Farmer's Diary
I NEVER did get around to telling you about the time that the Breadwinner and the Farmer were hijacked by an ambulance. I was reminded by this week's stories in the media about the soaring demand for ambulances, lengthening waiting times, and dangers to people with heart attacks not being able to get attention.

Many possible causes of the crisis were aired. It might be because family doctors don't provide the service they used to. It might be because ambulances don't know the area they are asked to serve and so waste time being lost. It could be that NHS24 sends people to hospital who don't need to be there but it sends them just in case. All those elements were there when we were hijacked.

It was the week after the Farmer had his new knee fitted. He developed a nose bleed. He had never had one before and there seemed to be a lot of blood which showed no tendency to stop.

After his operation the Farmer had been given blood thinners to protect him from blood clots. He wondered if he would be better to stop taking these to let the blood thicken up and stop the bleeding. In the olden days, a phone call to the GP would have given the answer. The modern substitute is NHS24 so it was phoned.

In no time an ambulance was on its way. A man with a nose bleed who wanted to know whether to take his daily medicine was to be rushed in.

And it was made worse when the ambulance got lost.

The Farmer's embarrassment grew. Was some other poor sod waiting for the cardiac arrest machine? The embarrassment grew worse when the bleeding stopped on the way to the hospital.

Don't tell me everything is getting better. At one time my GP would have known the details of my case and would have told me to stuff my nose with cotton wool and give him a another call in an hour if I was still worried.

But you can't phone your GP nowadays. And great as the service was in getting me to hospital with the Breadwinner to hold my hand, there was to be no return trip. The Farmer couldn't drive with his new knee, but what was the Breadwinner doing in the van when she could have been bringing the car? And why didn't I get Potions, who had to come and take us home, to take me in the first place?

I was indebted this week to my cousin Elrick - for a visit, for a meal at the Salmon Inn and a nice old-fashioned Aberdeenshire story.

Elrick is among the vast majority of my Mackie cousins who have left the land which 100 years ago was all we had. Of the 19 of us there are now only four still connected to the family acres, or any other acres. That is sad for all sorts of sentimental reasons but also because, believe it or not, Aberdeenshire farms are now making £4000 an acre and bare land has sold for over £3000.

A 250-acre farm is a snip at £1m these days, if you can find one.

The farms of North and South Ythsie, and Youlieburn, which Elrick amalgamated when he was a farmer, must be worth £4m today.

Elrick is a delightful man. Some idea of how nice a man he is can be gleaned from his lifestyle. He is well into his third happy marriage, to Jill, and they share his children and hers by previous marriages. But better than that, my cousin has a modern extended family. He and Jill keep very close contact with their previous partners' children by other previous relationships. It means they have some 20 "close" relatives and they are multiplying fast.

Now half of these people to whom Elrick and Jill are close are in Scotland and half in Australia, so they have split their lives between them. As I understand it, and I can't claim fully to understand, they spend the Scottish winter in Australia touring their relatives in a camper van and building themselves a sort of ecological dream house near Perth in the west, and the Scottish summer they spend in Britain with another camper van touring the relatives here.

In Australia they call themselves "Trailer Trash" and in Scotland they are "The Tinkies".

And Elrick's old story? It is about a conversation overheard by his big brother. It involved his father, Sir Maitland Mackie, who was for a long time the leading light in the Aberdeen & District Milk Marketing Board.

Mike, as Sir Maitland was always known, was heavying with an old rustic from Rothienorman.

In case you aren't familiar with the term, "heavying" is speaking gravely about the state of things - like the mess the government is making and the way the young people keep getting caught doing all the things we used to do without getting caught.

Mike's uncle had gone to Australia and that led his guest to opine that it was funny how the Australians had all these different animals. "It's a wonder that kangaroos never managed to jump over here."

Mike thought about that profound observation for a minute. "Mind you, it would have been a big jump."

"Aye," said Sandy impressed, "And aa up hill."