The Veterinary Detectives: A Vet for all Regions: The Veterinary Detectives, #3

By Guy Windsor

"An entertaining and informative read" Dame Joanna Lumley

 

Roger Windsor's career as a veterinarian and conservationist has taken him on a thrilling journey across the globe. In A Vet for All Seasons, the final volume of his memoirs, he takes readers on a captivating ride through his adventurous life. From his time at the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in Dumfries, Scotland, where he worked during the Foot and Mouth epidemic of 2000 and conducted a whale autopsy, to his consultancies on five continents, from Afghanistan to Zambia, Roger's tales are both entertaining and informative.

 

But Roger's passions don't stop at veterinary medicine. He is also an art lover who ran a gallery in Dumfries while juggling his international work. He was also instrumental in saving Moat Brae House, the birthplace of Peter Pan, for the nation, by setting up the Moat Brae Trust.

 

In The Veterinary Detectives, Roger shares some of his most memorable moments, including performing surgery on monkeys, advising on the conservation of orangutans in Borneo and Asian lions in Gujarat, and even treating a Liger for tonsillitis. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in animal health, conservation, and adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spada Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9789527157985

Guy Windsor

Dr. Guy Windsor is a world-renowned instructor and a pioneering researcher of medieval and renaissance martial arts. He has been teaching the Art of Arms full-time since founding The School of European Swordsmanship in Helsinki, Finland, in 2001. His day job is finding and analysing historical swordsmanship treatises, figuring out the systems they represent, creating a syllabus from the treatises for his students to train with, and teaching the system to his students all over the world. Guy is the author of numerous classic books about the art of swordsmanship and has consulted on swordfighting game design and stage combat. He developed the card game, Audatia, based on Fiore dei Liberi's Art of Arms, his primary field of study. In 2018 Edinburgh University awarded him a PhD by Research Publications for his work recreating historical combat systems. When not studying medieval and renaissance swordsmanship or writing books Guy can be found in his shed woodworking or spending time with his family.

Book preview

PART I

EUROPE

1

WHERE IS DUMFRIES ?

We were free! Free from the necessity of earning lots of money to pay for school fees. In 1979, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization had offered me a job in Salta, North West Argentina. We were desperate to have enough money to send our elder son to a private school where they would kick his arse and make him work. The village school in Willingham was a lovely, friendly school; Richard was clever and without doing any work, he could hold his own in class; as a result, he was bored, and the family suffered. I jumped at the offer, and we found a delightful prep school near Ipswich called Orwell Park, and Richard academically never looked back. We were now on the treadmill: we could not send one child to private school and the other two to State schools. From Argentina we went to Botswana and from there to Perú and now, after thirteen years, we were off the treadmill.

We had had wonderful experiences, and we had loved living in Gaborone, where there was theatre and music, wildlife and camping, and journeys to South Africa and Rhodesia. Arequipa had the most perfect climate and there was classical and folk music, mountains, desert and jungle and Chile, Bolivia and Paraguay. I had loved my work. In both countries I had been responsible for setting up a veterinary laboratory service: in Botswana we had built the National Veterinary Laboratory at a cost of 5 million dollars, while in Perú we had established not just a veterinary laboratory but an entire clinical service for livestock in the whole of the south of the country. But Maxine wanted a permanent home where she knew she was going to stay, where she could establish a music practice.

Now we could put down roots. Richard was well into his course in natural sciences at Edinburgh University. Guy and Claire had taken their A levels and they too would be off to university. Before we left Perú, I had applied for jobs with Oxfam and Save the Children charities, but neither had bothered to reply to my faxes. On the Friday after our return, my copy of the Veterinary Record came through the letterbox of my mother-in-law’s house; among the ‘Appointments Vacant’ column there was an advertisement for a vet to head the Veterinary Investigation Centre run by the Scottish Agricultural College in Dumfries.

Where was Dumfries? I had studied in Edinburgh on the east coast of Scotland, but had never been to the southwest of the country. The nearest I had ever been to Dumfries was to visit Glasgow in the west of the Central Belt. The Scottish Agricultural College ran eight investigation centres throughout the country, but Aberdeen, Ayr, Inverness, Perth and Thurso were too far from London: Maxine had an ageing mother, and my father was trying to look after himself and both lived in London. Dumfries was only five hours by train from London and so we could get there rapidly if the need arose. I applied for the job.

The family could not be expected to move to Scotland without having seen the place where we were to live, and so a visit to Dumfries was arranged. I phoned Norman Chandler, who had been my boss in the practice in Malton, but he had fallen out with his partners and moved to Latterford Doors where he set up a referral equine practice, and I asked if Maxine, Claire and I could stay the night with them on our way to Dumfries. Latterford Doors was a beautiful house set in a warm valley in the wilds of Northumberland, miles from anywhere, and with only a couple of farms as neighbours. I could never understand how Norman’s wife Maria could live in such a remote place without being able to drive, but she occupied herself with her garden and her cooking. Maria was of Spanish descent but born in Swansea; she was small but well-built and she had very definite opinions on society, which were greatly at variance with those of Norman. She was not impressed with the quality of my Spanish: Roger, keep your vowels pure.

She put on the most delightful dinner, turbot in a shrimp sauce followed by a strawberry cheesecake, and then Brie and Stilton, which were accompanied by wines selected by Norman. During the meal Claire asked, Why did you leave Malton? and Norman replied.

Our youngest child, Poppy, was taken acutely ill one afternoon and she and Maria were rushed to York Hospital where meningitis was diagnosed. Poppy was put straight into intensive care and when I got back from my calls, I found a message from Maria on the phone saying that I should go straight to the hospital as Poppy was not expected to survive the night. I was on duty that night and so I went into the staff room and explained that I had to go to the hospital, at which my junior partner said, ‘you can’t do that as you are on duty’. I told him I was going… and left. Poppy survived the night and made a good recovery, although she lost some toes. However, I felt I could not work with that man again, and so the next morning I went straight to the surgery and said to my partners that I was resigning from that moment. And I left.

What a callous man, said Claire. How could anyone be so stupid and hard-hearted?

I never had any regrets about the decision; we found this house and because I was well known in the horse world, I soon had a flourishing referral practice.

What is a referral practice? Claire asked.

It had to be a ‘referral’ practice because of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons: any vet running a normal practice has to provide a service twenty-four hours a day, for 365 days a year and you have to cater for all animals from dogs to elephant seals, (the latter being a reference to our work at Flamingo Park Zoo) a referral practice does not undertake primary care cases but works for other vets and so you do not have to work all the hours God gives, nor do you have to be an omni-vet.

The conversation turned to family matters, and we chatted away until it was time for bed. We were up early the next morning, and Maria suggested we take the road following Hadrian’s Wall, taking in Vindolanda, Once Brewed and Twice Brewed. It was an inspired choice on that sunny, early summer morning and it was my first view of the Wall and the magnificent Roman remains. Once we had passed into Scotland at Gretna, we hit the road works as they were upgrading the A75, the main road to the docks at Stranraer, which was getting busier and busier.

However, we were in good time to meet Ogilvie Mathieson on the Whitesands in the middle of Dumfries: this is possibly the most beautiful part of the town, with the rapidly flowing river Nith producing a peaceful air and reflecting the sun on this glorious day. On the far side of the river stood the old mill atop a hill and below on the bank was the Burns Centre, which had once been a water mill but was now a museum, a cinema, and a restaurant; this was set on a large grassy bank in which was an enclosure where fallow deer grazed. The deer formed part of the Maxwelltown coat of arms. Ogilvie had been a few years above me at College and had captained the College second fifteen, the rugby team for which I regularly played. Tall, slim and elegantly dressed with curly black hair, he possessed a soft lowland accent and a great deal of charm. We agreed to the pub where we should meet for lunch, and I left Maxine with the car as Ogilvie drove me to the laboratory.

The Dumfries Veterinary Investigation Centre was in the St Mary’s Industrial Estate, close to the railway station and not far from the centre of the town; set in its own grounds, the building was a typical example of Scottish thrift: it was a two-storey building with a flat roof in one of the wettest parts of Britain; there were large windows in metal frames, but the walls were of plywood and plastic and the roof was of paper, tar and gravel. I later learnt that the College ‘fathers’ had saved £5,000 by not having a brick and slate structure. Access was through a central door and to the right was the Agricultural Advisory department while the vet lab was to the left. The second floor housed the common and conference rooms, shared by both services and the rest were offices for the Advisers.

The board of the Scottish Agricultural College had not wanted a veterinary laboratory in Dumfries but had succumbed to pressure from the farming community. Prior to the laboratory opening, the farmers had to use the Ayr laboratory in Auchincruive, more than a hundred miles from Langholm in the east. Norman MacLeod had come from Ayr and had run the laboratory since its inauguration, and Norman was of the old school, in which the Veterinary Investigation Officer was God, making all decisions and signing all reports. It was a small unit with two vets, four technicians, two secretaries and a cleaner/post-mortem room attendant, who was shared with the Advisers. The building may have been falling down, but it was bright and clean, and the staff seemed generally pleased to see me. My first visit was to the Portakabin, which housed the secretarial staff, and there I met Shirley Newall, who had been working in the centre from the start. She was small, well built, with dark auburn hair and a round smiling face. After making Ogilvie and me a cup of coffee, we sat in her office and talked about where I had been and what community was served by the lab. We were soon joined by Lesley McRoberts, a tall, slightly built, attractive young lady with long blonde hair, who ran the biochemistry section. She had studied biochemistry at Edinburgh University but had not enjoyed living away from home and so had not completed the course. She was bright and lively, and the conversation flowed.

It was time to meet Tony Patterson, the vet with whom I would be working if I got the job. He was short, stocky, with a mop of black hair and obviously a keen rugby player. He was an Ulsterman who, like me, had studied at the Dick Vet, and was the only person I met that day who was not pleased to see me, as he too wanted the job, and I was obviously serious competition.

He and Ogilvie took me round the laboratory to see the facilities and our first port of call was to the office of Forbes Rogerson, the chief technician, a typical lowland Scot, small of stature with a wiry frame and thinning on top. He was obviously interested in personal fitness, and I later found out that he cycled to and from work, and loved distance running and long walks on the hills, that were everywhere in the surrounding countryside. His open smile on our meeting told me that we could get along. I think that he had suffered a lack of freedom under the old regime and thought that the new boss might give him more scope to develop his knowledge, skills, and authority.

As we walked round the laboratory, I was impressed with how everything seemed so well ordered and the laboratories were neat and tidy. In the postmortem room we came across Ian Riddet cleaning up and restocking the shelves. Ian was from local farming stock, and I took to him immediately with his round cheerful face, which hid a man who was suffering from clinical depression, although from his sunny smile you would never have known it. I met the tall, slim Ailsa, who had a professional footballer boyfriend and the small curly haired Loraine who had a passion for horses. Both were junior or trainee technicians. I never could adjust to the new nomenclature where technicians became scientific officers. In my young days, the Institute of Medical Laboratory Technology set their own examinations and laboratory workers with the letters AIMLT after their names were people who knew their way around the laboratory, and Fellows of the Institute were people who had really made their mark.

However, the Institute in its wisdom had dropped their own exams, instead candidates for admission had to have a university degree in a laboratory discipline. A bachelor’s degree from a tin pot university means nothing, whereas the letters AIMLT meant that you knew something, and were somebody. This had all come about because of snobbery on the part of medical doctors, vets, and chemists: a trait too deeply embedded in the British psyche, where the scientists are the crème, and people working with them who use their hands as well as their heads, are second class. It had not taken me long, when I started work in a laboratory, to realize that we were a team and that every member of that team was equally as valuable be they vet, technician, cleaner, secretary, and you cannot build a team if some members are more important than others. But I kept these views to myself.

As I walked round the building, I realised that although this was a much smaller laboratory than I had run in Gaborone or Arequipa, it was a place where I could be happy and possibly even do some good. I would inherit a team that was committed to serving the farming community, and that enjoyed working together: you get far more work done in a happy environment than one where the staff are constantly grumbling.

From the vet lab, we walked across the corridor to meet the Advisers, headed by David Marshall, and they too were a jolly bunch. David was from the north of England and spoke in a forthright manner: he and his team were waiting for their marching orders, and they could not come soon enough:

This shack is falling down; ask Martin Wrathall to show you the patent flood control system in his office. The water pours through the roof every time it rains and so when entering his office you have to make sure that you do not dislodge the pipes and tubes that convey the water out of his window and onto the head of anyone who happens to be passing below.

As if by magic Martin appeared in the doorway and when we were introduced, he pointed out that he was the younger brother of Tony, who had been a couple of years ahead of me at the Dick, and had achieved great distinction with his work on pig viral diseases.

Once the alterations were completed, the Advisers would all be moving to Midpark House, part of the SAC research farm on the Crichton Estate. Within a few months the veterinary laboratory could occupy the entire building.

Providing it hasn’t fallen down, said Martin.

The role of the Advisory Service was to assist farmers with their plans for farm development, help with completing the many and varied forms required to get payments from the European Union. However, at the time of my visit, they were heavily involved with the gas pipeline that was crossing the whole of Scotland to take gas from the North Sea across the Irish Sea to Ireland and was affecting many farms. They all wished me well, and it was time to make my goodbyes and set off to meet Maxine and Claire. It was a cheery goodbye, and they all said they hoped to see me again. I think they meant it.

Over lunch Ogilvie explained I might expect some problems from Tony Patterson, who had worked in Dumfries for several years and wanted to take over the reins.

However, Roger it is not SAC policy to promote staff within a centre, as it is a good idea to get people from outside with fresh ideas; if you get the job Tony might be a problem. I should point out to you Karl Linklater and I will be on the interviewing panel, so you will have some friends.

Karl had been the year above me at college and two years below Ogilvie and at one time they had worked together in the St Boswells Centre when Ogilvie was the Veterinary Investigation Officer. Karl, unlike Ogilvie, was a very ambitious man and had leap-frogged Ogilvie and was now Head of the SAC Veterinary Services. This did not bother Ogilvie, who enjoyed his work with both vets and farmers and loved the sheep flock he ran on his smallholding.

Maxine and Claire had had a profitable morning, and Maxine was very impressed with a man whom she met in the Market Square, who obviously loved Dumfries and sang her a song about its joys. They had had a look inside Barbour’s Department Store, which had a great range of high-quality merchandise. Several estate agents had been visited and although there were not many houses on offer, there were some houses within our price range, and one had particularly excited them. Both agreed that Dumfries would be a good place to live and so now all I had to do was get the job. I thanked Ogilvie for his kindness in giving up his morning to show me the centre.

It was a pleasure,, he said, and good luck with the interview. It has been a pleasure to meet you Maxine and you, young lady, and with that, he was off.

You must go and have a look at this lovely-looking house which is on the market at £132,000 - the photograph shows a large house on its own grounds. Come, I will take you to the Solicitors Property Centre, it is just off the Market Square. And so, we went and in the window was an impressive-looking building and it was advertised to have five bedrooms:One for each of us and a guest room too, said Claire. I went into the office and asked for a leaflet with the particulars of the house, and the assistant gave me directions. It is very easy to find, you can’t miss it. Do you want me to call the owner and say you want to view?

No, thank you, I replied, we just want to look from the outside: I haven’t got the job yet.

She was quite right. The house was very easy to find, and we drove up the very impressive drive lined with mature oaks, ash, chestnut, and lime trees and saw that the house was just as the picture. We liked it; I turned the car round, and we drove off. It was a large house and if the prospectus was to be believed, there were five bedrooms and five bathrooms. The garden was very dull, basically a grass field, rather than a lawn with many, many leylandii trees round the periphery, impinging on the hawthorn hedge. The plot was shaped like a tennis racket, the tree-lined drive being the handle and the house was on the north border. The house was surrounded by fields in which sheep were grazing. If the interior was anything like the exterior, we had found our dream house.

Not wishing to tempt fate, we did not try to contact the owner but as we drove across the Southern Uplands to Edinburgh and our dear friends Iain and Fiona MacLaren, we excitedly discussed the possibilities for the house. I decided to go up to Edinburgh by train for the job interview. I said to the family that if I had done a reasonable interview, I would hire a car, and organise a visit to the house. We arrived in Edinburgh in very high spirits which quickly transferred to Fiona, who had been resident with Maxine in the University’s East Suffolk Road Hall of Residence. Their friendship had lasted over many years, boosted by regular visits of the Windsor family when we were in Britain on leave. Fiona was thrilled at the idea that Maxine might be moving to Scotland, and she loved to see her God-daughter Claire.

As always in the MacLaren house, the drink flowed: gin and tonic before dinner, sherry with the wonderful homemade soup, wine of various colours with the different courses and there was a malt to accompany the coffee. It was amazing how Iain kept his sylph-like figure amidst the plethora of fine dining provided by Fiona. He was small, dark and with sharp, piercing eyes. He was the finest polymath I had ever met, with the ability to talk knowledgeably on almost any subject. He was a consultant surgeon based at the Royal Infirmary and he had the slim elegant hands of a surgeon and an intellect as sharp as the scalpels he used. A proud member of the Clan MacLaren, born in Edinburgh of Hebridean stock, he was educated at Fettes and the Edinburgh University Medical School.

Soon after graduating, Iain had gone to America as he had relatives who had migrated there a couple of generations earlier. He worked as a surgical research scholar in Philadelphia, where he developed a fascination for the American Civil War and took the opportunity of visiting battle sites, and relatives round the country. On leaving the States, he returned to the city he loved and working at the Deaconess Hospital where he took his Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He was a doer rather than a watcher and for many years he was secretary to the Royal College. A keen piper, Iain was also secretary to The Royal Scottish Pipers Association and was responsible for the Association inviting their Patron, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, to the Centenary Ball, where he had the temerity to invite Her Majesty to dance: she graciously accepted, and they tripped the light fantastic.

Not just a Rotarian, Iain belonged to many associations both medical and lay, including the New Club and the Aesculapian Dining Club, thought to be the oldest dining club in Scotland, dating from the eighteenth century; it is open by invitation only and of course Iain was the secretary, and his keeping of the minutes was spectacular and often the highlight of their dinners. Iain was always the perfect host, and it was ever a delight to visit their Newington home, where the welcome was warm and embracing.

Iain was married to Fiona, who had started her medical training in the year I began my veterinary course, and in those days dentists, medics and vets spent their first year studying together. Fiona Heptonstall was tall, beautiful, blonde and elegant, and lusted after by most of the men in our year. I never had the temerity to speak to her during that year and it came as a great shock, some years later, when I found that she was a close friend of Maxine. Fiona had tried her hand at many things, including a spell as a surgical assistant in a Canadian hospital where her first task was to be asked to close a chest unaided! She decided that general practice was for her and became a partner in a south Edinburgh practice. She was not only a practitioner, a wife, a mother of two fine children, a superb cook but unaided, she looked after their extensive garden and of an evening did the most beautiful needlepoint. They really complemented each other: he short and dark while she was tall and blonde, but they both loved company and their house was always alive with welcome visitors. I believe that no American MacLaren ever stayed in a hotel in Edinburgh but rested their heads in the ‘Hotel MacLaren’.

It was a merry evening in the ‘Hotel McLaren’ that evening, and the malt flowed. Granny MacLaren was still living and occupied the ground floor while Iain and Fiona lived on the first floor of their large Georgian house. The ladies adjourned, but Iain and I continued putting the world to rights and sampling different whiskies. I am not sure that I was sober when I stumbled down the corridor to my bed. After a late breakfast, we drove south, getting back to Ma’s house in the early evening. Now we had to sit and wait; I was certain that I would be called to interview, not only from Ogilvie’s comments, but my experience in running two laboratories in two continents must have to put me amongst the principal contenders for the job.

The letter inviting me to interview duly arrived, and it was a most auspicious date for the meeting as it was on my birthday, the 26 th of August. I had decided not to drive up again but to take the train, which, of course, in those nationalized days of rail travel, broke down just outside Peterborough and, carrying our luggage, we had to walk along the track and wait for a replacement. We were only two hours late on a four-hour journey. I took a taxi to the Shannons’ house in Morningside, an end of terrace large Victorian house on a quiet street. David and I had first met when I was in my final year at the Dick, and David, on study leave from Kenya, was working for the Diploma in Tropical Veterinary Medicine, without which no vet could hope for promotion in the Colonial Service.

Our paths crossed when I was in charge of the Diagnosis Section at the Veterinary Research Laboratory, Kabete, Kenya and we were investigating problems of infertility in dairy cows in Nakuru, where David was the District Veterinary Officer. I literally bumped into David again when I was carrying out a field trial in Vom, Northern Nigeria, of a diagnostic test for contagious bovine pleuro-pneumonia that I had developed in Kenya. I had to go to Zaria, where they had the centrifuge I required to make the antigens, and as I walked into the veterinary school in Zaria, there was David. He was teaching clinical practice to the students. He and his second wife, Dorothy, made me very welcome in their home. They came to visit me in Vom with their son Patrick, where I was able to return their hospitality. We had remained friends ever since and I had an open invitation to stay with them in Edinburgh where David was now teaching at the Dick.

I was not the only guest at the Shannons’ house that night. Richard Brown, a relative of Dorothy, was also there. The irony was that both of us were in Edinburgh to be interviewed for the same job of Veterinary Investigation Officer in Dumfries. I had not met Richard previously, as our international paths had never crossed. Despite the rivalry, it was a pleasant evening, and the wide-ranging conversations were so interesting that we never left the dinner table but continued the discussions over coffee and yet more wine.

Once before, I had been interviewed for a job in Edinburgh, as head of the Bacteriology Section at the Moredun Research Laboratory. I had many friends at the Moredun and before the interview we had been chatting about the happy times in Kenya. The interviewing panel had consisted of Gordon Scott and Bill Martin, both old friends together with the chairman of the Moredun governors, who I had not met. I could not have been given a more friendly interview, and I made a complete mess of it; I was asked about my research work on pleuro-pneumonia in cattle and streptococcal meningitis in pigs; subjects in which I was a leading research worker, and I stumbled and mumbled and my thoughts were jumbled. I felt certain that this was because I had not focused my thoughts on the interview, but had been chatting away to old friends. Later, Gordon phoned me and said that they had wanted to give me the job, but my interview had been dreadful.

What on earth happened to you? I was lobbing dollies for you to smash out of the ground. I came to the conclusion that you did not want the job.

I do not know what happened either; I can only think that I was too relaxed and had not psyched myself up. I did want the job, as it would have been a big step up for me.

This was not going to happen again and so on the afternoon of the interview I sat in the common room at King’s Buildings as I waited my turn to be called. John Gourlay, the Chairman of SAC, sat with Karl Linklater on his right and Ogilvie Mathieson on his left, while the Company Secretary, David Leslie, sat at the end, pen in hand. I do not remember the interview itself, except that I was certain that I had performed to the very best of my ability. I could not have done better and so I went to a phone box and called Mary White, the owner of the house in Dumfries, and asked her if it was convenient to view the house the following day. It was; she would be home after lunch.

That evening I took the Shannons out to dinner; Richard Brown had returned to Aberdeen after his morning interview and so I did not know how he had done. It was a merry evening at the end of which David and Dorothy gave me a birthday present, which was a beautifully bound copy of The Roll Call of Honour by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. The following morning at about 8:30, we were sitting at the breakfast table when the phone rang. David answered and said to me: It’s David Leslie from SAC for you.

Roger Windsor speaking.

This is David Leslie from SAC. We met yesterday. I assumed that you had gone home, and so I phoned to London, but your wife told me you were staying with friends in Edinburgh. I am calling to offer you the post of Veterinary Investigation Officer in Dumfries.

Wonderful! Thank you very much for calling me so early.

Do you mean you want the job?

Of course, I would not have applied for it had I not wanted it. I would not waste your time.

But you are used to running much bigger laboratories; although Mr. Mathieson said he thought you would take it.

I am delighted to accept it. My wife loved the town and thinks that it will be a very pleasant place to live. This morning I am off to Dumfries to look at a house we saw when I came up to see the laboratory and meet the staff.

We were very impressed with your interview, and we are certain you will make a success of the job. I will send you a formal offer with the terms of service. We are very pleased to have you join the College and I look forward to working with you. I hope to see you soon. You may start whenever it is convenient for you.

After exchanging pleasantries, I put the phone down and continued with my breakfast.

Well done! said Dorothy, but Richard will be disappointed.

After breakfast, Dorothy drove me to the car hire office and I set off for Dumfries safe in the knowledge that the job was in the bag. I took the main road through Biggar and down to the motorway and my mood was like the sunshine that made the countryside look so beautiful. I headed first to the Solicitors’ Property Centre to see what other houses were on sale, and with the help of the young lady in the office, I planned my route, and she phoned the owners and made the arrangements for me to visit. They varied from the conventional to the bizarre.

The old manse in Beeswing had four large bedrooms on the first floor but no toilet or bathroom: these were in an annex off the kitchen: much work would be needed. The house that I viewed in Terregles was built like a Swiss chalet: one enormous room on the ground floor: kitchen, dining room, study, sitting room, all in one huge space which was open to the roof. The four bedrooms and bathroom on the first floor were arranged on a shelf that ran around the outer walls. This was not a home for the Windsors. I viewed several other houses but they were either too small or too expensive. Middlefield was my last hope.

I had a beer and a sandwich in a pub on the outskirts of the town and set off for Mrs White, who I found out also came from Essex. She was married to a Scot, who was a marine surveyor who worked in the North Sea positioning oilrigs. He had recently been promoted in the company and was going to be based in Swindon and so the family was on the move. I fell in love with the house from the moment I walked through the front door. There was a spacious entrance hall with an elegant staircase with a landing halfway up, which was lit by an enormous picture window. On the ground floor were three large reception rooms, one of which would be ideal for Maxine’s music room. The principal reception room had a large bay window and the most beautiful cornice I had ever seen outside of a stately home. Not only was there a large kitchen, but off it was a utility room the same length, that we called the ‘lavanderia’ using the Peruvian term. Opposite the kitchen was a small room that would be ideal for a study or computer room. The house had been used as a guest house by the former owners and so all the attractive Victorian panelled doors were lined on one side with an asbestos sheet. There was also a fire door at the top of the stairs. On the first floor there were five bedrooms, two with en-suite bathrooms and a further two bathrooms. All the rooms had large windows which had once been sash windows, but they had been replaced by double-glazed uPVC units which looked in keeping with the period. Mrs White’s mother lived in one of the upstairs rooms and hers was the only well-furnished room in the house, the rest were spartan. The front bedroom was painted in black and orange and sitting in an armchair watching the television was a tall youth wearing a base-ball cap on back to front, who did not deign to greet us when we looked in.

I had found my ideal house, and it was well within our price-range. The garden was bare, but I suspected that Mary White’s energies were taken up with the house and her three children: she could not wait to get back to the south of England. We returned to the kitchen for a cup of tea. I said that I was genuinely interested in buying the house but that I could not make a decision without my wife seeing the house. Mary Smith was delighted: the house had been on the market for over six months and I was the first person to see the house who had expressed any interest.

I am more than interested, I said. I want this house, and we are cash buyers; we sold our house in Willingham, in Cambridgeshire, more than a year ago and the money is sitting in the bank. I will return to London tomorrow and I will arrange with my wife and children to come up and see the house; we should be here within a couple of weeks. And so it was concluded: I gave Mary Ma’s phone number in case she needed to contact me.

It was a happy man that drove back to Edinburgh. I had a job and now a house. I returned the car and had a delightful meal with the Shannons; I had bought a bottle of champagne to celebrate. I returned to London the next day, and the train managed to make the journey without breaking down. Preparations had to be made for a return trip to Dumfries. But then disaster struck. The world ended and the sky fell: Claire received a ‘B’ in history, and she needed an ‘A’ to take her place at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

Oakham School could not understand it: Claire was the best history scholar for some years and had won the school history prize only weeks before. They requested a remark of her history paper. The examiners returned the same result: Claire had made the classic mistake; she had not read one question carefully enough and as a result had answered the ‘wrong’ question. She scored enough marks on the remaining questions to get a ‘B’ but not good enough for Sidney Sussex. A salutary lesson, and an error she would never ever repeat. But what was she to do? Her life was no longer worth living…

The family rallied round; Mum was of great help and brother Guy was a tower of strength: he had been turned down by Cambridge but was off to Edinburgh to study English. However, our plans for a journey north had to be put on hold while we sorted out Claire’s problems. I phoned Mary White and explained the situation, but I think she thought I was letting her down lightly, although I told her she should not sell the house without contacting me first.

The School suggested that Claire return to school for a term for which there would be no charge and she could retake the history exam. This she agreed to do and thereafter she would find a job as an au pair in France. There was much purchasing of magazines looking for posts in Paris and one was found with a Franco-Scottish couple with two young daughters. Once Claire was sorted out, we decided to go up to Dumfries with Guy to look at Middlefield. We drove up and on the recommendation of the estate agent booked accommodation in the Swan Inn at Kingholm Quay on the river Nith, just outside the town. Before going to see ‘our’ house we thought it was a good idea to visit the Solicitors’ Property Centre to see if there was anything better on offer. We were looking at the advertisements in the window when Guy exclaimed,

They have dropped the price by £7,000 it is now £125,000. He was right, there was a big sign saying, ‘Price Reduced’. There were no other houses that interested us and so we made our way to Middlefield. Both Maxine and Guy were taken with the house. I had been going to offer £127,500 but was not prepared to haggle with the reduced price and told Mary that I would pay the price they were asking, and would contact my solicitor that day to put the formal wheels in motion. I phoned Richard Crouch, my old school friend, best man, Godfather to Richard, and my solicitor, to ask him to start the process.

Can’t help you was his laconic reply. We cannot operate in Scotland; however, I suggest you phone Diane Reid at Anderson Strathearn, who looks after our interests in Scotland: she does their conveyancing for private properties, and you will find that she is very thorough as well as being a delightful woman.

I phoned Diane, and she was most helpful. We might have some problems, said Diane. Provincial solicitors in Scotland are notorious for their slackness. It is all done by word of mouth and friendly nods: however, I will make them do it properly.

It was as she predicted: there was no written permission for the sash windows to be replaced by uPVC windows, but the local council gave us a letter of comfort in which they stated that no action would be taken. A similar situation arose with the septic tank, which was in the adjacent farm field. The house had been built in the middle field of the farm, when the house and septic tank were under the same ownership; the farm had changed hands several times but there was no legal agreement about the septic tank and its outflow to the burn. We now have a document signed by Mrs Andrew (who owned the field) that the septic tank could remain in perpetuity, and this is binding on her heirs or whoever owns the farm.

Things were moving fast: I had undertaken to start work on October 5 th and on route to Dumfries I would take Guy and his clobber up to Edinburgh where the university had allocated him a place in a student flat near the Old Quad. Before that happened, Maxine and I had a few days’ holiday in the Crouch country cottage in Neatishead near Wroxham in Norfolk. As we were driving along a Norfolk lane, we saw a large sign which read DAFFODILS £5 PER SACK. Perfect for quickly cheering up the garden, said Maxine, and so we stopped and purchased a sack.

On our way north, Guy and I stayed with Nick and Penny Naish. Nick, a member of the Rowntree family, had been in my year at the vet school and had been in practice in Yorkshire most of his life. He had been a partner in the Leyburn practice for many years but had fallen out with his dogmatic partner and had set up his plate in the village. He and his second wife Penny had custom-built a veterinary surgery and a physiotherapy studio in their Dales’ cottage. Guy as always, was at home in company of his father’s generation and enjoyed the conversation. The following day on the journey up to Edinburgh we found car was going more and more slowly: the clutch was slipping but we managed to get to Guy’s flat where we unloaded his stuff and the car crept to Newington and the safety of the MacLaren garage. After emergency repairs, I was on the road to Dumfries and my new job.

I received an even warmer welcome on my second appearance in the laboratory than on my first. My first port of call was to the office of Tony Patterson to ask him to help me make the laboratory more efficient and valuable to the farming community. Tony was still smarting from my having got the job, but he tried very hard to be gracious and co-operative. It was a different welcome from a smiling Forbes Rogerson as I sat down and we talked of the future. Forbes assures me that I said Forbes, we are going to make this place rock!

I certainly knew that I wanted to change the attitude of the staff towards their own roles in the team. For the first time in fifteen years, I had inherited a laboratory that worked, with efficient systems of recording and reporting specimens. It would not be necessary to develop methods that would ensure that specimens did not get lost: they were all in place, including a central database for recording specimens, writing reports and charging. I explained to Forbes that I had great experience in running laboratories and I knew a great deal about livestock husbandry in Botswana and Perú but I knew nothing about farming in the southwest of Scotland and before I could be of any use to anyone I had to set about learning what was of importance to the farmers in the area.

Forbes explained: There are four veterinary practices in Dumfries: The Bard, The Bridge, Charnwood and The Veterinary Centre. In Lockerbie there are two: Miller’s and The Dryffe. Castle Douglas has two practices, Bonn and Struthers and Derek Henderson. Out in the west, Kirkcudbright has a practice and there was one practice Edgar, Gemmell and Thin that has three branches, in Newton Stewart, Whithorn and Wigtown; while Annan and Thornhill each have a single practice. Dalbeattie has no practice but a vet from the Bard lives in the town and takes surgeries there. Moffat has no practice but receives services from the Miller practice. We do no work west of Newton Stewart as the two practices in Stranraer find it easier to get samples to the centre in Auchincruive, just outside Ayr.

Over the next few weeks, I will try to visit each of the practices to introduce myself, but before doing that, I will need you to teach me what goes on here. And with that, we set off on a long slow tour of the building. That afternoon, I held my first meeting with all the staff in my office. I informed them it was a real change for me to start off in a laboratory that was functioning well and as a consequence, the last thing I wanted was that any change I made should adversely affect the running of an efficient unit.

However, there is one important change that happens NOW: I want you all to take personal responsibility for your own work. I understand my predecessor belonged to ‘the old school’, where all wisdom emanated from the top. That is not how I work. I am a team builder and want each of you to feel that you are an important member of this team. You will receive all the support in your efforts that I can give you, and it has always been my experience that the more you put into a job, the more you enjoy it. I am not a stickler for timekeeping, but I do believe that the work must be done: if there is nothing to do then you may go early, but if work piles in late in the day, then I will expect it to be done. There was a general discussion, and it was concluded that such meetings were of benefit because it gave the staff the opportunity to talk about problems in a friendly atmosphere and we all agreed that people work better in a happy environment.

I ended that day feeling that I was going to work well with my team and that I had better find somewhere to live so that Maxine could come and join me.

2

THE SCOTTISH AMATEUR COLLEGE

MORE BATTLES THAN VICTORIES

My base was the Swan Inn at Kingholm Quay which was a quiet country pub within easy reach of the town, with a decent beer and some quality food. When ordering my meal that first evening, I asked the owner of the Swan if he knew of any houses or flats available for short-term hire and was informed that the house next door was currently free. He gave me the name of the owner and his telephone number. I called him the next morning, and we met that evening at the house which had been divided into two self-contained flats, and the ground floor flat was vacant. It was ideal as it contained a big kitchen, a sitting-room with a television a good-sized bedroom with a large double bed and a bathroom with a separate lavatory. The rent was £50 a week payable in advance and it was available until the end of November, which was fine since we had asked to take possession of Middlefield in mid-November. I rented the house.

The purchase of Middlefield was wending its way with the local lawyers trying to fob off poor Diana with such statements as We do not bother with such details here in Dumfries. Or The Council will not take action on such a matter. But Diana was not accepting these statements. I asked Mary White if I could plant my daffodils before the purchase went through: I explained to her that if the purchase did not happen, I would not come round and dig them all up! Mary was happy for me to do the planting, I purchased a kneeler and bulb planter from the local garden centre and each afternoon after work had finished, I would drive up to Middlefield and set to, planting until it got dark. I made a rough count as I went along and when I had planted a thousand, I called it a day and gave the rest of the sack to the staff in the lab to share out among themselves.

Despite my no longer being employed by the Overseas Development Administration my battles with them were not over. For my service in Perú I had earned a gratuity of £7,000, however they informed me they were withholding £5,000 to pay for the damage that we had caused to the house and garden we rented in Arequipa. Our landlady Kuki Lozada had been conveniently ‘out of the country’ when we left and so we had been unable to ‘hand back’ the house. Alistair Grieve, my chief laboratory technician, and Christine Banham from the British Council, had checked the house with Kuki and agree to all her demands. Maxine was incensed, and I was furious because we had made considerable improvements to the property. For a start, we had stripped thousands of pictures cut from glossy magazines which had been stuck all over the walls of what Maxine had used as her music room and to most of the bedrooms upstairs. We had redecorated all the bedrooms, purchasing expensive wallpaper in England. We had also spent a considerable sum of money purchasing plants and shrubs to brighten up the very dull garden. On the first floor we had converted two suites into four individual bedrooms and two bathrooms: this we had done at our expense so that the children could each have a bedroom and we had a spare room for visitors. We had done this with the agreement of Señora Lozada; since she was related by marriage to my boss in Arequipa, we thought it unnecessary to have her agreement in writing. Big mistake! Alistair and Mrs Banham agreed on my behalf to every one of her demands and so ODA were withholding my money. Letters went back and forth to East Kilbride (the administrative headquarters of ODA) but it was only when I threatened to consult my solicitor that I achieved anything. They offered to reduce my payment to £1,500, and I accepted; I considered it might cost me more money in legal fees than the £1,500 they were charging me. This was the first battle I fought on my return and it could be considered a draw.

ODA: 1 RSW: 1

Had I been in Perú for the hand-over I would have given Kuki nothing: she had received a great deal of money in rent, and we had looked after her house as if it were our own; we had loved living there, and it was a delightful family house. As Maxine said, What a cow!

Maxine came up to Dumfries by train and we moved into our flat; almost immediately we heard that our sea-freight had arrived in Liverpool and that it would take just a few days to get Customs clearance; where were we to put it? Mary White solved the problem for us; they had a ground floor room with French windows opening to the garden. This room was never used, and she was happy that our belongings could go there: not only would it save us storage charges, but it would save us the costs of another move. I insisted we pay Mary the storage costs. The container arrived, but the lorry could not get into the drive and so it had to find a haulage company where the container could be unpacked, and the contents put onto a smaller vehicle that could get into the drive. Everything including the piano had travelled well and not a piece of china or glass was broken. When Mary saw the piano she asked who played it and when she found Maxine was a professional musician she asked if she would want to play the piano before we moved into the house:

This can easily be arranged, said Mary, I will give you the key to the French windows and you can come and go as you please, you will not disturb us. So Maxine played the piano while I planted daffodils.

It was a cold autumn and most mornings I had to get the car running while I had breakfast, in order for the heat from the engine to melt the frost off the windscreen before I could drive to work. Shirley Newall lived with her mother in Kingholm Quay and as she did not have a car, I took her to the laboratory in the morning. During those first days I met the vets as they brought in specimens. Ian Harvey went out of his way to introduce us to people and was the first to invite us to his house. When he heard we were looking for a dog he found us Sally, a cross between a bearded collie and a Labrador, who turned out to be the most loving dog we ever owned. Sally was about eighteen months old and was a people dog who needed company. The current owners were the proprietors of the local veterinary wholesalers. This was a family business and husband and wife and both sons worked for the company. The family were moving from a house near the hospital to a house in New Abbey and so would not be able to go home during the lunch break to take the dog out for a walk. Sally did not join the family until we took possession of Middlefield.My first farm visit was to the practice furthest from the centre. Ian Thin in Wigtown asked me to investigate an outbreak of salmonellosis in calves in a dairy herd. Ian had been the year below me at college and we had seen practice together with Ralston and partners in Haddington, East Lothian. He was tall, slim with long black hair and the demeanour of a Highlander. Following the death of his wife from breast cancer, he had developed a drink habit which was to lead to the breakup of the partnership into three separate practices in Wigtown, Whithorn and Newton Stewart. Maxine came with me on this first journey: it was a wonderful November morning; there had been a hard frost overnight, but we set off in glorious sunshine.

As we drove west along the A75 Maxine and I were astounded by the beautiful scenery and it got better and better the further west that we drove. The fields were full of sheep but the only cattle to be seen were the ‘belties’ (Belted Galloways), as the other breeds had been housed for the winter: the ‘beltie’ being small of stature and large of foot did not churn up the pasture as other cattle breeds did. The ‘beltie’ is so called because it has a completely black coat except for a broad band of white round its middle. There were rolling hills with mountains in the distance, and we spotted several old castles, a reminder that this was border country. As we passed the turning for Gatehouse of Fleet, surely one of the most romantic sounding place names in Britain, we saw the Solway coast both beautiful and threatening: the sun was glinting off the sea and as the tide was out, there was a large expanse of glorious mud also shining in the sun and patrolled by a vast host of wading birds all seeking the riches of the Solway coast. Inland there were high cliffs presenting a barrier to invaders from across the waters. The gorse was coming into flower and was that a red squirrel on the roadside? I could not believe my eyes until we saw a second. What were these strange breakwaters that projected for some distance at right angles