I only realised on Monday, or maybe Tuesday, that Saturday had passed and I had forgotten to write to you at all last weekend. It felt surreal, though perhaps not surprising. My whirlwind trip to the Arctic was over in a flash. Even now that I’m home, it feels no time at all since I was landing in Bardufoss and walking across the recently cleared runway to find Shirley waiting for me, just inside the glass door of the airport building.
It was, in many ways, a beautiful trip. Temperatures were perfect at around minus one all week. Cold enough for crisp snow, not so chilly as to give you frostbite. Each morning, I went for a twilight walk with the dogs. This was my first day.
I sent the picture to my work colleagues, one of whom said it was like a postcard. I was quite surprised because to me, it’s just a road. Attractive enough with all the snow, but not especially scenic. Three years living there has skewed my perspective.
When we got back, Shirley offered to make me the same breakfast she makes herself each morning. Just some oats and nuts, I think she said. She came through a few minutes later with a delicious concoction of blueberries, porridge, nuts, seeds and honey. It was a fabulous start to the day.
I came upstairs on the 5th to find Shirley had put the Christmas tree up. This was in addition to a thousand other festive touches. With darkness outside some 21 hours of the day, it felt cosy and utterly Norwegian.
Despite being vegetarian, Shirley and Kai wanted to treat me to Norwegian Christmas dinner, so on Friday, they took me out to Senjastua for lunch. It was a delight of different Norwegian traditions, from pinnekjøtt (dried and reconstituted lamb) to pork ribbe, via a tasty lamb sausage. It was served with mashed swede and red cabbage, along with what was called ribbe sauce – effectively gravy! Delicious!
It was just as well our walk had taken us a bit further up the hill that morning, or I would never have managed the whole plateful.
The forecast was for cloudy skies all week and I had resigned myself to not seeing the Northern Lights. I did glance out of the window as I was on my way to bed that night and chanced to see stars. Stars meant the clouds must have cleared a bit, so opening the door, I went outside and, to my delight, the sky was indeed lit up with that gently dancing river of light. Standing outside in the snow, it felt timeless and wonderful as ever.
On Saturday, we made shortbread and stuffed mushrooms on a leek and cauliflower purée. No photos of those, but on Sunday, I made a gingerbread cake with cream cheese icing, which I will definitely be making again.
Somehow, it didn’t strike me until Monday that I was leaving on Tuesday. Throughout the weekend, I was thinking I was only halfway through my visit. Monday was spent shopping and Shirley and I had lunch in En Kaffe Te, where I sometimes used to go with John and Andrew, when we all lived there.
I bought quite a few Christmas things. I won’t be using them this year as my house is still in a state of flux with ongoing building work, but perhaps next year, I can make it into more of a haven. Lovely as my trip was, I confess there were bittersweet overtones. I loved my house in the north and when I bought it, I was expecting to settle there, with John nearby and probably Andrew somewhere not too far away. For a number of reasons, it didn’t work out that way and since then, life hasn’t felt settled or comfortable, but I guess that’s how life is. I can only hope to build something different. There’s no going back.
Flying out of Tromsø is always beautiful, especially in winter.
Unfortunately, my flight from Trondheim to Copenhagen was delayed, which meant an exhausting rush the length of Copenhagen airport, followed by the not-unexpected discovery that, although I had made it back to Manchester on time, my luggage hadn’t. Cue two days of hanging about at home, expecting it to be delivered. A message arrived yesterday evening at quarter past seven to say it will be arriving on Monday. I’m not very impressed.
Still Triar seems to have had a lovely time with my friend Ruth. Good to know that I have someone who loves him to look after him when I’m away. It was when she told me she was moving beds to make sure he had enough space that I knew I’d found the perfect home from home for him!
Another emotional week, this week. If you’ve been following for a while, you will understand why I was nervous of handing over the house, more specifically the cleaning. Shirley, knowing all that history, volunteered to come and help me and was absolutely wonderful.
As a retired nurse, I thought that if there were any problems, she’d be a great witness. She is also an absolute whirlwind with a mop. I think she cleaned three rooms in the time it took me to get the bathroom sorted out. She also brought along a kettle and delicious biscuits and we sat and drank coffee, gazing out of the kitchen window at the snowy bulk of Fagerfjell (Mountain) that rises up behind the house. It was lovely to have some pleasant last memories after the furniture removal debacle!
My last two days at work were lovely. I was on the early shift, checking the live animals both days. I had quite forgotten that Tuesday was Halloween, so I was especially delighted to come back from the lairage to find that Trude had made our office really cosy with Halloween themed decorations, sweets, and a cake.
A few last memories of the lairage: there were wooly pigs there on my last day. Like many of the pigs, they were fast asleep when I arrived to look at them, so I took a photo. Actually, I think the black one facing me in the middle might have clocked me, but it’s a typically peaceful scene from the pig pens, albeit with extra wool!
There are a couple of bits of grafitti that have amused me over the years. Someone with a dark sense of humour has added a direction marker for any poor sheep in the «cold lairage». Fortunately, with all the sheep being Norwegian, they won’t have understood it if they saw it.
And there is a cheerier message on the back of one of the gates we stand behind when the animals come in. There’s not too much danger from a flock of sheep, even if they do run straight over you, but there are also big bulls brought in on a regular basis, and then this i very relevant.
Translated, it says, «You are safe here, Amen». A very reassuring message.
We had pizza together at lunch time and I spent the rest of the day showing Ingrid how to do a few last things. I also hugged almost everyone, which was lovely, given the restraints of Covid that were in place for so much of my first couple of years. I was also given some gifts, including a lovely pair of Målselv socks, which I can confirm are deliciously warm as well as very pleasing to look at.
The sale of the car to Kaj and later of the house, went through without a hitch. Both had originally been planned for 1st November, but as the house was ready before that, I handed over both sets of keys on the 31st and then drove to Tromsø with John. I had two nights in the lovely flat he and Yoana have rented. They’ve made it really cosy. I bought them a Nespresso machine as a housewarming present. Hopefully they’ll get a lot of use from it.
On Thursday morning, I walked through the snow to catch the bus that would take me to the airport. It was a beautiful day and I managed to capture a last photo of Tromsø as the plane took off.
It was a lot greener in Stavanger when I landed.
And of course, this lovely boy was waiting for me at the airport. It was wonderful to be reunited.
So now I am in Stavanger for a few days. Andrew came round on Thursday evening and yesterday and tonight Anna will be joining us. She will be coming with me on the next leg of my journey. We will take a boat from Stavanger to Hirtshals in Denmark on Tuesday evening.
And for regular readers, I have been asked to continue blogging by so many people that I will continue when I get to Scotland, so I hope you will all join me as I begin the next stage of my life as «The Vet Who Came In From The Cold».
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.
I was sitting in bed on Monday morning when the phone rang. It was just after seven and I was reading, having already been awake for a couple of hours: a regular occurrence in the past weeks. I had been taken out of the rota and was enjoying not having to rush in. It was Trude on the phone and I wondered for a moment whether someone was sick, but to my surprise, she asked if I had overslept. It took me a moment to understand and then I clicked. I hadn’t been taken out of the rota at all. I had been moved to Vet 1 position – the lairage. I should, by now, be in the lairage and half way through my inspection of the live animals.
Until a vet has checked the live animals, no slaughtering is allowed. My absence meant that the entire operation – everyone who works on the line – would be an hour late in starting. If that resulted in running over to the end of the day, the financial cost would be enormous.
Within a few minutes, I was in the car and then Trude rang again. Ingrid had arrived early for her shift and was going to start for me. Though I was relieved, my world still felt as if it was cracking apart as I drove in. On Friday I had discovered two other errors I had made. On Thursday, I had forgotten to put on the chain mail tabard which protects us from knife stick injuries as I went to the line, and only realised after forty minutes. In itself , each individual mistake could be within normal limits, but it was happening too often and the reality is that I don’t have the kind of job where there is much room for error.
Last week, I wrote “I am rationally aware that I am no longer fully functional, yet on another level, I don’t feel incapacitated enough to take sick leave” but this felt like the final straw. Even after a weekend off, I was too dysfunctional to work safely. It took me all I had to keep my voice steady as I called Hilde. With only two and a half weeks to go, and at the height of the season, it was the last thing I wanted to do, but I was genuinely afraid I would do something bad that couldn’t be undone, and so, this week, I have been at home resting.
Not that resting has been easy to achieve. The upcoming move is hanging over me all the time. Though I think most of the arrangements are now in place, there will be a lot to do in the next couple of weeks. Pickford’s are coming on Thursday to pack up my worldly goods and take them on their journey to Scotland. After that, I have to make sure the house is cleared and clean. Fortunately, due to Kaj buying my car, that will be less complicated than it could have been, but it will be a big upheaval, nonetheless.
I had a narrow escape with changing over my phone provider as well. Work have supplied me with a phone for the past three years and have released the number so I can take it over. Obviously, in the UK, I will need to get a new one, but life these days is so mobile dependant that I don’t want to set off on my complicated journey to the UK without one. It was only when I had contacted my new supplier, that I remembered they would have to send me a new SIM… to North Norway… in the post. It says it should arrive in 5-7 working days and I know it has been sent with ten day to spare. Fingers crossed it will arrive in time. And of course, with the unforced errors at work, I am worried that there will be something I have forgotten with regard to my move. So far, the worst thing I’ve done is to cancel my internet provider too late, so I have to pay a month’s notice which is frustrating but not disastrous.
Anyway, I will be returning to work on Monday. I feel less tired after my week off, although the problem with extreme brain fog, linked to forgetfulness, is that you don’t necessarily recognize there’s a problem until it’s too late. I’m down as Vet 1 again on Monday and this time, I have my computer at home and can double check things. So long as there’s nothing too complicated to deal with, it should be fine.
On Wednesday night this week, there was an aurora. I had been waiting and hoping the skies would clear, and to my joy, there it was! I stood outside in the darkness, watching those mesmerising rivers of light dancing across the sky. Another last, perhaps. I will almost certainly come back, but people who holiday here can’t guarantee seeing it, though I am told it has been quite visible over the UK recently, so who knows? Anyway, I didn’t get any great photos, but here is a last view of my little house, bathed in the emerald glow of the northern night sky.
I received a message on Thursday morning from my friend Shirley inviting me round for an evening of cheese and port. “Stay over if you want to” it said. Well, with Covid measures in the recent past, and moving up here during them, I’ve not been invited to so many parties in the past three years. Cheese and wine is also a fairly British institution and Shirley’s Scottish friend Linda was still over and so, mentally already packing my bags, I agreed immediately. What a fabulous evening we had. I arrived to find this wonderful spread.
Within minutes of arriving, we were in gales of laughter about something or other. It’s been a while since that’s happened too and I think it’s the first time I’ve felt so relaxed since I started planning the move. I wrote most of this yesterday at home, but am currently in a comfortable bed in Shirley’s basement flat. I will be going home today to do some cleaning, but will return this evening. Shirley is going to the cinema with her husband, Kai, but Linda will be here and there’s still a lot of delicious cheese left. It’s looking like a much more exciting weekend than I could have imagined.
I want to start with a quick update on a couple of things. Several people have asked me about the guinea pigs, so I guess I missed out on saying that Bowen, who cut my lawn throughout the summer, agreed to take them for his children. Bowen is from a farming background and is very good with animals, so I have no doubt they are being well cared for.
And earlier in the week, Kaj surprised me in asking whether he could buy the car. We have agreed a price and he will take it over on the last day before I leave. I was slightly nervous until yesterday as he hadn’t driven the car yet, but he took it out for a spin while I was in the meeting and seemed to be very satisfied. I can honestly say that I am delighted. Not only is it extremely convenient for me to have the car right up until the last moment, I also like both Kaj and the car well enough for me to be glad they will be taking lots of road trips together.
Yesterday was like some kind of dream, though it began with a nightmarish tone. I got into work and opened an e-mail from Hilde that asked about a case document that’s been sitting in my inbox for months. I had made some limited moves to follow it up, and had asked for some help, but should have asked for more, rather than naively believing it was something that it was all in hand. Actions should have been taken when it came in and weren’t and that was down to me. There was another case too that had gone wrong. Not entirely my fault this time, but there were things I should have done that again, I forgot. I am rationally aware that I am no longer fully functional, yet on another level, I don’t feel incapacitated enough to take sick leave. Hilde is fortunately so level headed that she is cheerfully dealing with everything, without seemingly allocating blame or changing her opinion of me as a reasonably competent person. That in itself, feels like a miracle.
But from a poor start, the day quickly improved. Some of Konstantin’s old colleagues from Latvia had arranged to visit the abattoir. Konstantin and I spent a few hours last week organising a program for them, which included a tour of the laboratory where they test samples of meat for various bacteria and parasites, a presentation from the Health and Safety Lead, a trip into the big hall where the carcases are skinned and cleaned, and a tour of the lairage, where the live animals are kept. Hilde came too, to welcome the visitors and to tell them a little about Mattilsynet. There was a lot of interesting discussion, ranging from the domestic animal population on Svalbard (almost a thousand dogs, but few other animals, in order to protect the unique environment) to how border control with Russia had changed as a result of recent hostilities.
As well as the official visit to the abattoir, Konstantin had arranged with a local Sami acquaintance to take a trip to see reindeer afterwards. I was due to work on the sheep line yesterday. Ingrid filled in for me while I was in the meeting, but I was expected to take over from her when the visitors left. I had hoped that the sheep line would be finished early enough for me to go with them to see the reindeer, but by the time they were due to leave, there were still too many sheep left. As Ernestas and I went to the line, we met Konstantin in the corridor and I regretfully told him that I wouldn’t be able to go.
However, I had reckoned without the generosity of Vaidotas and Ernestas. Having heard my exchange with Konstantin, Ernestas accosted Vaidotas when he arrived on the line to relieve me half an hour later. Between them, the urged me to go and say goodbye to the reindeer while I had the chance.
By the time I was ready, almost an hour had passed since Konstantin had left, but I drove out to Andsvatn where the reindeer had been gathered, hoping that I would still catch up with the party. When I pulled up, I couldn’t see Konstantin’s car, but there was a big people carrier there, so I thought they might have all come together. I couldn’t, however, see anyone. There were a few reindeer on the far side of a high fence, through a big, securely tied wooden gate. Konstantin had told me that Per Mathis (who owns the small, family run reindeer abattoir) had told him that visitors were fine, so long as they closed the gates, but this one was so heavy and so securely tied, that I knew I didn’t want to attempt it.
Just as I was about to get back in my car, another car drew up and a woman got out. I asked her whether she knew if Konstantin was still here and explained he and I worked at Mattilsynet and sometimes did meat inspection at Andsvatn. She didn’t know, but assured me someone else would be along shortly, who might know, and sure enough, within a couple of minutes, a youngish man arrived on a snowmobile. He told me that he had no idea if they were still there, but that if I walked round to the back of the building we were parked beside and followed the snowmobile tracks up the hill, I would probably find them, if they were.
By this time, another woman had arrived with her daughter. She had a rucksack with her, which she rearranged and filled with provisions while I watched and I wondered whether she was going to stop the night somewhere. She and I spoke a little, but I found it hard to understand her, or more specifically, what she was referring to. Still, she seemed to know where she was going and seemed happy enough for me to tag along behind them. We walked up the hill together, her with her snow poles and me in my natty red suede boots, that probably were not designed for trudging along snowy trails, but which fortunately had enough grip to serve me well.
It was a beautiful sunny day, and though they were distant, I could see reindeer in all directions. Many of them were on the move and they were calling to one another – a kind of guttural grunting that sounded primeval under the wonderful blue sky. I felt as if I was entering a kind of dream like state, such was my delight at seeing and hearing these wonderful animals. I was also aware that this was something I was unlikely to experience again, so I was taking my time, drinking it all in.
As we walked over the brow of a hill, there was a fence in front of us. Behind it, a few reindeer ran past and then a few minutes later, a couple more. There were reindeer in the field where we were walking too, but still they were distant and I found myself hoping that we would be able to get closer. The tracks turned left here and we followed them between two fences, where there were a few snowmobiles parked. A black and brown dog watched us from one of them, but made no move as we passed. Beyond them, I could see a high wooden fence with a door. And now there were reindeer much closer.
We reached the door in the fence and it opened. The woman and her daughter walked in and I followed them through. To my amazement, I found myself inside a high-walled wooden corral. There were people there, some working, some watching, as well as a few reindeer, though as I looked around, there was no sign of Konstantin and his visitors. Some of the men were wearing traditional Sami dress, brightly coloured tunics and hats with intricate embroidered patterns. Others were wearing traditional Norwegian woollen sweaters, blue with red and white patterns over the shoulders and top of the chest. An older woman wore a brightly coloured fur hat with small flag-like embroidered projections. Unlike me, everyone else was dressed suitably for the temperature.
There was a moment, a long time ago, when my parents lived in the north of Scotland. A friend visited me in the summer holiday and we decided to walk to the local pub, half an hour away. We pushed open the door to the bar, which was filled with people and chatter, and stood there as the voices dropped away and every eye in the pub turned our way. It wasn’t quite that bad, because many people in the corral were working and the reindeer were circling, but the feeling of being an unexpected stranger was not dissimilar. Everyone else here probably knew who everyone else was. Per Mathis might have recognised me, and perhaps one or two others, but I really didn’t know any of the men I worked with two years ago well enough to talk to or recognise, and anyway, they were busy.
But as I looked round, to my enormous relief, I saw a friendly face. Merete who works as a technician at the abattoir was there. She has been off for a long time with a shoulder injury and I had half expected that I wouldn’t see her again, but there she was, opening and closing the gate one handedly, a part of this wonderful extended family scene.
And so I stood a while and watched as the reindeer were sorted. The traditional Sami method for identifying reindeer is to cut nicks in their ears in different places. Each family has a distinctive pattern, though the reindeer’s ears were so furry that it seemed remarkable that they could see which reindeer were theirs and then capture them as they circled past.
Having caught an animal by the antlers, they would tug them over to one of several gates around the corral, each of which led to a different field. Some were injected with wormer, some were marked on their rumps or their legs, and then they were allowed to go. When there were only a few animals left, a gate was opened and the remainder rushed through. Another, bigger gate on the far side was opened. Some of the workers went out , selected another group, isolated them from the herd with a huge tarpaulin that they stretched out between them, and guided the new group into the corral.
And now there were so many reindeer that I could have reached out and touched them as they passed. How beautiful they were, and how wild, with their wary eyes and velvet antlers. I could feel a deep happiness building inside of me, that I was having the honour of witnessing this wonderful gathering. I began to notice other details, like the lavvo – a traditional wigwam-like sami tent – on the far side outside the corral. There must have been a fire inside as there was wood smoke rising from the centre of the canvas roof. There was frost beginning to nip my fingers, but I stood there entranced as the reindeer flowed past me, circling round the corral as they probably have done for hundreds of years.
But as the animals were sorted, and the number in the corral dwindled, I began to feel the chill of minus three entering my bones. Merete had gone away to find some entertainment for her toddler godson and there was no sign that she was coming back. Straightening up, I opened the door I hade come in through, stepped back outside the corral and began to make my way back down the hill. I hadn’t taken any photographs inside. This was a family gathering, and not my family. But I took a few photos as I walked back, though as always, when photographing wild(ish) animals, I regretted not having a camera with a zoom lens.
Still, despite the lack of photographs, I hope I have done enough to paint you a picture of what I recognise was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences: one that was all the better for being unexpected.
That wonderful feeling of deep happiness is something that will stay with me for a long time.
There’s too much going on and my brain has reached capacity status. On some levels I feel I’m still functioning, but I may not be a good judge of my own performance. My boss had to remind me yesterday to finish up logging my working hours for September. There was probably a mass e-mail earlier in the week reminding us, but I guess I missed it. My boss did tell me though, that I won’t get paid for any flexitime I have accrued. I’m glad she told me as it’s easy to build up flexitime in the season without really thinking about it. Now, on the odd days when I have the opportunity to go home early, I will grab them with both hands.
A few things are starting to wind down, but I am still dealing with three relatively serious cases, two of which I took on before I knew I was moving and one which falls to me as it’s something for which I have responsibility and I was the person on the spot when a serious incident occurred. It’s interesting that, even now, I’m still learning a lot. The incident was serious enough that there have been meetings with senior and specialised staff. It’s important that everything is done right, so it ends up being a team effort and not something I have to handle on my own.
It’s also interesting as it helps me reflect on my own performance. This and another lower key case have highlighted to me that, while I am relatively good at observations and recording visual information, I am much less good at drilling down when interviewing others. I think this is, in part, due to language, but it’s still something I need to work on. The good thing is that people can be interviewed later, so even though I have missed the chance to get first impressions and immediate reactions, it should still be possible to drill down and get most of the factual information.
Some old colleagues of Konstantin are coming from Latvia to look round the abattoir at the end of next week. Having discussed the visit with Konstantin, we will be highlighting health and safety. The H&S manager has agreed to come and give a short presentation, as will the managing director. Fortunately, Hilde had done some of the groundwork before Konstantin and I approached them, as we (well specifically I, as it was my responsibility) were quite late in approaching them. Now the biggest potential fly-in-the-ointment is that it has already started snowing, so the chance that Konstantin or I will have to go to the reindeer abattoir next week are significantly higher. The reindeer are mostly walked down from the pastures, which is much easier to achieve using snowmobiles. Usually Konstantin goes, but as his absence might leave significant translation difficulties with the Latvian visitors, it will probably have to be me.
Not that I mind. I looked up reindeer in Scotland, and see that there are some in the Cairngorms, which is quite a trip, but probably one I will make sometime. I might even drag my mum and dad along. Sadly, due to Covid, they never made it over here to the north of Norway. Perhaps I can still give them a taste of it without having to travel quite so far. I drove round the road where the reindeer abattoir is yesterday, and as you can see from the photo below, there had been quite a significant snow fall there.
There’s not quite so much snow at home, though it is snowing at the moment. I took a couple of photos earlier in the week, when the snow line was starting to make its way down the mountainsides. There are still cattle outside across the road. Even the domesticated animals here have to be incredibly hardy!
That one was taken from the front of the house, and this was out the back.
And this is how it looks this morning!
John has moved various items of furniture out, so now we have two rooms which are empty, or will be very soon. We are trying to keep the main living room looking as normal as possible until the last minute. It’s good for my mental health to be able to sit somewhere that still looks homely and welcoming. I’m tempted, with all the snow, to light the stove, but I cleaned it out really thoroughly, earlier in the year and I am quite reluctant to use it again. If it gets really cold towards the end of the month, I may have to, but it probably won’t get so cold before the end of October. I hope the people buying the house have planned where to get their wood. It can be difficult buying it in later in the winter, but it’s expensive and such a labour intensive job putting it away, that I haven’t bought them a load. There is some in the wood store, but nowhere enough for the whole winter.
I went home yesterday via my friend Shirley’s house. I met Shirley on the fast boat to Tromsø in October last year, when I heard her and a friend speaking English behind me in the queue. This was a rare enough event for me to accost them, and now Shirley and I are good friends. When I popped in yesterday, her friend that I met on the boat was over on this year’s annual visit. We ate toasted cheese and ham sandwiches and played a game and I have arranged to go over on Sunday, when we will go out for lunch together. Shirley doesn’t really drive, so it feels good to be able to do something nice for her. She has already offered me a bed for when the removal company have taken the last of the furniture, and depending on what John is doing, I may well take her up on it, at least of a couple of days. She is generous to a fault, so I hope this is something I can do to give back a little bit.
Anyway, I had better go now, but I will leave you with another snow picture. The combination of autumn colours and fresh white snow is arresting. Though I was rather dreading it, given how oppressive I found it towards the end of last winter, now it’s here, I still find it irresistibly beautiful. See you next week!
Time is getting short and things are starting to move. Quite literally in John’s case. While all this has been going on, John has been searching for a job. He has a girlfriend in Tromsø now, so he looked for, and found, a job there. He has now handed in his notice and will leave at the same time as me. Everything happened very fast, and almost as soon as he was offered a job, he and Yoana found a flat. This weekend, he’s hoping to move some of the furniture out. We had agreed, a while back, to try to keep the house in reasonable order until as late before the move as possible, because living in chaos is never fun, but moving Johns’ things out early, where possible, makes a lot of sense. The removal company which will take my goods to the UK will be packing my stuff, so it would be ideal if there as only my stuff left, to avoid any mistakes.
I feel I’m mostly there with organising my trip. I still have to check about transport to and from the ferries in various places, and organise tickets from Newcastle to Settle, but that shouldn’t take much doing. Other than that, I have to sell my car and get the house cleared before it sells on 1st November. John has agreed to handle the car sale, up to a point. I think that he is likely to get a better price for it, though we are short of time, so might have to start to drop it quite quickly. It’s a juggling act though as I will need to hire a car if it sells while I still need it.
My planned tasks this weekend include taking the car to a friend of John’s to see if he can put a bit of a shine on it and to sort through my boxes of Christmas decorations. Over the years, we’ve accumulated a lot and up until now, I haven’t really tackled cutting it down, but with an international move coming up, I really need to weed out what’s important and what isn’t. I feel like I should probably be doing more. I know there will come a time when we are going to have to get everything out of the house, and some of it will need disposing of. The removal men are coming on a Thursday though, so the rubbish dump will be open until six. If necessary, we should be able to take anything left over there before it closes.
Of course I am trying to juggle all this with doing my job as well. This week, there weren’t quite as many animals coming into the abattoir as we would normally expect during the season and so I managed to fit in an inspection out on a farm. I had offered to do it months ago and was starting to worry that I wasn’t going to get a chance, but on Thursday, I took Ingrid out and we did the inspection together. I must say, it’s lovely to have a native Norwegian along with me. It makes for much easier communication and as she wrote the “receipt” with our observations at the end of the visit, it was reassuring to know the whole thing was written in competent Norwegian.
As you can see from the photographs, it’s wonderfully autumnal here right now, but as I looked at the weather forecast a couple of days ago, I saw we were in for a change. There is snow forecast this week, on Tuesday, then towards next weekend. That means that, in addition to starting John’s house move and the other things, we are also going to have to put the winter tyres on the cars this weekend. Still, this time last year, I had the feeling we were battening down the hatches for the long winter ahead. This year’s winter is going to be very different for me!
Anyway, I think that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed the autumn photographs and that I will see you next week! Thanks for reading.
My laptop is dying. It will be a sad farewell, because when I depart, I will leave it behind. If I wasn’t moving, I would probably buy a new one and pop this one on a shelf somewhere. It can’t be sent with my furniture, even if it was worth sending, as lithium batteries are not allowed. It’s heavy too.
If it was still working properly, I would take it, even though it will take me almost a week to travel by land and sea to bring Triar to the UK and all I take will have to be lugged around in the hand which isn’t holding Triar’s lead. I will have to carry his food and blankets and my clothes, as well as packing all my important documents, which you are also advised not to send with the removal company. Being attached to objects is pointless of course, but I have written six published books on this computer and have all my photographs stored for this blog and it will be quite hard to part with it, but part we must!
The season is in full swing at the abattoir. This years crop of lambs are coming in before the long hard winter sets in. Vaidotas and Ernestas have returned from Lithuania for a few months and the whole place feels fully alive. I’m still teamcoordinator and also the veterinarian who carries the responsibility for everything from animal welfare to hygiene, but now I am training my new colleague Ingrid to do all the tasks I’ve acquired over the last year. Hopefully, she will have a bit more idea what she is doing than I did as I felt my way through all the unfamiliar tasks after the season ended last year. She certainly retains information much better than I do!
Of course, I am juggling my job with all the logistics of an international house move, which is seriously interfering with my capacity to remember things. Last week I bought tickets for the overnight ferry from Stavanger to Hirtshalls. This week, I have bought the train tickets to connect up that journey with the ferry from Amsterdam to Newcastle. This will involve travelling first to Hamburg, where we will stay in a pet friendly hotel for the night, and then the next day, the shorter leg from Hamburg to Amsterdam. I also phoned a veterinary practice in Amsterdam and have booked Triar in for the Echinococcus worming treatment he needs before he can enter the UK.
The snowline on the mountains has been going up and down a bit. On Thursday morning it was minus three when I went outside to the car (and minus six at one point on the drive to work) but the temperature has risen again, and according to the weather forecast, will hopefully not drop below zero again in the next week.
This weekend, I need to get my car into shape. Selling it is the last big challenge and something I find quite daunting. There are instructions on the state highways website, which include a directive not to transfer ownership until the money is in your bank account. There’s also the small matter of needing a car to get around. I guess if it sells quickly, I can get a rental car for a few weeks. Hopefully the price I get will be enough to cover the expenses and there’s no doubt it will be a great weight off my mind, which is something worth paying a little bit for. I had hoped to sell to a dealership, but the price difference between what I could theoretically get selling it privately and selling to a dealer is so huge that it’s worth taking the risk.
The pictures this week were all taken on Thursday, when I went outside to find the world was sparkling with frost under a clear morning sky. It wasn’t quite hoar frost, but hopefully there will be some, before I leave. Have a good week all!
There has been a chilly reminder that winter is coming in the past couple of days. When I drove up through Sweden, I noticed they already had their snow poles up and I thought it was early, given it was the start of September. But when I got back here, I noticed there were poles lining the roads here as well. And the past couple of days, there has been fresh snow on the mountain peaks.
It wasn’t this picture I sent to my friend, Donna, in Dumfries, but a different one of the same mountain. Her reaction “Looks gorgeous!” would have been mine too, a couple of years ago. Right now I have mixed feelings about it. The chief one is probably, “it’s too soon!” along with some speculation over whether we’ll have to start clearing the driveway before the removal van has to manouevre its way in here!
I am looking forward to being back in a place where my chief reaction, when I look out of the window and see snow flakes in the breeze, is to hope it will lay! The one winter I spent in Castle Douglas (half an hour from Dumfries), thirty years ago, saw temperatures plummet to minus ten and there was such a huge snowfall that a state of emergency was declared! I was so excited, being snowed in for the first time in my life!
Donna also pointed out a Facebook post to me. Dumfries has a celebration each year, celebrating the connections between Dumfries and Norway that were established during the second world war when Dumfries hosted the exiled Norwegian army. I had been speaking to John, only the day before, about how sad I felt that I was probably going to lose some of my fluency and that there probably weren’t enough Norwegians in Dumfries to have any kind of meetings or clubs with Norwegian speakers, but Donna has already offered to introduce me to someone Norwegian. I feel amazingly emotional over the offer. Leaving Norway feels a little bit like losing a part of myself, and that’s something I hadn’t really expected.
It’s very much autumn here now. I went to visit my British friend, Shirley last weekend and took some photos along the way. The sullen sky, ruffled lake and the sunny trees in the foreground made for a breathtaking combination.
Further on, the fjord looked equally dramatic.
Visiting Shirley is like clinging onto my British self, I guess. We chat about anything and everything, but we have lots of shared experiences about how alien it can feel when you have left your home country. Shirley came here so long ago and is so immersed in the life she has built, that she sometimes slips into Norwegian when we’re chatting and she writes down stories about her life in Norwegian as well. She read some of my Hope Meadows books and said it was a long time since she’d read that kind of descriptive language about the British countryside. She had enjoyed it, she said.
I can’t remember if I have talked about Shirley before, but she came to Norway for a year, as a young, unmarried nurse, met and married a Norwegian and had a family, who have long flown the nest. I had often thought, especially when the children were younger, that it would have been much easier, had I been married to a Norwegian. It’s difficult to pick up on the subtleties of social norms and customs, as an incomer. But she is now so connected that leaving is not an option. If it was, would she take it? I don’t know, but she is unable to visit the UK at the moment because of responsibilities here. It often crosses my mind now, that life is so much longer than I envisaged as a young woman and decisions, lightly taken in optimism for the life ahead, can throw very long shadows, much further down the line.
This weekend’s tasks include emptying Andrew’s bedroom, then sorting through my clothes and throwing away those I don’t use. That’s a job that’s long overdue, but my chest of drawers is falling apart. I’m not taking it to the UK, so I have to take it to the rubbish dump. The dump is only open late on Thursday evenings, so I will try to fill my car before then. Six more weeks to go before the house has to be empty. I have to use that time efficiently, given work is ramping up. That said, with the house sold, all other tasks can now take precedence, and that’s great.
I will finish with a couple of autumn photos, also taken last weekend. The autumn colours here are spectacular. Long may they last!
It still feels like a miracle. Just over a year ago, I was sitting in a hotel room, bidding on a house with trembling fingers. The house had been on the market for six months. I couldn’t really understand why it wasn’t selling. There were some aesthetic problems. The previous owner had painted one of the bedrooms black and lilac and covered one wall with mirror tiles and there were more screw holes in many of the walls than seemed ideal, but it seemed a nice house and it was positioned well, half way between Finnsnes, with its fast boat connections to Tromsø and Bardufoss, which boasts an airport.
Before – Black and lilacAfter: Blue and grey
A couple of suggestions had been made by colleagues as to why it might not be selling. It is directly beside the main road was one. Though small, it had three bedrooms, but a fast road outside the door might mean children were not safe in the garden. The other observation was that the previous owner hadn’t done much to the house (mirror tiles aside). That comment was made with an attitude that improvement (or as a minimum, upkeep) of a house ought to be a priority for all, and of course, with the hard, hard winters, that is a lot more important here than in other, gentler parts of the world.
I already had plans to build a fence. John had learned how, so I would only have to pay for the materials. The fence was mainly for Triar, but in future, if I sold the house, it might also keep children safe. In my head there were two other immediate plans. Firstly, I wanted a bigger heat exchanger. The old one didn’t sound like it was functioning properly. Secondly, there was an air vent on the roof that was leaking. Those were the most pressing problems, I thought. The two worst bedrooms would also be decorated before we moved the furniture in, because that was easier than shuffling everything about. As well as the black and lilac room, there was one that was painted an aggressive pink colour.
Beyond that, if I was going to sell, it would be years into the future, I thought. There would be years to plant trees to damp the sound of passing cars and tidy up more generally.
But as regular readers will know, last winter was harder in many ways, than I ever could have predicted, and the decision was made to move back to Scotland. So then I was faced with having to sell the house a long time before I’d ever thought I would, and with not a lot of time to do it. I considered holding onto it and renting it out, but then, as I discovered last winter, if your roof falls in because you didn’t clear the snow, you might find your insurance doesn’t cover it. And if it was hard to sell while I was still living in it, how difficult might it be if it had been rented out for a while and not looked after?
So all that has been in my head over the past couple of months and I found myself driven to get it looking as good as I possibly could. Since contacting the estate agent, I have painted the ceiling in the hallway, painted the garage, painted all the white railings on the front and side of the house and (with Trude’s help) cleaned and stained the wooden deck outside the front door and the veranda. Add on a deep clean inside the house and a major declutter. I haven’t pushed myself that hard in many years, and as the day of the visning came, I could only hope it was enough.
In Norway, houses are normally sold by auction, often on the day after the visning. I didn’t ask until the last minute, but I was pleased to hear there were six interested parties who came to look at the house on the day. Still, it wasn’t a certainty anyone would bid.
I misunderstood the process somewhat. I thought that nobody could bid until midday the next day, so I was disconcerted when the estate agent called me at around nine in the evening on visning day, to say that the first bid was in. It was way too low and the date for taking over the house was the first of October. The agent seemed to think it was a good thing, but it was too late to discuss details. What she probably didn’t know, was that before I bought the house, there had only been one previous bid made, months earlier, and for the same amount I was being offered now. I had the idea in my head that the same thing might happen. First of October looked impossible as well. I had been in touch with three removal companies, all of whom had agreed to mid-to late October.
After a restless night, I slapped out e-mails to the removal companies, asking if there was any chance they could manage the earlier date. When I got to work though, Trude reassured me that a super-low starting bid was normal. I also came to understand was that the midday deadline was not for bidders, but for the sale. I could not agree to any bid before twelve. This is in line with a Norwegian law intended to make sure all who attend a visning have enough thinking time to consider whether they want to bid.
All was quiet until ten thirty the next morning. The bid that came in then was only a little higher, but what it did mean was that there was more than one party interested in buying. Almost immediately there was another bid and then another. Bid number four was a major turning point. It was for 1,8 million kroner – the same price I had paid a year earlier, and the price I had decided was the level at which I would definitely sell. The date on that one was first December, but all that would mean was that I wouldn’t be there personally for the handover: not a problem.
By now the agent was ringing me regularly. I told her first October was so difficult it might make a difference to which buyer I chose. When the phone pinged again, the date was my chosen date of first November. The estate agent was ringing the bidders as well as me, pushing them upwards and the bids were still coming in. 1,9 million… 2 million… And then a jump I hadn’t expected, right up to 2,1 million.
By this time several of my colleagues were sitting around the table, keeping me company. They’ve probably never seen me so grinning so broadly. Not only had I made back the money I had spent on the house during the past year, but I had probably covered the costs of buying and selling as well. The estate agent rang again to say she thought it would be the final bid, but really it was already way beyond anything I dared to hope for. It was also the first November bidder, so perfect date as well as price.
I have come down a bit since. There’s still a lot to do. I have to get rid of a lot of stuff. John’s things have to be separated from mine. The removal company is now arranged and they will do the packing, but that means we have to be very clear about what is to go and what isn’t. There’s lots of paperwork to be completed so that the importation of my furniture goes without a hitch and doesn’t cost me a fortune in import taxes. I have to sell the car and then get to the airport without it. I am working in the abattoir right up to the day before the keys are handed over, so it’s a logistical jigsaw, more complicated than any I’ve handled before. But it all looks so much more doable now. Selling the house was always going to be the biggest challenge.
Anyway, I had better go now. I have to fill in some UK government forms so that I don’t have to pay tax on my goods as they go into the UK. I also contacted a car dealership last night to see whether they would buy my car. I thought they’d make me an offer, but they’re asking how much I want, so now I have to go and work out how much it’s worth. Steps and steps and steps, but I know I will get there eventually.
And I’ll leave you with a couple more bad moose pictures. I love seeing them, just outside the garden, but they do like to hide behind the trees. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you next week!
A Vet’s Life 