Ugh! What a horrible shift! Last year, we were on days for Christmas, and we had a party kind of atmosphere in the control room, with people wandering in and out the room with plates of food and everyone falling asleep in front of the messroom telly whilst a steady trickle of (mostly rubbish) calls came in. Steve came up to the room with a bunch of mince pies, and we all had fun with a raffle and a Secret Santa.
Well, what a contrast. This year, staffing levels both on the road and in the room were at an all time low. The call rate, however, was relentless. I don’t know what it is about Christmas these days. When I was a child (growing up in a suburban, middle class, almost exclusively white/Christian-ish area) absolutely NOTHING was open and it was unheard of for people to do anything other than sit and eat turkey and play board games with their family. These days it’s all different — as I made my way to work, I noticed shops and pubs open in every street, and even on one occasion an open hairdressers! Those shops and pubs were later full of fights and stabbings and people generally not full of festive cheer. There was not one Christmas Comedy incident such as “choking on mince pie” or “impaled on Christmas tree” which was very disappointing. There was instead a steady trickle of green calls (because of the lack of public transport and increased taxi fares), a whole bunch of chest pains (indigestion, anyone?), plenty of Domestic Incidents and a couple of rather sad cases, such as a woman whose sister, far away in Scotland, had taken an overdose alone in her flat, and a homeless lady who had rung for an ambulance in the hope it would take her to a hostel in Central London so she would not have to spend Christmas night on the streets. We felt sorry for her, but not sorry enough to send the ambulance ten miles out of its area when we had a screenful of sick and injured people waiting.
Festiveness was also spoiled by the fact that two lovely girls from our watch had been beaten up for no apparent reason by a gang of horrible teenagers whilst out drinking on Christmas Eve, and whichever Scrooge had pulled my name on the Secret Santa had FORGOTTEN to bring in my present, meaning I had to sit and watch everyone else open theirs whilst I sat empty handed. Bah humbug! By the middle of the night, I had completely forgotten that it was Christmas at all and even caught myself looking at the wall clock to find out what date it was.
Crap call of the night: “My girlfriend has developed a stomach ache after we had sex! No, I can’t drive her to the hospital, I have been drinking all day!” As you can imagine, someone who had been able to spend time with their partner and enjoy a few drinks whilst we were all stuck in Control Room Hell inspired no sympathy WHATSOEVER!
