I've just gotten an email from Olav, the journalist who interviewed me earlier. The interview with me will be in the Public Agenda supplement of tomorrow's Times. Apparently there are two photographs - hopefully at least one of them won't make me look like an idiot...

I'll link to it later if it goes up online.

With Gordon McLean's recent bit in the Scottish Sunday Times (Not a very Blogger friendly article in my opinion), it seems that print journalism is becoming more and more interested in the popularity of Blogging.

Actually, I think I should write a reply to that article, but It's be hard not to make it sound like sour grapes

Not working in an office, I have no evidence for my following theory for perhaps some of the growth in popularity of blogs...

With more TV channels (satellite and cable), people aren't watching the same programmes anymore, there are no more "Who shot JR" type events. People no longer socialize around the water fountain, talking about 'must see TV'. Blogs can fill that hole, as they are pretty much an 'on demand' media, you type in an URI and there it is. You check out the blog that your friend this is a 'must read' and then talk about it with them over a coffee (or standing outside having a smoke break).

This is, I think, just a small reason for their popularity - although 'reality', 'truth', 'community' being perhaps much bigger reasons for why blogs have taken off so far.

The results of the 2005 Bloggies have been announced, and I didn't win a thing, actually with the exception of Tom Coates, Flickr and Boing Boing - I don't read/use any of the winners.

Does this mean I'm out of the blogging 'loop'?

And not that I'm bitter, but who exactly is this 'Dooce' person?

An excerpt of a conversation I just had with Control.

Control : "Hello, EC50, we have a job for you".

Me : "Ah, you rotten buggers! I've just got myself a pizza".

Control : "Hold on a sec... OK, stand down (Other Callsign) is closer".

Me : "I love you like I have loved none other".

Control : "*giggle*, enjoy your pizza".

Control can be nice sometimes...

(And if you want to do that again, I won't be complaining).

One of the main differences of working on the car, as opposed to an ambulance is that you are always on your own. This isn't normally a problem, but sometimes you do feel just a tiny bit vulnerable.

A case in point would be last night, I was called to a 17 year old who was 8 weeks pregnant, and had taken a tumble down some stairs. This wouldn't normally be a problem job, there is a fairly small chance of there being any actual damage.

The problem was, as I turned up there were around 20 youths hanging around the house, all dressed in the de rigeur baseball hat and hoodie. The house was down a little side turning, so there were no houses overlooking me. It was around 1am, and several of the nearby streetlights weren't working.

To be fair to them, they were no trouble - they had all turned up after being summoned via mobile phone but it did put me a bit on my guard. To get to the patient I had to walk through a miasma of cannabis smoke - I should count myself lucky that we don't have random drug tests, because I'd probably be positive just due to passive smoking.

The TV series Spaced, and then Shaun of the Dead had, as a running theme, the idea that groups of teenagers can be a bit scary, something that until tonight I've never had a problem with.

Other jobs of the night included two separate epileptic fitters, a heavy combative patient who'd had a stroke, a diabetic with an ear infection and a barndoor appendicitis. None of these jobs were particularly stressful (with the exception of getting the stroke patient out from lying behind their bed and downstairs, with them fighting all the way).

How can I best tell you about my night?

Shall I tell you about how I kept my cool when I found out that I had been waving my (ungloved) hand through my patient's vomit?

Instead should I write about the alcoholic couple who called for me because one of them had had piles (hemorrhoids) for the past couple of years - and then started arguing amongst themselves?

How about the despair I feel when I keep turning up to the same nursing home, for patients who are always given as 'not eating', yet when I turn up the patient is about as close to death as you can get? How the 'nursing' staff seem surprised that the patient has so 'suddenly' deteriorated? Or how the 'nurses' are so thick they can't tell I'm being angry/sarcastic at them?

How about being called to the family that are shouting at each other in some foreign language (I so hate being left out of an argument), while the son thinks he is having a heart attack, when he is actually just having a panic attack?

Should I divulge how I turned up to one of our (very) frequent callers, asked her if she wanted an ambulance to take her to hospital, and when she said yes - told her to stay in the phone box she was using to call us while I waited for the ambulance in the car?

What about my being sent to a job waaaay outside my area (1 year old with a belly ache), only to find an ambulance there first? Then needing to arrange for the mother to return from the party she is at to look after the other four children in the house? Perhaps I could mention that she didn't believe that it was the ambulance service that was phoning her at the party?

Or maybe, just maybe I should just write about being nearly in tears watching the poor people that Comic Relief is trying to help - people who would be blissfully happy to have half the chance of the idiots that I go to?

It's a bit embarrassing to start welling up when you are sitting in a messroom, surrounded by other ambulance crews

Stuart Moore found this little gem on the BBC website, essentially about GPs planning to dial 999 for non-emergency calls.

Ambulance bosses say a threat by GPs in Swansea to dial 999 for non-emergencies would bring the service to a standstill and risk peoples' lives.

Doctors say ambulances are over-stretched and non-emergency patients who need to be admitted to hospital are left to wait.

Ambulances have to respond quicker and within a guaranteed time to 999 calls.

GP’s are upset that ambulances spend their time stuck outside A&E with no beds at the hospital to offload their patients onto.

The Morgannwg Local Medical Committee, made up of doctors from the region, has put forward a motion to the Welsh LMC conference on Saturday calling for members to use the 999 system rather than pre-book vehicles.

Swansea based GP Dr Ian Millington, secretary of Morgannwg LMC, said: "It's really a way of using the system to guarantee that patients get appropriate care.

"What we are trying to arrive it is where we can guarantee a time for a patient to arrive at hospital. Increasingly that's becoming difficult if we use the normal control room number.

These non-emergency patients are the patients who can wait for an ambulance, as their condition isn’t immediately life threatening.  People who are believed to have a DVT, a chest infection, or a urine infection are the typical non-emergency calls we go on.

Stuart asked my thoughts on the subject, these are –

Short answer : “GAAAAHHHH!”

Longer, more sarcastic answer: “Don’t GP’s do that anyway?  Especially for the patients that they haven’t actually seen, just diagnosed over the phone”.

Sensible answer : “Why do GPs think that abusing a system will help patients?  If they carry out their threat then ORCON (Government target) will be hurt, the ambulance services involved will be slated for poor response times and will get less funding, this will result in a worse service.  This only leads to patients getting a worse deal than before.”

I’ll leave you with these comments, so you don’t just think it’s just us road crews who think it is a bad idea.

But Don Page, Chief Executive of the Welsh Ambulance Service NHS Trust, warned if the GPs carried out their threat it would have dire consequences.

"To undertake the threatened action will result in the emergency ambulance service coming to a complete standstill and unable to respond to real emergencies and life threatening calls," he said.

"It would be unprofessional and negligent of GPs to take such action which would clearly put the lives of people at risk.

"I understand the concerns of GPs but I would urge them to step back and consider the dangers that such action would cause."

OMG!  isn’t she the absolute cutest cat in the world eva!!!!

She has adopted my mum and brother, and is SO clever, she spends all her time laying next to the telly and can make my mum get up and feed her wehnever she wants.

I luv her so much ::heart:: ::heart:: :heart::

My brother calls her Ni………….

 

 

*SQUERCH*

Normal service has been resumed.

Kara remembered the times when the transhumans roamed free through the biodegradable cities, lionesses holding hands with teenage boys who had the zebra skinjob, but couldn’t afford to clean the acne from their cheeks.  She remembered the unique culture that grew up around the people who had undergone the dracoform modifications, there were rumours that they induldged in ritualistic cannabalism, but when your reproductive system has been changed so that you lay eggs – who is to say what constitutes eating your young.

Cyberwear had fallen out of fashion, and oh, how she remembered laughing at the ‘punks in the old folks homes, with their  skinweaves tight over old, worn flesh.  She had laughed at their cerebral computers which had been rendered obsolete a hundred times over, why, she had thought, would anyone put unyielding metal in their bodies.  Instead of cold hard metal, the geneengineers had their soft science, molding bodies instead of cutting them, merging liquid computers with the grey toothpaste of the brain and playing with genders as if the whole boy/girl concept was modelling clay.

But it had all ended – biotech became obsolete, instead the new nanofactories took over.  Microscopic machines that build and destroyed without emotion, it was perhaps inevitable that things would go wrong.  No-one knew what caused the disaster that followed, some thought it was African Mafia with a failed blackmail attempt on the Eurasian collective.  Others theorised that it was a lone crazed nanohacker, others that it was a skript-kiddie prank gone wrong.  Perhaps it was just one flawed nano amongst the billions that were made that year.

Whatever it was, it destroyed the world – nanites multiplying out of control, eating the concrete and the metal, turning it into oxygen, and carbon, and water.  Thankfully the ‘Holtman protocols’ were still intact, so it was unable to touch organic material.  First the cities fell, then the iron cores that held the sum of all human knowledge.  With only a few books in the hands of collectors, and millions of people killed in the riots, let alone the starvation (it had been centuries since simple farming could feed the huge human population), humanity sank back into a dark age.  They forgot technology, they forgot history, a few ‘wise men’ protected the people, and gradually they too died.

Kara remembered this, although it had happened over 300 years ago – she, like many of her generation had been gene-fixed to become immortal.  Over the years her peers had thinned – the wolf-boys had taken to using their enhanced bodies to hunt sheep, and other more human prey.  They had been some of the first to go to the fire.  Then came the goth-kids, altered to become more like their vampiric heroes, they too had fallen to the superstitons that held anything from before memory as inherently evil, their pale skin made them easy targets.

In her old life Kara had been a doctor, her body had been modified to release chemicals, chemicals that healed, that caused sleep and eased pain, and those secret chemicals that brought euphoria.  She had been moving from village to village, helping where she could – but now the wrong people had been made to fall in love, and Kara had to run from the village to stop from being burned as a witch.

She wondered how many more of her kind were out there, immortals who were now becoming creatures of legend, she wondered how many would continue should humanity manage to pull itself out of the pit it found itself in, continue to see the same mistakes made.

She wasn’t sure that she wanted to be one of them.

Written in about 20 minutes, first draft, complete crap.  Started alright, but then lost the flavour around the third paragraph.

All posts with utmost respect to Mr. Ellis

Japlish at its best.  An entire site with snapshots of the peculiar brand of English as spoken by the Japanese.

My personal favourite is “Rock Crap” instead of Rock Crab.

We have seen people using computer games to make movies, now some people are taking the slightly simpler option of making comic books using computer games.  Most of these are pretty poor, mainly due to the writing of these things, partly because the four-colour super-hero style is old fashioned, and partly due to the difficulty in properly composing a panel.

I’ll only be happy when one of these comics has the same panel repeated 12 times in a page, only half of them having dialogue.

Make me suffer Mr. Ellis?, I’m trained to make people suffer, and while I may well buy and enjoy all the things you write, but I can still take the piss out of ‘decompressed comics’.

M I U R A are an experimental three piece..

Certainly the way we view life is going to come out in the music. Nowadays the idea of preaching to someone is thought of as beating someone over the head with your idea of how life should be lived. In our opinion, the best way of showing someone the best way to live life is by living it. That's the stance we take. Certainly our views are going to come out in the songs but maybe in a different way. Miura based out from Manjung. The atmosfera, kind of going along with the idea that God has been so good to us and learning to understand his goodness is a life-long process. We think that's a positive and refreshing thing. Hopefully we'll increase our thirst and hunger for truth and the idea that life is meant to be lived. There's a shift to the spiritual dimension of this life, that we are more than just machines. In music, the idea that we can express these things to people, that is what we're made for, at least for this particular moment in our lives.

Myspace music is pretty good, and you can find some complete gems there, easy to search and plenty of downloadable/streamable goodness.

Just a couple more before midnight, then tomorrow will be my last 'emulation post' as I'm back on glorious night-shifts

Some excellent use of demotivational posters here and here.

The ambition one made me laugh like a drain.

So there I was, watching the local news and they have finally told people about the dodgy kebab shop that I blogged about here and here. The BBC have written about it on their website (and thanks to Emma for pointing it out to me).

I'd just like to have a bit of smugness about how a blogger broke the news before anyone else.

Shame no-one else really noticed.

(Nearly forgot about this, what with all the searching for people who mutilate their own genitals online)

Do you find yourself missing your local radio station while away from home? Radiofeeds, will point you to online streaming versions of radio stations from across the UK.

Now if TV companies would just give up on trying to stop home downloading, and let you watch their programmes across the internet for a reasonable charge.

Alabama 3 are a group of musicians from Brixton, who pretend to be American deep South preachers. Their website is (with the exception of a shop that isn't working) everything that a band's website should look like. There are downloadable MP3s and streaming audio and even some videos of their live performances.

They, along with The Polyphonic Spree, are my favourite live bands.

I'm off to pour bleach in my eyes, DO NOT LOOK

ABSOLUTELY NOT SAFE FOR WORK - DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU

A lot of commenters seem very interested in the phenomenon that is "foreign rectal bodies". So until I do a full posting about things I've seen up people's arses here is a link or two to be getting on with.

(Safe for work, only if they allow educational pictures of x-rays of revolvers stuck up people's bums)

Ancient Chinese Sex Toys, the text may be in 'foreign', but the pictures speak a thousand words.

(Safe for work, as long as your work doesn't mind you looking at rusty iron dildos)

Are you as amused as I by the sight of people hurting each other?

Then you may be interested in the following short video. (Safe for work)

Weird old comic covers.. Exactly what it says on the tin.

Although the music makes me want to go stabby.

Why can't I follow everyone's comments in RSS? I subscribe, via bloglines to a hell of a lot of blogs - most of which allow comments.

What I would like is a way to subscribe to comment threads and have them delivered either into a folder in Bloglines, an email address of my choosing, or some other web-based application. If any of you lot know how to do it, you can have my second-born child, my first-born is already spoken for - why do you think I look so eternally youthful. What do you mean, I don't look youthful?

Bastards.

What would be even better would be if I could reply to comments from within Bloglines.

Today's posts are brought to you by the sponsors...

And by cheap formica tables.

As it's Diamond Geezers birthday today, here is the second of two posts that look to emulate him. He was one of the blogs that I read that got me into blogging in the first place.
Below are 21 anagrams of things that people have 'suffered' from enough to have an ambulance called. Put the answers in the comments box, and only one guess per person please.

The 21st anagram is both an injury and a future blog post

1) INFECT RUG
2) A NON DRY RUSK DIDDLER
3) A UGANDA STEM IN IV NO
4) A BAD PAIN LIM NO
5) A HORNED ADA GOT IRVIN MI
6) CITE THE THY
7) STOW A KNIGHTS PILL
8) MEET A MESSIAH
9) BABY BLEND TILES
10) EEL MASS
11) LUF
12) HI A TEMPERER THUG
13) NEGOTIANT
14) RID A BELCH IF UNFIT TYING
15) A PC THE SIN
16) RYAN JUDE HI
17) AH PLAY YOGIC EM
18) ENDED PUSS
19) FAG THE FROM HILL
20) ATTACK AT MASH


21) A BED FE RIGOUR NO SPY

Happy birthday DG

West Ham ambulance station wasn't always so, although the land has been in the hands of the medical professions since 1889 when Ms Katherine Twining bought the site and opened it up as as St Mary's District Nurses' Home.

There was a period of expansion from 1898 to 1904 where the site became an maternity training hospital, there were 12 in-patient beds, which is where the picture comes from.

There was then a number of changes, with the nurses home moving, and the building being damaged by bombs during World War II. During the Second World War, the In-patient Department was evacuated to Suntrap, High Beech, Loughton, Essex. During the same period the Ministry of Health Emergency Maternity Hospital at East Haddon Hall, Northampton was staffed by Plaistow Maternity Hospital.

Then, in 1976 the site was closed and the ambulance service moved in. Now we have the area's fitters, and a small but nice ambulance station. Later on in the year management will be moving into a portacabin on the site while the offices in Newham station are refurbished.

In an amusing turn of fate, one of the staff who works at the station was born there while it was a maternity hospital - we keep joking that one night-shift we'll find him dead in a messroom chair.

Two year olds seem to attract head injuries like jam attracts wasps. 'Serious head injury' normally equates with '1 inch cut to the forehead, not bleeding very much at all".

As I was a late developer in the fine art of injuring myself, I needed some practise. Which I think, dear reader, you will agree is what little brothers are for. They are of course good for a great many things, including but not limited to...

* Eating strange plants so that you can tell if they are poisonous.
* Making good use of hand-me-down clothing.
* Taking the blame for the broken vase that mum really, really liked.
* Getting paid much more than me, for much less work and never failing to rub it in after a childhood spent eating strange plants.

However, 'bruv' did serve as a good way to cause injuries without actually hurting myself.

I started early, by persuading him to jump from the very-safe-children's-climbing-frame that was at Blackpool's pleasure beach (long since shut own after a string of fatal repeat incidents* I mean, there was sand at the bottom, just that underneath this very thin layer of sand (about three grains deep) was a concrete floor.

But my piece-de-resistance was providing bruv with a nice little head wound of his own.

(Insert your own 'flashback' visual/sound effect)

Around the back of our house was a bit of waste ground, and like all waste ground, children will play on it. Mum considered it dangerous on a par with some Eastern European minefield, we were forbidden to climb over our back fence and play there (where she could see us from the bedroom window), and instead was made to go halfway across town to the local park.

Obviously this park was incredibly boring, and I suspect was considerably more dangerous than 'our' land.

So, of course we would play there - digging around in the things that people had dumped there (we even gave it it's own name, "The Dump" - original I know). The Dump was a treasure trove of old bikes, bricks, radios, planks of wood and bathroom tiles**

I had a schoolmate (let's call him 'Welly'), and he was allowed to play over the dump, which made us think that his mum was great.

Now, at the time of the crime I had just been caught playing in the Dump and so had been banned in even stronger terms than normal - but how could I miss out on all the great junk that was laying behind the back garden's fence. The solution was simple - get Welly to throw interesting stuff over to us, so that my brother and I could catch it and use it in our 'experiments'.***

This worked well until Welly found a car battery.

"Shall I throw it over", he asked uncertainly.

"Sure" I said, in blissful ignorance of the terror ahead.

So it came flying over the fence, and, with the sort of slow-motion that only happens in really good Westerns, struck my brother in the head.

...silence...

shitshitshitshitshitshitfuckityshit

(that was me, bruv was too young to know how to swear)

*WAAAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!*

(that was bruv)

pitterpatterpitterpatter

(that was Welly running away)

"Bruv, don't cry - or mum'll find out", I was to put it mildly shitting myself.

But no, would the little git keep quiet? We could have kept it hidden, washed the blood away, combed his hair over the wound, and given him sunglasses so mum wouldn't realise that one pupil was bigger than the other.

I'm not sure how we could have hidden the sudden loss of function down his left arm.

Instead he went running into the house, leaving me with a few seconds to decide what to do.

So I ran around in circles, only slightly more scared than when mum asked me to cut an inch off her hair, and I cut it so there was an inch left.

I'm afraid this is where the story gets blurred, the memory blanked out possibly due to the huge amount of trauma that my backside sustained a short while later...

Bruv managed to make a full recovery (in retrospect the injury might not have been as bad as I remember it), and to spite me has lent me loads of money that, with his "special" interest rates I'll never pay back****

So now - when I see kiddies with head injuries I just turn around to the mother/father/auntie/cousin and tell them "It's what kids do - just wait until he gets older".


* - Not true, but a nice thought I think
** - For which I enjoyed a brief celebrity in being able to smash them over my head without apparent hurt - which, come to think of it may explain the blurred vision and constant headaches I have...
*** - Our experiments never involved hurting animals, just one more way that my brother has changed from childhood.
**** - To be fair, no interest rate, just something that he can hang over me when I ask him to make me a cup of tea

This 'Scaryduck' style post was really hard to do, and I don't think it's worked too well - maybe I should have written about things I've seen up people's arses.