Nee Naw

Strangely enough, after my question about bystanders the other day, I found myself on the other side of the fence last night.

I am a member of St John Ambulance (yes I know, another blogging Johnner! Please no pages of abuse!) and regularly attend duties at my local football ground, Leyton Orient. Generally not a lot happens first aid wise at the matches, so I get to sit on a stretcher and watch the footy for free! I think the most exciting thing I have ever dealt with is a rather tipsy bloke who felt down the stairs and allegedly sprained his ankle. It looked fine to me, but he was making a bit fuss, and was delighted with the bandage I put on, hopping off without so much as a limp, so who am I to argue?

Anyway, there I was last night, waiting for a bus to take me to the evening match against Brighton and Hove Albion. It was a horrible, rainy, night and there were fifteen million billion people waiting at the bus stop. Several buses went past, full, and a couple more stopped and opened their doors to let a few people on, then, infuriatingly, drove off again. Soon it was 7pm, the time I was supposed to be at the ground, and I was still standing in the rain, at the front of the queue at last. A bus came, and I was on my way. The bus moved off, and then lurched to a stop, near some traffic lights. A few people complained about the driver’s driving, and then a bit of fracas started breaking out, and people started getting off the bus.

“What’s going on?” asked someone.

“There’s someone under the bus!” shouted someone else.

I suddenly realised that I was standing in a bright yellow coat with “ambulance” on it and therefore all eyes were on me, expecting me to take charge of the situation. Which was unfortunate, because I am not a “taking charge” sort of person, and my area of expertise lies with sprained ankles and not people under buses, but what choice did I have? I barged my way off to the bus and round to the front where a crowd was assembled around a woman in her thirties wielding a pair of crutches and a Tesco bag. She wasn’t under the bus after all, but she was doing her best to get herself there. I asked a passer by what was going on.

“She was in the queue for the bus and didn’t get on because it was full,” he explained. “So she tried to run along side it, banging it with her crutch, shouting ‘I’m disabled, how dare you leave me here?’ and then she tripped and dropped her shopping, which went under the bus. Then she pulled herself up and ran out in front of the bus and tried to lie in the road as some kind of protest.”

About twenty people were trying to persuade the woman to come away from the front of the bus, some more politely than others. A huge queue of traffic was building up behind it, horns were beeping, and people were getting out of their cars to see what is going on.

Everyone was still looking at me expectantly, so I put on my best Taking Charge of Things voice and (after making sure someone had called the police) ordered everyone to stand back, then approached the “patient” with what I hoped was a friendly smile on my face.

“Come on love,” I said. “You can’t stay here, it’s dangerous. I’m from St John Ambulance, I can help you to the side of the road.”

“I can’t move!” she wailed. “I’ve hurt my leg. And I’m disabled. I need an ambulance!”

“But you got up and deliberately stood in front of the bus!” pointed out a bystander. “Please, madam, we’ve all got to get on. I’ve got to pick my baby up from the childminders!”

“And I’ve got to get to work,” said another man.

“And I’ve done a twelve hour shift,” said a woman in what appeared to be a nurse’s uniform. “Come on, let this man help you. Do you want him to look at your leg?”

“NO!” she bellowed, “don’t touch me!”

“I don’t think she’s hurt at all,” muttered another man.

“WHY ARE YOU ALL TURNING ON ME?” bellowed the woman. “THIS IS DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THE DISABLED!!! WHY DID YOU ALL LEAVE A DISABLED WOMAN STANDING IN THE RAIN? WHY DID YOU GET ON BEFORE ME?”

“I got on before you because I was at the front of the queue and didn’t see you were there,” I pointed out. (I always let disabled/elderly/pregnant people get on before me and have the seats on buses, but I do think this is a matter of courtesy and not something they should expect as a right.) “If you had asked politely, I’m sure all of these people would have been happy to let you go first.”

“YOU DIDN’T SEE ME!” howled the woman. “THAT’S EXACTLY MY POINT! The disabled are INVISIBLE!”

Everyone was beginning to lose their patience at this point. A man in a bomber jacket started shouting about how he too was disabled (epilepsy) and how his mother was in a wheelchair and neither of them played the card like this. Another man (rather foolishly, I thought) dived under the bus to retrieve the lady’s shopping bag (which now contained an assortment of squashed chocolate bars and a flat four pack of beer), hoping this would encourage her to move on. A black girl with her hair in a big pineapple started telling the patient she needed to go to church and have faith in God as this would stop her being angry with strangers and trying to jump under buses. I stood and flapped my arms ineffectually tried to calm everyone down whilst simultaneously persuading the patient to remove herself from the road, with equal lack of success.

What seemed like an eternity later, but probably wasn’t, two police cars drew up and ordered the lady to get up and stop lying in the road. I’m not sure if it was because they were police or just because they were better at being authoritative than I was, but after a bit of whinging about her leg and how she needed to be moved on a stretcher, she got to her feet and scuffled to the side of the road. I noticed she wasn’t even limping. I was happy to leave her in the care of the nice policeman, and got the next bus to the football ground.

I got there five minutes after kick off. Our only casualty was a man who had, for no apparent reason (other than inebriation perhaps), come out without a coat or even a jumper on and was utterly freezing. His rationale for this was “It’s okay, I live in Bounds Green.” Leyton Orient lost, 1-4. I got utterly soaked.

I just saw on the news that they are stopping free English lessons for asylum seekers.

My first thought was, they have free English lessons for asylum seekers? They don’t seem to have done much good if the calls I take are anything to go by.

Nee Naw has been drowning in spam these last few days, and despite having numerous filters in place, I’m still wasting inordinate amounts of time deleting comments. Therefore, I have changed settings so that you will find your comments are held in a moderation queue unless you have a previously approved comment. Sorry for any inconvenience, blah blah blah.

And BOG OFF to spammers!!

Edit. Got two of the plug-ins suggested, and they seem to be working a treat. Please let me know if you have any problems posting real comments! Thanks everyone.

It seems I can’t make a post here without someone exclaiming “Oh my god! You published the patient’s address!” For the record, NO I DIDN’T. All the names, addresses and other identifying details on these posts have been changed, and none of the addresses published even exist. Run them through Streetmap if you don’t believe me. My name isn’t really Mark Myers, either.

I would take all the addresses out entirely, but I think it spoils the “flow” of the post, plus the addresses I use are similar to the originals in that they convey what kind of area the call was from. So if a call took place in a council estate in Peckham, I’d move it to a fictitious estate in, say, Hackney, which is a similar kind of area. If it took place in posh Chelsea, I might move it to equally posh Kensington and make the address ’something Mansions’, so everyone could see this is a posh person calling. You get the idea.

So please… no more comments!

PJ over at Dispatcher Journal has asked me to make an appeal on behalf of a friend of a friend who is urgently seeking a bone marrow donor. The donor needs to be of Filipino origin and aged 18-61, although of course there are people of all nationalities out there seeking donors right now.

You can read more about it here.

Tim Worstall has published a book about blogs. I am going to be in it, so I suggest you all buy a copy.

I’ve had rather large problems with spam lately and am no longer using the email address mark@neenaw.co.uk. Anything else @neenaw.co.uk will get to me.

More ambulance stuff later…