Quick question...

Would it be fun to ask (under the data protection act) for all CCTV footage of my run yesterday?

Lets give it a go.

It's the day after the Tube Run, and my lower body is one quivering mass of pain. If I sit down for longer than five minutes I get stuck in position and need to spend another five minutes warming up to start walking again.

So I decide to go for a bike ride, maybe that'll soften the old muscles a bit. It's a nice day, and I need to head into East Ham to pick up some contact lenses. So off I ride, I collect the lenses and then start making excuses to keep riding. Shall I go over to the industrial park to see if there is anywhere to tether my bike when I visit PC World? Shall I haul myself over to Gallions Reach to check that my Orange phone will work in Spain? Or shall I go to Asda for some treats to eat while watching the telly tonight?

So I do all three...

When I get to Asda I notice a lot of emergency services in the car park - taking a professional interest I wander over there, only so see a Newham ambulance crew showing off their shiny yellow ambulance and allowing loads of children to crawl all over it. Apparently it's a 'Meet the emergency services' fête, and the Paraffin Parrot is going to be landing soon. Obviously it's an easy day, so I grab some water for the lads and wait around for HEMS to arrive, as when they arrive on a job, I'm normally too busy to take a photo of it.
Apologies for the poor quality, but as I was cycling I only had my mobile phone with me.

This is HEMS landing

Just about to settle down, the Fire Truck in front of it makes it look tiny.

Just before the policeman just out of shot told me to move on, here is HEMS in it's "resting" state.

Incidentally I asked the policeman who was telling me to 'shoo' if they still marked your postcode on your bike...and he didn't know. Considering he is a 'community support officer' I find that a little worrying - it's like me not knowing what to do if someone cuts their finger.

First off - I'm bleedin' knackered, running around the tube is surprisingly hard work, that and the rather high temperatures made the day hard, but very enjoyable.

There were a couple of teams running, I teamed up with Ewan as both our planned partners were unable to come. The plan was to use the few overground areas to send updates to my blog, but there simply wasn't the time. When we weren't on trains, preparing for our next run, we were chasing each other through the stations, down streets and across busy roads.

Running from platform to platform our biggest enemies were other people - the more crowded stations slowed us down as people insisted on being two-breast on escalators, or decided to push their baby strollers out in front of the knacked looking man and his friend in a kilt. So it was a bit like driving at work.

Our route was thought up by Ewan, who to give him full credit, didn't laugh when I told him my idea of a route. I had thought that running between stations would be easy - I hadn't counted on our general levels of unfitness. Given that we were against a bloke who was a master of the sprint and someone who had run marathons I didn't hold much hope for our chances.

Mike, a BBC cameraman followed us for part of the way - so if you tune into BBC local news next week and see a 90 second spot with Ewan in a kilt, and myself in a "404 /shirt/tie not found" shirt, well - we worked hard for our shot at fame. There may be further links to extended videos later.

We had some good luck with our transfers - there was nothing better than running to a station to see the exact train that we wanted pulling into the station. But it was counterbalanced by the occasional despair of getting to the platform 10 seconds too late, regardless of how many 'no entry' signs we ignored, or how fast we ran.

Our time was 2 hours, 55 minutes and 39 seconds, the winner (git) came in at 49 seconds faster - beating us into second place, although we did have pride at beating the lads who hold the speed record for the whole tube system.

It was fun, although I often questioned the wisdom of doing it while wheezing my way between stations, but I can now say (with some nerdish pride) that I have at least visited every Zone One station - and not many Londoners can say that.

Just, for the love of all that's holy, let us not make it an annual thing...

It is a miracle that the thumb keyboard that I'm using still works, as it has been through a high temperature wash cycle.
I'm at the start waiting for Ewan to turn up wearing his promised kilt so at the moment I'm looking at the MI5 building, taking photos of it and wondering how many CCTV cameras I'm showing up on.
Time to get a sandwich I think...

So In a few minutes I'm off to race around Zone 1 of the London Underground with Ewan, partly because he is leaving London soon, and partly because it seems like a giggle.
Given my new found internet mobility (in other words I don't have to balance my Pocket PC and Smartphone on my knee trying to line up two IR ports), I shall be attempting to post updates throughout the day. This of course is dependant on when we 'come up for air' as I don't think that GPRS coverage is great underground.
You may also be able to follow us on the BBC as a BBC news cameraman will be following us around for at least part of the day.

I spent hours working on a route, and then when I spoke with Ewan last night, he showed me a route of beautiful simplicity which involves a lot less running around than mine.

So I'm sticking close to him.

I've just gotten a CF Bluetooth card for my Pocket PC. Couple this with my Smartphone (and camera) and you have a more mobile ambulance blogger.
Now watch me pick up nothing but dross today...

Our first, and so far only job was transporting a psychiatric patient from their ward to a Court appearance in a very nice, green and sunny part of London. We turned up at 8:30 and were told the patient wouldn't be ready until 9:00 - so we had time to get a nice fry-up breakfast.

Told you I couldn't give up junk food.

I discovered a few things about cycling today.

1) It won't take me two hours to cycle to work, it's actually closer to twenty minutes. Therefore leaving at 5am for a 7am start is not the worlds best idea. Especially when the night crew laugh at my legs because I'm wearing shorts.

2) It's a lot harder cycling into the wind than when the wind is at your back, and that the A13 is a very windy road.

3) That when you are as unfit as I am, you start begging for traffic lights to turn red so you can have a quick breather.

4) That a saddle will make your arse sore, no matter how you sit.

5) And finally, when, after a long day at work and all you want to do is go home - you might not look forward to riding your bike as much as when you pledged to get fit (and outlive your brother).

But at least I didn't end up dead under the wheels of a lorry.

One of the main problems with the LAS at the moment is the lack of vehicles, in the past this has come to mean that there is not enough staff to man the vehicles that we have, or fill the rota to maintain safe cover over our area. Lately however we haven't had the vehicles physically present. At the moment, for I am typing this from work, I am looking out the window at the fitters, whose job it is to maintain the fleet in our area of London. There are 13 ambulances waiting to be fixed. There are three crews sitting on station, unable to take any calls because their vehicle has broken down. Someone has just visited us in the staff car (a nice little Corsa), and on attempting to leave its clutch has broken.

Today I took an ambulance from West Ham over to Poplar to replace a vehicle whose steering had broken. Then two management brought over a spare vehicle from Newham for me to work on - a vehicle that had just been fixed for a broken rear suspension.

(Let me tell you, riding on an ambulance with no suspension is an 'interesting' experience - you get thrown around and the cupboards fly open spraying bandages and other, less soft, equipment around the cabin)

This 'fixed' ambulance lasted three jobs before the suspension died again and I was bouncing around the cabin. It also stalled if you closed the choke.

So now I'm sitting on station twiddling my thumbs, unable to continue my daily grind of saving lives picking up drunks.

The Fleet is just falling to bits, the new Mercedes have faults developing around the 5,000 miles mark and the tail lifts are extremely temperamental (like my experience yesterday, they fail at the worst possible moment). The LAS needs a cash injection so that it can have a fleet of basic, but reliable ambulances, fully equipped and fully manned.

In a change of subject I met some American student nurses outside the Royal London today - They were interested in how the LAS was run. As I'm starting to get some idea of self-promotion I chatted to them for a while and then pointed them in the direction of this blog. If you are one of those nurses - "Hi there!"

My God, he's done It

Congratulations that man. Full details are here.

First off, I'm bloody knacked, frazzled, chin-strapped, and generally tired. If I ramble just poke me in the ribs with a stick.

Today was both bloody awful and rather good fun, which despite sounding like the ramblings of a madman is a perfectly sane way to describe today, although I'll be glad for today to be over.

The day started badly, I woke 3 minutes before my alarm was due to go off - so I turned it off and woke for the second time 10 minutes before my shift was about to begin. I didn't get much sleep last night so I suspect my body overruled my brain to give me an extra 50 minutes of sleep.

Luckily when I wake up with an adrenaline jolt like that I can get washed, dressed and speeding through the streets of Newham like Linford Christie on meth-amphetamine.

Turning up at the station I found out that my regular crewmate was ill, and instead a 'Team Leader' was being sent to work with me. Team Leaders are on the lowest rung of management - they are the people who are supposed to keep 'the troops' in trim, and so spend considerable time moaning about the speed at which we get to jobs, and the poor quality of our paperwork. I'm of the belief that if management don't know about me, I can't get in any trouble - so working with a new Team Leader was something I was less than happy with.

I had barely gotten to say hello to 'Team Leader' than we got our first call of the day, a 'suspended' (cardiac arrest) a couple of miles from station. Manoeuvring a big yellow taxi through rush hour traffic is no fun at the best of time, but as I was driving I gave it my best shot - we got to the scene shortly after our First Responder who was already bagging and giving CPR to an obese woman in her eighties. As we were in one of the new yellow ambulances I lowered the tail lift, got the trolley out and nearly ruptured myself lifting the patient onto the trolley bed. Rolling her out to the street, we got her on the tail lift and raising it, rolled her into the back of the ambulance. All that was left was for me to raise the tail lift and rush to hospital.

You may notice I spent some time discussing the tail lift - this is because as I went to lift it, the hydraulics failed and it was stuck, sticking 7ft out from the rear of the ambulance at a height of about 4 foot from the floor.

I gave it a kick, a shake and then resigned myself to manually lifting the bloody thing up, all while the crying relatives were watching me pumping the manual handle like an idiot. Finally it was raised to the closed position, so I made my way rapidly to hospital while 'Team Leader' and 'First Responder' worked on the patient on the back. I'll not mention the road closure than forced me to make a painfully wide detour, but otherwise we reached the hospital with some speed where the woman was unsurprisingly declared deceased.

After a quick tidy-up of the back of the ambulance (which after a cardiac arrest always looks like a bomb-site) we got a job to a 'unwell child'. The 15 month old child was indeed unwell although not life threateningly so. The assessment was made harder by the mother having very poor English and the child having 'Development Delay' - which encompasses a multitude of syndromes and genetic/biological causes.

The next job was a transfer from the local maternity department to a maternity department in another county. This is a hospital that I had no idea how to get to (the details of why there was a need for transport are too boring to go into, also I think I might say something about the mother I'd regret in the morning). I set our travel computer to give me directions to the hospital and we set off. The journey was supposed to be 9.8 miles, but after following the computers directions to the letter we had travelled 37 miles along rather crowded motorways.

We had taken 30 minutes longer than we had planned. It's the last time I trust that bloody machine. 'Team Leader' was not happy at the computer but we laughed it off.

The next job was a simple maternity which we drove into the London Hospital - this was fine until I managed to drive into another ambulance when trying to leave the hospital. No damage to my ambulance, and minor damage to the other, but as my first accident in over 18 months, it was obvious that it would happen when 'Team Leader' was sitting next to me...

Returning to fill in the accident paperwork, Control asked us to attend to another call - this time it was an obese unconscious 70 year old female. She was extremely heavy, and because of her 'floppiness' was a complete dead weight. Once more I nearly killed myself in lifting her. All her body functions and observations were normal so it was a complete mystery why she was unconscious - although I could confirm that she had been incontinent of urine...

...after I put my arm in it.

All these problems throughout the day meant that we worked harder than we needed to - and yet, throughout the day we had a great time as we laughed and joked between patients and vowed never to work together again. I said that I'd take sick leave, saying I was 'stressed' and 'Team Leader' said she would make sure I got sent to the other side of London before she worked with me again.

And so, at the end of the shift we parted, laughing at the thought that it was possible we could be repeating the experience tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to that possibility.

I really need you to keep a secret for me...

...something just between you and me?

First some background.

I have a brother (lets call him 'bruv'), and for as long as I can remember he has been fatter and less fit than me. It's always been a point of pride that I could beat him in any contest of endurance, that and his lilly-white, worm flesh stomach was more hideous than anything that I could come up with. He attained this perfection of slobbishness by eating tonnes of junk food, and doing no exercise at all.

However this has all changed - not only has he stopped eating junk food, but he has bought an exercise bike and has gone from his former couch potato into a much fitter, slimmer person. So much so the other (only female so far) teachers at his school have been making excuses to cuddle him. He is drinking lots of fruit 'smoothies' and has generally turned his health around.

We occasionally have 'differences of opinion', and as we are both very wilful these will occasionally simmer on and on. So we have come to an understanding that whoever, out of the two of us, dies first, that brother will have 'lost'. Also I want to get my hands on his Will. He has a lot of money.

Since I have become more and more unfit as the years have rolled on, I need to change something. I doubt I'll be able to give up the junk food, and I know that working rotating shifts can increase your chances of getting cancer. I also don't have enough room in my flat, nor the motivation to use, an exercise bike.

So (and this is the big secret) - I've bought myself a road bike.

Why is this a secret I hear you ask, (or rather - 'when is he getting back to the exciting ambulance stuff?'), well my mother mustn't know.

I know that the The British Medical Association has estimated that the health benefits of cycling outweigh the risks by twenty to one, but my mum won't listen to reason. My chances of colo-rectal cancer will drop by about 40%, while the risk of heart disease will drop by 50%. It doesn't matter to her, all she can see is me laying splattered under a lorry.

I've never seen anyone killed while on a bike - I know that there were 136 deaths of cyclists in 2001, while 712 pedestrians died and 1749 car drivers/passengers died in the same period. For cyclists that is one death every 29 million kilometres travelled. I've only ever seen minor injuries from cyclists - the low speed of traffic in London helps, and there are more and more cycling paths than ever before. For more of the logic behind my decision go here and here.

But logic doesn't count for Mum, she thinks the moment I set foot to pedal I'll be mown down by a truck driver.

She doesn't read this blog (shes scared of the internet), so if you see her, don't tell her.

And yes Bruv, this means you too.

(Back to work tomorrow for more ambulance goodness)