blog – The Countryman's Daughter

A close call for my son

Joey on his third birthday, just three weeks before he fell ill

Joey in Leeds General Hospital after an operation that saved his life after he contracted sepsis

Joey and I on a recent walk around York City Walls 20 years after he contracted sepsis. He lives with the after effects every day, but it’s a small price to pay compared to the alternative.

As I write this, I am basking in the glow of lovely bank holiday upon which it also happened to be my birthday. My boys came over with their girlfriends and yet again I was blessed to receive cards from each of them with words inside that touched my heart.

My older two would be embarrassed if I publicised what they had written, but my youngest, Joey, has given me his blessing to share his message, which had me crying from both laughter and emotion.

He wrote: “From the bottom of my heart, thank you for giving me toilet paper when I come over.

“Thank you for all your sacrifices over the years to make sure we boys were happy and healthy. We don’t forget what you do for us (car insurance, my new bed, pancakes on Sunday, cooking, washing, cleaning, new toothbrush heads, lifts, supporting our choices, and an infinite amount more).”

These are simple things that his words demonstrate he doesn’t take for granted. I need to explain the first line though, and why that hilarious sentence stems from something far less amusing.

When Joey was a toddler, he became ill on a visit to my mum’s. He could not stop vomiting and I assumed it was a stomach bug. I was not too worried at first, but by the evening was getting concerned and took him to the out-of-hours doctor. He advised me that it was likely a bug and to come back if it didn’t clear up.

By the following day, things had not improved. Joey was gulping down beakers full of water, yet did not pass any urine all day. My unease was mounting, and by the evening, I was really worried. Joey would lie down on the sofa, then stand up and run to another seat, as if he could not get comfortable. I called the out-of-hours doctor, and she asked me some questions:

Did Joey have a temperature? I felt his forehead and it wasn’t hot. “No,” I replied.

Was he alert? Yes, he was running from pillar to post.

Was he drinking? “Yes, loads,” I replied, but informed her that his nappy had been dry all day.

She suggested to give it another night and call back if he hadn’t improved by morning.

It was the worst advice she could have given me. What I had unknowingly described were classic signs of septic shock, but she didn’t pick up on them. I spent a sleepless night with a child who would not settle, who was vomiting a dark brown substance (I now know were dried specks of blood called ‘coffee grounds’), and I STILL did not call an ambulance because I trusted the doctor’s advice. I ignored all my instincts screaming at me to get help (I have never done it since).

I took him back to the doctors first thing and we were very soon in an ambulance speeding on blue lights to Leeds General Infirmary for emergency surgery to save Joey’s life.

He made it through the operation in which a large portion of his dead small intestine had to be removed. He’d had a Meckel’s diverticulum, which is a pouch-shaped piece of excess tissue many people have from birth. In rare cases like Joey’s, it can become entangled with the bowel, cutting it off. This led to an infection which in turn led to the sepsis, the UK’s second biggest killer after cardiovascular disease. Many kinds of infection can lead to sepsis, so knowing the signs is extremely important. Despite awareness campaigns, it is still being missed, 20 years after it happened to Joey.

Had the doctor worded her questions differently, I believe she would have realised he was in an urgent situation. Joey had low body temperature, which we rarely look for. I now have a thermometer to take accurate readings rather than relying on my hand. Agitation and lack of urination are also signs of the body entering septic shock, the advanced, life-threatening stage of sepsis where the vital organs start to shut down.

The long-term effect is that he lives with the discomfort and inconvenience of an upset stomach every single day. Hence, Mum supplements his higher-than-average loo roll costs.

But that is a very small price to pay to still have my beautiful son in my life.

Do you have opinions, memories or ideas to share with me? Get in touch with me using the ‘Contact’ button on the top right.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 13th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 11th June 2025

No Leg to Stand On

Daddy longlegs’ webs are rather scruffy compared to their scarier home-dwelling counterparts. But these harmless creatures can help keep the scarier spiders at bay

I hope you weren’t too disturbed by my column about house spiders last week. It’s funny how seeing just a picture of an eight-legged arachnid produces a physical shudder in many of us, so apologies for doing it again this week.

Our reactions go back to our evolutionary ‘fight or flight’ response. When we are under threat, our brain floods our body with the stress hormone adrenaline signalling to our muscles prepare to either run away or stay and fight. It’s estimated that around 4% of us fear spiders and as a phobia it comes second only to snakes. If we are truly phobic it means that we are fearful to the point of irrationality, and the terror we experience far outweighs the actual danger posed by the object of the fear.

If you are worried about house spiders then I suggest you rein in your instinct to clean because they have a natural predator that loves nothing more than setting up home in the corner of your living room. The trouble is though (especially for arachnophobes), this helpful predator is yet another spider. In its defence it’s much less scary and, unlike the house spider, does not whizz alarmingly across your floor at the rate of half a metre a second.

This creature is a friend to all housework-shy humans, a regular resident of neglected corners, cupboards and attics and a weird-shaped spindly thing, the lazy old daddy longlegs. Compared to the clean and ordered webs built by swotty old regular spiders, the slovenly daddy longlegs’ home is a shambles and described as ‘untidy’ and ‘without great design’ by the Natural History Museum. I can relate to that, because it reminds me of my side of my dishevelled university room compared to that of my unnaturally tidy roommate.

The light brown DLL (how I will refer to the daddy longlegs from now on because it is too much effort to type it out fully) is characterised by its long dark two-part body of abdomen and paler thorax (head end) to which are attached its eight ridiculously long skinny legs. It originated in the Sub-Tropics and after hitching a lift on an England-bound boat, was first documented in the south of the UK in 1864. Once it worked out that to survive our much chillier climate it had to stay indoors, it dared to venture up north and is now common all over the country.

It relies on its web to do the heavy lifting where dinner is concerned, but if that fails, it will get off its idle backside to hunt food, which includes – arachnophobes take note – other spiders. In the entomological version of analysing the rubbish left outside MacDonalds, someone in Hampshire decided to count all the food waste discarded by the slothful DLL in the webs found in his garden shed. He discovered that of the 102 bits of leftover critter, 63 belonged to house spiders, six were DLLs, and the rest were mainly other spiders. How the DLL loves a spider-flavoured meal, even if it is their own sister.

There are a couple of other minibeasts that we also refer to as ‘daddy longlegs’, but they are distinctly different. You will likely have seen the harvestman in your garden, which from a distance looks very much like our DLL but is not actually a spider. Found outside among vegetation rather than indoors in webs, it has a teeny tiny bulbous single body and six long wispy legs. The other is the crane fly, that lanky-legged winged thing that looks like a giant mosquito and has a habit of bobbing into your room late at night to flap annoyingly round your lampshade. It may be the most stupid of creatures but its (literal) saving grace is that if it gets trapped by its dangly legs, they simply pop off and it bobs away again, unperturbed by the fact it is a leg or two lighter.

In conclusion, if you hate house spiders but can cope with the odd messy web of the slothful DLL, then perhaps you should welcome it into your home as your ally rather than your enemy.

But my educational takeaway from this column is that I now have a valid excuse to do even less dusting than I do already.

I’d love to hear from you about your stories, memories, opinions and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 20th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 18th Sept 2024.

Band on the hand

Wedding bands date back to Egyptian times

Reaction to my column featuring Australian reader Sarah Tyson’s suggestion of composting dog waste was almost universally one of revulsion. There were expressions of fear about salmonella and e-coli being present in the compost, concerns about lingering unpleasant

odours and a general aversion to handling something that has come from a dog’s back end.

Despite these worries, Sarah assures us there is no smell once it decomposes (don’t forget is is mixed with 50% vegetable scraps), and that it quickly breaks down into an environmentally friendly natural compost. But it is recommended that the site is positioned well away from your regular compost heap. Another reader (also called Sarah) advises that it would be fine to put over flowers and other garden plants but that it shouldn’t be used on edibles destined for the table. She adds: “I can’t say it appeals to me, but apparently if it’s broken down properly it doesn’t smell. I won’t be experimenting though.”

There are plenty of people out there who do it, and lots of help can be found online. It is not recommended that you use waste from dogs who are ill, take medication, or that are fed on a raw meat diet. Although the compost should not be used on edible plants, it is very good as a mulch and also can improve the quality of nutrient-deficient soil. I would recommend reading up on it before giving it a go.

Let’s move on from dog waste to a more pleasant topic suggested by regular reader Clare Powell, that of wedding rings.

“Why do we wear them?” she asks, “Where does the tradition come from? Some feminists refuse to wear them because it’s seen as a chain. When did men start wearing them? Some men won’t wear them, they think it threatens their masculinity, or are they keeping their options open? I have girlfriends who don’t always have theirs on or swap them around. I happen to have four rings on that finger, but that’s because I love bling!”

The tradition of wedding rings can be traced back 5,000 years to the ancient Egyptians, where both men and women wore twisted rings of braided reeds or hemp on their fingers to symbolise the romantic commitment to one another. The 2nd century Greek historian Appian of Alexandria is supposed to have described a vein that ran down the finger directly to the heart called the ‘vena amoris’ or ‘vein of love’. Wearing a ring on that finger meant that a couple’s love for one another was bound by the never-ending circle.

Having done some research, it’s unclear whether Appian actually did mention that vein, but there is no doubt that Henry Swinburne, a 17th century York-born ecclesiastical lawyer, did.

In his work ‘A Treatise of Spousals, or Matrimonial Contracts’ published in 1686 he wrote: “The finger on which the wedding ring is to be worn is the fourth finger of the left hand, next unto the little finger, because by the received opinion of the learned in ripping up and anatomising men’s bodies, there is a vein of blood, called vena amoris, which passeth from that finger to the heart.”

Unfortunately, despite how fitting and romantic it all sounds (apart from the ‘ripping up and anatomising’ bit), Swinburne was talking utter claptrap. There is no such vein, and all the veins in our hands are pretty much the same, with no unique heart-bound one.

What is interesting though, is that he says the ring should be worn on the left hand. Swinburne was a staunch Anglican, and in 1593 began to work for the Dean of York Minster. This was a mere 50 years or so after the Reformation where Anglicism became the state religion and Catholics were persecuted. The Church of England established its ‘Book of Common Prayer’ in which it stated that a wedding ring had to be worn on the left hand. Up until then, in most other religions throughout Europe including Catholicism, wedding bands were worn on the right hand. In England, if you were caught with your ring on the right, you would be identified as a Catholic, accused of treason and possibly executed.

I was married to a Dutchman for 20 years and had always wondered why in the Netherlands they wore wedding rings on the right and not left hand.

And now I know!

I’d love to hear from you about your opinions, memories and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch. This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 7th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 5th June 2024.