Scenic Route

Today I'm working out of a Cotswold ambulance station about fifteen miles from home. It's very picturesque round these parts. Very scenic.

Being a one car family means I usually travel on my motorbike when working a bit of a distance away, a faster, cheaper and usually more fun mode of transport than driving. I say faster but that doesn't include getting togged up at the beginning which takes ages especially if, like me, you've built up your riding kit piece by black leathery piece over the years and can't just slip on a nifty bright onesie and go straight out. It also doesn't include getting undressed at the other end which consists of jerking around like a man changing into a werewolf in a black and white film, only with a more startling transformation resulting.

Apart from that, much faster.

My trip to this ambulance station is usually cursed with discomfort though. Rain is often the order of the day, with lashings of horizontal wet lasers probing my seams with the sole intention, it appears, of getting my undercrackers wet, and not in a good way. The beautiful scenery that flashes by, green and wooded, gentle hills, fields bordered by ancient walls, the honey-coloured stone of Cotswold dwellings nestling in cute villages are completely unavailable to me as I try to clear my visor. Last "spring", I got caught in a blizzard riding home and was reduced to a crawl, stopping every few minutes to shake snow off my jacket and peel ice off my helmet. Cars meandered by unconcerned and it occurred to me for the first time ever that I might have to swap my trusty old Suzuki for the all-weather comfort of a second car.

No one would blame me. Cars are easier, warmer, and you can go out in your pyjamas if you want. They have hot and cold running music, comfy seats and you can scratch yourself wherever you want.You can even  indulge in a beverage or snack with relative ease. 

Currently however, the only option I have is the bike. Dutifully I donned armour, secured my work kit on the back with the help of overstretched bungees and growled off, fully expecting a sudden chilly, utterly unpredicted monsoon to plague me en route.

But no! The journey this morning was gorgeous. The temperature was admittedly low and the roads icy, so I was forced to take it easy, but the emerging sun made every verge a diamond carpet, the dark silhouettes of the hills just magnifying the aesthetic effect of a marmalade cloudscape. The nearly full moon was still out and I could even see the bright dot of Jupiter in the dawn sky to my right.

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I remember Robert Pirsig suggesting that one difference between riding and driving was that being on a bike moves you through the scenery, as a part of it, whereas being in a car you simply go past as a separate, insulated observer. Having been to too many incidences where a vicious tree has attacked a car and suddenly made both vehicle and occupants very much part of the scenery, I've never been particularly convinced by this.

Today though, I got it. I felt the freshness of the cold, heard the roar of the wind, could smell the air and feel the changing vibrations of tyre on road beneath me with an immediacy not duplicated in a car. My fingers were a bit numb because I hadn't put my inner gloves on underneath, I had to think about every corner, every icy patch of frozen flood water yet to drain away after our recent rains, even the slush of leaves in the car park as I arrived at work. On the way, my innards felt the surge of acceleration as I overtook a line of traffic, my inner ear enjoyed the long sinuous bends through the woods and I finally got it because this morning I really had to be there.

I still danced the undignified transmogrifying dance of the changing biker at the end, but it seems well worth it. I may change to a car in the future, but not for a while yet if I can help it and you can be damn sure that if I do there will be times I'll regret it.

Bet it pisses down on my way home though.

Sign Language

At work we have a number of people who are responsible professionals, with an ethical and moral duty to help folk if they can, using their paramedic skills whether on or off an ambulance.

Most of the time, this involves going to where the people are hurt or unwell, and ministering to their needs there. Occasionally, they come to us, asking for help.

Obviously, the powers that be have noticed this, and have reacted by erecting a sign to welcome them:

Possibly the rudest sign since the burning bush spelt out Moses Is A Cock in sparks.*

It's not the idea I have a problem with. This is an ambulance station and there are drugs and patient records on site, albeit locked away, so a modicum of security is sensible but, really, the computers are ancient, the telly is tiny, the chairs are threadbare, the vehicles are locked, the blinds are broken and the charity box is empty.

The only thing of real value I can think of anywhere on the premises are my sandwiches, and should anyone amble force their way in and try to steal them, then I would fight to them to the death. Theirs, hopefully.


Morphine? Yeah, help yourself, I'll get you a cannula.


My butties? Oh, you don't know who you're messing with.


This sign seems a bit unnecessary and probably won't put off real evil-doers intent on nefarious deeds, as we are rather limited on security guards, towers, patrol dogs, CCTV and automatic intruder-tracking weaponry (other than an elderly stray cat called Feeble, which might give an interloper some sort of skin disease, should it lean on them).


For genuine visitors, a simple piece of text asking anyone to present their ID before gaining access would surely suffice.


But this sign is so . . . angry.


Is a thief going to go to all the trouble of ironing his mask and writing SWAG on his sack, sneak up to the door, put his hand out to open it and then suddenly notice the sign, causing him to have a change of heart because, ooh, that is a nasty picture, and there's a lot of red on it so, you know, they really mean it. I'd best be off.

No. All it does is be rude to anyone and everyone, no matter what they're here for.


"NOOOOOOOOOOOO access! Feck off! Shoo!  Hey! You there? Yeah, you with the haemorrhage? Are you authorised? No? Well gertcha then! Go on! There's nothing for you here."


The little jaunty blue NHS sign in the top right corner can't deflect attention from the rest of the design. A big, scary voodoo hand (possibly wearing a glove favoured by the more particular of murderers) reaches forward, looking as if it wants to rip your heart straight out of your ribcage, before showing it's quivering ventricles to you as punishment for coming too close to the front door when you're not bloody well authorised!.


But that's not the really annoying thing about the sign.


That would be the face.


Look at it. It's not even a proper face. Is that a hat? Or some sort of hair? Or really angry eyebrows maybe? And what's with the big circle in the middle. Is it shouting? Screaming?


I have seen a similar expression before, only not quite so tormented:

This would be a more effective sign, I think.

Actually, I may have hit on something here. Maybe all public warning signs should include a piece of classic art, so people are warned, entertained and educated, all at the same time.


I could see a Constable water scene to warn drivers of a ford ahead, or Dali's Persistence of Memory to show something might be hot. Perhaps Da Vinci's Last Supper could remind people coming out of a restaurant that this is a residential area so could they keep it down a bit, or Michelangelo's Creation of Adam on Do Not Touch signs. A William Turner jobby could be used to alert drivers to fog, or a John Waterhouse warning against serenading wispy girls near ponds.


All essential information, but delivered without threat or irritation.


I wonder what you could use MC Escher paintings for?






*Strangely omitted from the Book of Exodus.

Accent marking

I rolled in to work the other morning and took over the paramedic car from my mate Roy.

"Top o' the marnin' to ya!" he greeted me, and did a little Irish jig.

This was strange because of two things. The first being it was six in the AM, and no-one should be doing a jig at that time of the morning. I'm sure there's a bylaw that forbids it.

The second is that Roy is from Birmingham, and his Irish heritage is about as closely linked to him as his Kenyan ancestry. Judging by his pallor (and I do like to judge), that is quite a way in the past.

So obviously I replied in the same vein with an appropriately mangled "Top o' the marnin' to y'good self as well there, so it is!", proceeding to see-saw my elbows in and out which I understand to be the way all people speak in Ireland.

I couldn't help myself. It just had to be done. Upon hearing the Irish lilt,  my vocal chords suddenly became flawlessly Hibernian, as though I harked from the sprawling suburbs of Galway itself.

This, I thought, was odd. Why couldn't I simply nod and accept that he'd accented at me, maybe smile appreciatively if it was a particulalry good one, and then carry on talking in my (arguably) normal accent.

The following few days, as we crossed our finish and start times, I decided to try an experiment to see if the phenomeon was reciprocal.

That evening, as I finished the day shift, the moon was already high and bright, and Roy began his second night shift, I promptly hollered "Why aye mon, it'll be a braw bricht moonlit nicht tonicht!"

Without a moments hesitation, he answered "Aye, you're nay wrang. Icy an' all. Ah nearly hit a coo comin' here the noo!"

So, it wasn't just me then?

Roy caught on quick and, the following morning, I was met with "Guten Tag,  Englisher! Achtung, schnell, gott in himmell!"

"Guten morgan Herr Royzenburger." I replied, unable to help myself, "You haff ze car keys?"

"Nein!" he shouted back at me. "Ve haff vays of making you valk!"

How we laughed.

That evening, I greeted him with an accent from the Deep South of The United Americas (Northern Branch), politely enquiring if there was good eatin' on squirrels, and he responded with a Californian drawl, assuring me that, in fact, gingham foot-longs with crawdads were better.

This was still a success because in England we feel there are only three US accents. These are Hillbilly, Surfer Dude, and Mexican.*

So, it appears that, should someone greet you in an accent other than your own, there is some sort of psychological imperative to respond in kind.

Try it if you don't believe me.

I guarantee it'll either be true or false. Or possibly somewhere in between. That's how confident I am in my  hypothesis.

Maybe it harks back to tribal days when one might meet a well-armed stranger and, to reduce the risk of being speared by a xenohophobic Cro-magnon type, emulating his speech patterns would lull him into feeling secure in your presence, so you could then stab him in the back and steal his fabulous sabre-tooth head-dress which is all the rage down the cave system this season.

Or maybe, and this is my current favourite psychological theory, it's just silliness.

Of course, night shifts take their toll on anyone, and the first thing that tends to go is a sense of jollity. On our last swap over, continuing the theme I think we had both come to expect and enjoy, I hailed a not-so-sprightly looking Roy with a hearty " 'Ow do, is thee all reet?", and was rewarded with an appropriate faux-Yorkshire lilt straight back.

"Fook off, I'm reet not int' moooood."

Still, it's not the content that counts, but the delivery. My theory stands.

Thinking back, I may have come across a potential downside, as when the new Stores chap came to our ambulance station in a large white NHS van to deliver a single vomit bowl.

He came over to the corner of the garage where I was busy test-licking defibrillator paddles to say hello.

" Allo, mon amis," he said, outrageously "Ah em ze new supplah personne, 'ere to provide for your armbularns needs!"

Obviously, I retorted in a lengthy, french-accented soliloquy taking, for humourous effect, aspects of Monty Python's Ker-nigg-hut insulting frecnhmen, the policeman out of 'Allo 'Allo and an onion-necklaced, beret-wearing, Gauloises-smoking baguette-eating stereotype, thus crafting them into a beautiful, synergistic combination of humour and good-natured racism.

Eventually, exhausted and bouyed by the banter between myself and my new, nameless friend, I stopped, got my breath back and introduced myself. "I'm the Jules." I said, and proffered a hand, expecting us to retun to our normal, everyday Anglosaxon now we'd got the fun over and done with.

"Herve." he replied in a monotone, but strangely keeping on with the foreign accent.

In fact, come to think of it, he's still using it, which in my opinion has gone way past funny and is starting to get a bit tiresome now.

*In comparison,  Americans think that Brits have two accents; Upper Class Toff and Cockney.

The Mystery of Work

Work has once again got in the way of an appropriate blogging schedule, with the tawdry necessities of feeding and clothing my family forcing me to prostitute too much of my precious time for the interests of others.

I'm very lucky in that I actually enjoy my job, and don't mind going to work, although one or two shifts a month would be preferable, just to keep my hand in. In the absence of a lottery win (made even less likely because I only did the lottery once when it first came out, and gave up as I didn't win even one million quid), I have to make my presence felt three or four times a week, for twelve hours a time. And because I'm a bit skint at the moment, I have to go in even more for the overtime.

It's not very fair, when you've got blogs to write, ukulele's to play, the park to mess about in and camping trips to go on, but the powers that be seem oblivious to the emotion in my emails on this subject. "Not our problem" they reply, and "Please stop emailing the chief exec with your rants." they opine.

I would complain, but they threatened to pay me what I was worth and if they did that I'd probably have to live in a hedge and lick the insides of abandoned crisps packets to survive.

I'm not greedy though. I could get by on just one billion.

Pounds, not crisp packets.

Work then. My presence was felt, and we were clearing the garage out because one of my colleagues is pregnant and therefore has decided that she can't bear the thought of any clutter on the premises whatsoever. It's called nesting, I think.

She was initially threatening to throw all the personal mugs out, including mine, simply because it's washed so infrequently that the build up of tannins inside has left an almost solid block of cup, with a small hole down the centre where the next brew goes, like pushing a test-tube into a cylinder of soft clay.

My argument that it gives a beverage some character if you only rinse a mug out every couple of months or so didn't have quite the appeasing effect I was hoping for, so we diverted her by saying how cluttered the garage was at the moment, and perhaps she should go and have a look.

She did, and then announced that it was no good, it needed clearing and we would all just have to chip in and do it.

Arse.

So, there we were, finding paperwork that had been stored safely in a box under the sink and now resembled something you'd put on a plinth in the Tate Modern and call 'Essence of Chaos", mucking out the cleaners cupboard which is paradoxically the filthiest space in the area, and tentatively opening sacks of bulging items with the faint but tangible fear of finding the King of Rats holding court in it.

There was quite a lot of crap.

There was quite a bit of unidentifiable crap as well. Some of it from vehicles that we hadn't used for years, some from equipment that was now seen as a potential health and safety risk, and the occasional abandoned Tupperware lunchbox with labels proclaiming them to be the property of long dead colleagues. Opening them was a bit like the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where tormented, screaming souls erupt from the pretty box and tear apart Nazi's in a blaze of of mediocre special effects, but apparently can't get through Indiana Jones's closed eyelids.

There was also a BabyBel cheese, which was still edible. Well, as edible as they ever are.

One thing I did find was this:

It felt sort of heavy and expensive, and looked like it belonged to a kit of some sort. If I had to describe it in terms that everyone could relate to, I suppose it was like holding the spine of a robot monkey that had overdosed on diazepam.

I passed it around for people to have a look at, hoping to be enlightened as to it's function. In return, I recieved various explanations ranging from a Homeresque "Ahdunno." to the frankly inspired "It's one of those things you use to, you know, thingy."

The mystery wasn't helped any more when I found another one, so they're either a useful thing or they're breeding.

Any ideas anyone?