Ah, the joy of Windows computers. My desktop system has gone 'kerblam' and I find myself having to do a complete reinstall of the whole **expletive deleted** system. Which isn't as easy as you would think. Whatever happened to systems being sold with driver disks? It's not like I like to do anything 'fun' with my time off. Why, I haven't looked at my email or twitter alerts for at least two days.

But it's not all bad, I had a shift where everyone was really rather nice.

An elderly woman whose GP had called and decided that she needed hospital treatment. The family were lovely and completely understood why we were a couple of hours late for taking their mum into hospital. They were even nice enough to offer to carry our bags of medical equipment for us while we carried the patient downstairs.

Then there was the mother of a small child which had suffered a febrile fit. The mother was somewhat panicked but our showing up soon calmed her down, especially after we explained what had happened to her child. At the hospital she looked me in the eyes and thanked me, something that is unusual enough that it sticks in my memory.

Then there was the elderly man who was suffering severe back pain, especially when he tried to move. We arrived and the paramedic I was working with gave him some intravenous morphine to try and ease the pain a bit before we tried moving him. While she was doing this I was outside giving the patient's wife a hug as she was crying thinking that she was going to lose her husband. Thankfully the cause of the pain wasn't too serious and the man should make a full recovery.

Our other patients were similarly nice.

No lives saved that day, but everyone got the care they needed and thanked us at the end of it - so one of those days to mark up in the 'win' column.