I like my job

National Botanic Garden of Wales, May 2013

So far, I like my job.

I like the small team, the fact that we are mainly unsupervised and can do mostly what we like. I like the building, I like my office, I especially like the way that everybody comes together for lunch in the largest room. I can adjust 'my' heating, open 'my' window, and arrange 'my' furniture. I can always find somewhere to park on the site, even if not immediately outside the building. I can ask all sorts of people for all sorts of support, and so far they have not hesitated to do whatever they can to help.

Of course there are things that aren't so good. On Wednesday mornings I have to give up 'my' room to a renal Dietitian, but there are plenty of other places I can sit. We don't have any access to colour printing or copying in the building, but I believe we can go elsewhere if we really need it. These are small issues.

I have started to see more patients, and feel very pleased that I am almost keeping within the time limits allocated. One patient returned for a second appointment, and was extremely positive about how my advice had allowed him to make useful changes. There have been other patients who have not welcomed my input, but I have been content to leave them alone, and they may return for advice if they ever want it in future.

I've been given the job of reviewing the patient information leaflet that we offer on hypoglycaemia, and have included some of the great pictures that I produced last year. The draft leaflet is out with the rest of the team for comments at the moment; we'll see what they think.

A quick update on stuff outside work: no, there's nothing of any interest at all. I stupidly cut my finger on a tin can. I have a hurty arm, probably a result of the last wipe-out of the ski holiday and then exacerbated by badminton. My newest badminton club is very enthusiastic about the fact that I am eligible to play in matches; I am less enthusiastic, although I have said I will play if they are absolutely desperate. Mr A and I went dancing on Friday night; this is his latest plan to introduce some non-sedentary activity into his life. It was fun, but with two nights of badminton per week I'm not sure I will be accompanying him every time he wants to go dancing. The falconry centre has reopened after the 3-month winter break; it was interesting to see how the birds need reminding that they are expected to work for their living again. That's about it.

And it hasn't rained for two days!

Solitary Holiday reprised

Groombridge Place, June 2013

I've come back to Royal Tunbridge Wells for my second annual Solitary Holiday, because I enjoyed it so much the first time (except for the lack of hot water, but I was refunded handsomely for that). The apartment is the same: comfortable, with an inexplicable lack of certain kitchen implements (slotted spoon? not essential I know, but a pity not to have one). I brought my own sieve this time.

I dropped in at the Falconry Centre on the way down, and arrived in the evening so took the opportunity to have the first sushi of the holiday, at the restaurant that I had so enjoyed last time. After a long morning in bed planning my schedule on Day 1, I started on the dress I'd promised to make for Lola II.

It's been a long time since I did any dressmaking, and I'm planning a separate blog on the progress of that particular project, so suffice it to say that I didn't finish the thing in a week, especially as I wanted to do some other stuff as well.

I had plans for day 2 in London - going to the Pompeii/Herculaneum exhibition at the British Museum, meeting mum and dad, and then meeting some other friends. It was a good day, but a long one. Day 3 was more relaxed - more dressmaking, then a stroll into town to do some shopping for household items. I don't enjoy shopping in normal weekends when there never seems to be much time and the shops are all crowded. There will be more shopping needed, but I got a whole lot done.

Another unplanned bonus of the week is that it's the first week of Wimbledon, so I've been watching a bit of tennis here and there, and listening to some of my podcasts and audio books. I thought I'd have lots of opportunities for listening while dressmaking, but unfortunately I can't do it - either I miss bits of the story or tennis match or I make mistakes with the sewing.

I saw a film and then wandered about some more in town - I think there are more charity shops here than in Leamington Spa, which is really saying something. I didn't even get the opportunity to see them all, because I found suitable work trousers in the second one I went to. Ate more sushi, had a bath, researched a new feed reader because of the demise of Google Reader - at the moment I'm thinking of using Feedly (I also tried The Old Reader and Feedreader). Watched more tennis.

I did as much of Lola II's dress as possible without putting her inside it to check the measurements, and had a whole day left to play with. So I did a bit of research, and went to Groombridge Place, which contains quite lovely gardens (featured in the film 'The Draughtsman's Contract') as well as a forested area with stuff in it. And various animals, and (the clincher) a birds of prey centre. It was a good choice for the day with a great deal to see and a decent amount of walking, which I enjoyed. And because it was warm but mostly raining, the only other visitors were a busload of holidaying Germans who didn't get in my way at all, and a class of maybe 10-year-old schoolchildren with their teachers, who I could hear a mile off, so could easily avoid.

Walking in the woods in silence was wonderful, as was my decision to have a go on one of the swings. I walked past them first of all, and then stopped to reconsider. If there had been children about, then clearly I would have left them to it, but there was nobody about at all, and these were interesting swings. The ropes were about fifty feet long up to a tree branch, and I wondered what that would be like. And I'm so glad I did, because it was amazing. Obviously the arc was much longer than your standard playground variety, but the slope of the land and the weight of the ropes and swing (and me) meant that I was propelled so much further and higher than I was expecting, high over the wet forest floor, slowly and (almost) silently, with nobody about. It was a wholly unexpectedly wonderful experience.

Apart from the swings there were other attractions set up in the forest, which would have appealed enormously to a) hippies (standing stone, mystic pool, some rubbish about treefolk) and b) children (things to climb on, unexpected pens containing animals - rabbits, rheas, some kind of goat, wild pigs and a zedonk called Adam who is a cross between a zebra and a donkey). For the likes of me there were peacocks, deer, tree ferns, pools with irises and with gunnera (my personal favourite of the giant plants), wooden sculptures, and I somehow got stuck on a raised boardwalk going the wrong way along a kind of assault course designed for children, such that I had a child-size doorway to get through or go back over a wobbling set of suspended logs.

The falconry displays were a washout because of the rain. There were some birds sitting in the weathering looking a bit forlorn, but there was a Jackal Buzzard which they don't have at the Cotswold centre, and which managed to fly along with a Harris Hawk before the rain came down. I didn't much like the way the 'script' was delivered to the audience (although the other four people in the audience were charmed). They also had a nice display of falconry equipment with useful descriptions, but containing terrible apostrophe abuse.

So that was the last event of Solitary Holiday #2. I'm thinking that this will definitely be an annual event, and it's possible that I might even return to Royal Tunbridge Wells for a third visit next year!

Work, food, birds

Cotswold Falconry Centre, July 2012

I always want to start posts nowadays with excuses - no, reasons - explaining why there's been such a long gap, I've been busy, blah blah blah. I should just accept that I haven't got the same amount of time nowadays, and an awful lot less that I'm allowed to write. If only I could tell you about some of the patients. There's a lot to tell, but what makes them interesting is also what makes it impossible for me to write about them. Even the woman who came to my clinic thinking that it was another clinic would recognise herself if I gave any more details, and that's my test nowadays for whether I can or can't relate the story. So, I can't. Even if it was a man.

Generalities are fine. So I can say that two weeks ago was extraordinary - I had almost no referrals all week, to the extent that I could spend half a day in the library reading about diabetes, and catching up with paperwork, and throwing a lot of accumulated stuff out. Then last week, the tables were turned. One of my colleagues was off sick, and we were just keeping our heads above water even when we discovered at very short notice that she was supposed to be giving a talk on Wednesday, and even though I had a full clinic (11 patients) booked in on Thursday morning (4 DNAs in the end). But on Thursday, the wards decided to go into overdrive, and we received 15 referrals (I think it was 15 - my other colleague had to deal with the inundation during the morning - I was in clinic).

For some reason, Thursday was also the day that I found myself involved in three separate complaints about catering. Afterwards, we decided that in an ideal world I should have just said "This has nothing to do with me; you need to talk directly to catering yourselves." But, as a health professional trained to help people, my instinct is to try and help, even though one complaint was simply that the ward catering staff wouldn't give larger portions to a patient who clearly needed and wanted more to eat. It was very frustrating for all involved.

In the end, you can only do as much as a person can do, and our colleague returned on Friday, and we just about got through everything as best we could. But the team of six is down one anyway since our team leader left, and the most senior of the remaining five of us is covering not just that post but also providing paediatric cover, as we only have one paediatric dietitian for the whole hospital. And one of the remaining five isn't supposed to do anything except stroke, and she had a student with her all week as well. The end of the working week on Friday was a huge relief.

Mr A and I had a treat on Friday night - a return visit to Queans, the restaurant where we first went to celebrate our birthdays earlier in the year. This time we had a voucher which Mr A had earned by doing some work for a neighbour. It was a lot of money, too, enough for dry martinis and three courses for each of us and a bottle of wine. It is a lovely place to spend the evening.

Then on Saturday I volunteered to help out with end-of-season cleaning and clearing up at the Falconry Centre. As a Friend of the Centre, as well as not having to pay to get in, I am invited to a summer barbeque and two cleaning events, one at the end of the season in November when the Centre closes, and the other in February just before the Centre opens again. I'm not entirely sure why I volunteered for this, and most Friends do the sensible thing and just come to the barbeque, but there I was on Saturday, spending a few hours sweeping up leaves in the pouring rain, and getting almost as wet while cleaning the insides of the cages where some of the birds are kept overnight and through the winter.

The birds don't fly at all out of season, mostly because there aren't enough visitors to justify opening the Centre. They don't need to fly - given sufficient food, they are happy to just sit there for a month or two, growing new feathers and thinking whatever birds think when they have nothing to do. There were about six of us volunteers in all, a friendly group, and I'm kind of glad I did it, even though I really didn't have to. I might even volunteer for the February opening workout as well.

No fresh news about the new job. I know I'll almost definitely be leaving if all the bureaucracy gets completed to everyone's satisfaction, and it is likely to be at the end of December all being well, but there are no guarantees. Then another similar vacancy was advertised, much nearer to home, permanent, but only 4 days a week. I mentioned it at work, and was surprised when the consensus was that I should apply, despite being halfway through the process of moving to a different job. So that's my Sunday fully occupied, along with my usual treat of a trip to the greengrocer.

Unrelated items

Norfolk, July 2011

Have you noticed how long it is since there was a post on what I've been reading? This is because I don't seem to have time to do reading nowadays, or, more accurately, I use the time previously allocated to reading for less intellectually strenuous activity: watching DVDs or doing mindless puzzles. Working all day makes the active acquisition of knowledge in the evening much less attractive. Even novels don't make the cut at the moment. And if I were reading, there'd be even less time for blogging, and that's getting very little of my attention at the moment as well.

I still haven't worked on all the pictures I took while I was on holiday in May/June, to get them ready for display here. I've just had a quick look, and there are about twenty pictures from Sissinghurst that are fit for the purpose, some of them very lovely indeed, and a few from the weekend when we returned to the Falconry Centre. That was a lovely trip, because the weather was just about perfect for the falcons (not really breezy enough for the heavy birds like the eagles and vultures) and I very nearly saw a falcon stoop to the lure, i.e. plummet from a great height catching its prey on the way down. I missed the full flight because I lost the bird into the sun for a second, and couldn't spot it again until it opened its wings in the last stages of the stoop. But I'm planning another trip to the Centre in a couple of weeks, so I hope the weather remains fine.

I'm still Not Very Well. This is separate from the touch of sunburn that I acquired at the Falconry Centre, which is gently fading; it started last Saturday with a sore throat and progressed to congestion and an odd pain in my back when I breathe in too deeply. I think it is a chest infection, but am not sure. It is the first illness I've had (apart from broken leg) that has stopped me playing badminton. I've even taken time off work, which has helped with the reading and blogging (see above).

At work, I seem to have the same number of patients and referrals as ever, while my two colleagues report that their workload has dropped off significantly. Even their clinics are poorly attended, while for the first time ever in my clinic this week, everybody who was listed actually came. If it had been a full clinic, the medal would have been mine. As it was, there were still seven patients, while my colleagues have had two or three. What with feeling ill as well, I was feeling rather persecuted, but taking a day off has restored the balance somewhat. I will be sharing out my caseload a bit more equitably soon.

So now these unrelated items have been related, and I shall return to my sick bed, or perhaps the sofa.

Falconry

Henry the Harris Hawk and me

Last weekend I had one of the most enjoyable and memorable days of my life.

It was a drizzly, grey sort of day on Saturday, but I set off for the Cotswolds in a spirit of barely suppressed excitement. This was the day I was to redeem my Christmas present from Mr A: a day's falconry experience at the Cotswold Falconry Centre.

When I was in my early 20's, a friend invited me to his wedding in North Lincolnshire somewhere. I don't remember much about the wedding, but what I do remember is that the following day, I went with friends to a local attraction that hosted a falconry centre, and watched the display. I was hooked from the first moment. I made my friends stay so that I could watch a second display later in the day, and then wrote to the falconer with all sorts of questions about what was involved in keeping and flying birds of prey. He kindly wrote me a letter in return, which I still have.

At that time I was at university, having a somewhat disorderly, irresponsible and unsettled life, with all sorts of plans for travelling and without the slightest intention of settling down to the sort of life that would allow me to look after any sort of animal, let alone one as sensitive and time-consuming as a bird. But I never forgot the thrill of that display and the unexpected passion that it aroused.

Move on about 20 years, and Mr A and I visited Ludlow, where we happened upon a sign in Ludlow Castle advertising a falconry display. I insisted that we stay and watch it, and the impact was hardly less than all those years ago - the birds were so beautiful, graceful, powerful and still almost wild. They were certainly not tame or domesticated; there was none of the mutual attraction of a cat or a dog with a human. It was a cold, business-like relationship based on making an easy living on food provided in exchange for flying about a bit. The birds were free to go if they wished, although it was clear that the falconer would have calculated carefully to ensure that they didn't.

Mr A has since said that he hadn't ever seen me in such a state of excitement before. It must have made an impression, because that was at least five years ago, and I was absolutely amazed to receive the envelope on Christmas Day with a voucher for this falconry experience.

So last weekend I headed off into the drizzle, and joined a group of five other people from 9.30 a.m. until 5.30 p.m. We were looked after by four of the staff, and were plunged straight in at the start when each of us was given a bird in turn (Henry the Harris Hawk and Desmond the Great Tufted Owl) and sent off to walk around a field with it. Then, in order to understand the variety of size and weight of falconry birds, we each were given a little American falcon, followed by a Gyr/Saker cross and then... a Golden Eagle. It was amazing - you could hardly feel the tiny falcon on the fist, but the eagle looked me straight in the eye, and was as heavy as a small child. A magnificent creature.

The centre is remarkably big, and has about 150 birds altogether for conservation, breeding, and flying in displays and at prey. They include eagles, vultures, buzzards, caracara from South America, a huge variety of owls, down to the slighter birds: sparrowhawks, kestrels and falcons. At this time of year many are raising chicks. There are several birds tethered in mews (sheltered areas) and weatherings (uncovered) - they are flown every day and brought inside at night, while others are permanently out in large enclosures. The breeding birds are not disturbed, but some of the non-breeding birds in the enclosures are brought out and flown, including a pair of caracaras in one of the displays I watched. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We were given some information about the 4000-year recorded history of falconry, species and types of birds, how they are cared for, the equipment used (the tether, the creance, hoods, jesses, lures) and some of the terminology that has entered the language. A mews was originally for housing birds, not horses. When annoyed you can reach the end of your tether. It was emphasised clearly that birds don't fly for fun, but for food, and only if they're hungry, and the way to tell whether they are hungry is by weight. A bird needs to be at its flying weight, but if it is too heavy, it is fed up, and will not fly. The last lecture/lesson of the day included tying a one-handed knot - the falconer's knot. Obviously while holding a bird on one fist it is important to be able to manage everything else with the other hand.

We went out into the field with Henry the Harris Hawk and flew him a bit more freely, taking turns to hold out an arm for him to land on and accept the food offered. We were given a glimpse of how manoeuvrable he could be, and we all got thoroughly wet, including Henry. The long grass and the rain soaked into everyone's shoes, and we all spent the rest of the day with wet feet, taking turns in front of the small gas fire when the opportunity presented itself. I think the American lady in the group had the worst time - she had the most inadequate shoes, and being from Texas I think she suffered more than the rest of us from the cold, damp conditions.

The weather was still pretty wet for the first display. Mr A turned up to see this with us, and stayed for lunch. He watched another display and went home, while the group was taken on a tour of the centre by its owner, and given lots of fascinating information. One of the most interesting facts was that the breeding enclosures contained lots of unsteady perches that swayed and required the birds to balance. In order to mate successfully, the male has to sit on top of the female, who is a good deal larger in many raptor species, and not likely to be sitting entirely still. He had received a male bird that came from a different breeding centre with only fixed perches, and realised that the bird had never learned to balance effectively. "Our breeding success improved significantly when we introduced the wobbly perches," he told us.

The weather had improved slightly for the last display of the day - it was no longer raining - but there wasn't a breath of wind and the low, grey cloud hadn't lifted. This meant that the larger birds were reluctant to stay out long because they were getting no help from wind or thermals, and the smaller birds weren't going to climb and 'stoop' to prey because of the poor visibility. I still haven't ever seen a stoop, which is when a hawk (e.g. a peregrine falcon) goes into a vertical dive at up to 100 mph, and takes the prey on the way down.

The displays featured a number of birds in turn, including the caracaras, a bald eagle called Wotan, another eagle called Lulu, and a number of owls. Owls have acquired a reputation for wisdom and intelligence, assisted by books such as Winnie the Pooh and the Harry Potter series, but their real nature came to light in the displays - they are pretty stupid, not very impressive, have no sense of smell, and have never seen their own feet. This is because their eyesight is pretty good, especially in low light, but only at a distance. They are effectively blind to anything close up - the trainer held food up in front of an owl's nose, and it peered dimly past at nothing in particular. But throw the food a little way off and the sound and sight of it prompts the owl to head over there and pick it up. Unlike the other birds, though, having picked it up and eaten it, the owls tended to sit there doing nothing in particular. Their special skill is flying from A to B and then stopping, rather than soaring majestically in wide circles to perch on the lofty branches of tall trees before gliding silently to the falconer's fist, or performing aerial acrobatics to catch food in midair. I was not impressed with the owls.

In contrast, I was deeply impressed with the falcons, hawks and eagles, and also with the quality of the tuition and the knowledge of the team who work at the centre. The vultures weren't bad either. When I came home and told Mr A that I had signed up as a Friend of the centre and was now able to visit free of charge, he said something along the lines of, "I thought you might." I spent the rest of the evening and much of the next two days imagining that I might join a club and go out flying with people who own birds (there is a club that meets every second Sunday at a venue only 5 miles away), and visiting the Cotswolds centre every other week. Realistically, I hope to go there enough times to make it worth my while having paid to be a Friend. Lola II will definitely be forced to accompany me at least once as well.

It was also our ninth wedding anniversary on Saturday. Don't feel bad that you missed it - I was pretty sure that it was in May, but I had to rummage through the filing cabinet to find the wedding certificate with the actual date, which wasn't the date I thought it was. We went out for what turned out to be an over-priced and fairly ordinary dinner at a Thai restaurant - we would have been better off at Wofon for a fifth of the price, even though the surroundings would have been less glamorous. Mr A has provided a few interesting moments during the sixteen years we have been together, but I wouldn't have been without him. Happy Anniversary, Mr A!

Naughty monkey and me