After four attempts to write something a year on from 7/7 Diamond Geezer and Inspector Sands write what I feel.

There wasn't a blog post yesterday as I spent all day working at both of my 'two jobs'. In the afternoon I was racing around East London rushing genuinely ill people into hospital. In the morning I was doing a bit of publicity for my book.

Now - given how us ambulance people make fun of each other, I'm writing about this only because you, dear reader, deserve a good laugh. I fully expect to get ridiculed at work. Can you see the trauma I put myself through for you?

The plan was simple, there is a company that make short 'talk to camera' videos of authors talking about their books. These videos then get posted on the internet, get linked to from Amazon, get sent out to independant bookshops and find their way onto touchscreens in Tescos. It's all good publicity, and I am a whore for publicity these days. They are called 'Meet The Author'.

So I found myself in my publishers office having to talk about my book in an unscripted fashion for around one or two minutes. In one take. While everyone in the office watched.

Well, after four or five attempts This is what we got. Please do not mock the video virgin.

Many thanks to John the camera guy who made the whole process much less painful than I thought it would be. After the first take where I stated my name, the title of the book, whimpered the word 'ambulance' and froze, he took his time to get me warmed up to the idea of talking on camera.

So, when you view the video I want you to remember that I had to talk off the top of my head into an unblinking camera lense.

One thing though - I do seem to be channelling Norman Lovett (without the jokes).


Of course, when I got home the first thing that I did was take a look and see how other authors did, and there are a lot of authors there and a lot of big names. I'm heartened to se that some of them look more frightened than I...

...although if I'd done my research I took could have had a 'stunt lime'.

I have a bit of luck, a brand new shiny relief has drawn the short straw of working with me for four days. This means that I know who I'm working with for this period of time which makes me a more relaxed ambulance person.

She asks that she be described here as 'sexy, smart, kind-hearted and with a nice bum', or something like that. I was too busy laughing at her after the first few words.

She is actually a very nice person and I think she'll fit in well with the rest of our complex. I'm enjoying working with her.

...except...

Last night, with one exception, all our patient's were so ill we had to 'blue' them into the resuscitation room at the hospital. 'Bluing' in a ptient means that we find ourselves racing to hospital on blue lights and sirens because we are concerned about the well-being of our patients.

Our first call was a 'classic'. A frail, demented 90+ year old female in a nursing home who had become 'semi-conscious'. We arrived at the home to find that the FRU had arrived before us. He shouted out the window at us that the patient 'wasn't well'.

Breathing at sixty times a minute, she barely flinched as we lifted her across onto our trolley bed. She looked so unwell I connected her to our defib machine 'just in case'.

As is usual with these cases the nurses at the nursing home couldn't give us too many details on the patient, they had no idea how long that she had been ill for and had to be persuaded to call for the next of kin.

Our next job was for a man who had collapsed and was having a seizure in the street. He had a cycle of coming out of a seizure then having another one. This continued in the ambulance so once more we found ourselves 'blueing' into the hospital. The patient continued to fit until some rather strong drugs were given.

Our next patient was another 'fitter', this one however was a two year old girl. As we arrived she was still fitting. Prolonged fits can result in a lack of oxygen to the brain, so this justified another 'blue' into hospital. As we arrived at the hospital the child woke up and seemed fine.

I hate children - when they are ill they really put the wind up me.

Our last 'blue call' of the shift was to another child, this one was five years old who had fallen four feet out of bed. He had a painful shoulder and neck, had a huge bump on his head and was very drowsy.

I didn't like how drowsy he was - it's normal for a child to be sleepy after an accident, but this seemed a more profound drowsy than is to be expected.

As the child was a 'funny shape' I couldn't fit a hard collar to his neck (to protect against the possibility of neck injury), trying to put a collar on a child normally has them squirming and crying, but this child just lay there wanting to go to sleep. I had to make do with wrapping his head in a blanket roll, and old fashioned way of immobilising the head, but one that I think is more effective than the specifically designed equipment that we have.

So once more we found ourselves heading into hospital under blue lights and sirens and I'd like to thank my shiny new relief for a nice smooth ride. It's easy to get fired up in the moment, to start driving hard, all the while forgetting that your crewmate is getting bounced around in the back of the truck. this didn't happen - which made me grateful as I would have been the one bouncing around in the back...

Once we got to hospital the child seemed to make a full recovery, I suspect that the hospital will observe him overnight before sending him home.

I'm thankful that there was a nice doctor receiving the patient, she understood that I had my concerns even though the child now seemed fine. It's the curse of the ambulance service that in the nice controlled atmosphere of a resus room things rarely seem as bad as they are out on the road.

Still - no one ever lost their job by bluing in a patient that didn't need it. I'd rather be a bit of a worrier than have someone drop dead as I calmly wheel them through the doors after convincing myself that, 'they aren't that sick'.

So a busy night - but one in which we both felt we'd done some good work above and beyond the normal 'pick up drunk, take to hsopital, mop out vomit' that I often find myself doing.