My attempt to write a review on the Edinburgh fringe preview with Deon Vonnegut and Adam Kay.  I think I need an editor.

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An evening with two performers, both of which use music in their shows to various degrees.

James Lark is a talented chap, writing, acting and composing are just a few of the strings to his bow.  In The Rise And Fall Of Deonne Vonnegut he mixes music and comedy with great effect.  The show is about a failed songwriter and his final performance.  Starting as a member of Pink Floyd he takes us through the decades stopping off at The Bee Gees, French cross dressing and Andrew Lloyd-Webber before finishing off, quite literally, where he started.

A polished performer, the surreal life of his subject easily comes to life.  The singing and playing fit well with the monologue and James keeps the audience captured throughout with songs about cardigans and cheese.  While very funny, the show sometimes verges on pathos centering, as it does, around the career failure of the titular character and his descent into depression.

Adam Kay’s performance as the ‘Amateur Transplants’, while also using music, was very different.  Unlike ‘Vonnegut’, Adam’s humour is much more of the schoolyard variety, concerned with ‘mucky stuff’, such as sex, disabled girlfriends and a new Gay Pride anthem.

Many people on the internet will have heard his ‘London Underground’ song, some may have heard the more medically based ‘Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin’.  The show is similar in that the humour is mostly based around the songs.  His drole delivery and timing of the jokes between the songs are also spot on.  There is much swearing in this show, and I can imagine some people being offended by some of the subject matter.  However it does highlight the very sick humour medical professionals often use to make it through the day.

Where the show excelled was in the short pieces, using music that is well known (Celine Dion’s song from ‘Titanic’ or James Blunt) with altered lyrics, Adam makes a punchline in a couple of bars.  These one-two punches, intermingled with the longer pieces, keep the laughs coming.

It will be interesting to see how the more medical based songs perform when there are fewer medics in the audience, something that Adam is aware of and so the content of the show may change.

The real barometer of how much I enjoyed myself at both shows is, quite simply, this – while the theatre was small, boiling hot and had uncomfortable seats, this was forgotten once the shows started.

An excellent pair of shows, and I would recommend anyone at Edinburgh to take time out to watch them.

 For booking details –

The rise and fall of Deonne Vonnegut

Amateur transplants

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Disclaimer – Both James and Adam are published by The Friday Project, I am also published by them.  Once upon a time I wanted to do a medical/ambulance based stand-up.  Having seen the amount of work that goes into it, I’m not so sure…

Tomorrow (Thursday) I'm heading into Kings Cross to watch Adam Kay (of sweary London Underground song fame) and 'The Rise and Fall of Deon Vonniget'. They are both previewing their Edinburgh shows.

I have two tickets, and no-one to go with.

(Sad, I know).

So - If you can make it to the Kings Cross area tomorrow for a 19:30 show, and would like to see them, send me an email. I only have the one ticket and the first person in my Inbox will get it.

Update: The ticket has now been snapped up.

"Report on arrival", it's something that Control ask us to do when a call seems serious. It's really a way of reminding us that if we need extra ambulances or the HEMS team to help deal with a difficult call.

This job was to a 'fall from height'. to be honest I was a bit worried about what we would find.

The patient was a ninety-five year old man, he had needed to change a lightbulb on his upstairs landing. He had gotten a stepladder, climbed up it and in the process of undoing the bulb had toppled backwards.

He'd fallen, cracking his head on the lintel of the bathroom door, he'd then rolled down his stairway before coming to rest halfway down the stairs.

When we arrived he had picked himself up and was sitting on the downstairs sofa. His concerned neighbours (who were the ones that called us) had already changed the lightbulb for him.

A quick examination showed exactly two injuries. He had a small bleeding wound on his arm and he also had a bump on the back of his head.

He hadn't hurt his neck, he hadn't been knocked out, he hadn't broken any of his frail looking bones.

He was also a very nice chap.

While I can often examine someone to decide if they have injured their neck, and indeed this patient apparently didn't have any neck injury, in this case I thought that it would be best to err on the side of caution. Ninety-five year olds tend to have crunchy bones.

Half of this job is how you relate to people, so I told the patient that I was going to strap him down to our spinal board so that when he got to hospital he wouldn't be sent out into the waiting room but would instead be seen immediately. It's sometimes better to say this than, 'You may have broken your neck and I don't want you dying as we go over one of the many speedbumps on the way to hospital'.

So we took the patient to hospital - they saw him straight away and it was determined that he had indeed only minor injuries.

A very lucky fellow. And we didn't need the HEMS team, which is good, because when I do need them it means that someone has been seriously injured.

Ergh - I can't type today. I think the heat has made my fingers swell up...

I need to give you a bit of background before I talk about today.

There is a breed of ambulance called the ‘Intermediate Tier’.  Staffed by two crew who have had less training than a regular ambulance they attend to the lowest priority jobs, the so called ‘Green calls’.  Green calls are the sort of calls that, while an ambulance may be required, it is not essential to have them speeding to you with two fully trained staff on blue lights and sirens.  They also deal with ‘GP Urgent’ and ‘Non-Urgent’ calls, those patients that a GP has seen who need treatment at a hospital but again don’t require a full response.

So far it has worked well, some emergency ambulance people loathe doing ‘Green calls’, as they are often not very exciting, (I like them because they are normally simple jobs).

As I am a long term single (without a regular crewmate since she broke her foot), I have been working with lots of different people.  Today I was put onto an Intermediate Tier vehicle with a woman who normally works on it.

I’m always happy for a bit of a change of scenery.  As I have no idea how the paperwork/assessment/handling of these patients differs from my normal emergency work it was suggested that I drove.

The first job was to someone with quite severe back pain.  While not life threatening the patient needed to go to hospital for some really good painkillers and there was no way that they could get there on their own.  Severe back pain is annoying as there is little that we can do to help, the patient often has to walk as the pain gets worse if they sit in our carry chair.  However after some pain relief with ‘laughing gas’, the patient was able to make their way to the ambulance.

At the hospital I bought myself an overpriced hospital sandwich (more on this in a later post) and settled down for breakfast.

Another snippet of background – In my mouth there is a broken tooth, I’ve had it for ages and it seldom bothers me.  I have so far ignored it.

As I bit into the sandwich I felt an incredible shooting pain running from the tooth, under my tongue and jaw and into my feet.  I started to sweat and feel sick.  I couldn’t talk because I had pins and needles in my tongue.

Finally the pain died down into a dull roar and I suggested that we had a drive over to a dentist so I could make an appointment.

I entered the dentists office and found it empty.  The staff were about to start their lunch break.  The nurse behind the counter looked me up and down, asked me a few questions about the pain and disappeared.  She came back moments later and told me that the dentist would fix my tooth for me now.

Fifteen minutes and fifty pounds later I became the proud owner of medical treatment for my tooth and a temporary filling.  I was ecstatic with my treatment – they were very kind seeing me in their lunchbreak, and the dental treatment was first class.  The nurse behind the counter said, ‘We can’t have you saving lives with bad toothache can we?’.  Sometimes the ambulance uniform is an excellent thing to be wearing.  I blessed them all for working during their lunchbreak.  I may have offered one of them a marriage proposal.

It has been more than twenty years since I last visited a dentist (and yes I know that this only promotes the American view of English dental care), not out of fear, but more that if it didn’t hurt me then it wasn’t worth the trouble.

I would recommend the Barking Dental Practice to anyone in the area.  (They should really have their own website…)

I’m also grateful that there were no ‘Green Calls’ that needed our attention at that time.

There were two more calls for us this shift.  Another woman with back pain and a man who was so heavy I worried that he was going to break our carry chair.  Normally you need to tip the patient back on our carry chair.  This is considerably tricky to do when he weighs more than you do and you find your feet lifting off the ground.

A lovely shift, and a nice change of pace.

(I’m not the only Blogware blogger who has had trouble with their teeth).

I'm sitting on standby next to the Thames, waiting for someone to fall ill (or fall over on a Sunday football field). As I sit here I've been watching canoeists paddling up and down, and am terribly jealous.

One of the things I've always wanted to do is boat up Regent's canal, I can only imagine the sights you could see.

Instead I'm sitting, sweating and dreaming.

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Sent from a mobile phone, from the cab of a FRU.
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I *think* I've fixed the whole 'render everything in black' and 'don't show the comment box for entering new comments' bugs.

My fingers are now crossed that everything is alright as it's a right pain to work my ambulance job and then come come and work a javascript debugging session.

I am well aware that people do this for fun.

I am not one of those people.

(Although I do enjoy mucking around in C++ occasionally).

I particularly dislike things that go wrong for no apparent reason. If I change something and break it then it is only to be expected, but these problems have seemed to occur due to random changes in the bedrock of reality. Ho-hum.

I'm still pondering how difficult it would be to move this blog...

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As a public service announcement, can I ask all parents/guardians to please keep a close eye on their children during this summer weather. The local ambulance crews have had two very nasty incidents involving children in the past two days.

A friend of mine has just come back from a job as a solo responder.

A small child was choking on a bone, he managed to clear the child's airway so the child didn't choke to death.

I let him know that I was impressed with the way that he saved the child's life, without him being there the child would have died.

"You've worked for your paypacket today", I told him.

He didn't seem too impressed with me noticing this, saying that, "It was nothing".

So - consider this 'being mentioned in Dispatches'.

Top bloke.

As quite a few people noticed, this blog disappeared yesterday leaving a black screen and a few tracking pictures the only evidence that there is a blog here.

Thankfully Neil Harris (a talented and heroic reader) managed to discover that a */script* tag had gone missing. For this I am eternally grateful and should we ever find ourselves in the same general location I would be honoured to buy him a beer.

At the moment I'm looking at importing my Blogware posts and comments into a Moveable Type system, mainly for backup purposes, but also because this is the second time in as many weeks that this blog has gone *pffft* for no discernible reason.

(And the second time I've needed to rely on the intelligence of my readers).

I'm considering starting up an announcement style mailing list, something to cry through should the blog go down again (and perhaps somewhere I can throw out the stuff that doesn't really fit into this blog). Who knows - maybe I'll give it a try...

The other reason that there wasn't any blogging was due to a personal problem.

A couple of days ago the fingers in my left hand started to tingle. Then my right hand decided to join the left and develop similar 'pins and needles'. It was quite unlike anything else I'd experienced. As this seemed to be systemic I started to worry about electrolyte imbalances and the like. You see, all medical people are secret hypochondriacs, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.

So I got my bloods tested - which turned out to be fine, and the problem has settled down pretty much on my own. I'm guessing that I picked up some wacky sort of infection that causes inflammation of some nerves. The doctor also examined me for carpal tunnel syndrome type illnesses, thankfully all findings were negative.

If I cut my leg open I'd probably stitch it up myself - but with something that I can't see/explain my mind starts running through all those little traps that will keep you awake at night.

Finally - My email over the past two weeks has been playing up (again...I know...) So if you have emailed me and expect a reply, please do let me know so I can avoid being rude.

There has been any blogging for the last few days because of illness, something that I'll go into in a post later today (probably after work, unless I get an ambulance that breaks down...)

So in the half hour before I need to leave for work I thought I'd quickly mention a few things.

Craig (from Crog's Blog) let me know that 'Rest Area 300m' has dedicated a pothole to yours truly. I can easily imagine how such a pothole could be made with ambulance tearing out of there at high speed.

Towards the nearest kebab shop.

The other interesting thing is that I've had a bit of my work published in the Press Gazette. It's an edited version of my 'The Perils Of Citizen Journalism' post. You can find it on their '/Discuss' section. I'm being paid for it as well - once we sort out the tax that is.

I got my prizes from wining those Medgadget polls, a couple of rather nice books. The box that they came in was so battered it was easy to believe that they had come halfway across the world.

I'm using Ecto to write this, so if it's a bit screwy, I'll need to adjust some preferences. Once more - after work.