A quick thank you to one of the police cars of Newham.

There we were last night - driving on blue lights and sirens to a job which would ultimately prove to be as dull as ditchwater.

I'm racing down Barking road, I always race to high priority jobs, it's what I'm paid to do.

Ahead of us, at the junction with Ron Leighton way there is a police car. They see and hear us coming, so they pull over to let us pass. Just then another car decides to overtake the police car in the middle of the junction, pulling out in front of us we have to slam on the brakes to avoid driving into them.

I may have honked our horn at them.

So it was with much merriment that I saw in our rear view mirror the police car pulling the car over in preparation for a jolly good talking to.

We were laughing about it for the rest of our shift.

So if anyone from Newham police read this (and I know that some do), a big thanks from this particular LAS crew.


I also wonder if the driver of the car is that rarity in Newham - someone with a valid license, road tax and insurance.

An absolutely easy shift last night.  One patient was a little old man who was “not right” and had “vague eyes”.  His wife was terribly worried about him, but I suspect that there was little seriously wrong with him.  We then got sent to a two week old baby with a flaky scalp.  Once more a nice an easy job, where we didn’t even have to carry the patient.

Then we were sent to “54 year old male with chest pain”, the call had come from a public telephone box, so I wasn’t too surprised when we received the update “Patient has been drinking”.  The area is a local haunt of our homeless alcoholics – there are public toilets, a nice churchyard to hide and sleep in and a number of off-licenses to buy their cheap tramp-juice.

Both ourselves and the FRU spent some time driving back and forth trying to find him, with no luck.

We got back on station before being sent on a similar call in the same area – I suddenly had a brainwave.

“I bet it’s John Smith”, I said, “He’s an alcoholic homeless guy, normally as good as gold, but he calls us when his hostel kicks him out for drinking”.

We got an update – ‘Patients name is John Smith’.

Once more we chased around the area looking for him, at least this time I knew who we were looking for.  Once more he had given us the slip.  I’ve never known him to act like this.

Still – next time I see him I’ll have a little word in his shell-like…

Yesterday I had a nice little trip outside of London to Basingstoke.  Why there I hear you all ask – well, I went to visit a warehouse, the warehouse that my book will be distributed from.  MacMillian Distribution to be precise – the people that handle the Harry Potter books.

I went along with two of the editors from The Friday Project, Clare and Heather who are as lovely as they look.

To be honest, a lot of what was talked about went over my head, MIDAS and Vista are apparently some electronic way to order books, although that is just a guess on my part.

The real fun for me however started when we saw the server room – I’m enough of a geek that I had a small ‘nerdgasm’ over seeing two miniframes running in a heavily air-conditioned room and hearing about their off-site backup and disaster recovery procedures.

We were then shown the warehouse floor, where there are absolute tonnes of books all being moved around by forklift trucks.  It is here that the books are stored until they are sorted out into the orders that are shipped out to various shops.

Did you know that if you ship a wooden pallet of books abroad it has to have been impregnated with an insecticide?

And did you know that China won’t accept any wooden pallets at all – they all have to be made of plastic.

I also discovered that prison labour is used to process any returned books, and that recycled books are used to build motorways.  Yes – motorways are partly made of paper (which might explain a lot about the state of the UK’s roads).

We saw the system that they use to make sure that every book reaches it’s right destination (they weigh every book in their catalogue, then weigh the boxes as they go out – if there is a discrepancy then the box is re-checked).

Luckily we avoided the busiest time to tour the warehouse, all the forklift drivers were having lunch – otherwise we would have been dodging between these pallets being moved around at high speed.

I learnt about the way that Weatherstones orders books, and why they might not have a book you want in stock (apparently it’s called ‘C’ stock, which means that they only have one copy in stock at a time – and it takes three days to order a new copy).

It was great – it felt like a school trip.

Here is the thing though – at some point in July, one of those pallets is going to be full of my books – with my book title on the pallet sheet, and with my words written on bits of paper inside the shrink wrapped container.  Then they will travel down the conveyer belt where they will get sealed into boxes and sent on their way to bookshops around the country (where I shall be obsessive-compulsively rearranging the shelves to make sure my book is at the front…)

It makes me feel weird in my tummy.

(Oh – and when they are due to be released they don’t keep the new Harry Potter books in Basingstoke – it’s in a top secret location and they have security guards sitting on top of them…)

Back to the real world of ambulance work tonight.

 

All pictures can be seen in Hi-res on my Flickr Page.

For those that are interested – I’ve recovered from about a month of near terminal email failure.  So if you have emailed me in the past month or so – don’t be surprised if you suddenly get an email in your inbox.  The problem has now been fixed.

On 22nd of April at 23:59 and 45 seconds I had my last alcoholic drink for 1 year and a day.  It’s something I occasionally do – give up alcohol.  This will be the longest ‘fast’ so far.  The reasons are many and varied, but include…

• I’m getting fat.  With a beer belly.  This is easier to do than that thing called ‘exercise’.
• I have a bad memory – if I have two pints then I may as well write off any hope of remembering the night.
• Alcohol is a depressive – I don’t need any more help in unblancing my ‘bad brain chemistry’.  I have more reasons than ever before to be happy – there is no need to wreck it now.
• I’m always moaning about drunks – time to remove that bit of hypocrisy from my life.
• I’ve found myself having a drink after each shift – this is not good.  It might be alright for others, but experience tells me that for me this is a bad idea
• Bottles of soft drink and water are cheaper than beer.
• I have a bad memory…hold on…Didn’t I just…oh…yes…
• For those in the know – I’m aiming for some inhibitory gnosis.

Tomorrow I shall hopefully be having a little day out – I’ll let you know more on Thursday if I manage to wake myself up a 7am in time for the charabanc…

Apart from tomorrow I’m working pretty much continuously for the next fortnight.  My sense of humour may fail at some point during this period of time…

Take off your shoe.

Now remove your sock/stocking.

Get a ballpoint pen (red for added authenticity)

Lightly touch the nib of the pen against the sole of your foot.

You are now looking at the same wound that I went to last night.  As a Category A call.

The patient was a 25 year old woman who had stood on a sliver of glass.  The pain was apparently so bad that not only couldn’t she walk, but the pain was travelling up her leg and into her chest.

Chest pain = Category A call.

I had to wheel her out of her expensive riverside flat apartment.

Her husband told us that he would follow behind us in his car.

 

The only sound you could hear while she was being wheeled out was Reynolds grinding his teeth.

After she was safely dropped off at hospital I indulged in a little ‘Primal scream’ therapy.

 

I’m starting to come around to the idea of charging for certain ambulance jobs…

So picture the thought processes that went into these decisions...

You have a young woman who has already broken her ankle in a suicide attempt by jumping out a 2nd floor flat window.
So the council re-house her...

...in a 5th floor flat.

When her husband attempts to protect her by installing metal grilling over the flat's balcony, the council threaten him with court action for 'defacing' the building.

We've just taken her to hospital because she was threatening suicide by jumping out a window.

Perhaps the council can rehouse her in an even taller building?

Twits.

This blogpost is a little later than planned for reasons which are about to become apparent.

If you pay UK taxes, I’d like to take a moment to thank you.  You have helped me out quite a bit.

 

We got a call as “Two people in collapsed state”, so we rattled around to the house only to find the two ‘patients’ having a nice (for them) drug trip.  They were boyfriend and girlfriend and the ambulance had been called by the boy’s mother.  She told me how they were both known to use drugs, and that her son had spent some time in a rehab unit trying to kick his drug and alcohol addiction.

We called for another ambulance as they were so far into their drugged state they were in a real danger of blocking their own airway and choking to death.  There was no way we could transport both patients.

So I stayed downstairs with a male 6’2”, built like a brick outhouse apparent weightlifter while my crewmate looked after his girlfriend in the bedroom.  Sometimes I draw the short straw…

Eventually another ambulance turned up (we were having a very busy night), and we started to move the patients into the ambulances.

Unfortunately for me, the male patient became just a bit agitated and started waving his arms about.  He managed to string together a couple of naughty swear words just for my ears.  As we got him into the ambulance he managed to punch my crewmate and kick the FRU driver who had arrived to help us out.

As I was trying to strap him down onto the bed he swung an arm at me and caught me in the face.

My glasses went flying off my head, bounced around the back of the ambulance and landed in pieces at my feet.

I’d just like to state that without my glasses I score a 9/10 on the Magoo Scale.  This is about the level where you would pick up a skunk thinking that it was a pet cat.

We took both patients into the local hospital, where the young man decided to ‘kick off’ again.  He tried biting a couple of us until the docs could dose him up with Haldol which *ahem* ‘calmed him down.

I then called Control on our radio and let them know that I was no longer able to work – I don’t have a spare pair of glasses, so there was no way I could continue.

Control sent one of our new Duty Station Officers (DSO’s) over for a chat – I’ve got to say I’m pretty impressed with him, he seems to have a pretty good idea of whats going on, and he talks a lot of sense.  He also told me that each night around 10 ambulance crews are assaulted, which is a surprisingly huge number given the shortage of ambulances on the road each night.

He also told me that when I got new glasses I should give the receipt to him so that he can do battle with the finances department and then I can claim the money back.  Asking him if the patient would be made to pay by the LAS, I was told that this wouldn’t be the case, and that the money would come out of our normal funding. 

I was told not to buy any solid gold glasses.

I find this a bit ridiculous – here is a patient who has indulged in something illegal – he has assaulted a number of ambulance and hospital staff (thankfully no-one was seriously injured), he has wasted all our time and broken and essential bit of kit for the running of an ambulance.  Because of him there was one less ambulance covering our area that night.

And he’s going to get away without losing a penny.

I can see why we don’t bother pressing criminal charges against him (I read enough police and magistrate blogs to understand a little something about the CPS), but you’d think that we could win some small civil action against him.

So – as it is, my new glasses are being provided by the tax payer.

Thanks.

I promise – no solid gold glasses.

 

---

I now have two pairs of glasses on order (a 2 for 1 special on frames for all you fans of reasonable NHS budgets), I also have some ultra stylish ones that cost me £9 plus lenses.  Well…I think that they are stylish, and they were made in one hour, which is nice when you are otherwise as blind as a bat.

The Patient said that he had been kidnapped.

He hadn't.

He said that the people who had kidnapped him were Serbian.

He then said that they were Bosnians, then that they were "Pakis".

He said that the keys to his car had been stolen.

When the police searched him, they found his car keys.

He said he didn't know where the damage to the side of his car came from.

There was a matching damaged skip just down the road.

He said he had been walking home.

Other people had seen him driving, they were the ones who had called the ambulance.

He said he only had a drink or two.

He was so drunk, he could barely walk.

He said that he didn't want any trouble.

He had previous convictions from assaulting both the police and ambulance services.

He told the police that he didn't want them involved.

He got arrested for drink-driving

He told us to "fuck off".

So we did - then he spat at the police

We put one of our 'TB' masks on him to stop him spitting at anyone else.

He smashed his head against the floor in temper.

His hand was causing him pain - but the injury wouldn't cause any lasting damage.

We were quite happy to have him arrested after refusing the ambulance. The police doctor would probably arrange an x-ray and treatment of his hand.

I hate drunk drivers with a passion - I particularly hate abusive drunk drivers who could have killed someone and who have been flagged as being violent towards anyone in a uniform. When he told us to "fuck off", I was more than happy to open the door to the ambulance and have the police remove him.

For some reason I find it difficult to care about his painful hand.