So George Best is dead. While he was apparently a good footballer (having no interest in football, I can only go on what other people say), I can't understand the huge amount of mourning that is going on.

Lets face it, the man was an alcoholic, a drunk driver and slapped people around.

But it's alright, because when he was sober he was a 'great guy'.

Which indirectly must mean that hitting people and driving while drunk is acceptable if you are one of these 'great guys'. So I suppose that the family wiped out by a drunk driver that I dealt with a couple of years ago this Christmas, were just a speed bump if the killer was a 'great guy'?

Lets not speak ill of the dead, and there are a lot of dead due to drink. He is one of 6,400 people who will die this year directly because of alcohol. That's not counting the 40,000+ who die due to causes 'related' to alcohol. I don't think there will be any national mourning for the 16 other people who died of similar causes on the same day as him. Or the 109 who died in relation to drink.

Interesting that he died in the same week as the government making alcohol available around the clock. Increasing the access to alcohol is apparently going to cut these deaths?

I'm sorry, but I find the death of Richard Burns, far more tragic. A young man, dead at the age of 34 of a brain tumour.

I think I'll keep these comments between you and me though, as Manchester United are playing West Ham later today, and I don't fancy being dragged out my car and stoned to death for daring to suggest that Best brought his illness on himself.

I see a lot of alcoholics, and it's the pure waste that makes me angry, not only of their life, but the damage that they cause the lives of their family and friends.

Talking to my station mates, my opinion isn't uncommon which is probably as an effect of dealing with alcoholics day in, day out I suppose...

Well, extended licensing laws are in, which I’m afraid will mean more disorder on the streets, couple that with the seasonal increase in illness, and the ice on the roads that means I can’t drive as fast as I normally can and what you get is an increasing failure to reach our government’s benchmark time.

Remember the Great and Powerful God ORCON?  Where we have to reach most high priority calls within 8 minutes?

We aren’t on target for it this year, and unlike other years I don’t think that “extra effort”, as our management call it, will save us.  There is a shortage of ‘flu vaccinations, so more at risk people will get ill, we’ll be going to more alcohol fueled violence because of the new licensing laws.  It is thought that there will be a colder than average winter, so, because of ice, our vehicles won’t be able to drive as quickly and as safely as normal.  And Agenda for Change has hit morale hard especially given the uncertainty of payment for overtime shifts (which are needed to cover staff shortfalls).  Oh and more people are calling us for more crap reasons every day.

We are doomed.

But worry not, patients won’t be doomed, remember, this eight minute ORCON time has absolutely no basis in health, or prevention of death.  If your heart stops then you have, at best, five minutes to get it going again, after eight minutes, I’m afraid you are more than likely dead, and are going to stay that way.  Most calls clinically either need a “faster than five minutes”, “faster than half an hour” or “Sometime in the next couple of hours” response.  Eight minutes is some figure plucked out the air.

So don’t worry, all it means is that the best Chief Executive the LAS has ever had will lose his job, and we won’t get given as much money to fund the service.  After all you wouldn’t want to fund a failing service would you?

Stupid $&%*£^&*!!! government.

All I can do?  Get there as quickly and safely as possible, and make sure the patient doesn’t get any worse.  I can only do what I can do…

While Sony seem intent on being evil, Microsoft do the right thing (although I don’t think that this will help their ambitions on being media providers/resellers).

So it seems that many of you are either very clever, or have been reading this blog for a long time.

Yesterday was incredibly busy, there were a lot of ambulances off the road because there was not enough staff to man them, and there were only two RRUs in the area. One of which was me, and so I was being run from one side of my patch to the other all day. I don't mind driving miles, as it's always entertaining to race through the streets on blue lights.

My last job was a maternataxi in one of the 'less exclusive' parts of town, my patch touches on both the highest and lowest income areas in London. This place was within sight of where multi-billion pound deals are made.

It was a small flat, and the family were about to prepare to break the Ramadan fast. The young patient was having contraction pains, and her waters had just broken. She was being looked after by her neighbour, and on immediate inspection there was nothing much to worry about.

'Hmmm', I thought, 'She's pretty close to giving birth though'.

Contractions were about two minutes apart, and were lasting one minute each. Still, at least she didn't have the urge to push.

Time passed...

No ambulance arrived.

More time passed...

Still no ambulance.

I phoned up my Control.

'Hi there, EC50 here on a labour. If there is a truck on the way, they might want to bring the carry chair with them', I was up in the clouds in a block of flats, so I didn't want to have them running down to get the chair when the mother was getting close to that 'I can't walk' moment.

The patient groaned and said something in her own language.

'She wants to push', translated the neighbour, but looking at the patient I didn't need that translation.

'I think we'd be better off in the bedroom...', I suggested.

But the patient didn't want to struggle up the stairs.

Now my job changed from reassuring the patient, to reassuring the patient that, should it come to it, having a baby at home wasn't going to be a problem, especially because the kitchen was fairly clean*. I mean, a kitchen is much easier than the back of a car, at night, with no streetlights.

I really wanted to examine the patient to see how near the birth was - but I'm always a bit respectful that Muslim women don't particularly want me poking around in their nether regions. If the ambulance didn't arrive soon though, I'd have no choice.

The ambulance arrived.

Luckily one of the crew was female, and so I told them what was happening, and that the female crewmember might want to have a little look at what was happening before we tried moving her out of the labyrinth of a tower block we were in.

Us men left the room. Then we heard her say that the baby was 'crowning'. Birth was going to be a few minutes away.

I opened the maternity pack that I always bring with me on calls like this, and we laid the patient down on the kitchen floor. I phoned for a midwife, while the ambulance crew delivered the baby.

They made much less of a mess than I normally do.

A perfectly happy, healthy baby girl, a happy mother, a happy neighbour and an even happier aunt.

From waters breaking to delivery in under 45 minutes. Not too shabby.

The midwife was delivered by another ambulance (traveling on a flat tyre for the last part of the journey) and I left them to check out both the baby and mother, and to deal with the delivery of the placenta. I was no longer needed.


* Cleaner than my kitchen anyway.

I was in tears last night watching the news about the earthquake victims, it's hard to imagine over 20,000 people dead and at least 46,000 people injured. I know that I would rather be out there helping people who really need help, rather than running around after people who have had a cold for the last three days...

Newham has a large Pakistani/Indian population, and I would suspect that nearly every family will have been touched by this disaster. The fasting of Ramadan (which is going on right now) is supposed to remind Muslims of those worse off than themselves - something I don't think they'll have much trouble with right now.

You can donate money to the Red Cross appeal, I have, have you?

So Jeannie and I have been roaming around London, and to the left you can see a picture of us outside the Tower of London.  It was the first time that I’d ever been on a London tour bus, and to be honest the experience wasn’t too bad.  I did of course annoy Jeannie by pointing out things that the recorded tour audio missed, and gave her little tit bits of information on various places and people.

There was a reasonable amount of drinking in London pubs.  As a ‘lightweight’ I stuck to the rather weak, but also tasty, John Smiths.  We met up with Mozrat (from IRC) and had a nice little meal in Paddington.

Another first was the little river cruise that we took.  I’ve lived in London all my life, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually been on the river Thames.  So a short trip up to Embankment was a pleasant change to the normal tube travel.

We had a little wander up to Leicester square, where we stumbled across the Premiere for ‘Serenity’. I think that I’ve mentioned before how much I love the TV series Firefly that has spawned this film.  So we stood around for a bit until some of the stars, and the writer turned up, and I snapped some pictures.

They all spent a great deal of time signing autographs and meeting the fans.  Joss Whedon is in an unusual position, there are few writers/directors who get their name so prominently on the movie poster.  The poster reads ‘A Joss Whedon Film’, which I think is a little unusual.

It also mentions that he was the creator of Buffy and Angel.

I can’t think of any other movie that mentions TV programmes on it’s poster.

Talking of the posters – the railings that we were standing behind had hardboard posters for the movie.  We liked them.  So did the couple who were standing next to us…

So after everyone had gone in, and after getting permission from the security people, I pulled out my penknife and got Jeannie, and the other couple some swag.

I don’t know how she is going to get it home though, as it is quite incapable of being folded…

 I like to think that Nathon Fillon and I look similar, after all we both play characters called Reynolds…

Jeannie has landed safely and is, I suspect, planning to invade the UK, given the amount and weight of her luggage.

Why is it that men can travel in comfort with a shoulder bag, while women need two suitcases, a backpack and a huge carry bag?