in three years. Of course, if I hadn’t had all those ore-expectations, I probably would have found it lovely. Instead, I grumpily sat up and selected a different one. Ah well, I’ll just have to write my own Arctic stories instead!

Anyway, Valerie is now up and it’s time for me to go down and join her, so I’ll leave you there. Hope you have a good week and thanks for reading!

A Week Away

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I’ve spent this week in leafy Surrey, which surely lived up to its name.

It’s been a good week, all told. I’ve learned how little I know about chicken diseases. I know more now than I did, but as with so many courses and conferences I’ve attended that were not squarely aimed at people doing the same, specific job I am, there was a good deal that was so removed from my technical expertise that my brain switched off. I’m never going to need information on how to split DNA to make a vaccine or test for the presence of a virus. It was interesting to get an idea how it’s done, but it’s only really the end product or the positive or negative result I will ever encounter.

That said, there were parts that will come in useful, not least in learning how to recognize some non-notifiable diseases when I’m out on a report case. Background understanding of what you are looking at when you walk around a shed filled with sick birds or when you carry out a post-mortem is obviously really useful. There were also lots of lovely people and I enjoyed talking to, and working with, vets from several different parts of the world. Some of them worked for APHA, so it’s not impossible I’ll run into them again.

We were based part of the time in the very new vet school at the University of Surrey. How different it is from Summerhall in Edinburgh, where I studied more than thirty years ago. There are some pictures here on a website dedicated to Outlander locations! About halfway down, there are some pictures of the anatomy lecture theatre, with its steep horseshoe of drop-down wooden seats. I always had a real sense of history sitting there.

Summerhall

The new Surrey building is all soaring glass roofs and pristine labs. There’s also a wonderful sports hall nearby and modern student accommodation, though I didn’t see inside that. There was a choice to stay there, or in the Holiday Inn next door, which seemed like a no-brainer to me! I’ve been photographing my food through the week. I must say, I started out healthy, with “superfood salad” with added salmon and then chicken. I should have stuck to that as I probably enjoyed it the most, but I got drawn in to trying other things and last night, eating with a friend I’d made on the course, I succumbed to dessert as well. Ah well, tomorrow it’ll be back to no sugar and then after that, back to reduced carbs. Anyway, I present to you, a week of food, by Holiday Inn Guildford.

Ironically, having succumbed to the chicken schnitzel sandwich on the last night, I really didn’t enjoy it: an error I shall try not to repeat. The cheesecake was nice though, as was the chocolate torte the night before. Not bad for a hotel chain restaurant (she said, not quite damning them with faint praise!)

This morning, I shall take a train back up to Yorkshire and tomorrow, I’ll drive back to Scotland. The real world and the return to the grindstone awaits. I shall pass my newfound knowledge to my colleagues. That’s the deal with any course I attend. I will also follow up on some networking opportunities. Anyone who knows the civil service will be aware that who you know makes all the difference to how well you can perform your job. The more I learn about who to contact, the more I can help the farmers I work with to get the answers they sometimes need.

Have a lovely week all and thanks for reading.

Off to Learn about Chickens

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After all the frenetic activities, work has been a bit slower this week, though no less interesting. I’ve spent time reading up on, and around the new case I’ve been given, which will be very different from anything I’ve done before as I am working in a group of ex-police enforcement and intelligence workers. I’m the one with the veterinary knowledge to their investigative powers. Unfortunately, I can’t really write about it though as people might recognize themselves, or others. I’m sure there’s a novel in there though, if only I ever find the time to write it.

Last weekend, I had a fabulous time visiting Sue at her home and then visiting the gardens at Dumfries House together. Dumfries house is, counterintuitively, in Ayrshire and not Dumfries and Galloway. Sue volunteered there, in the garden, a while back and pointed out a few huge bushes she had planted. Gardening has obviously been a lifelong passion. She wants to help me get my garden in shape. I have let it run wild this summer and finally started cutting the lawn this week. Unfortunately I didn’t get it all done in one go and the rain came after two exhausting sessions, so now I have one half yellow-brown lawn, one half hay field. I will get there…

As you can see Sue’s garden is gorgeous!

I went to the GP earlier this week. I’ve been having headaches, pain when I moved my eyes and sensitivity to light, which has been going on for a few weeks now. It’s been particularly inconvenient as I have been affected when working in front of a screen as well as when driving, especially when it’s bright. The GP couldn’t help, so he directed me to my optician, who has been very helpful in the past when I had some flashing lights in my left eye. I saw her on Friday afternoon and it seems that I have dry eyes, which apparently can cause all those problems. I now have eye drops and a glasses shaped beanbag to heat up in the microwave and use on my eyes for ten minutes twice a day. This should help the oil in the glands along my eyelids to soften and get things going again. I’m mostly just glad it’s not FND related. Hopefully things are starting to get better already, though I’m about to go to Guildford for a week, so will be in a microwave-free zone.

The Guildford trip is for a chicken health and welfare course, so I’m hoping to come back with loads of new knowledge. I feel very honoured to have been selected to attend, so will be making the most of it. Triar will be getting spoiled at Mum and Dad’s. I will miss him, but at least he will be well looked after.

Hope you have a good week and thanks for reading.

Do Not Attend

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I am finally inspired to work on my story based on the Norwegian song/poem Tir n’a Noir again. I have decided it shall be a short story – different from what I usually write. I have also signed up for a scriptwriting course and am waiting for that to begin. I think it will benefit me trying out different formats. A novel takes so much time and concentration and I am in short supply of both those things. My day job takes too much energy.

That said, I’ve had a good week at work. On Monday I was out with Lauren, one of our animal health officers, training her to blood sample sheep. With only minor instruction from me, she quickly got the hang of it and took blood from twenty sheep in no time. I enjoy teaching people how to do things I’ve spent half a lifetime learning.

On Tuesday, I was learning myself. I was up at Prestwick Airport again, checking two beautiful horses that had flown in from the US. It was a broodmare and her foal and they were blue blood in the racing world. Absolutely stunning. Another colleague recommended I took the Castle Douglas road on the way back and I did. The normal Ayr road is rather boring, so I was delighted to find myself driving through some gorgeous Galloway scenery. There are mostly rolling hills here, rather than mountains, but I passed through spiky fir forests and by lochans and burns.

As you can see, the sky became quite spectacular and shortly afterwards, it began to pour. I was reminded of a summer long ago, when we holidayed in New Galloway and went walking every morning, but made sure we were back in the cottage in the afternoon as the rain started each day at about 3pm.

On Wednesday, I recorded the training on the Disease Report Form that I had given in front of an audience the week before. To do this, I was told to set up a Teams meeting with my mentor, Josephine. “Mark it, ‘Do not attend’” she told me, so I gave it that title and then began. I muffed it a couple of times and I wasn’t sure how to delete, so I decided to quit that meeting and set up another. This time, I thought I would give her a giggle and gave it a rather tongue in cheek name.

That time, the recording went well and I laid down a perfectly respectable piece of training. What I hadn’t realized was that when anyone accesses the presentation, what they would come to was a video with the title of the meeting it was recorded on in broad letters at the bottom of the page. And so, you guessed it, I have created a piece of training on a serious topic, with the title that will be there in perpetuity – Do Not Attend Again – The Director’s Cut.

I don’t have any real plans for this weekend so far. Last weekend I went for a walk with Belle, who is one of the women who will be teaching me about scriptwriting. Her dog George is very laid back, and he and Triar seeem to get on fine. Triar did shame me slightly by disappearing into a massive field, filled with long grass and rabbits, and failing entirely to return when I called him. Belle and George were fortunately very laid back about the whole thing and Belle even suggested that, as Triar enjoyed it so much, we could come back another day, but bring a picnic instead of aiming to go to a pub for a drink. Sounds good to me!

Have a good week all and thanks for reading.

Golden Hemorrhoids and Sticky Toffee Pudding

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At the start of this week, I was quite tense. I’ve explained before that I am trying to work towards a bonus payment, which requires a lot of hoop-jumping and I am attempting some of the hoops right at the last minute, given that the deadline for submitting my activities is Monday coming. On Tuesday last week, I was meant to be presenting training on Foot and Mouth Disease and an update on Bluetongue. On the morning of the presentation, I received a message to say it the meeting was cancelled. I confess, I was rather relieved, though hopefully it won’t undermine my case.

On Wednesday, I gave my Disease Risk Form training to some of the vets. It was given at our regional meeting and I fondly looked round the room at the three or four vets in attendance and thought there was nobody there that would worry me to present to.

When the time of the meeting arrived, Josephine, my veterinary mentor told me we were linking in by Teams, and slightly to my horror, I realized that there were vets at all levels, linking in from the whole of Scotland. Still, I didn’t have any time to worry, and apart from wishing I’d thought to bring a glass of water for my dry mouth, the whole thing went off pretty well.

I must say though, that Josephine herself had given some training on Bluetongue (the situation is unfolding fast – we’re trying to keep it out of Scotland) which she made much more fun than anything I have produced. As you can see below, the cow on the Lipton’s tea van is leaving England and crossing the yellow border into Scotland and we were learning about the special measures the farmer would have to undertake. Suffice to say, there won’t be a lot of English animals at Scottish shows this year and vice versa.

Not sure whose the Coke bottle is, but clearly it should really have been Irn Bru for the sake of consistency.

Wednesday night was the summer meal at my writing group in Lockerbie. The hotel we use does food and they are responsible for the sticky toffee pudding at the top of the page. As regular readers will know, I’m a bit of a foodie and the beef stroganoff, for my taste, had too much Dijon mustard, to the point where that was the principal flavour, but it was pleasant enough.

On Thursday morning I woke up feeling a bit more relaxed, with all my training done for now. I’ve mentioned before that I am reading the Bible and I have an app that gives me three readings each day, two from the Old Testament and one from the New. My first Old Testament reading was Samuel and I was bemused to read that, having stolen The Ark of the Covenant, the Philistines were blighted with “‘emerods in their secret parts”.

Of course, I had to look this up. There are sometimes words I don’t fully understand and sometimes I don’t check, but these emerods were coming up, over and over, and moreover, when the Philistines sensibly decided that the safest thing was to swiftly hand the Ark back to Israel, the priests and diviners told them they had to give it back with an offering that consisted of five golden mice and that they had to make images of their “emerods” from gold and hand over five of those as well.

So when I checked, it turns out that the word “emerods” is actually an old word for hemorrhoids. I must say, the Bible does throw up some truly bizarre things now and then! As it was my friend Valerie who encouraged me into the Bible reading, I tried to send her a message, “Golden hemorrhoids? I’ve heard it all now!” But having sent it, I realized a minute or two later that I had sent it instead to another friend. Fortunately, I managed to delete it before she saw it, but I had a laugh and shared that with Valerie too. Let’s face it, that would be quite a message to wake up to, without context or explanation!

I shall leave you with a few, wonderfully overgrown pictures from Blackbird Lane. Thank you, as ever, for reading. Hope you have a good week.

.

Good Morning From Yorkshire

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Isn’t it warm? It’s not yet seven thirty as I write this, but Triar and I have been out for our walk early. We stopped to have a chat with some heifers in a field (we stayed outside the gate) which is the high point of our day so far! Aren’t they gorgeous?

I came down yesterday as I had a dentist’s appointment to get a filling. I intended to come down on Thursday evening, but was unexpectedly offered a cancellation appointment to see a neurologist, so of course I jumped at the chance. As the occupational therapist at work wanted, he has given me a diagnosis – FND, which I’m guessing most people haven’t heard of. It’s described everywhere as being “like a software problem and not a hardware problem”. Basically they can’t see anything wrong on a battery of tests, but it fits certain criteria.

I’m still trying to process the ramifications. The tests I had were years ago and he hasn’t sent me for any new ones. With hindsight, I’m not sure we talked enough about what’s happening now and how it will be fixed. Back in Norway, I maintained fairly good health for three years, by resting properly when I needed to. He’s going to write me a letter to take to occupational health, so I will see what it says.

But overall, I think it’s good. On examination, he didn’t find anything new or particularly significant. He seemed certain there wasn’t a degenerative disorder. Having spent years looking up my own symptoms (don’t do this!) I had myself thought FND was the closest fit. Back in 2017 when this all began for me, I found almost nothing online about it. Now the internet is awash with information. It is, I feel the neurological disorder du jour! Hopefully I can find a way to manage it better than I am at the moment. I’m still working full time and doing a good job. I’d just like to have more energy to do things when work is over.

In other news, I’m getting through the paperwork mountain, though the dreaded Framework Agreement still needs some work. I’m giving training sessions next week, on Foot and Mouth disease, to some local authority inspectors on Tuesday and on the Disease Risk Form (investigation) during TB outbreaks to my fellow Senior Veterinary Inspectors. My boss, Dean, has a case lined up for me when those are done and there is some chicken work starting from July, so plenty to keep me going. I may be easily tired, but I also don’t like twiddling my thumbs, so it’s all going right at the moment.

I shall leave you with some more cow pictures and maybe some flowers too. Blackbird Lane is wonderfully overgrown and tangled at the moment, with wildflowers peeking out all over the place. And now it’s time to go make breakfast, so have a good week all, and thanks for reading.

Talking

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I’m hopelessly short of photos at the moment. Sometimes it’s been because of the weather, but for now it’s because my life has shrunk, I think. For a while, I was forever away on courses, or sent out west. I will expend what extra energy I have to spare this weekend on painting rather than exploring. I feel, in some ways, that everything in life it at a standstill. There are some hurdles I need to get over, and once I do things will start to move again.

One of the hurdles is the building work upstairs. I asked to paint before there were skirting boards and wooden windowsills and lights and plug holes, because it would be easier, and it is. But what that means is, that until I have painted, all those things can’t be done. Once they are, and I’ve got real rooms back again, and all the workmen have left, I can start to clear my bedroom. I’ve been living in a room that’s clogged with inaccessible boxes for almost a year now. I don’t want it to become a way of life.

And then there’s work. I have started to call my nightmare farm, the Farm of Doom. My fellow blogger Penny, who writes the Walking Woman blog (https://icelandpenny.com) has commented now and then on the presence (or usually its return after an absence) of my sense of humour. When I’m rested and well, it comes to the fore. It never really leaves, but it seeps more into my writing. Black humour is how I deal with the negative stuff that comes with a career as a vet.

Anyway, I’m hoping to put the Farm of Doom behind me shortly. My line manager offered to take me off the case on Thursday afternoon, but frankly, I want to take it to some kind of conclusion so I can get closure. That will be another river crossed. The offer came in the wake of me telling him I had been suffering from nightmares, to the point where I had phoned a counsellor on Tuesday.

My workplace has twenty four hour counselling available and I felt a bit apprehensive as I picked up the phone, but it was actually a huge relief. I haven’t really talked to anyone, beyond the absolutely necessary people working on the case, what I saw that day. That’s partly down to confidentiality, but even where I could talk to colleagues, I mostly haven’t. They don’t need to share my horrors. Having checked the counsellor had her own counseling available, I poured most of it out, though something still held me back from mentioning the worst detail. I don’t know why, but perhaps nobody else needs that image stuck in their head.

Yesterday, I talked to someone from Safety as I have reported my experience with the Farm of Doom as a “near miss” or whatever the terminology is. She discussed my most recent absence from work with me and told me I should record it as work related, even though I have a pre-existing condition, the fatigue was caused by my experience at work. She will advise that the three days I had off should not count towards my absence record. She doesn’t control HR, unfortunately. She has been arguing for years with them, about the awful wording in the formal absence warning letter, but she can certainly give advice, and as my line manager generally follows such advice, hopefully they can make things better for now.

I guess the other big hurdle is the NHS waiting list. I spoke again to the GP who tried to bring things forward for me, but he had no success, so the expected date for an appointment is still July. In the meantime, I will continue monitoring myself, looking for patterns and trying to work out triggers. I was sent a course about BSE in cows recently and was reminded of how similar my symptoms are to theirs, but I know I don’t have Creutzfeldt–Jakob because, if I had, I’d be long dead.

On that cheery note, I shall take my leave! Even if I’m barely going out, there’s a lovely view from my garden and Blackbird Lane will be waiting for me. The daffodil at the top of the page was taken there. The birds were singing when I stepped put into the garden this morning, and a beautiful day was dawning. I’ll leave you with a couple of photographs of that! Have a lovely week all.

More Song, Less Horror…

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To continue what I started yesterday, Tuesday and Wednesday were broadly taken up with meetings about Monday and follow-up actions. When faced with something complex that requires careful handling of many different aspects of care, there are always things missed that need to be rectified, and follow up questions and investigation.

Not entirely coincidentally, I had an appointment early on Tuesday morning with the doctor from Occupational Health (OH). We had a good chat and discussed some things that I found helpful. For example, she suggested using flexitime to take days off when I am tired in the immediate aftermath of something that takes a lot of energy.

There were other suggestions my mind rebelled against. For example, she suggested I could try anti-depressants, partly on the grounds that they wouldn’t interfere with any neurological examination because “half the population are on them”. That doesn’t strike me as a good thing. I know some people find them very useful, but I’m not depressed.

I said as much and she suggested some of my symptoms mimic anxiety symptoms. She also said the tingling in my hands and feet (which I was experiencing during the meeting) were not due to anxiety as I was speaking (and therefore breathing) normally. That’s quite a useful observation actually, because it’s been suggested before that some of my symptoms might be anxiety, but I have never been breathless in that way, even when my symptoms were at their worst.

Anyway, having driven through Tuesday and Wednesday on adrenaline, I woke up on Thursday and my mind and body rebelled. I had noticed, on my flexitime sheet that the extra hours I’d worked on Monday and Tuesday had taken me over eight hours, so I called my line manager, explained what the OH doctor had suggested and, to my relief, he agreed. My shoulders immediately dropped several inches, so I knew, at once, it was the right thing to have done.

I didn’t do much that day. I wrote a bit of my new story and immediately came upon a conundrum. Setting it in Dyrøya is all very well, but if the man who fell in love with Mary McKear is old now, he must have met her some time ago. So I need to know about Dyrøya’s past. It’s now an island, connected to the mainland by a bridge. So knowing when Mary arrived… and how… is important. More than that, what is a young Irish woman doing on a remote island in Arctic Norway anyway? It’s going to be the first thing he asks, surely?

Leaving all that aside, it was time to take Triar out. I set off to go down Blackbird Lane, and halfway there, decided to look if there was somewhere else I could take him in the car, that wasn’t too far away. Google led me to Castledykes Park, which was only a few minutes drive. We wandered slowly round the park. I know vets are meant to despise extending leads, but this was the perfect time to use one, because then Triar can zoom about, while I meander.

It was warm and sunny in the park. We looked at the trees and flowers and Triar did what dogs do on trees and flowers, and quite shortly, I found a nice bench. It was warm enough to sit down and close my eyes and hope that Triar wasn’t eating a dropped bar of chocolate or rolling in fox poo as I listened to the birds singing.

There was, yet another meeting on Friday morning, but much of the day was spent on a refresher course about handling animal welfare cases. It all sounds very peaceful when you’re talking about the legal framework and the form filling.

And so, yesterday I went to another mini-writing retreat and I used the time to delve into Mary’s background. She now has a history – a Norwegian grandmother, who escaped from Norway in World War 2. Maybe she came over in one of the boats that are coming to Shetland when I’m there in May!

Anyway, that’s me up to date now, after my busy week. If you’ve read this far, thank you. Take care!

Before the Storm

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There were two beautiful mornings in Blackbird Lane the week before last that I want to share with you. I took the photo at the top of the page and the one below on Monday the 7th.

Mist hung above the fields, but the light was beautiful, catching the wonderful clarity of the raindrops, left there by a shower.

Four days later, it was frosty and again, I couldn’t resist taking photographs in the sparkling morning light.

I was taken out for a driver training course on the Thursday. The instructor asked why I was there. I must have triggered something when I answered some questions at work about my driving, but the only one I can think of was that I said I drive when I’m tired. If anyone working in field services (as I do) said they never drive when tired, they are not being entirely truthful. After a long day on a physical job on a farm, we all have to get home. That’s just how it is. Anyway I drove the instructor to Tebay service station and had a coffee and a pie, then drove her back. She says I’m a good driver, so no complaints about that one!

Last Sunday, I met an old friend from university and had a meal with him in Lockerbie. We then decided to go and look at a section of the west side of Hadrian’s wall, as it wasn’t too far away. It’s an impressive sight, even now: well constructed and taller than I am, so I couldn’t see over it. It was originally four metres high when it was built almost 2000 years ago. It must have been very commanding and Hadrian must have been very alarmed by all the evil Scots!

This week has been a real mixed bag. I was meant to be heading off to Bury St Edmunds today, to do some bluetongue surveillance, but on Tuesday, I was told that there was tracing work to be done here in Scotland and I couldn’t be spared. I was a bit frustrated as I was looking forward to getting away and doing some outbreak work.

The high point of my week was on Tuesday, when I visited a vet practice for a routine inspection over Wigtown way. It went well and I decided to spend lunchtime in a cafe in Wigtown called ReadingLasses. They had run out of soup and were only serving coffee and cake, so I chose a coffee and martini cake, which really was as delicious as it looks. Wigtown is also Scotland’s book town, as I’ve mentioned before, and as you can see in the photo below, and maybe guessed from its name, ReadingLasses was filled with books by and about women. I read the first two chapters of a book about crofting life with my cake and will definitely return for the following two next time I’m over that way.

Thursday wasn’t so good. I woke up and found that Triar’s breathing was not right. He was obviously struggling a bit, needing more effort to breathe out than was normal. I had woken at six and the vet didn’t open until 8:30 – he wasn’t bad enough to warrant an out of hours call – so I had a frightening couple of hours, during which my lovely friend Lara called me and calmed me down, talking through what to do.

By some miracle, the vet Triar knows had an appointment at 8:45, so I rushed Triar there. I think he has some kind of inflammation in his lungs, or pneumonia, but don’t know what’s causing it. He’s had a steroid injection and is doing a bit better, but for now, I’m waiting and monitoring and hoping he goes in the right direction. Lung problems in dogs can be difficult to diagnose and treat. This is the one time I wish I was working in practice, as I would do way more tests, though of course that can also cause more problems. Patience is very hard though and the realization of how precious he is to me was brought home by the wave of emotion. I was no use for work on Thursday morning and fortunately, my manager was very understanding.

So after all, I am very grateful to not be heading off to Bury St Edmunds today. Triar and I will have a quiet weekend together. The weather warnings say there’s a storm on the way, so we will shelter together here and hope for better things next week.