Above the Loch, by Phyllis Wragge

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

Norah Pring had joined the Women’s Timber Corps in the spring of 1943 because the recruiting officer in Leeds had promised fresh air, and nobody had mentioned how far up a hillside fresh air could be. Her first week at the forestry camp above Loch Fyne was the longest of her life. The hut bell went at six, and the boots she had been issued were so stiff that her heels were raw by the Tuesday. She was put on the crosscut saw with a big Glasgow girl called Senga, and however hard she tried she could not keep the rhythm, so that the blade kept jamming in the trunk and had to be knocked free with a wedge. Her hands blistered, and then the blisters burst inside her gloves. Measuring the felled trees meant sums in cubic feet, which she had hated at school, and she got them wrong twice in front of the forester. In the evenings the midges rose out of the bracken and found every inch of her, and she fell asleep over her letters home before she had written more than ‘Dear Mum’. On the Saturday Senga looked at her hands, said nothing, and left a tin of ointment on her bunk.

List five things Norah finds difficult in her first week at the forestry camp.