It is not so common that a building, even more so a bridge, is the main protagonist of a novel. Before embarking on a second trip to Bosnia, I thought it a good idea to familiarise myself with the writing from this part of the world and what better way then to start with …
Author Archives: The Blue Vet
Salt is the sea that could not return to the sky
The left kidney looked huge… In fact it measured just over three times the length of the second lumbar vertebra and my mind was made up : this dog had a problem….. Pete Mantis, the embodiment of the Greek enjoyment of life, a character that might just have jumped out of a Nikos Kazantzakis …
Continue reading “Salt is the sea that could not return to the sky”
Pet Insurance
I had noticed it for a couple of days, but had tried to ignore it. When passing her bed, there was a sour odour in the part of the entrance hall, where she was sleeping. That her food was left untouched wasn’t anything unusual – she had always been a reluctant eater, but now …
Too late to ski, too soon to run….
It had been a quiet day at the clinic – just a couple of spays and no consults this morning. A recent publication on Anthrax in beast and man, which I had read to while away the time, had been less than stimulating – just a nasty bugger of a disease you would hope …
Hamburg
The conversation with Ebeling wasn’t planned, nor was the encounter with the Baroque interior inside a Lutheran church or finding a set of concert halls inside a Tsunami….but in Hamburg these things just seem to happen…. I met Ebeling outside Carl Feddersen’s Sea Shop, enjoying the rest of his cigarette. “Just go in, I …
Two remarkable men
Over the last few weeks, I have made the acquaintance of two remarkable men. Unfortunately both are no longer with us, but they left a deep impact on me. Let me tell you more about them….. It was just before Christmas and as I was not signed up for a shift at the …
Emergencies
At the end of a year, filled with travelling, with meeting so many inspiring new people, with working once again in new places and with new teams, something I couldn’t have imagined when setting out on this journey five years ago, it was time for me to return to the UK and to open …
Säntis
It had only been a short walk from the clinic to the station and the yellow post bus left right on time. Of course it did…..this, after all was Switzerland ! I had been on emergency duty for the last 24 hours and had a day rest before starting another 24 hour shift. Thankfully …
Hotel Moskva
It was the piano music that I noticed first, while strolling down Terazije, one of the central boulevards in Belgrade, in October. Finding myself somewhat drained from another vet congress, where I had updated myself on how to remove gall bladders in dogs, how to endoscopically neuter chickens and how to dampen the blow …
Lunch with Goethe in Frauenfeld
Another day, another place and once again the realisation, that there is so much more to life than veterinary medicine….. It had been a busy morning at the small veterinary clinic in Frauenfeld, not far from the German border in the North of Switzerland, where I had been working in the beginning of October. …
The Blue Vet Diary 