Belfast, Northern Ireland
What is there to say about Mark? He was gentle, friendly, accommodating, he had two large pigs, which he let roam the house while we ate dinner, and many baby piglets which were then about the size of a small Pit Bull and ate potatoes.
Mark took his patients from home, so we would regularly have the neighborhood folks over one at a time for him to perform minor (I think minor) operations on them in one of the downstairs rooms. I never heard anyone screaming. I also somehow knew he was an exceptional podiatrist.
He also owned prized Highland Cattle, beautiful creatures if you’ve ever seen them. He had one male and six or seven females. They don’t look like cows so much as they look like buffalo. They were not for meat, in fact he said the only condition under which he would ever eat one of them is if it was old and died naturally and was still consumable. Other than that, they were his prized possessions. A single Highland Cattle costs around 4,000£. Mark was clearly doing well as a podiatrist.
His brother lived at one of the next houses over, which would have taken somewhere between half an hour and an hour to walk to, yet was still visible, and it was the house where he had grown up, his father’s old house. At the time I was there, his father was old and needed support so he lived at our farmhouse and my host took care of his father until his death a year or two later. His sister lived a 10 minute drive away. The people of Northern Ireland understand what it means to be “close” as a family.
He also, for some reason, had a greenhouse which was beautifully kept and had quite a variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and exotic plants. I think this was what he was the most proud of.
I had booked a stay at Mark’s house, which by the way was a gorgeous and rather large farmhouse with enough acreage to get lost, for two nights. It was very last minute (almost everything I do is very last minute) and he accommodated. During this time, I looked for a repair shop to properly fix the bike, and on one day with beautiful weather, I rode the bike along nearly the entire north coast of Northern Ireland. There’s more to say about Mark later.