I consider myself very lucky. Since starting this blog I've had a couple of people send me books to review, something I'm more than happy to do.

The latest book that I was given (and I have another one on the review pile) is Blue Lights and Long Nights by Les Pringle.
Les is an ambulance man through and through, he joined the Birmingham Ambulance Service in the early 1970's. This book is the story of his first eighteen months in the job.
I was immediately struck by Les' writing, full of humour, wit and self examination it reminded me of all the thoughts and feelings I had when starting the job. Even including the worlds crappiest van for the driving test.
It's a very easy read and I read it in one sitting. He tells a number of stories and gives you all the interesting details without ever leaving you thinking that the story has gone on too long.
What is shouting out from almost every page is that the job hasn't changed since the 70's - sure, we have better equipment and more drugs to play with, but the messroom culture, the sorts of patients we go to and the problems with management are all the same as they are now. One story from more recent times its told, and it is only the 'insider' in me that had me noticing the small difference between the past and present.
Les' writing is so good that, even though I know the material inside out, I was still drawn to read more - he's a very engaging a writer. If you like this blog, then you will also like this book and I cannot recommend it enough.

You also might want to buy mine at the same time - More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea. It should be in all good shops (and some dodgy ones I guess) by the weekend. As soon as I've the details for the download version I'll throw them up here. Also, for those interested I did a scrap of radio yesterday - you can listen to it via iPlayer here for the next week, my bit starts around the 17 minute mark (and thanks to @jamrock for pointing that out, thereby making my life easier).
Disclaimer: All my Amazon links make me a bit of money from stuff that is bought from them.

Some people have pointed out to me that the 'Contact Me' link just redirects back to the main site. There should be a quick fix in the next three hours or so, basically what happened was that I own the Domain Randomreality.org - at the moment it is used to store the 'Contact Me' page and the image that normally appears at the top of the page.

When I went to the PR conference two days ago I noticed that they had my blog's address as randomreality.org, not the actual working domain.

To be honest I forgot that I hosted my images and contact page on this domain so I quickly set up a domain redirect so that if you typed randomreality.org into your browser address bar you'd be directed automatically to here. Unfortunately this had the effect of breaking the links to the images and contact page.

I've (hopefully) quickfixed it back, but when I have more time I'l have to put in a more permanent fix. While I'm at it I my brush up on my design skills (*ahem*) and have a look under the hood to see what might be improved here.

But before then, I have a manuscript to edit - so all distraction are being turned off.

A quick listing of things that might not warrant a full blogpost, but have been clogging up my 'I really must post about this' file.

Adrian Sudbury is dying, in his final weeks of life he is petitioning the government to improve education about bone marrow donation, as there are still a lot of myths about the process - if you live in the UK please do sign his petition. It's a bit of common sense legislation that works in other countries.

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'Jeremy Clarkson has been criticised for claiming he drove at 186mph on a public road, by a father whose son died when a speeding car crashed into his vehicle...
...When asked about driving the supercar, Clarkson, who lives in Chipping Norton, said: "I got a great speeding ticket. I think it was 186 in the Limehouse Link.'

I love Top Gear and I have no problem with the presenters doing daft things on the telly, but 186 m.p.h. through the Limehouse link tunnel is utterly moronic. If this is true (and let's face it, he was probably willy-waving) then I'd suggest that this was 'dangerous driving' and perhaps worthy of a driving ban. The Limehouse link tunnel is in my patch and I remember, before the speed cameras were fitted, having fatal R.T.A's there seemingly every other week.

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Boing Boing recently had a post on a 'Right to Die' card. I hope that Salford council have liaised with the emergency services because if someone waved a bit of card at me while I was about to start doing CPR on a recently dead person it wouldn't mean a thing to me. Our rules for not starting resuscitation on a patient are strict for a reason - to prevent mistakes that could quite literally cause someone to lose their life.

Saying that, there may well be a point in my life when I have DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) tattooed on my chest.

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In a related story here is a tale of a movement to recognise that sometimes it's best not to be over aggressive with the treatment of disease. We can't all live forever, but for some people it seems like a goal to aim for regardless of the consequences of the treatment.

I'm not too sure how it would translate in the NHS - dealing with decisions in a privatised health service raises some very different questions than in the socialised medicine of the UK. How much does treatment cost factor into things? Would a poor person choose to die rather than saddle their relatives with debt for instance?

But ultimately, if you are hoping for a dignified death keep your fingers crossed because it so seldom happens, it's definitely not the 'important life journey' that certain groups would have you believe.

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'Incidents of violence and aggression against drivers of one-person rapid response ambulance vehicles are not recorded separately by the Scottish Ambulance Service'

Shame, because that's exactly the sort of information we should have before moving ahead with the 'Front end model', that has a lot more ambulance staff on solo responder cars - and therefore probably at increased risk of being seriously hurt. One day a solo responder will be killed and I can predict that the service involved will say, "lessons have been learned".

By the way, I adore They Work For You watchlists...

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A good idea to use 'Telehealth' to keep an eye on our ageing population. One of the trial areas is on my patch. Unfortunately the report itself is written in a really childish fashion. I suppose that it's alright to insult the elderly, here's hoping they do the same to those rascally Jews next...

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Peter Canning writes about something that all us folks in the emergency services occasionally worry about. Recently one of our FRU drivers was involved in a crash (thankfully no-one was seriously hurt) and only the other month some... person drove into the back of our ambulance while we were on lights and sirens. Under pressure to hit the ORCON targets some people are going to drive too fast to get to a job (which is probably just someone with an ingrowing toenail anyway). Thankfully our managers are too smart to tell us to drive faster as I think they know exactly what answer they would get...

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Here is another fear that us ambulance types have - being falsely accused of sexual misconduct. You will notice that his ambulance service took the brave step of supporting him by firing him even after he was found not guilty in a court of law. Unfortunately it wouldn't surprise me if the UK services didn't take a similar tack. I hope that Mr. Howes has some good luck with his arbitration.

I know that this is something that I'm very scared off - it only takes one drunk, drugged or mentally unstable patient making an accusation to have you suddenly out of a job.

It's one of the many reasons why I like having a female crewmate.

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Some nice news now. Inspector Gadget will have a book out soon. His is a top blog and I wish him all the best with it. He is on my list of 'fellow bloggers who I'd like to buy a pint, but are likely to want to remain anonymous'.

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On Thursday I'll be entering all the information from my 'holiday wiki' into Google Earth and making some decisions on where I'm going and what I'll be doing, feel free to edit it until then. Afterwards I'll have to make a decision what to do with it, the smart money is on me tidying it up and leaving it as a permanent resource.

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I think that's everything - lots of these came from people sending me links, something I'm always happy to receive so do keep sending them to me at the usual address.

A little while ago I took part in a fun little cookery competition. Needless to say my partner and I were hampered by the fact that I'm the sort of person whose cooking knowledge ends at the kebab shop door.

However we did get to blog about it, and so if you go to the Food2.0NomNomNom website you can find out more about the fun time I had.

There is also a little competition between the teams who took part, so have a look at this list of participants, read their stories and look at their pictures and vote for your favourite.

You can see my entry here, but please don't vote for me just because it's me - do read them all and pick the best web experience.

"Tom is asleep right now and cannot come to the website. He was going to write about what has recently happened to JonnyB, however Zinnia has beaten him to the punch I believe the Americans would say, 'You snooze, you lose', although perhaps not as literally as has happened in this case. Please leave your message after the bleep..."

Bleep.

Only a quick post today as I'm in an extremely busy part of my life at the moment.

Reading the comments on my last post reminded me that I haven't really commented on comments. Here is a rough FAQ.

1. I like reading comments, it lets me know that people are reading this site as I don't pay much attention to site statistics any more.
2. I value almost every single comment.
3. All comments, no matter how far back into the archives they stretch get emailed to me. I read every single one.
4. I delete all spam, just as a matter of principle.
5. I don't delete comments with three exceptions - If the person who wrote the comment emails me and asks me, if it breaches patient confidentiality, or if they are nothing but abuse.
6. Feel free to disagree with me in the comments, I like having to change my mind about something I've written or having to defend myself. It gets what tiny spark of academia I still have burning again. Just try to be polite and if you can bring evidence to the discussion I'll thank you for teaching me something. (See my post on Home births for example). I may completely disagree with you, but we can still be civil. So far I am so incredibly happy and proud that almost every comment thread has been reasoned and calm, even when discussing quite controversial subjects.
7. If you write utter twoddle then other commenters will stamp on you. I tend to ignore the trolls but others won't. The verbal beating you get will make me laugh.
8. You cannot insult me in the comments, nor upset me, nor cause me harm. I spend my day job being verbally and physically abused. Words on a website do not bother me in the least. If I have a sleepless night it won't be because of something you've written. I have no dark secrets in my past that you can bring to light and embarrass me. If you are a fool I will laugh at you.
9. I may use comments as inspiration for further posts. Sometimes far in the future.
10. If comments get silly (like calling other commenters Nazis) I will shut that thread down.
11. I try to answer direct questions, if I seem to have forgotten and it's important do feel free to send me an email - I'm awful at answering emails but I will get to it eventually. The timing depends on what shifts I'm working. Likewise if there is a good comment thread I'll get involved, but unfortunately I have little free time so please don't feel I'm ignoring you.
12. I love comments, I really do.
13. If you want to leave a comment you need to 'create a reader account'. This was put in place to stop the frankly astounding amount of spam I was getting (over 500 a day).
14. If you have a long comment to make and a blog of your own, post a précis of it here and direct me to your own site - we can continue the conversation between the two blogs, just like the good old days of blogging. I like getting comments of all sorts, but this means I can send some linky-love your way.
15. Keep commenting I really do love it. When I was promoting the book a lot of people asked me my favourite thing about blogging, and each time I answered, "my commenters". Really, each time I get even the slightest glimmer about packing in this blogging lark it's you folks that keep me going.

Yes, pretty much most of that list can be boiled down to, "I like comments and read them all, but don't be an arse", but it sometimes needs stating.

All comments gratefully received.

UPDATE: And then I hit my Bloglines subscriptions ands see that Diamond Geezer has posted a much more entertaining view on the same subject.

Having just spoken on how to market an idea to bloggers to MSF (short version, we like truth and we also like stickers to put on our laptops), I received an email.

Hello,

I was reading your blog and I see you have a very impressive way of describing things. The information you provide is very helpful. So I was wondering if you could take a look at our product *Pseudoscience deleted* and write a review about it.

this is a link to my site: www.*utter-twoddle*.com

I would really be interested to know if you could do an unbiased paid review for us.

Bad enough, but here are two other tips.

1) Don't use CC:, us BCC: when you send the email, then I won't see the twenty odd other bloggers you have sent this exact same email to.

2) Don't send it to someone who actually enjoys debunking fake science. Not me but the superb Black Triangle. I think they missed a trick by not also sending it to Dr. Ben Goldacre as well.

So - let's see what happens if I answer their email. The first thing I'll wonder about is if they'll have even read this blogpost.

The second is if they pay up when I test them and find them to but utter rubbish*

That's unbiased isn't it?

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More seriously, if you really want to learn how to market to bloggers talk to Gia. She's my friend so it's an utter pleasure to mention her stuff on my blog - especially if it brings back memories from my past.

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*Assuming they are - I have a scientific mind and am prepared to be surprised.