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!
It’s nice to start the weekend with something amusing. Last night, I sent a selfie to Yoana, my son John’s partner. Last Christmas, she gave me a headband that she had knitted herself. I was touched. Homemade gifts are precious. It’s been a while since the weather has been suitable for a knitted headband, but one frosty morning last week, I put it on to keep my ears warm when I was walking Triar. I don’t normally take selfies. Too old perhaps, and anyway I’ve always been curiously preoccupied with photographing scenery rather than people. Anyway, I took a photo of me in the headband and sent it to Yoana with the caption, “Warm ears on a chilly day!”.
I woke this morning to a message, “Thank you. Wish the same for you.” I was slightly surprised. It wasn’t quite the response I was expecting, but having lived in Norway for a long time, I’m used to conversations which didn’t quite go where they would have with a fellow native Brit. I was happy just to hear from her.
A couple of hours later, a new message arrived. “Just showed it to John and he mentioned the headband which I didn’t notice!” A laugh emoji followed. I found myself picturing the scene: Yoana maybe unsure of my original message. An odd sentiment about warm ears? Rather a strange thing to mention? I’llcheckwithJohn.
And maybe John… my mum sent a selfie? Odd!
Then of course, the revelation that it wasn’t a selfie per se, rather a thank you for an appreciated gift, and it all makes sense. She and I were both amused. It was a good start to the morning. I took photos other than my selfie. It was a gorgeous sunrise over the frosty ground.
More than a morning, more than a weekend, this is the start of a two week holiday. I’m here until Tuesday, then I’m off for a week of Polar Night. Sometimes there’s a dull warm period up there at the start of December. I’m hoping for snow on the ground, sub zero temperatures and clear skies (with some Northern Lights as a massive bonus) but even if it’s wet, I get to spend time with friends. My friend Shirley was concerned it might not be good weather, but when I suggest we could stay inside, bake and cook all week, watch TV and maybe write, she agreed this was a wonderful plan. Really, I’m going to see her Nothern Norway is just the world’s best bonus!
The photo at the top of the page is of the Nith as it runs under the Devorgilla Bridge in the centre of Dumfries. I was out last night for a low-alcohol beer with a friend and was struck by how lovely the water was, with the lights shining out in the darkness. It felt like a good start to a winter holiday. Tomorrow I’m joining some colleagues in Glasgow. A group of female APHA vets, we’re going to an escape room as our Christmas Day out. There are no trains to Glasgow on a Sunday morning, either from Dumfries or Lockerbie, so I’m about to find out what the bus service is like. Hopefully on time, as well as relatively cheap!
I have a decorator coming this evening to look at my building project. Hopefully he’s going to tackle the complications of partially removed lining paper on (probably) lath and plaster on my stairwell. He’s unlikely to do the work before Christmas, but I am eyeing up carpets and thinking I might be able to get the bedrooms finally in order. There are buried clothes in my bedroom which I haven’t seen now for over a year. Getting them out (and putting them away in actual drawers) will be a novelty after a year where my clean clothes are piled on a table and there are four beds, a pile of boxes and no other useful furniture in the room where I sleep.
Anyway, December is almost here. For anyone who hasn’t seen my photo Arctic Advent calendar, you can find it here: Arctic Advent
As for me, I’m off there shortly to make some new Arctic memories. I shall leave you with more frosty morning pictures. Have a good week all and thanks for reading.
When I booked this year’s Norwegian holiday in December, it didn’t cross my mind that I would see snow in Scotland before I went. Living in Dumfries for the last two winters, I’ve not seen more than a heavyish frost, so I joyfully booked a pre-Christmas week in the Arctic to boost my chances. Not that there is invariably snow there in December, but the odds of it (and Aurora) are much greater. Perhaps I should have been prepared for it. After all, last time I went there (May last year) Donna sent pictures of spectacular northern lights over my house. Life is sometimes topsy-turvy after all.
I guess in North Norwegian terms, this barely counts as snow, but it was beautiful anyway. A white world under a cloudless blue sky. My favourite kind of day.
This was my second day in the area, working with a team that was trying to ensure the last of the maurauding pigs were gone. Most had been removed the week before by my colleague from the local authority in a trailer. These were the stragglers: those which were no longer domesticated enough to come back to their field for food. Knowing this might happen, I had asked for, and received, permission to invite a wildlife firearms team to come up.
I guess some might criticize that decision, but these were pigs living in close proximity to a nasty bend in an A road. We’d already dealt with one that had been hit by a lorry. Someone asked if I would be traumatized, but my thinking is that these are healthy animals being shot from a distance in an environment where they are comfortable. There are much worse ways to go. I was there as welfare vet though in truth, the two members of the team who came were so professional that my presence was barely needed. There were very few pigs, though there was a young pair, probably brother and sister, who would have bred if left.
As well as taking me up the hill where we had great views of the snow, my local authority colleague took me to see the weaned piglets from the members of the herd he’d taken away the week before. Instead of being outside in the cold, they were inside in a comfortable pen, with plenty of food. This hasn’t been a perfect operation, but it’s a good end to a welfare case that held the prospect of getting completely out of hand.
I’ve been out to a couple of cafes this week. The first was a trip to my local garden centre, where I have a card that lets me have two coffees each month. Mostly my intention is only to have coffee, but on my previous visit, I had seen a gingerbread cake that I decided was worth going back for when I was hungry. This then, was last week’s belated breakfast after waiting for the plasterer. It was worth the wait: the cake had a warm and spicy flavour that was nicely offset by the coolness of the icing. If I was being pernickety about it, I was slightly disappointed that the litttle gingerbread man and the biscuit crumbs on the cake wer soft and not crunchy but, complemented by the smooth bitterness of the coffee, it was a delicious start to the day.
The second was a revelation. On a dreich day at work, I went with a colleague to a cafe in Sanquhar called A’ the Airts. As Scots readers can possibly predict, this venue had lots of paintings on the walls. There was a gorgeous acrylic of a cat on a black background and a glorious golden painting of a stag with antlers. I may go back to buy a painting when the work in my house is finished, but I will definitely be going back before that for more food.
In addition to the normal menu of toasted sandwiches and soup, there were two Christmas offerings. Having been out in the rain all morning (I saw myself in a mirror and bedraggled would have been a good description) I was keen to order, so decided quickly on the second choice, which involved pigs in blankets, gravy and Yorkshire puddings. It was only after the order was in that I read the description properly: “Two Yorkshire Puddings stuffed with Cranberry, Pigs in Blankets & Honey Topped Baked Brie served with gravy & festive slaw”
I guess there is nothing wrong with a cheese and Yorkshire Pudding combination, but I confess I was surprised. Still, bedraggled and hungry as I was, I was delighted when it appeared.
It wasn’t easy to photograph. I’m not sure how enticing it looks, but reader it was delicious! Cranberry and Brie is a common combination. I’m usually wary of adding in bacon. For me that is gilding the lily because the sharpness cranberry offsets the creaminess of the Brie so well. But this time, with the honey accentuating the salty and crunchy bacon, alongside that heavenly Brie and cranberry combination… well it was divine. I’m not sure I detected any gravy (I love gravy) but for a hot meal on a wet November day, it was perfect. And if you want to know what was festive about the slaw? That had cranberries in it too. Not sure they added much, other than it being an odd colour, but it’s a forgivable experiment! All in all, this was a wonderful meal.
And now I am down in Yorkshire. Not the snowy part, but the past two days were beautiful with frost. It’s been a lovely start to a long weekend.
I was in Brighton last weekend to attend “the largest annual grassroots feminist conference in Europe”, according to FiLiA who ran it. If you’re in the UK, you might have seen in the news that the Brighton Centre venue was vandalised the night before it started. The whole of the front of the building was sprayed with pink paint and several windows were broken. In addition, inside there was also disagreement, with a woman announcing in the opening ceremony that she “wouldn’t be lectured on Hamas” before attempting to rouse the room with chants of, “free, free Palestine”. A few women stood up and joined in, some Jewish women stood up and walked out, some jeered and the rest of us sat there in stunned silence. For an uplifting weekend, where FiLiA say you can “Build your Feminist Network. Leave inspired,” it wasn’t a great start.
Regular readers will know I love strong women and there were plenty of them there, but I don’t think I will be going to the next one. Brighton was also curiously depressing, though perhaps it isn’t curious really. Like many UK cities, the drugged homeless lined the pavements and the whole place seemed dirty and down at heel. Like many seaside towns, you could see it had once been gorgeous and rather grand, a haven for holiday makers. Now they go for beaches abroad, with reliable sunshine at lower prices. I did get a photograph on the first evening that I love though. The sea is still beautiful, under the evening sky.
There were cafés along the beachfront, where the lovely Welsh woman I made friends with on the first day bought me an ice cream! It was probably the high point of the weeekend!
On Monday, I headed back to Scotland. Somewhat rashly, I had agreed to work in Stranraer on Tuesday and had booked to stay there Monday night. The logistics of collecting Triar from my parents in Yorkshire and dropping him off with a friend in Dumfries were complicated. Several delays on the railways meant I ended up getting a taxi for the last leg of my Yorkshire journey. A jackknifed lorry on the A75, with blue flashing lights lighting up the night (nobody was hurt) was the final hold-up, but at least the hotel was comfortable when I finally got there at 10:30 in the evening.
My lovely friend also seems to have enjoyed having Triar and sent reassuring photos of him looking happy. I’d been a bit worried about picking him up, driving him two hours, then dropping him off again, but he seems to have been so well looked after, that it was all good!
As usual, after a few days back at work, it feels as if I never left. Two days out on farm, blood testing cattle with three (female) animal health officers was uplifting. We have some wonderful women in our APHA team. I was duty vet on Thursday, where the high point of the day was dealing with a query about fish-sludge being fed to maggots (no, me neither). And all the while, as I was out on farm and juggling bizarre questions, there were emails landing in my inbox about cows which had been transported to slaughterhouses with shackles on.
For my non-farm readership, occasionally (and particularly around calving time when the ligaments are softened) cows do the splits on their hind legs and then can’t easily get up. With shackles buckled onto their hind legs, that stop their legs sliding outwards, they can often manage okay, until they heal. A new decision has been made that travelling in shackles isn’t allowed, on the grounds that an animal with them on, isn’t fit to travel. This isn’t a law, it’s a directive that has come from someone high up in APHA. Like all such decisions, it’s somewhat controversial. If a farmer wants to send such a cow to the slaughterhouse and can’t send her in shackles, he may decide to take them off and risk sending her anyway, which is more risky than sending her with them on.
As my investigative case is all about unfit animals being transported, all the emails about this new rule being broken (in Scotland) are now being directed to me. What it really highlights is not that animals in shackles shouldn’t be travelling, so much as that there is a huge gap in care, now that having lame animals culled on farm and being sent to the abattoir afterwards is so incredibly limited. If a cow has an accident, farmers only have 24 hours to decide if it’s so serious that she should be culled, so there’s no time to wait and see how she fares. This is all a hangover from the EU, so since we’ve left, perhaps we could start to look at systems that might work better for our animal welfare here. If I can find the time, and put together some coherent arguments, maybe a visit to my MP is in order. There are times when trying to sort things out locally, just isn’t enough.
I shall leave you with some stormy pictures of Yorkshire. Thanks for reading and have a lovely week!
I had a wonderful weekend in Central Scotland. The forecast rain warning had moved south by Saturday morning, so rather than huddling indoors, Valerie and I went shopping. I have been looking at my hedges for some time, knowing I have to trim them, but in recent weeks (since bird nesting was definitely past) they have been so wet that the idea of tackling them with a plugged-in electrical hedge trimmer seemed risky. Having finally got myself a garden waste bin, I wanted to fill it, before the service stops for winter, so with that in mind, I bought a battery powered trimmer. I had been hoping for a long-handled version (tall hedges, shortish human being) but didn’t find any, so I opted for a normal one and thought I’d figure out the height issue later.
Valerie was looking for a garden box to store cushions, so we were in a number of garden centres. The end result was that, as well as the hedge trimmer, I came home with multiple packs of bulbs and a trowel as well. A dog bowl for Triar was next on my non-existent shopping list. A lovely friend from church has offered to take Triar and my current method (sprinkling food across the floor) probably isn’t very civilized. So now he has a new bowl.
Next on the list of things I didn’t really need was a scented candle advent calendar. Given that I have booked a holiday in the Arctic Wastes of Sørreisa for the first week of December. I may end up with a scented candle glut on my return, but it was only £5.99, which seemed a small price to pay. Finally, we went to a café, where I had a latte and Val had a spectacular hot chocolate, I found a Christmas present for a friend, so I bought that too. For someone who didn’t intend to buy anything, it was a great morning!
The café (and gift shop) were on a farm set against the backdrop of the Ochil Hills. The picture at the top of the page was the view from the car park. This is the view from the covered terrace where we sat.
The food sounded great too, but we’d had a massive breakfast, so we didn’t indulge. There are far too many cafés I’d really like to try in Scotland, and not enough time! Perhaps I should have pursued a life as a restaurant critic, but at 16, James Herriot’s lifestyle called me more. The fact that those days were already past, even as I set out to train, wasn’t something I had the life experience to understand.
Since I’ve come back, I have started to tidy up the garden. Different people have inspired me to try, the most obvious being Sue, whose garden I visited a few weeks back, and whose love of gardening shines through so clearly. Another, unexpectedly, is Scott with whom I do a lot of welfare work. As well as fun discussions about food, he has told me now a couple of times that he loves cutting the lawn as he enjoys the smell of freshly cut grass so much. I had always viewed it as rather boring labour, but now my lawn is (mostly) cut, I’ve realised that the answer is probably to do it often, because then it really will only take a few minutes. It’s hard labour this year because I procrastinated over doing it. Next year, I hope to make different choices. That said, I’m about to plant a load of crocuses and daffodils there, so there will be hard decisions to make about those patches!
My job is going well and that’s something I didn’t think I would ever be able to say. My line manager has acknowledged our team is in crisis, due to understaffing and has started to withhold work that he feels would be too much. I’ve no idea whether he will successfully campaign for enough staff. In the end, I think it’s pay that is the real stumbling block, alongside our district having the most animals and most of the (non-existent in Scotland) TB breakdowns. People tend to join to our team, then head off to somewhere there’s less work as soon as the opportunity arises. I’m so glad someone is fighting for us. Sickness over the summer was like watching dominoes fall.
The big case I’m handling is fascinating. I’m looking at animals that should not have been transported for reasons of health and welfare and I am liaising with useful people all over that I didn’t know existed. I have dug through ancient files and scrolled through reports and investigations and became so engrossed in it this week that when my manager tossed me a TB case on Thursday afternoon, it simply caused my mind to go blank. For a moment, TB case management was shoved so far back inside my head that I struggled to retrieve it. But retrieving it was essential, because my job is to keep the farmer informed about what he or she has to do, and manage the system so that the awful disruption of being locked down is bearable. By Friday morning, I was ready to go. Changing direction when something new crops up is part of my job and something I have to manage.
Autumn has really set in now. Unsurprising as we are at the end of September. I don’t know where the year has gone. This week has seen a return to blue skies and I have been enjoying Blackbird Lane with its changing colours and ever-shifting hedgerows. Yesterday morning was particularly wonderful. The sun, low in the sky, lit up the dew drops bedecking thousands of spider webs. Normally invisible, they stood out against the leafy backdrop. There are berries everywhere too and the sun shone on those too, so bright and cheerful. Hope you enjoy the pictures I took, even though they don’t do it justice. You’ll have to imagine the gentle warmth of the sun, the chill air on my cheeks and the earthy scent of autumn, that hung in the air with the birdsong.
If you were attracted in by the title and train times photo, and you’d prefer not to read my ramblings about current events and Charlie Kirk, please scroll down until you see a photo of the Leeds to Settle train time from last week. Underneath that, I describe my rail journey from last weekend. My brain took me elsewhere as I contemplated the title I had just written and it’s quite long, so feel free to pass over it, if you will.
There are a lot of thoughts rushing round my head this morning, and as I typed the title, it struck me that the words have more than one meaning. Our country and many others in the western world do seem to be filled with anger. I don’t have a TV licence, nor do I read many newspapers, so I don’t know how it’s been presented in the UK mainstream, but I have seen on Twitter/X an outpouring of debate, following the shooting of Charlie Kirk.
Most people I follow, whether they agreed with him or not, have reacted with shock and grief. Whatever you thought of his politics, this was a young man with a family, shot for his political views. I must add here, that I had never heard of Charlie Kirk until he was shot, but having seen a lot of clips of him, it seems he was a Christian who was trying to remind people that the Bible doesn’t just say, as many modern churches (and even secular societies) seem to, that life is all about being nice to people and that we should never judge or comment on what we personally believe is right, in case it offends someone. He also seems to have recently been hand in glove with Donald Trump. US politics are beyond my understanding right now, but Christianity and politics are somehow embroiled in a way that doesn’t happen in the UK, so that is something I can’t assess, but my thoughts are around the accusations attached to his Christian views.
Some Bible “rules”, even in the New Testament, set out ideas that don’t seem very relevant or important. There are examples of customs set out in the Bible which many modern churches simply ignore. A fairly non-contentious one for discussion would be the instruction, set out in 1 Corinthians 11 that women should cover their heads when praying, while men should not.
“4Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. 5But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head”
This is, broadly, ignored in modern churches. I ignore it myself, though I can remember my grandmother always wore a hat to church, so in living memory, it was considered important enough for faithful Christians to follow it. There are far more contentious things set out, including that women should not preach. We struggle with that, in an age when we are trying to remove ideas we see as sexist. Long term readers will know that I have started daily Bible readings, with a view to understanding more about what the Bible actually says, and that I have struggled with the contrast between Jesus, who calls God “my Father” and the jealous, even capricious God described in the Old Testament. To be truly Christian, as set out in the Bible, is actually a difficult prospect, because it doesn’t fit with some values we now hold to be true, and even within the texts, there seem to be contradictions.
While being nice to people is an attractive (surely blameless) suggestion, the idea that we should never set out our personal beliefs if they might offend someone is a backwards step. Our western values were heavily influenced by the Bible and Christianity and those rules are being eroded. Some might regard those rules as stupid, but abandoning some while assuming we can retain the good ones that fit with modern sentiment is open to the risk of undermining everything.
Anyway, from one side, I see Charlie Kirk being accused of being right wing, anti-gay, anti-abortion and these are held out to be heinous crimes, actually worthy of assassination. But the clips I have seen paint a more nuanced picture. The Roman Catholic Church is similarly accused, and possibly there are some members of that church who are sufficiently anti-gay and anti-abortion that they would shun those who are gay or have abortions. But my understanding, from priests I have listened to (and Charlie Kirk seems to have held similar beliefs) is that Christians should never shun those people, or condemn them, but rather love them nonetheless as another person’s sin is between that person and God, and not for us to judge. Love the sinner, hate the sin. But you can’t hate the sin, without acknowledging that it exists.
What many in modern society seem to propose, is that we should dismiss the very idea that anything is sinful and we must move towards a blame-free model, which is simply a free-for-all with everyone choosing their own rules. The expectation that nobody should mention the Biblical rules in any form, lest someone feel hurt, or that only chosen topics that are agreeable to modern sentiment can ever be mentioned, is dangerous ground.
I feel that, in the rush to be non-judgemental, even those in many modern churches seem too ready to dismiss the rules altogether, which (contended through translation or not) is to lose sight of what is written in the Bible. If you pick and choose which of the Bible’s (and particularly the New Testament’s) teachings to believe (as opposed to working out which you can bring yourself to adhere to) you may as well not really call yourself Christian at all. Am I a Christian? Well I’m working out where I stand, but I realize that I too, am on dodgy ground when I pick and choose which parts I want to believe and which I dismiss. Who am Ito judge what is relevant? Those who wrote it and those who selected what belongs in it did so a long time ago. It’s a thorny problem.
So how does this relate to Charlie Kirk? From the clips I’ve seen, which I admit are not comprehensive and have obviously been selected to demonstrate certain points, what he seems to be accused of is being anti-gay and so on, but what he is actually “guilty” of is reminding people the rules are there, written in the Bible and that picking and choosing is a complicated business. There are clips of him talking to gay people and saying what they do isn’t up to him to judge. He still accepted they were important to God and the society he wanted to build. Nowadays, reminding people that Christianity has rules is, by some members of society, being painted as so contentious that those doing the reminding deserve violence.
I’m not a particularly deep thinker, but I don’t believe anyone deserves violence and I don’t think violence is ever justified, though there is a grey area with physical self-defence. I also think a completely secular society, where we throw out all Christian based beliefs of right and wrong, is a society where awful ideas can more easily take hold. The idea that there is no “normal” and it’s not okay to regard anyone’s activity as deviant? Well I understand what that is trying to achieve, but it leaves us at risk of normalizing behaviors that put others in society at risk.
That attitude seems to go hand in hand with the idea that those who even mention the suggestion that some activities are deviant are committing a violent act and that retribution is only to be expected if you say something that offends people. The idea that someone might deserve to die, for saying things a group of people didn’t like, then starts to be normalized and excused. Well what did he expect? He should have keep his mouth shut! Really that is a world I don’t want to see or live in, yet here we are. What happened to “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”?
I apologize to anyone who was drawn into this blog by the photo of the train journey at the top of the page and didn’t want to read my thoughts on current events. This was going to be a light hearted post about my rail trip from Guildford to Leeds last weekend, but sometimes I end up going where my brain takes me. From here on is what I intended to write about.
Screenshot
I took a train from Guildford to Reading last Saturday morning and was smugly thinking how much easier rail travel was nowadays. As I looked at the screenshots I had taken of train times, I thought back to a time when I would stand on station platforms, trying to make sense of the printed timetables on the posters and of a huge tome with all trains everywhere for the next six months, which my dad or the people in the ticket booth at the station would check for you, so you could work out how to get where you wanted. You had to memorize the journey in advance. That said, if you missed a train, there was usually a guard or station worker who could tell you. They all seemed to have magical memories, that retained all this national knowledge of what went where.
Having looked online last weekend for trains to Leeds, from Reading, it seemed that I had a choice of going to Paddington, getting the Underground Central Line to Kings Cross (or it may have been Euston) then getting a Leeds bound train from there. The alternative was going via Birmingham and changing there for a train to Leeds. That would get me to Leeds a bit later, but I would still be in time to get the 15:18 from Leeds to Settle. Whichever I chose, I would arrive in Settle at the same time. While I had confidently negotiated a trip from Kings Cross to Waterloo on the way to Guildford, I decided Birmingham New Street sounded the easier option.
If you look closely at the image at the top of the page, there was only a twelve minute connection time between the train arriving at Birmingham New Street and the Leeds train, but as you can also see, the information gathered by Google even went so far as to tell me what platform I needed. As I rushed across New Street station, dismissing the possibilities of toilet and coffee (queues at both) I was glad of the help that Google provided.
The first carriage I tried to get into turned out to be first class. With time passing, I went to the next entrance, which proved to already have passengers standing, while through the windows I could see all the seats were filled. Scurrying along the train, wondering whether there were seats anywhere, again and again, I came to entrances that were already blocked by people for whom there was standing room only. It was a long train and eventually, in the last carriage, there were a few seats. With relief, I jumped in and sat down. My student days of happily sharing train floors with seated strangers are long past.
It was only after the train had left the station, that I started to listen to the announcements about where it was going. There was a long list. The final stop was Aberdeen, with many stops along the way, but one name that I hadn’t heard was Leeds. I waited for the scrolling announcement on the screen to go again and it was confirmed. Sheffield and Doncaster were on the list. Leeds was not.
There had been a woman with a trolley in the entrance to the carriage. Rather than trying again online, I thought I might ask her. She was lovely, but didn’t know. “What you can do,” she said, “is walk up to first class. There are staff there who’ll be able to advise you.” I was halfway along the carriage where I had found the seat before it struck me that, not only was it a long way up to first class, but that getting past all the people in the corridors was going to make the journey difficult and that there was a possibility that I might not be able to make it at all.
I did give consideration to sitting back down and trying to work it out myself, but my faith in asking people for help surged to the fore. I’d already made a mess of online searching. Better to ask someone who actually knew how it all worked. It was a long walk and I apologised over and over as I initially pushed past people, then later actually had to aske them to stand up from where they had settled themselves in on the floors of the increasingly crushed corridors and doorways.
With all those bodies, it was hot and I was sweating by the time me and my suitcase passed through the civilised and air conditioned first class carriage to reach the galley beyond, where I did indeed find two permanent members of train staff. To my relief, my stammered explanation of being on the wrong train was met with a friendly resignation. This train, they agreed, did normally stop at Leeds, but today it was going via Doncaster instead.
They advised that I could get off at either Sheffield or Doncaster and would find easy connections to Leeds from either. It was only then that I began to think about the rest of the journey to either of those. Both were still a couple of hours away and the seat I’d found was a very long way off, past people I’d already inconvenienced once. I’d had a brief conversation with a staff member on an earlier train, who’d said it would probably only be a tenner to upgrade to first class. Not expecting to find it was the same here, I haltingly asked how much it would cost to upgrade here.
To my amazement I was told that, as the train was fully booked, I could sit in first class for now, until somebody else needed the seat. I felt slightly guilty as I sat down in the only spare seat, but as the alternative was to shuffle all the poor floor sitters in the stuffy vestibule beyond the first class door (there was no space to join them so going past would be the only option) I decided I would stay where I was and hope that nobody else would book the seat I was sitting in before we got to Sheffield.
Thankfully, I was able to travel first class to Sheffield, where I found there was about an hour to wait before the next Leeds train. There may well have been more trains that stopped there (rather than it being an end destination) but I decided that I wasn’t going to risk Dr Google again and that the time could be well spent, using the toilet and buying the coffee and sandwich there hadn’t been time for in Birmingham.
And so, I arrived back in Settle about an hour and a half later than I had hoped, with a new realization that I should not take shortcuts in looking up train times. There are proper apps and sites that will actually give live information on what is actually happening that day, and not on what usually happens on the line or service. I guess I’ve already started to doubt the AI summary that Google gives at the top of any search now, so I can add train times to the list of things I need to search for on reliable websites and not on accumulated information (and misinformation) that Google gathers from anywhere and everywhere.
I was also going to write a bit about the apps I use to help with managing my FND and in particular, my amusement last night about a “Sleep Wind Down” called “Arctic Lights” which… well the described scene did not resemble the Arctic I remember. I may come back to that next week, because this is already long enough.
I’ll leave you with a few images from Blackbird Lane, where autumn is already creeping in and the clear summer skies have been replaced with more typical Scottish weather. Thanks for reading and I hope you have a good week.
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.
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.
I made a happy discovery yesterday evening, when I was travelling to Yorkshire. I like to break my journey at Tebay, but when it’s hot and I have Triar in the car, I tend to push on. Last night though, I was tired enough to stop. On entering the car park, instead of going straight ahead, I turned left up the hill, hoping to find some shade behind the trees. What I didn’t expect to find was a lovely shady dog walk, set among the trees. So as well as crunchy cheese and mango flavoured fizzy water, I got in 1,000 steps and a very pleasant woodland wander.
It’s been an unexpected type of week really. The only visits I had planned were to a farm where I was to TB test eight cattle. They had tested before as inconclusive, following a move up to Scotland from a higher risk area, so they were being retested. That was booked in for Tuesday/Friday (inject and read) so when my line manager sent out a message asking for volunteers to do night duty on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights, I quickly offered.
Usually, being on call is not too onerous. Sometimes there are phone calls in the evening, but it’s fairly rare, so I was quite unprepared when the phone rang at 2am on Wednesday morning. Quickly gathering pen and paper, I spoke to a vet about an owner whose dog had been in contact with a bat. The dog was now unwell and she wanted some advice. As both bat and dog were in central Scotland, the chances of rabies infection were small, but having been phoned, I had to make sure. Most of the form filling was left for the morning, but I was still up for a couple of hours recording the situation, so the vets taking over in the morning knew I was dealing with it.
So Wednesday morning was mostly taken up with the aftermath. The afternoon was quiet, but I was glad when home time came. However, I had only just sat down when the phone rang again. This time it was my veterinary advisor. Did I want to go on a report case the following morning. I’ve been waiting to do a report case, which is an investigation into a potential notifiable disease outbreak, so I said yes first, then braced myself for whatever she was going to say next. Whatever had run through my head, I wasn’t expecting what came next.
I was being asked to go to a beach where there had apparently been a number of dead birds found, as well as a seal (or maybe a porpoise). I was to test the seal for avian influenza and to do so would involve taking brain and lung samples, while fully dressed in all my protective gear, including my space-age hood, which circulates air through filters and blows it on my face.
I did double check about the hood. After all, I have tested dead birds in Norway for avian influenza and nobody even reminded me to wear a mask. But the answer was yes, I had to wear the hood. To be fair, brain sampling required a hammer, so spray was quite possible, but what struck me as particularly amusing was that this wasn’t a beach in the middle of nowhere. It was near a relatively popular west-coast holiday resort. I understand there were background discussions going on about whether we should let the police know. I was half imagining television cameras turning up, creating mass panic over people donning virtual space suits to approach dead animals that, half an hour earlier, someone’s dog might well have been sniffing.
Having spent two hours on Wednesday evening, learning about techniques for sampling marine wildlife and refreshing myself on donning and doffing PPE safely, and another hour on Thursday morning, ensuring I had everything in the car I might need, I drove an hour and a half and met my colleague , an experienced animal health officer, at the beach.
Partly because it was already warm, and partly to avoid causing alarm, I had decided that we should plot the position of the animals first, then get our final permission and instructions to test from VENDU (the Veterinary Exotic Notifiable Disease Unit). My plan was to photograph the animal or bird (necessary so that an expert can make sure what species it is) and get OS coordinates for each. All those details have to be recorded, so it made sense to do that before getting all the kit on.
In the event, what actually happened was that we walked onto the beach, made our way to the mark on the satellite image where the seal carcase had been recorded, and found… only tyre tracks. There were a number of dog walkers on the beach, so my colleague began to ask whether any of them had seen anything. None of them had. We walked on down the beach. No dead seal. No bird carcasses either.
I called my veterinary advisor. Was it possible the local authority, or someone, had already been and removed the seal? In the background, she started to make enquires to all the possible agencies and groups that might possibly have done so. In the meantime, my colleague and I walked on, scouring the beach with our eyes. After all, the worst possible scenario I could imagine was that we failed to find it after all the prep and travel, only for it to be reported again the next day.
The tyre tracks were explained – the local council had been out, but hadn’t found anything apparently. Nor did we. Despite walking for half an hour along the beach, the only things we found were a number of dead jelly fish and one, single, very rotten bird carcase, where there was nothing much left except bones and a wing. Eventually, we had to admit defeat and turn back. All that remained was to call VENDU and call off the hunt.
I did that, back at my car. I was just driving off when VENDU called back and asked whether we could go back and sample the bird. I said no. Sampling is from the cloaca and the back of the throat. Neither of those would have been identifiable. Not only that, but it was a good half-hour walk back to where we had seen it and there was no guarantee we’d find it again as, by that time, I’d abandoned all thoughts of OS coordinates.
We’ve been told that in hot weather, we have been allocated a £2 cold drinks allowance, so when I stopped for lunch, I ordered an iced caramel mocha. £2 doesn’t come close to covering it, but it was delicious, as was the goats’ cheese salad I ordered along with it.
I had a pleasant drive back down the Galloway Trail. Really, it ended up being one of those rare days where I look back and want to laugh and feel highly pleased that someone actually paid for me to do that. There are truly awful moments in this line of work, but there are some great ones too. And next time I am asked to go on a report case, there will be things I learned this time that will be put to good use.
I rounded off the week reading the TB test. Sadly, there were some animals that tested positive. Another farm, now under restrictions, with thousands of animals that all need to be tested. If I were in charge, I would be looking at banning moving cattle from high risk zones and into Scotland. I know there’s a lot of negativity about red tape, but the eventual cost of allowing those movements is unreasonably high. Then again, after 15 years in Norway, I’d be on board for massive limitation on moving animals around.
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!
It’s been another week of contrasts. At work, I am chasing my tail a lot of the time. I’m behind on paperwork, some of it complicated paperwork, that requires a lot of concentration and reading around the questions that I have to answer. APHA has what is called a Framework Agreement with the Local Authority, because we work together. We are regulatory, they are an enforcement agency, so complementary.
If you feel slightly lost at that last sentence, you may have an inkling of how I am feeling. There are about twenty pages to fill in, and sixty three pages altogether in the document. I have to read and digest the forty three in order to understand what they want me to write in the twenty and there are snippets on different pages about how to address each reply. Then I have to assess whether the reply (which is about what the LA intend to do – gleaned in a meeting, so based on notes I took about what they said) meets or exceeds the minimum standard. There was nothing about this in my veterinary degree! I guess the one good thing I should consider is that at least I am doing it in my mother tongue!
On top of that, I’m dealing with a TB breakdown. When we’ve found TB on a farm, we have to do a series of tests at sixty day intervals. Part of it is a skin test – injecting tuberculin (purified proteins from bacterial cultures) – to see if there is an immune reaction. In addition, we take blood samples in the early stages. The blood test is more likely to find animals in the early stages of the disease.
Because the skin test can only be done every sixty days (before that, the tuberculin causes desensitisation, so no reaction) what usually happens is that there are periods of inaction, followed by a massive flurry of activity as any positive reactors have to be culled and checked for lesions at the slaughterhouse. They are under restrictions on the farm, so moving them requires – you guessed it – a whole load of paperwork. I am currently in that flurry, so alongside the Framework, there’s a lot going on.
As if that wasn’t enough to be going on with, there’s a bonus I can achieve if I can demonstrate I have jumped through various hoops to show I have progressed at work and am therefore worth more. The deadline for that is the end of June.
I probably should have been working on this for the last year, to make sure I ticked all thirty eight of the boxes, some of which involve training people inside and outside the agency. As well as writing thirty eight mini-essays, demonstrating my super-competence, I am currently creating a training program for those going out to do a DRF – the epidemiological investigation we carry out in TB breakdown cases – and may also go to a Local Authority meeting to train them on how to spot foot and mouth. All that in the next two weeks.
Really, the Norwegian method of progressive pay, based on assessment meetings with your manager, with the possibility of promotion from first vet to senior vet if you demonstrate a willingness to take on responsibility is much more efficient. The irony is, that used to be the same in the UK civil service. In trying to make everything cheaper, they’ve ended up with enormous inefficiency. Even more ironically, if I was in a quieter region, with less urgent work, I’d have way more time for the box-ticking games. The idea that I’m no more useful than I was on the day I arrived, unless I can tick these boxes is just silly.
Still, there are lovely benefits thrown in. On Wednesday this week, I took a day away from all the paperwork to go to a meeting run by the British Deer Veterinary Association. It was down at Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire, so I was able to stay with mum and dad on Tuesday and Wednesday nights and drive over there for the day. The lectures were really interesting and focused on things that were relevant to what I do. There was a talk on welfare at the time of killing – a hot topic for APHA – as well as information on the levels of TB in wild deer and the risk that represents to farmed animals. I must admit that my conclusion was that the UK is never going to be TB free, but really it was a very interesting day and a lovely break from my day to day activities.
The day ended with a walk around the deer park, which was very beautiful. The deer were mostly just dots in the distance, but it was a lovely end to the day.
The drive back took me over the moors and I couldn’t resist stopping to take a few photos along the way. The light wasn’t quite as gorgeous as it had been in the morning as I drove over, but now I had no deadline for getting to where I was going.
And so I will leave you with my June award for WalkFit, which I have already completed. As I was searching for the icon, I saw there’s another challenge coming up in three days, so I shall tackle that when it arises. Thanks for reading and a good week to all of you.
A Vet’s Life 