Absent (Without Leave?)

Today, I read one of Ella's blogs. This isn't unusual, I frequently do. Her blog reminded me of one I wrote a year ago, about cyclists. This prompted two thoughts. One, that I had promised her a 'guest blog' about three months ago and two, I hadn't blogged since lent.
Being asked to write a blog for someone whose blog you admire is both an honour and humbling. But it induced a crippling writers block! What should I write about? The Chickens? Work? Family? Something else? Could I even write something half as good as others? Would I just look a fool, like a child trying to speak at the grown up table...
I ran away from blogging, thinking I couldn't write again and certainly not of the standard of other bloggists.
"it's ok" I said to myself, "I'll write about Edinburgh". Our theatre company's tour to the fringe, that should provide some inspiration. It did, and I wrote furiously. For about 20 lines. Then I decided no one would read that drivel and deleted it! The tour was excellent by the way, seamless production, military precision on get I and strike and a well rounded three star review to boot!
Then this morning I read Ella's blog. Then I read mine. I like what I read. I realised how much I'd written. I felt compelled to write again, to offer an explanation perhaps?
I may have been AWOL, but am back in the ranks now and I feel rejuvenated!

Distraction Techniques!

So, we're what 3-4 days into Lent. I've been good and not touched social media. On the first couple days I hardly missed it! I found plenty of things to distract myself anyway! Shopping, eating out, work, cycling, dinner with friends, geocaching....
Then today I found a new and obsessionable toy. Plane Finder, an iPhone app. Those that have it know what it is, but for those that don't, it basically allows you to know loads of info, such as flight numbers, destinations and carriers of the planes above your head!
So this resulted in me and Daughter1 running about the garden plane spotting! Brilliant! Next years lent perhaps?

Unsocial Networking...

We have just entered the forty days and forty nights (or so) between Ash Wednesday and Holy Saturday, the period better known as Lent. During this time practicing Christians observe rules of abstinence, fasting and generally doing without as a homage to Jesus' forty days in the desert.
Now, I'm not a practicing Christian. I know the stories, I find them interesting and so every year, at Lent, the Wife and I challenge each other to a penitence.
This year, for me Social Media lucked out. It is true to say I have become somewhat addicted over the last year or so to the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare, whiling away the quiet hours at work with other peoples thoughts and opinions.
So like a good sport, yesterday I severed myself from the Social Network, like a drone cut from the collective now standing seemingly alone in the universe. I turned all alerts off on my phone, cleared the history from my browser and sent "goodbye" posts on TwitBook...
The rules are simple.  I am not allowed to use, access or post to Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare or any other social forum.  If people need to contact me or visa versa then it must be via Phone, Text or Mail.
The only exception is this blog, to share the experience of leaving the internet sensation behind!

The trouble with badgers...

Meles meles or the European badger. A Brock if you like. 40lbs of solid wildlife.
Generally this timid, nocturnal creature causes little interference to humans, give or take the odd bit of TB or a badly placed sett.
The one problem with badgers is their lack of road sense. Now with other creatures such as rabbits this doesn't pose a problem, a light thud, a guilty feeling and it's all over. Not with badgers...
I take you back to Monday night. I'm on the way to work to start my 2nd night shift. Out side my house there are currently some roadworks that have closed the road. I decided, as I had a little time to take the scenic route. It pops me out right by station and breaks the monotony of nipping through the housing estate.
I had had a good day. I was chilled out, having had a bath, a good sleep and nice meal. Driving down the lanes I see ahead a badger, trotting down the road, he disappears in to the hedge. Thinking nothing of it I continue, approaching a corner and the spot whet Mr badger had disappeared. The without warning and like a shot he flew into the road. In a split second I had to make a choice. Hit or try and miss. Having hit one before and needing to replace an entire steering system I went for the miss. I hit the brakes. Hard. The wheels locked on the wet, muddy road. All I could see ahead was a large oak tree...
Somehow, most likely by luck not skill a regained enough control to miss the tree, putting the car into the hedge and bank. Hard.
No for those of you worried about the badgers welfare, wether he got home for Valentines day I can assure you he is fine. Perhaps even laughing at me.
My car on the other hand was resting in the hedge looking sorry for itself. Me standing next to said car, shaking, feeling sorry for myself.
Then came the worry of "I'm in the middle of nowhere, car in the hedge and IM GOING TO BE LATE TO WORK!"
To my relief the car started and unpicked itself from the hedge with minimal fuss. There was, however, a worrying, steaming wet patch on the bank. Turns out I smashed the radiator to bits. Cue frantically ringing round garages, trawling the web for parts. Cue 5 days without my car. Cue a repair bill to the tune of £220. Cue relentless jokes, badger references and risk of badger related gifts for a while from friend, family and colleagues.
Brilliant.

The belle of the ball...

So tonight is the night! The MAdD theatre companies' Valentines Ball. Months of planning, plying of tickets and stress, hours in the kitchen making mini tarts, meringues and Creme patisserie! At 7.30pm all the hard work will be over.
For those who don't know the company is taking their home grown show to the Edinburgh fringe festival this year and this ball is in part fundraising and in part a damn good party.
There is to be music by Green and Bushell, Sonic Sound Disco and yours truly. Food has be hand made (imagine me, at 12 midnight, high on sugary leftovers rocking in a chair covered in cream and sugar...) and table decorations hand constructed!
So if you want to join us please do, tickets available on the door, just email me for details!

To Edinburgh 2!

Well, our venue has confirmed. Greenside, studio 2! Everyone is very excited and Kat and Sophy are in the process of signing contracts! We're a go! So now begins the arduous and unenviable task of rehearsal schedules, logistics and publicity! The hardest task of all is going to be getting our 'get in' and 'get out' down to five minutes a piece. That is set, band, props and cast in and out in five minutes. I envisage a military style drilling to develop a precision known only to the SAS!
The other issue of fundraising still continues though. The valentines ball preparations are in full swing, the band is booked, the sound and light is ready, the tickets made. Sales are going well, about half have been sold which means any of you lucky readers who wish to come and enjoy an evening of music, food an MADD hats still can! Visit www.maddrama.org to buy your tickets!!

Targets

My local news last night included a story on how the private sector is turning its back on unemployed, redundant public sector workers, with 88% of companies interview brandishing us as 'work shy' and 'not target driven'.
I nearly threw my cup of tea at the television. How dare they!
So, here's a little personal reminder to potential private sector bosses on just hard working and target driven I am.

I work an average of 4 shifts a week., 10 or 12 hrs a shift, including lone working, double crew and supervision of students. I see about 4 to 6 patients a shift. That's somewhere between 800 and 1200 a year. I work predominantly nights as well as raising a family, running a volunteer responder group and supporting the long suffering wife's company (private sector I'll add).  I work Christmas, New Year, Bank Holidays, and Birthdays.

I'm answerable to the following targets.

• Mobilisation within 35 seconds,
• Respond to Life Threatening A Catagory calls within 8 minutes,
• For certain calls, Such as Heart Attack, be on scene for less than 20 minutes,
• Monitored against several points with Clinical Performance Indicators for patients suffering Myocardial Infarction, Stroke, Hypoglycaemia and Asthma Attacks,
• Handover at hospital within 15 Minutes,
• Handover to clear within 10 minutes
• Mobilisation to Dispatch point within 5 minutes (I'm not sure on this one!...)

There are other targets that although not solely my responsibility, I help to acheive

• Call to Balloon time of 150 minutes for confirmed STEMI,
• 75% of all Non-Emergency calls for transport to be at their destination within 15mins of the agreed time,
• 75% of all A catagory calls reached within 8 minutes and 90% to have a conveying resource within 19 minutes,

There are even more targets that affect us, such as Call Connect, C Catagory responses, GP OOH's call backs etc.

All these targets affect our funding and our jobs.  They ultimately affect the patients, the reason we do the job in the first place.

I'm not stating in any way that we work harder than the private sector, we work just as hard as each other, nor am I saying that these targets are more important than the patients.  These private sector bosses, these 88% who were interviewed, really need to take a closer look at the facts before slinging mud and wrighting us off.

A bit of healthy competition?

This is a little impromptu but i have to share!
It finally happened. The long suffering wife decided to have a go at blogging.
"How do I set up one of these blog things?" she asks.
So I showed her where to go and what to then left her own devices.

Credit where credit is due she wrote a very good one and before long was racking up the page views.
This is when it started to get ugly!
First it was casual questions like "how many have you had today?" or "how many did your first one get?". This developed in to a competition, more one sided perhaps as to who could achieve the most views in 24hrs.
Unfortunately I lost.
It's not a bitter defeat, I'm really pleased for her and it really has the potential to be great if the first post is anything to go by! I don't plan on changing the way I blog either as I'm as much about keeping old readers happy as well as getting a wider audience!
So if you want to read a competition winning blog it can found here

An Eggceptable Subsitute?!

As you may know, I have chickens. Four little ladies that have been munching their way through what is left of my lawn and pooping on my decking (not a nautical term!).
Well, I had my first egg the other day. A momentous occasion really, and quite a lucky find seeing as it was tucked under some straw and mud on the floor of the run, a little cracked but intact.

I ate it. It was very good!

Since then I have been expectantly looking in the coop for more eggs. This morning I found one, smashed and leaking by the coop door. Clearly the girls hadn't sussed where the nest box was!
Mournfully I disposed of the destroyed egg. Normally one would purchase a fake egg or perhaps a golf ball and place it in a nest to encourage them to lay there, but I had another plan.
Now perhaps because I'm a genius, or more likely because I'm a cheapskate I decided to make my own! This resulted in me making scrambled eggs Heston Blumenthal style, carefully preserving the shells, filling them with flour and water, a bit of red poster paint for colour and then baking them.
This evening I lovingly made a couple of nests and placed my fake eggs in. Now to spend the next few days obsessively checking to see if they have fallen for it!!

Kids Games?

I pick an unusual topic today. Kids toys...

Those of you who follow me on twitter may have seen my little 'rant' earlier today about the lack of toy ambulances in shops. They are full of fire engines, police cars, construction vehicles and sports cars, but very few ambulances. Even those that do are generally lacking effort, or as in today's case, came with a police man wielding a truncheon! (I can believe some would like this to be a reality when dealing with less salubrious of characters!)

It's not envy at my fellow services, not jealousy that someone hasn't made the effort to create us in miniature, it's bigger than that. Well, it's an element of that, but it's mainly, for me, about a lack of awareness. Kids grow up playing with, recognising, understanding the other services. They become interested, they have a drive to become a police officer or firefighter. They develop (generally) a respect for these services.

They know little about ambulances or Paramedics or the service. They fear them at times, and certainly don't respect them! It's as much the fault of the profession for, in it's nature, being secretive but maybe if they sold more ambulances, RRVs or little plastic helicopters tomorrow's new paramedics might say "I've wanted to do this since I was given a toy ambulance!"

I know they do exist, heck I own a couple, it would just be nice though to pop into a shop and see some on the shelf looking proud next to their colleagues!