One of these people is called Olav, while the other is called Mark.

Let me make it easier for you.

Olav is a journalist, Mark is a photographer.

Let your cursor hover over the pictures for the answers

Today, Olav interviewed me for a piece in The Times about 'employee blogging', and blogging in general - while doing this Mark took some pictures of me to go with the article.

Olav bought me a beer with his expense account.

The interview went, I think, pretty well - I was given the chance to blather on a bit about blogging in general, the ambulance service and employee blogging. During this I was able to sup on a pint of ale and pose for some photos. Olav was kind enough to tell me about his own blogging experience, and why The Times asked him to take his blog down - this was a couple of years ago, so if they had thought about it a bit, The Times could have been way ahead of the Observer blog.

Yes, I am turning into a media whore...

After the interview (which could be out next Tuesday), while we walked back toward London Bridge I managed to have a chat with Mark, the photographer. To be honest, I think he should start a blog as he has some great stories to tell - jet-setting around the globe, doing a job that he loves. I just manage to jet-set around Newham and Hackney, and get to pick up drunks.

Being photographed was more than a little strange, there were the 'in conversation' shots, the 'it's just past noon and already he has a pint in his hand' shots, and some 'posed, but they look pretty nice' shots - I particularly like the ones where I was asked to stand still, while the camera was put on a long exposure so that the office workers walking behind me were blurred.

Some of them might even look like the sort of pictures you would see of the author on the back of a books dust jacket.

I'm next working on Friday night (YAY!), so from now until then I shall be trying something new - For the next couple of days I shall be attempting to mimic the work of other bloggers - perhaps I'll even stray into parody. So tomorrow I shall attempt to copy the style of Scaryduck, then I shall try to emulate Diamond Geezer and on Thursday I shall hop on the train to Southend, where I shall find a pub and try my best to write like Warren Ellis. On Friday I shall probably be recovering from the whole 'sit in a pub and pretend to be Warren Ellis' thing.

Much fun was had with this bunch of reprobates



This is a fun weekend called Contact where we operate out of the Kelvedon Hatch nuclear bunker, and fight in the paintball site around it. Sleeping in an underground bunker is a weird experience, there are, surprisingly enough, no windows - and because there are no televisions or radios, you have no idea what is going on in the world.

Not wishing to brag, but when I was in charge of a mission, it worked out really well with all objectives taken, and none of my men shot.

The group that I game with are all great people and Dean, who runs the event is an absolute star.

We also managed to free two cars from some rather sticky mud, and some of us managed to get absolutely covered while doing it.

I also managed to find every rabbit hole during the night, by the simple act of nearly breaking my ankle every five steps - and I think I have discovered a new form of nettle, one that continues to sting 24 hours after laying on it. I am covered in mud (but that only happened after it thawed from the ice it had turned into), my muscles are sore, and I'm completely exhausted.

It was great...

Now for a bath and a sleep.

I'm just leaving the Kelvdon Hatch bunker, to head towards Vange (which is a wonderful name for a place, just ever so slightly rude).
I'm typing this, while sitting in the messroom, in full combat gear fully aware of the confusion, exercise and pain that will soon follow. Why do I do this again?
As official medic, I've had absolutely nothing to do so far, and I really hope I don't have to do anything this weekend - we have a pretty good safety record, only two people have broken a bone at these things (and I was the first one to do that), and apart from a broken arm, I'm normally only dealing with blisters and headaches.

Bit like work really.

Right, I'm off to run around a bunker for a few days. I'll try to post from it, but it is designed to keep radiation out, and so is very good at kep mobile phone signals out.

There may be photos...

Before I leave, I'll just point you towards another blogger who has appeared on radio.

I'm wondering if this could work for Bloggers?

Yesterday I felt that my role as a RRU was justified, and this, coupled with the better weather, means that I am in a much better mood.

The unfortunate thing is that it was a tragedy that made me feel better.

The first job of the day came two hours into my shift, the call was "Woman fell out of bed, not breathing". I got to the house in two minutes and climbed the narrow stairs to find a 55 year old woman laying in the lap of her daughter - also on the bed was two small children (perhaps one and two years old). The younger woman was crying - my patient wasn't breathing.

I had to pull her out from the side of the bed so I could get my resuscitation attempt started, not very dignified, and probably not that nice to watch either, as a stranger in green pulls your mother across the floor.

I connected her to my heart monitor/defibrillator, and saw that she was in PEA, so I started chest compressions, and ventilating her with my ambu bag.

While doing this I was trying to get some form of medical history, but none of her relatives could speak English that well, but I managed to gather that she had just rolled out of bed, and besides tablet controlled diabetes she was otherwise healthy.

I was just about to finish the first round of CPR when I heard the ambulance crew turn up - I shouted down the stairs that the call was indeed a 'suspended', and when they entered the room they started to intubate and try to gain venous access. Venous access means that we can give potentially life-saving drugs, but in this case the woman's veins were so small that after two attempts we realised that it wouldn't be possible in this case. Instead we were able to give her the drugs via the ET tube, which is the breathing tube we use to protect the patient's airway.

We then saw a change in her cardiac rhythm, from PEA she entered VF so we 'shocked' her with my defibrillator. She then went from PEA to VF and back again every time we shocked her.

At one point during transport to the hospital we got a pulse back, but this soon degenerated into VF.

The hospital worked on her for an hour, and at one point she had both a pulse and a blood pressure, but unfortunately she later died.

And the memory of the job that I have is of cleaning her hair from where it had gotten stuck to the ambu bag, just after she had died in the hospital, hoping that the son-in-law wouldn't then choose that moment to look in the back of the ambulance.

At least I felt justified in my role - all too often you get used to being called to jobs that are, frankly, crap. This was a 'proper' job, and although we didn't save her, we gave her the best chance we could - if we hadn't been there, then she wouldn't have had even that chance.

This is a strange job - people who aren't sick annoy you, and yet the really sick people are 'good jobs'. We are only happy when someone is suffering.

As the London ambulance Service doesn't have an ambulance station on every street, and given the state of London's roads and traffic, we find ourselves going out on 'Standby'.

Essentially ambulances crews, and RRU cars are told to drive away from the station (with its heating, toilets and tea making facilities) and sit in public roads to help cover a wider area. The idea is that because the 'resources' are spread out over a wider area you will be able to get to calls quicker, thus improving our all important response time.

Crews don't like going out on standby - but I doubt anyone would like sitting in an ambulance cab waiting for someone to be ill/injured/drunk. Management like crews being put out on standby because it apparently improves response times, which pleases the government.

The standby points are chosen to be reasonably far away from station, around three miles in my case, and in an area where there is a reasonable expectation for there to be a high number of calls.

They also try to place you where a number of major road routes meet, so you can rapidly make your way out of your area to cover the shortfall in other sectors...

There are limits to how standby can be used - you can only be put on standby for twenty minutes at a time, and you can only be put on standby between the hours of 8am and 8pm, so while it is unpleasant to be put on standby, it isn't the complete torture that it could be.

On the RRU there is another ruling - that they can't spend longer than 30 minutes on station, so although I had five jobs over the space of twelve hours yesterday, I spent very little time actually on station. Most of my time was spent sitting behind Stratford shopping centre with the engine running so that I didn't freeze to death. When I got bored with that, I would roam the area, essentially looking for some trouble.

It is a fair assumption that it takes half an hour to do one job, from activation to being ready for the next job - so I was only actually working for two and a half hours, for and hour and a half I was on station, leaving me sitting in the car for eight hours.

Well...today was not what you would call a barrel of laughs. I don't know if it was the weather, the lack of jobs (five jobs in a twelve hour shift does not make the shift pass quickly), or that I'm nearing the end of 5 sets of 12 hour days shifts - but I'm rather fed up.

It's not helped by being on your own in a car with no-one to talk to, and if you go back to the station for a bit of human contact you get shooed out by Control who want you either roaming the streets, or sitting at your standby point. Then I come home to an empty flat...

insert sound of mournful violins

There was one bright spark during the shift - that of a supposed heroin overdose. I turned up and the patient (female) was laying in bed asleep, also in the bed was a male. The patient turned out to be a heroin addict, on methadone and was also a prostitute. The flat was pretty much as you'd expect a junkie's flat to look.

The 'patient' was just sleeping, so I woke her up and she told me to go away, which I did - but only after checking her pulse, oxygen levels, blood sugar and so on and so forth.

Sitting in the car afterwards doing my paperwork, I found myself in a slightly better mood, it wasn't because the job was actually funny, nor was I bothered that if her 'male friend' had given her a shake she would have woken up without an RRU and ambulance being sent to her. But for some reason, unknown to be my mood was lifted, if only for a short while.

My final twelve hour shift of this run is tomorrow, when I shall try to post about standby points from my Smartphone. Then I have a week off - at least some of which will be spent running around nuclear bunkers and woods trying to shoot people with plastic pellets

This is just a quick test posting to see if I can get picture posting working from my mobile phone

If you can see the picture I've just taken - it's the view from the front of the car as I sit here on standby, in order to better cover our area

Of course, if this hasn't worked, then you will see nothing, and this post will just be confusing.

Extra karma points if you know where I am...

Yesterday I did five jobs, of which I only got to see three patients, as Control sent me to jobs where an ambulance was either already there, or just a lot closer. Of these jobs the only one of any interest was a four year old girl who had vomited, and then was behaving strangely. The child had a number of medical problems, related to her being born at 23 weeks premature. To me it looked like she was 'post ictal' following a fit, but there was no history of a seizure. I was glad that the ambulance crew turned up quickly, as there is little I can do in that situation apart from try to get a provisional diagnosis, and give her some oxygen.

I believe that she was later transferred from our local hospital to a specialised paediatric unit.

Today, at the moment, I'm 'off the road'. According to the night staff, the engine management light has been showing throughout their shift. Also the rear windscreen wiper has stopped working (could these two things be related? I have no idea).

When a vehicle is broken it finds its way to the mechanics who have their garages on our station, a little pink form is filled in letting them know of the vehicle defect and they do their best to fix it. I hate going over to the mechanics, as there is one of their number who has a real attitude problem, and I can't always be bothered to deal with him. I also feel like I'm encroaching on their 'territory' - which is strange seeing as I wander around people's homes all day.

But today, the crew working are all nice people - and I didn't feel too bad about giving them a bit more work to deal with (I've mentioned before how certain vehicles on our fleet are essentially held together with tape and chewing gum).

Once the fault (whatever it is) has been fixed, and the mechanics are quite good at their job so it shouldn't take long, I then need to take the car to get the computer system in it fixed - the GPS system is getting confused and thinks I'm driving around the South of London, which is something I avoid as much as I can...

Then, hopefully, I can start doing some work.