Rehab through work

For a whole mid-20thC generation, a month's bed-rest was prescribed after the terrifying near-death experience of acute uncomplicated myocardial infarction AMI. There was no very good evidence for this form of rehabilitation and several studies found that patients did better (psychologically, physically and psychosomatically) if they got up and started back to their before times regime. 

A few months ago James Rebanks [L], the articulate Cumbrian shepherd - bloboprev - was interviewed on Full Disclosure [1hr YT also free download at podbean] by James O'Brien. Rebanks was plugging his latest book A Place of Tides [2024]. The conceit is that Rebanks volunteers to travel to the furthest NW edge of Europe and help two elderly Norwegian ladies with the eiderdown harvest.

April Fool's Day: while spaghetti is not harvested from Italian trees, the down from eider ducks Somateria mollissima is gathered from nests after the chicks have fledged, carefully cleaned and sold for high-end duvets and jackets. The eider boom has a peculiarly intimate relationship with seafaring people. In the 19thC, better boats and better prices led to an extension in the North Atlantic fishery. The by-catch and fish guts returned to the sea were scarfed up by the eider ducks as being easier, more digestible, pickings than mussels and crabs.  And now we have taken every fish from the sea and replaced them with plastrash, the numbers of ducks is tumbling.

In the Spring these ducks have to come ashore to breed and the women of the community started building eider hotels near the shoreline. The accommodation was/is in two parts 1) artificial nests made from dried seaweed 2) a shelter built from stones, sod and driftwood to mitigate the wind and shed some of the rain. It was/is easier to separate the down from neat seaweed nests than from the any-old-shite which the ducks would use in the wild. It's a compromise for the ducks: they accept tenancy from their enormous terrifying landlord because the presence (and the .22 rifle) of the latter deters the mink Neogale vison, otters Lutra lutra and ravens Corvus corax which eat nesting ducks and their eggs

The younger of the two women started to help during the eider season when she was a) increasingly hacked-off with the up-sell demands of management after several decades working in the local bank b) in remission from breast cancer. The Elder, came earlier but at a similar age after finding that catering in the hubbub of an old folks home was no longer floating her boat. And Rebanks, locked into his family sheep farm man-and-boy, is also troubled by an existential crisis. As with recovery from AMI, there's no good to be had from moping about as damaged goods. Better to be kneeling in slick goose-shit, suffering a biting wind with intermittent showers, fixing a new door on a duck-house. 

It turns out that 'young' James [b. 1974] is not a total useless mouth out on Fjærøy [Feather Island]. He's been deftly wielding a sprong since ever he could walk because hay must be pitched. Pitching rotten, or shaping newly dried, seaweed is essentially the same; and farmers can do A Lot with a saw, a hammer and a mouthful o' nails. 

I'm not surprised that my request to borrow A Place of Tides from the library took 3 months to reach the top of the list: it's easy to read and just a little bit inspirational.