So it's not just St Georges day today - it is also International Pixel-Stained Technopeasants Day, go and have a look for lots of crunchy free stuff. I've included my own stuff. By coincidence I only signed up to Livejournal today.

Tip of the hat to Warren Ellis.

I've come to the realisation that I use Twitter as a place to stick ideas for further blogposts, sort of a public memo-space. Which is a bit daft as I have a word-processor on my phone/PDA, but there is something about the immediacy of publishing that appeals to me.

Yesterday was the London Marathon, temperatures were high and all my patients were over the age of 60. They weren't running the Marathon of course.

Instead the St John Ambulance people were staffing it - I've got to admit a bit of jealousy that they get to do all the fun stuff like concerts and sports events, while I get to wrestle with drunks. And before you ask, no, I won't be joining them, there is still bad feeling between a lot of folk in the London Ambulance Service and St John ambulance. Most of it tied to the dispute of the late eighties.

Also, way would I do my day job and not get paid for it. I have a mercenary soul.

Going back to the Marathon, it's sad news that one of the runners has died, but given the weather it's not entirely unsurprising. He must have been running on pure willpower and my condolences go out to his family and friends.

I wonder how we are going to cope with the Olympics, loads more people and I doubt there will be any new A&E departments, in fact the government is trying to close down two local A&E departments. Given that Newham hospital has had to double up it's cubicles to see the 'normal' stream of patients, I dread to think what will happen when we have a couple of hundred thousand visitors to the area.

Returning to St John Ambulance, the current belief is that they will be in the 'security zone' of the Olympic park - they will then take patients to the outer cordon where we will take them to hospital. Now not wanting to give anyone any ideas, but I would have thought that it would be easier for terrorists to infiltrate St John ambulance than the LAS - that and we aren't recruiting people anymore. I'm sure we'll have plenty of our management involved though.

Today was going to be my 'writing and answering emails' day, the plan was to sneak around my mum's place and work on my laptop while she tops me up with cups of tea. Instead she has been on day 20 of her campaign of 'cleaning out the loft'. Loads of old computers, computer magazines, toys, books and cameras have had me looking up beauties like this, this and this on the internet. Because of this I have been prevaricating like an expert.

But I promise - all my emails will be answered by midnight tomorrow, (so if you haven't got a reply and expect one then it's probably gone astray).

Still, I have got my revenge on my mum with this picture. She nearly died with laughter after I told her what it was really a picture of... Is it any wonder I'm an atheist?

At midnight tonight I will have completed my year and a day abstention of alcohol; successfully at that! I shall be celebrating with a can of John Smiths and the company of some friends of mine.

Also for some reason I signed up for Facebook, I don't know why - perhaps my next step will be a MySpace Livejournal page... (I have a Myspace account that I forgot about)

UPDATE: Mum's just shown me a butter knife that she found in the loft (and is using at the moment) that was blown out of their house when a WWII bomb dropped on their street - she later found it buried in the garden while digging as a child. You couldn't pay for this sort of history.

St George in stained glass
Originally uploaded by T.A.G.

Because, you know, I'm kinda happy to be English.