Monthly Archives: May 2012

LAS Tennis

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In the olden days of the ambulance service all vehicles were untraceable.  There was a VHF radio system which was open miked and crews had to keep Control updated on their whereabouts at all times so that the folk running things could plan the dispatching of jobs.  Sadly, this gave rise to abuse of the system somewhat . . .

Control:       G801*, please give your location
G801:           Bollocks
Control:       . . . . . um, G801, sorry, can you repeat that location please
G801:           Bollocks!!!
Control:       . . . . . er, G801, I think I may have misheard you.  What is your current location please!
G801:           BOW – LOCKS!!!!
Control:       Sorry G801, my bad, roger that all received, thank you.

Nowadays, everything is computerised – Continue reading →

Emotional content

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Again, its been a while and again, I apologise.  I guess I can’t be inspired to write things all the time.  I really don’t know how columnists do it!

And its not as if there’s nothing to write about either.  Every day brings something different in this job.  We still hold a belief that a good 80% of calls don’t need an ambulance and some would argue that this figure is being conservative.  However, every call brings something different and a chance to have a brief look into someone else’s life.  Therefore, there will always be a plethora of things to write about.

Its just sometimes I can’t find the ‘oomph’ to get it down.  And then there’s my thoughts of what direction I want this blog to be going . . . do I want to keep it as light hearted anecdotes?  Or more a chronological collection of events?  Do I get deep and meaningful?  Or do I just down right take the piss all the time.

I’ve always felt uneasy about being deep and meaningful and am possibly the last to sit and feed on sympathy over sad events.  In fact, I’d probably be the first to burst out laughing at a funeral.  I remember years back, when my father had just died I showed some colleagues a copy of his death certificate . . . Continue reading →

Stabbing

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I went to a stabbing the other day, whilst on the FRU.

Well, I say I did . . . in reality, it was an ambulance crew from way out East who got to them first.  I  was racing up and down a street just one block of flats away trying to find the patient (I’d been sent to the wrong location!).  It wasn’t until several minutes after I’d done the seventh lap of the road that Control finally told me that the incident was ‘just the other side of the flats from you’.  I think bystanders on the street were secretly glad I was going.  Being smiled at and asked over and over whether they or any of their friends had been stabbed recently must have started to appear slightly unnerving after a while.

So, racing round the corner I found the tell tale signs of a serious incident;  lots of police, an entire road cordoned off and lots of flashing lights . . . ah, I thought, that’s more like it. Continue reading →