head wonderingly. “Aye, well, it’s a wonderful new treatment. But I’ll tell tha summat. I hope you don’t mind me sayin’ this, but,” he put his hand on my arm and looked up into my face, “ah think it’s just a bit drastic.”
I drove away from the farm and pulled up the car in the lee of a drystone wall. A great weariness had descended upon me. This sort of thing wasn’t good for me. I was getting on in years now—well into my thirties—and I couldn’t stand these shocks like I used to. I tipped the driving mirror down and had a look at myself. I was a bit pale, but not as ghastly white as I felt. Still, the feeling of guilt and bewilderment persisted, and with it the recurring thought that there must be easier ways of earning a living than as a country veterinary surgeon. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, rough, dirty and peppered with traumatic incidents like that near catastrophe back there. I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes.
When I opened them a few minutes later, the sun had broken through the clouds, bringing the green hillsides and the sparkling ridges of snow to vivid life, painting the rocky outcrops with gold. I wound down the window and breathed in the cold clean air drifting down, fresh and tangy, from the moorland high above.
Peace began to steal through me. Maybe I hadn’t done anything wrong with Mr. Kettlewell’s horse. Maybe antihistamines did sometimes cause these reactions. Anyway, as I started the engine and drove away, the old feeling began to well up in me and within moments it was running strong: it was good to be able to work with animals in this thrilling countryside; I was lucky to be a vet in the Yorkshire Dales.
There’s Christmas—and Christmas
This was a different kind of ringing. I had gone to sleep as the great bells in the church tower down the street pealed for the Christmas midnight mass, but this was a sharper, shriller sound.
It was difficult at first to shake off the mantle of unreality in which I had wrapped myself last night. Last night—Christmas Eve. It had been like a culmination of all the ideas I had ever held about Christmas—a flowering of emotions I had never experienced before. It had been growing in me since the afternoon call to a tiny village where the snow lay deep on the single street and on the walls and on the ledges of the windows where the lights on the tinseled trees glowed red and blue and gold; and as I left it in the dusk I drove beneath the laden branches of a group of dark spruce as motionless as though they had been sketched against the white background of the fields.
When I reached Darrowby it was dark and around the marketplace the little shops were bright with decorations and the light from their windows fell in a soft yellow wash over the trodden snow of the cobbles. People, anonymously muffled, were hurrying about, doing their last-minute shopping, their feet slithering over the rounded stones.
I had known many Christmases in Scotland but they had taken second place to the New Year celebration; there had been none of this air of subdued excitement which started days before with folk shouting good wishes, and colored lights winking on the lonely fellsides, and the farmers’ wives plucking the fat geese, the feathers piled deep around their feet. And for fully two weeks you heard the children piping carols in the street then knocking on the door for sixpences. And best of all, last night the Methodist choir had sung out there, filling the night air with rich, thrilling harmony.
Before going to bed and just as the church bells began I closed the door of Skeldale House behind me and walked again into the marketplace. Nothing stirred now in the white square stretching smooth and cold and empty under the moon, and there was a Dickens look about the ring of houses and shops put together long before anybody thought of town planning; tall and short, fat and thin, squashed in crazily around the cobbles, their
I drove away from the farm and pulled up the car in the lee of a drystone wall. A great weariness had descended upon me. This sort of thing wasn’t good for me. I was getting on in years now—well into my thirties—and I couldn’t stand these shocks like I used to. I tipped the driving mirror down and had a look at myself. I was a bit pale, but not as ghastly white as I felt. Still, the feeling of guilt and bewilderment persisted, and with it the recurring thought that there must be easier ways of earning a living than as a country veterinary surgeon. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, rough, dirty and peppered with traumatic incidents like that near catastrophe back there. I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes.
When I opened them a few minutes later, the sun had broken through the clouds, bringing the green hillsides and the sparkling ridges of snow to vivid life, painting the rocky outcrops with gold. I wound down the window and breathed in the cold clean air drifting down, fresh and tangy, from the moorland high above.
Peace began to steal through me. Maybe I hadn’t done anything wrong with Mr. Kettlewell’s horse. Maybe antihistamines did sometimes cause these reactions. Anyway, as I started the engine and drove away, the old feeling began to well up in me and within moments it was running strong: it was good to be able to work with animals in this thrilling countryside; I was lucky to be a vet in the Yorkshire Dales.
There’s Christmas—and Christmas
This was a different kind of ringing. I had gone to sleep as the great bells in the church tower down the street pealed for the Christmas midnight mass, but this was a sharper, shriller sound.
It was difficult at first to shake off the mantle of unreality in which I had wrapped myself last night. Last night—Christmas Eve. It had been like a culmination of all the ideas I had ever held about Christmas—a flowering of emotions I had never experienced before. It had been growing in me since the afternoon call to a tiny village where the snow lay deep on the single street and on the walls and on the ledges of the windows where the lights on the tinseled trees glowed red and blue and gold; and as I left it in the dusk I drove beneath the laden branches of a group of dark spruce as motionless as though they had been sketched against the white background of the fields.
When I reached Darrowby it was dark and around the marketplace the little shops were bright with decorations and the light from their windows fell in a soft yellow wash over the trodden snow of the cobbles. People, anonymously muffled, were hurrying about, doing their last-minute shopping, their feet slithering over the rounded stones.
I had known many Christmases in Scotland but they had taken second place to the New Year celebration; there had been none of this air of subdued excitement which started days before with folk shouting good wishes, and colored lights winking on the lonely fellsides, and the farmers’ wives plucking the fat geese, the feathers piled deep around their feet. And for fully two weeks you heard the children piping carols in the street then knocking on the door for sixpences. And best of all, last night the Methodist choir had sung out there, filling the night air with rich, thrilling harmony.
Before going to bed and just as the church bells began I closed the door of Skeldale House behind me and walked again into the marketplace. Nothing stirred now in the white square stretching smooth and cold and empty under the moon, and there was a Dickens look about the ring of houses and shops put together long before anybody thought of town planning; tall and short, fat and thin, squashed in crazily around the cobbles, their
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