The last week was a week off from my 'day job', (is it still a day job if you work nights I wonder), what this let me do was catch up on all the things that I can't do when I'm working. What this really means is that my 'week off' was a week spent in meetings, plotting plans, doing writing work and other such things.

This week is also going to be a busy one, not only do I have forty-eight hours of ambulance work, I also have a PR conference where I am a panel guest. I also have the final changes to the sequel to Blood, Sweat and Tea to have in by the end of the week - with some luck I'll have some interesting news about both books in the near future.

Then I need to start planning out the narrative arcs for my third book, which will be fiction - something that I've never really done before.

I'll also hopefully have some good news about a gig that is quite unlike anything else that I've done before - I'll let you know what that is as soon as I can.

Finally I'm chasing yet another writing job that could be extremely interesting.

But tucked away at the end of everything else is a regular podcast and the possibility of another website.

Oh yes, and I should write some blogposts for this blog before I get carried away...

I think I need to employ an assistant.

All of this means that my time spent doing my 'day job', my ambulance work, will be one of the few moments that I'll have to relax - which is obviously a bit strange.

For those that want to take part, this Monday's question (to be answered in the comments) is, "Tell me about a teacher that made an impact on you". I ask this because I'm reading 'Moab is my washpot', the early autobiography of Stephen Fry where he talks about his teachers. Due to my shocking memory I can't remember any of my teachers, so I'd like to hear about yours.

Coming off nights, I'm writing this before I go to bed - the one good thing about nightshifts is that I get to drive home to go to bed while the normal people are trudging through the rain to get to work.

The draft manuscript for the sequel to Blood, Sweat and Tea has been emailed to my publisher. More news on this as it comes.

Monday's question for you is this -

If everyone has the ability to write a book - what is the first sentence of your book?

When I emailed in my draft manuscript I also posted a little note for the copy editor - I include it here the for comedic value of all the 'gotchas' that I am blissfully ignorant of.

Note for copy editors –
Just some notes to help guide you and alert you to some of the horrific liberties I take with the English language
The [[text like this]] is formatting instructions, not me having some sort of conniption. It’s text that should be rendered in a fashion that makes it obvious that it’s a later comment on the previous post.
I’m particularly poor at getting lying/laying right, sorry about that. Normally I write myself around using these words but I may have missed a few.
Also ‘was’ and ‘were’.
And ‘which’ and ‘that’. I wish I’d paid attention in school.
I like hyphens, en-dash or em-dash, I can’t seem to get enough of them – if possible I’d like them left in as they are part of my ‘voice’ even though I know that it’s not necessarily decent grammar.
I also like ellipsis… (Which I type as three full stops, Word may have changed them into the correct character – I have no idea).
Commas followed by propositions, but sometimes I can’t help myself.
I’ve probably missed a few chances to press my semi-colon button on the keyboard. I like semi-colons but I’m a bit daft about when to use them.
I try to avoid jargon, but sometimes I can’t help myself. If you want to change EMT to E.M.T. go ahead but ORCON isn’t an acronym and so should remain as it is.
Keep an eye out for ‘ and “ I’ve possibly mixed them up – sorry. I’m also a terror for missing or adding incorrect possessive apostrophes, blame my comprehensive school education.
I use newlines and double newlines for timing, I don’t know if layout is part of your purview but some of these double newlines are intended – please bear this in mind if you change some of them (and no doubt some of them are in there by mistake)
Thank you very much for putting yourself through the trauma of trying to beat this manuscript into shape, it’s very much appreciated.

I now have a week off work which means plenty of chance for me to get some of my other projects up and running, as well as a chance to do some administration on this site.

But first... sleep.

You may be interested to know that you can now get my book in the colonies without having to pay huge amounts of postage and packaging. My publishers over there are Andrews McMeel Publishing who I like a lot even if they won't pay for me to fly out and publicise it.

It should also be available in shops, so feel free to ask them to order them for you. While you are there ask them to order a few extra to put on the shelves.

It is also freely available under a Creative Commons License at Archive.orgThis lets you remix the book in any way you can think of as long as you don't charge for it and as long as you credit me.

So please, go and buy it so that I might retire to a beach somewhere to drink fruit based cocktails until I go mad with boredom. Also to give these lovely publishers some profits as well.

There has been a little thing that I've been keeping quiet about (because when groovy stuff happens, I like to know that it is going ahead before I mention it in fear of jinxing things).

Richard Monks has turned part of my book into a Radio play for the BBC and it is due to be broadcast this coming Friday (Radio 4 - 21:00).

It was some months ago that Richard came out for a ride-along with me so that he could get an 'ear' for the language and turns of phrases that us ambulance people use. I should also say 'Thank you' to the LAS folks who let him do this. Numerous war stories were told and I think that Richard got a lot out of it.

A little while later I was sent the draft copy of the script to check for dialogue and to make sure there wasn't any huge medical errors. To be honest I didn't have to do much at all, it seemed that Richard had a firm grasp on the subject.

I was then given the chance to sit in while the play was recorded. So I found myself getting the tube to the BBC studio at Maida Vale.

As always at the BBC I was made to feel extremely welcome - Are there any nasty people at the BBC? I got to meet the cast, who were all lovely, the first person to speak to me was Liz White and I *shamefully* completely blanked on where I'd seen her before, only one of my favourite TV programmes...

I managed to take some photos, although apologies for the quality, I couldn't really bring a tripod, and a flash was out of the question as I didn't want to distract the actors as they worked.

I also got the chance to chat to Martin Freeman who plays 'Paul' in the play an ambulanceman who has a cynicism dial turned up to eleven. Martin was also a great bloke and we chatted politics over a BBC lunch.

It was also excellent, especially for a geek like me, to see how the 'wild track' was created, and to see how they made the various sound effects. An example - an ambulance trolley sounds remarkably like a knackered baby stroller. I was able to offer my opinion as to what certain bits of kit sound like. I even managed to get a part, 'voice in crowd moaning about drunk person #3'.

It was a great experience and I'd like to thank everyone involved for some really nice days out and for turning my book into a great little play.

When it gets put up as a 'Listen again' I'll pop the link up here so that people from outside the UK can hear it (I think). Also if the slideshow works, you can click on the big pictures to read the descriptions.

Some people might have noticed that my publishers The Friday Project have gone into administration and are being sold.

What this does is place any sequel to Blood, Sweat and Tea into a kind of limbo (along with, I presume, any royalties). I know that they can't comment about it until the sale has gone through.

What I do hope is that Clare and the others who work at TFP are all alright - they have always been very nice to me and I wish them the best whatever the future holds.

From tomorrow I'm back at work - which, because I'm looking forward to it, obviously makes me bonkers.

My memory is poor, but I'm sure that, when I was a nurse, the NMC had it as a condition of being the sort of nurse who gives drugs to people that the aforementioned nurse understand what a drug does and what it's side effects are.

It's 3am in the morning and I'm miles out of my area on the FRU*. I have been sent, as a blue light response, to a nursing home where one of their 'clients' is sleeping.

Yep - sleeping.

I get there and the patient is in the reception area of the home sitting in a wheelchair. He is... asleep.

The 'nurses' at the home tell me that normally he is very active at night and often comes to see the night nurses and sits chatting with them. He's ninety-eight years old and mildly demented.

I bite my tongue and do all the checks that I can to make sure that there isn't anything obviously medical going on. All his observations are fine and he responds somewhat when I try to wake him. I'm sure that if I provided enough pain stimulus I could fully wake him up, but it would just seem cruel.

I look at the patient's drug chart. Two days ago he was prescribed a rather strong sleeping pill.

I ponder, for about 2 milliseconds, if this might be the cause for his sleeping. At 3am in the morning.

I suggest this to the nurse.

She shrugs.

The staff don't say anything, but I get the distinct impression that they have been getting tired of this patient being awake while they are at work. If all your patients are sleeping then the night shift has little to do. If this patient has been awake, then they actually have to talk to him. In a lot of the nursing homes that I've been to the nursing staff don't like talking to the patients.

In a fair few nursing homes that I've been to the staff and the patients rarely share a language, and so everyone just 'gives up'. As a digression, the good nursing homes that I've been to have been those where the staff and patients do talk to each other, and the care of the patients is considered to be more of a 'partnership'.

The nurses, who I suspect have got exactly what they asked for, aren't happy. They've already rung the elderly relative of our patient (at 3am!) to let her know that he is heading into hospital.

The ambulance crew arrive and I have a real problem explaining to them why we have been called.

"The nurses wanted this patient to sleep at night. They have given him a sleeping pill, and now he's asleep", doesn't really seem reasonable for a trip to the hospital.

But the 'customer' is always right - and so the patient is driven off to the hospital.

I talk to the crew a few days later and they tell me that the receiving nurse at the hospital was as befuddled as the rest of us.

I don't know, jobs like this make me despair at the general intelligence of people, not less the intelligence of the sorts of people who look after the elderly.

Oh well, at least one of us had a bit of a kip that night.

*I really need to tell you about FREDA one day - perhaps a joint post with Nee Naw.

I'd like to apologise, blogging has been a bit slow of late. Mostly this is due to working on the sequel to 'Blood, Sweat and Tea' - I'm needing to put some concentrated effort into it. this is not easy with twelve hour shifts accompanied by the utter lack of energy I have at this time of the year.

Medgadget are running their annual Medical Blog Awards - you should go over there and have a look at the nominees, there are some really good ones there. Also there is no other motive for suggesting you visit the link. No. None at all...