Well, I didn't die on the flight over, and it was actually more pleasant than I expected it to be - there was more legroom that I am normally used to, and the food was actually approaching edible.

You will, I'm afraid, have to put up with my lack of spell checking, and even editing - as I am writing this on one of those '$3 for an hour of Internet' shops. At least it lets me check my email.

The weather is much like Londons at the moment, perhaps a bit more of a bite to the wind, although I do note that Torontonions (is that right?) seem to wrap up warmed than those in the UK, is this intelligence on their part, as they are less bothered by fashion, and more bothered with keeping warm.

Talking about fashion, I can't tell who the homeless beggars are, everyone seems to have a cup of coffe, and in London walking around holding a cup is reserved for people who are begging for money.

The people here are really friendly, I'm yet to work out if I am supposed to answer shop staff when they ask me how I am. The hotel in which I am staying has a very 1970's feel, which I find comforting somehow. I also find it amusing that I can watch TV episodes before they start in the UK...

Talking of which - I recommend that when 'The Incredibles' opens in your part of the world, you should go and see it - it's a great film, from the design of the characters and sets, to the musical cues. And the name of one of my City of Heroes characters is used. (Geeky I know, but it really is a good film).

I walked past Joey's house this morning, so I know I can find it tomorrow night. Toronto itself, is a little like East London (big ethnic mix, downtown is full of little shops that do all sorts of things), and the Isle of Dogs, with their tower blocks and very wide streets. These wide streets may mean I get to see the inside of an ambulance in a not-so-good way, because the cars all drive on the 'wrong' side of the road. The McDonalds here though are awful, they seem to be full of drunks, madmen and the homeless, and the meals don't taste as good as the McD's in London.

I am, as they say, enjoying myself...

I've managed to get to Heathrow without any trouble, and am now logged on to a T-Mobile hotspot. Musty say, I don't like the way you buy your 'hours' as when the transaction is complete it sends you back to the original 'but hours' screen, which may make some people think that the transaction has failed.

Unlike the last time I flew, I'm actually quite relaxed about the whole thing, even if it means spending eight hours in a cramped tin can that could turn into a flaming ball of death at any moment. Maybe it is because this time I'm not running massively late, and the only person I have to worry about is myself, and not my mother/brother.

Now...I am in severe need of some Dutch courage, so I am now off to prop up the bar at O'Neill's for a bit.

A week can be a long time, especially if you are working a week of late shifts starting at 6pm and finishing around 3am the next day starts to wear on your sanity a bit - and I have the scientific proof...

Take a look at last Tuesdays post, a jokey little post, followed on Wednesday by another rather upbeat posting. On Thursday (after only one shift), I'm moaning about the type of people who are calling me out for minor illness (and a moan about Christmas). Then on Friday I moan about being sent into dangerous situations, and I tell you that I want to hurt people if they annoy me. On Saturday I can't even be bothered to write a full post, and just tell you about even more stuff being stolen from the LAS.

Sunday, I can't be bothered to post at all.

And finally on Monday I have an excessively whiny post about, strangely enough, whiny people.

In 'real life', I had my 'decamp' interview yesterday, after a scant four hours sleep. It turns out that when I get moved from my current flat (nice flat, just surrounded by scrotes, drunks and drug addicts) I shall almost certainly end up with a much smaller property. If I were a teenager I'd post up some angsty bit of poetry - so be thankful I'm too old for that sort of stuff.

Today, I'm bleedin' knackered, and I feel like I need a revitalising break. This is rather good timing as I fly out to Canada tomorrow. Hopefully, when I get back I won't be quite so eager to stab people in their eyes with my pen because they live in a nicer flat than me, and quite obviously don't deserve it.

During this little break, I shall be doing my best to check my email , and I may even manage an update or two while I am away. But I wouldn't hold your breath, for I may just find myself very drunk and laying in a Toronto gutter. If you are in Toronto between then and Tuesday you can always phone me on +00447903257650

Back sometime on Tuesday...

Halloween is a funny time of year over here in Blighty. We celebrate it, but not in the same way that Americans do - we tend to show a scary movie (or Planet of the Apes), on telly, we have some drunken parties where women dress up like naughty witches, and men like Harry Potter, we even have a few kids running around setting fire to stuff (trick without the option of treat) and we also have stabbings and whiny people.

Last night, after talking to a few crews, I can report that our time was spent rushing between people who had very little wrong with them, but who insisted on rolling around on the floor, crying at the drop of a hat, and refusing to talk to the ambulance crews who just wanted to find out why they were acting like a dying swan. Seriously - if you, or someone else calls an ambulance, when the crew ask you a few questions in order to form a diagnosis, answer them. Rolling around on a bed trying your best to look like you have been stabbed up the arse with a hot poker is no way to behave when you have had a chest infection for the past week. Yes, you may have had the same "excruciating" abdominal pain for three days, but pretending you can't walk (when you are obviously not laying in pools of your own waste, and therefofe must had been visiting the toilet), and having put on make-up for the trip to the hospital, is not going to endear you to the ambulance crew, neither will you refusing to take the painkiller that we are trying to give you.

It doesn't help that they all lived in really nice areas, in really nice flats/houses, with no urine in the lifts, and must get paid much more than I do - while I (for the moment) live in a complete rat-hole, where people urinate in the corridors and burn their own flats to get moved somewhere else. I think it is safe to mention "Reynolds Law Of The Ability To Handle Pain", where the more expensive the house that I pick someone up from, the more whining I get from the patient, and the less sympathy I feel toward said patient.

Between attending to these people who would probably need three days bed-rest for a broken fingernail, we had a steady stream of stabbing/beating/serious RTAs. I went to a 19 year old whom someone had decided to "make stabby" on. He had been stabbed in the head, the chest and the abdomen. Luckily for him they were all fairly shallow wounds, but not wanting to poke down wound tracks in a grocers shop at night, we blued him into the local hospital anyway.

This seemed to be the pattern for the other crews on the complex, there was an RTA where the driver had a hole the size of a fist in the back of his leg, plus an open fracture of his Tib and Fib (lower leg-bones), there was a drunk bloke who looked like Quasimodo after being beaten, a couple more minor beatings, another stabbing, and a little old woman who was pouring blood from her back passage. All interspersed with the sort of people who you wanted to clump around the back of the head and tell them to buck up their ideas, and get over it.

So I suppose that in our own way, we do celebrate Halloween - by moaning and by trying to kill each other...

It's getting so you have to tie things down now...

Yesterday a "Decontamination POD" truck was stolen, this is an unmarked truck that we use to carry around chemical incident equipment. The current word is that this truck was carrying a load of atropine - which is the treatment for nerve agents.

If people were to start injecting this into themselves, they could get serious (as in fatal) effects.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide if this is a good, or a bad thing...

I've just gotten on station for the start of my shift, only to find out that some scrote had broken into the station last night and nicked the video recorder and DVD player.

I mean, it's not like we are ever on station long enough to use them, but it's the principle of the matter.

These are the sort of people who we serve, these are the sort of people we are polite, professional and caring towards - and this is how we are repaid...

Now I'm on my favourite shift, picking up drunks on a Friday night. All I can say is if they know what is good for them, they had better not annoy me...

I know that the ambulance service is being used as a substitute GP service these days, but it really takes the biscuit sometimes. Take, for example, the job I was sent on last night. It came down to our ambulance as "Patient wants to kill his doctor".

I immediately called up Control on the radio and asked if we were being sent because they couldn't find the patient's GP? Although I was half joking, I wondered what good we could do for the patient.

Control got back to us, and let us know that they were indeed sending the police, and that we should wait until they turn up. However, when we arrived at the address we knew who the patient was - so we cancelled the police and sorted out the patients problem.

I mention this if only because, when I got back on station and read the local newspaper, I found a story about a coroners investigation into the death of a 55 year old female who had taken a fatal overdose of blood pressure medication. When Control asked if she was violent, they were told that yes, the patient was violent. The police were called and the crew waited at a rendezvous point for half an hour until the police turned up. By then it was too late, and the patient died.

Once more, the paper blames the ambulance crew, it doesn't blame the psychiatric services who discharged her a few weeks earlier after a failed suicide attempt. Nor does it blame the person who made the phone call that said that the patient was violent. Violence from the drunks, druggies and criminals doesn't worry me - the job that worries me, is the little old lady, who has become confused and is sitting in her living room with her husband's service revolver, or her favourite kitchen knife, desperate to stop the strange men in green from stealing her away in the night.

Instead, it blames the crew who, quite rightly, waited for the police. If one of the crew had been stabbed to death, it might be a more sympathetic headline. We are expected to go into people's houses, where we have been told that the patient is violent, where we could get assaulted or even killed - but as soon as we start thinking about our own safety, we are the ones to blame for anything that goes wrong with that patient.

As normal the ambulance service has investigated, but in a show of support for it's road staff, has stated that the policy of waiting for the police at a rendezvous point is the correct thing to do.

We aren't cowards, but we also aren't stupid/paid enough to wander into dangerous situations.

I know I'm not the worlds most 'religion-friendly' person, and that I have a strong dislike of Christmas. But when walking through the local shopping centre I found them erecting their Christmas tree.

It's still October! We haven't had Halloween yet!



It's going to be a long two months...

I came across this story on the BBC news website,

A Cambridge University student dialled 999 for an ambulance as she needed some painkillers, according to paramedics.
The 19-year-old student was said to have run out of her pain relief tablets which she needed for period pains.

East Anglian Ambulance Service said an emergency crew was called to the student's flat on Saturday afternoon.

The spokesman added: "It should be obvious to anyone that if you want some paracetamol, an emergency ambulance is not the place to get it from. For someone who is supposed to be intelligent you would think would have more common sense than to dial 999 for some pain relief".

The call came through at about 1640 BST from King's Parade, Cambridge, and sparked a full blue-light response from the ambulance service.

I was curious as to how this counts as national news, when it happens to us all the time. My first thoughts when I looked at the story was "So what?", but then I realised that although Ambulance Trusts keep trying media campaigns to cut down on inappropriate calls, most folks are still surprised by the reasons why we are called out.

This call is the sort of thing I get called to once or twice a day, multiply that by the 10 ambulances we have in our complex during the day and you get at least 10-20 "inappropriate calls".

Every day...

I was writing this post at work, so let me tell you about the calls that interrupted my writing,

1) Small child with a minor cut to the head, lives 200 yards from the A&E department.
2) Woman with painful teeth - for the past week.
3) Hoax call, a child phoned up from the Mosque and told us that someone had been stabbed.
4) A drunk who had fallen asleep on the bus, we woke him up and he wandered off on his own accord.
5) The one 'proper' job - an alcoholic who had a fit (related to his alcoholism).

Still, I suppose that it meant that I had an easy seven hour shift (the first of seven such shifts, so I'll be lucky if they are all like this one)