Gap Yah

When I came down for breakfast, the door was open and I realised his bed hadn’t been slept in. He’d gone. Off to explore the world, no doubt. But he was so very young: young and so, so anxious. What had he taken with him? Did he have enough food – and water.

We had to find him.

There was some evidence of which way he’d gone. He’d clearly wandered about the house for a bit, but his most likely destination was a dark corner under the oven. He’d dropped bits of sawdust nearby.

We left out food and water, thinking he’d come out and we’d bring him home, and to safety, but he’d tasted freedom and he didn’t want to come back. This was his gap year.

We heard various scratching and gnawing and scuttling, and sometimes glimpse a small twitching nose, but he liked freedom. He did some Grand Designs-style home improvements, and shifted half a cubic foot of builders rubbish from a rat-run between an understairs cupboard and the oven by way of some pipework supplying a tiny loo.

I set a trail of small cubes of cheese from beneath the u-bend and soon saw him emerge pouching the cheese as he scuttled forward. But on coming to end then of the trail in the corridor, he rapidly turned and fled back to sanctuary beyond the u-bend.

A had the inspired idea of manoeuvring his i-phone towards where we thought Lawrence had made his home and filmed him. He was dazzled by the light of the phone but came forward to see if any more treats were on offer. They weren’t. He fled, and that night he relocated.

That was his big mistake. He settled for a comfy carpeted corner behind a small, easily moved cupboard. When we finally caught him, he’d clearly ferried many pouchfulls of food between the loo and the new location. It seemed so harsh to put him back in his cage again.

Click here for an exciting 17 sec clip of the traveller...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GVMJZnvga0

 

 

 

Remembering Swindon

Life as a GP is so full on that it is a rare thing to do nothing. Maybe that's why rail travel is such a treat. Hurtling through the landscape, it is easy to let the mind drift while interesting or beautiful images flash by, or placenames awake some fond reminiscence. Some journeys convince me that England is too crowded, too covered in concrete, too tamed, but then there is a journey like yesterday's where England really does seem like a green and pleasant land.


Bristol Temple Meads Station

I left the ridiculously Gothic Bristol Temple Meads to rocket east through wonderfully undulating agricultural scenery of the Vale of the White Horse, which looked especially attractive to this East Anglian flatlander.

We swept by russet cattle, and then a kestrel, suspended so still in the air that he looked like he was perched and merely exercising his wings. Then a huge evil-looking circling bird grabbed my attention, but it turned out to be a microlight. Then more signs of the British at play: two hot air balloons rising above the flooded fields, rushing brown streams, hedgerows and little woods with the strange sinuous white horse carved in the chalk down behind. The shadows were long and the clouds had silver linings. They blushed red then turned to a muted orange. Shiny vapour trails looked increasingly like an alien invasion as we drew closer to Heathrow.

The purpose of my journey was a meeting of travel health boffins, and the keynote speaker (and gap year guide author) Tim Beacon talked about what people get up to on their gap years and how easy it now is to keep in touch with home. Yes you can blog about your adventure, or you can just enjoy the experience. Tim isn't the first person to suggest that people either live or they write - so perhaps that's a good thought on which to stop this post.



Reminiscences of the Magic Roundabout and crazily busy hospital jobs