Unusual floor surfaces

Wind, snow, whales.

I am in Massachusetts, researching. Specifically, I am in New Bedford, known as the Whaling City for all the whales it slaughtered. But New Bedford is now the Windy City and will be fighting Chicago for the name, because this is where the rapidly growing offshore wind industry is based. But it’s also the most valuable fishing port in the United States, its fishing industry is thriving, and wind turbines and fishing grounds rarely get on. And that is why I have come: to see how a lucrative and (in this country at least) prized industry will deal with a new and lavishly funded and subsidised industry that is being pushed through by government with speed. More in my book, in about a year from now.

I am here on my own, and have no fixer — a local person who helps visiting journalists or TV people set up meetings with relevant locals. I am on a tight budget, but that is not why I refused to hire a car. Instead, once I was off crutches, I thought I would walk places, and I wanted to get on a bus from Boston to New Bedford so I could feel like Jack Reacher. After a three hour wait at Terminal E, this was less appealing and since then although I have done some excellent walks, I have also regretted not having a car. I’m staying in Fairhaven, over the bridge from New Bedford. Chalk, cheese, yin, yang. New Bedford has a pretty historic centre, but it is also a town recovering from having lost first whaling and then textile mills. The whale history is everywhere: there is a Whaling City high school, and a Whale’s Tooth parking lot. Of course there is also Herman Melville street. I didn’t want to go to the famous whaling museum; I visited it when I was researching north Atlantic right whales for Ninety Percent of Everything, and now I’m writing about fish not ocean mammals. But I had a free afternoon, and I was tired of being told to visit, so I did. And I didn’t like it, not one bit. It’s a fine museum, I get that, but unless I missed it, there is no interrogation of the ethics or wisdom of all that killing. In fact, it could be the New Bedford Killing Museum and that would be accurate. I did love the scrimshaw though:

Fairhaven is a gorgeous place of colonial houses and also extremely gothic buildings. My friend Teresa, who grew up here, went to school in a building that makes Hogwarts look discreet.

It’s a public high school! Anyone can go and be a wizard.

I’m staying here. I’m in the tower.

The day after I arrived, there was a nor-easter. That is also a wind. But this one brought a snowstorm. My meetings were cancelled, everybody stayed home and had a snow day. But not me, I went for a walk. I wanted eggs, but the first cafe was shut and the second cafe was shut and finally I found one that was open and stayed there just because it meant I wasn’t walking in quite emphatically falling snow. Sometimes I wish I weren’t so stubborn. That first day has influenced the others, because every day I have walked across Fairhaven bridge, which has a pedestrian walkway but no-one has cleared it, so it has been icy, crusty snow or ice. Slowly over the few days it has melted and now it’s almost normal. When I walked from Fairhaven to the Port of New Bedford building the other day, a man stopped his car, opened his door and shouted, “ARE YOU OKAY WALKING?” which was a) nice and b) mate, no way I am getting in your car. I know other people walk across the bridge because I see the footsteps in the snow, although sometimes I think I’m probably just retreading my own. Is there a bus? Yes there is a bus but the one time I tried to take it, I waited ten minutes in the shitty New Bedford bus terminal, it arrived, didn’t open its doors and took off again. So, back to walking.

I shouldn’t really be walking. My shin has been sore consistently, and I know that walking counts as weight-bearing and I shouldn’t be doing excessive amounts of that. But when the sky is bright blue and the air is crisp, I will walk.

That all sounds great, doesn’t it? A trip overseas, the privilege of meeting interesting people who — bizarrely I think — happily answer my inquisitive questions and give me their time for nothing. And all that is indeed great.

But reporting assignments are also:

— lonely meals in restaurants

— lonely hours in the evening

— constantly worrying that you have not got enough material or spoken to the right people or been to the right places. it is never enough.

— more lonely meals in restaurants

— getting far too familiar with Uber Eats

There is a lot of alone time. I’m not seeking sympathy. My privilege is properly checked. It’s just, when people assume that because I am travelling overseas it’s like I am on holiday: it is not like that.

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Animal hero of the week: Magic

I was going to cheat and not write about heroes but about the totally mind-bamboozling fact I read about recently: that gannets who have survived avian flu have different-coloured irises afterwards.

WHAT?

Usually their eyes are ice blue. The flu turns them black. Why, science? Dunno.

To be continued.

And back to Magic. Magic is a small horse with un-flu gannet-blue eyes. She is a therapy horse and works as hard as therapy animals do, with old folk, ill folk, young folk, people with dementia or cancer or both, anyone who could do with a hug and a stroke of a wee cute pony.

One woman had not left her room for six months but was waiting in the lobby early in the morning when she heard Magic was coming. Magic was asked to visit a gentleman who had been the stunt double for John Wayne, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. He had spent his life working with horses and wanted to be with a horse one last time. Magic was with one gentleman when he woke from a coma. Another gentleman in hospice care at home passed away with his hand resting on Magic head. Magic often returns to her farm with lipstick stains on her face from being kissed so many times.

Magic has been judged by Time magazine to be one of history’s Top Ten heroic animals, alongside Bucephalus, Alexander the Great’s horse, and Able Seacat Simon. Because Magic has worked magic.

On one therapy horse visit, a woman in who had not spoken since she arrived at an assisted care facility three years earlier began talking to Magic. "Isn't she beautiful" were her first words. "It's a horse". The activities director began to cry and told the woman she loved her. "I love you too," the woman answered...her first words to another person in all those years. The woman has continued to talk ever since that visit with Magic.

That is not the limit of Magic’s skills, according to this site. She also “walks up and down stairs, rides in elevators, walks on unusual floor surfaces, works near other animals (including elephants and zebras for a literacy photo shoot!) and moves around hospital equipment.”

She makes the mute speak. She walks on unusual floor surfaces. She is Magic.

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