Sad news in Hello.

I found out this morning that one of my colleagues, Alan, has died. He was a great man, a proper character. He was the site handyman, always carrying his home made knife about his person. If anything needed fixing, Alan could fix it. He used to be a chemistry teacher and was very clever, so if ever anyone had any very technical questions about distillation on a tour, we could always go to Alan and he’d know. I didn’t know much about his private life, but he recently told me he had spent 30 years in Scotland in the mountain rescue. His local knowledge was phenomenal and if I was planning a walk to somewhere I wasn’t very familiar with, I’d run it past Alan and he’d tell me features to look out for that weren’t common knowledge like ancient trees or interesting rock formations. He knew about all the wildlife on site, so if I told him about a stoat or a heron I’d seen, he always knew exactly where I’d seen in. He also had a very broad Cumbrian accent and would often confuse tourists when he spoke to them because he would never soften it for them.
We don’t know how he died yet, we don’t think it’s Covid. He seemed really fit for his age, he was forever up on roofs unblocking drains, digging, and building drystone walls on site. I last saw him just before we were locked down. No one will have been in his shed since he was last in it. The site will be quiet without him.

I’m doing the early “buddy” shift at the distillery again on Saturday. Let’s hope I’m definitely needed this time and don’t get sent home at 6.20am like last time. I’m hoping the weather is nice so I can go somewhere for a walk afterwards.

John cut his head shaving it yesterday. It looked horrific! I came down after my bath and he was sitting there with lines of blood all down his head. It looked like he had split his head open! He told me he’d wanted to leave it to scab over before he cleaned it, but he hadn’t realised quite how bad it looked till I took a picture and showed him. So I cleaned it up for him. Then I changed our bedding and he must have knocked the scab off in his sleep because his pillow was covered in blood!