Sean and I spent New Year down at his mother’s while he finished off his panto run before heading back to Wales via Battersea and his dad. It’s been good to have him around again, the house feels a lot more cosy when he’s here. The guys came for a D&D session and we spent all night playing Three Dragon Ante – no wonder Rich wanted to play for money, he cleaned us all out. I finished reading Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights trilogy which Sean bought me for Christmas – what a fantastic series of books. We even went to see The Golden Compass while we were in Stevenage – quite a good adaptation, but it doesn’t go anywhere near far enough in explaining and showing some things. Oh, and with Sean back at Uni he’s left his PS2 and GTA:Vice City and GTA:San Andreas here in the house – which means that productivity has fallen massively here in the house.

Tonight, instead of playing GTA, I decided to catch up on some TV. I’m not a big soap watcher – Sky+ has completely changed the way I watch TV by allowing me to watch series’ as and when it’s convenient for me though, so I have been watching things like CSI (all of them) and NCIS which I enjoy. I also recorded the Christmas lectures. I don’t however tend to watch things like Coronation Street et al, or even Pobol Y Cwm, but one series that I have been an avid fan of from when I was young is BBC’s Casualty. So tonight was a Casualty catchup night and I started with the Dec 22nd episode…and the end of an era. Charlie Fairhead has been a member of the crew for the entire length of the series – 22 years, and in this episode he resigns. A surprise ending, it’s going to be strange watching the series without him. He’ll be one of the characters I remember most – the other being a handsome gay nurse called Sam (Jonathan Kerrigan) – he was in the series during my early college years and I remember working in a gay bar in Cardiff at the time with a really cute guy who was the spitting image of Sam. Ahem.

So indeed. I’ve not been doing much responding lately – especially after falling on my knee on a search last Thursday night – I’ve spent much of this week limping around. It’s getting better now though, I hope to be back and responding to calls with both services by the end of the week. Hope you all had a good new year.

Oh, well. Another shift on Tuesday night, and a night of D&D in between.

I was very tired having spent Sunday night driving Sean home, getting to bed around 0130 and then getting up at 0500 to drive back to Cardiff from Sean’s on Monday morning. I’m also on a tight diesel budget. I was very tired. Oh, and I had the D&D group on their way around. And I was tired.

Did I mention how tired I was?

So executive decision made, I headed home. Traffic was heavy in rush hour and about 5 minutes after I got home, the standdown came out. Huzzah. In retrospect, very much the right decision, I was too tired to be of any use, and potentially would have been dangerous to drive.

Last night I went to WICC again where Lee gave me a few pointers and made me climb until I fell off. And then climb some more. Until the point came when I physcially did not have the strength in my arms to make a fist. Or undo my laces. This morning I’m aching less than I thought I would, but it’s all good. 2 and a half hours of climbing, excellent workout. So I need to work on my back – I don’t have the strength there that I should do – time to talk to a few friends about what exercises I need to strengthen the right muscles there then I think.

Missing 10 year old girl. We’re needed to back up the Bridgend team who’d been out all night. Yeah, ok, so this one’s serious. I headed across Cardiff to pick up my car and in the early morning took some very peaceful photos. I got to base around 0500 and prepared my kit. It’s a long journey down to Haverfordwest where the girl was missing, even on blue lights, and I settled in on the back seat to see if I could get an extra few hours sleep.

Once our briefing was done, the eight of us got ourselves radios and high-vis jackets and headed out around town to try and find the girl and talk to people to see if they’d seen her. She’d been missing from the night before and weather (according to the BBC) had been “awful”.

After a few hours of searching we stopped for breakfast at Tesco’s in Haverfordwest – many grateful thanks to the duty manager and his staff there on Saturday who were wonderful to us. We carried on searching as more media got involved to try and publicise the girl’s details.

“All stations, all stations from search control, hold your position.”

A call came through on the Inspector’s radio – they’d found a girl matching her description. A few moments later details were confirmed and we were on our back to the police station. Once everyone was happy and the media fed with their information, we had a quick bite to eat at Tesco’s again and headed off home – another 2 hours’ kip for me before we got back to base.

Saturday, one of the lads from the team got married and so to the evening party we went after being disappointed by losing to New Zeland at rugby. We had a great evening – the band was fantastic, and the atmosphere was great. I did feel a little out of sorts though without Sean being there, but other than that it was a great weekend.

Yesterday was spent prepping for tonight’s game – Friday’s night out managed to bag us a new player – I’ve met Si before and chatting to him on Friday he was interested in coming along so we’ve got our third experienced player in the group. Add in Louisa and Jon and we should be sorted. Woot.

Life has been rather hectic recently, what with some major changes at work (I now have more control over my time and scheduling; Judy has a better idea of what it is I do daily). The car has had a new tire and a new hub bearing although the camber looks as though it’s really badly out which needs dealing with. I was raided by the police, Sean’s been down for a week, Mal broke (and mostly fixed) his car…

Yeah, so you noticed that one. Yes, I can now say that I have experienced Gwent Police’s ability to execute a search warrant. I WAS at work when they broke the door down, but Sean wasn’t poor thing. I had a few words with the officer in charge and once they realised where the cockup lay, they quietly removed themselves. I can’t say too much about it in public at the moment, as I’m going to be issuing a complaint against them and asking for them to make good the damage they did at least.

Sean spent the week down here which was wonderful – an empty house is not very nice to come back to, and it was nice to have a hug when I got home. The central heating finally gave up the ghost – looks like the timer’s gone, so it’s manual control for now until I get a replacement timer fitted. Looks simple, so I’m not expecting any hiccups other than the £50 odd it’ll cost me in materials.

The Cthulhu game in Cardiff is on a bit of a hiatus at the moment, since Simon, our GM, has gone to London for a new job. We’re having a whole day event to finish off sometime in the new year, so I’ve taken up the reins as a GM for my first campaign, and we’re goin to be running a classical game in a world I created based around Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain and the Mabinogi. Last night was the first session and so we have a Bard (Andy) and a Paladin (Mal). Aaron looks like he won’t be able to make it because of his new job, but Louisa, Mal’s missus, and Jon from work are interested, so I have a Ranger, a Rogue and a Fighter for them to decide which one they want. The group at the moment are on a moor with a heavy storm approaching (lightening causes 1d10 d8’s of damage if it’s a direct hit…owch…). The only shelter is an old tor once used as a fortress and burial chamber. What will they do?

There was a callout on the weekend, which the BBC mentioned, and Mark put up some photos on the team flickr site. I missed out on this one as I was stuck in work at the time. Poo.

Hopefully, with my life becoming a little more boring now, I’ll have more time to update, so it’ll be back to the usual random stuff.

 The first was on Saturday morning at around 0400. I got up and quickly dressed before slapping a flask of hot water together and jumping in the car. Made it to base for Alpha and jumped on with Blackie. The callout was in Bridgend where an elderly gentleman had gone missing. Scant details to start with we started searching our area and finally got some details on the guy we were looking for. Apparently ex-military, I had visions of not finding him at all with his ability to hide, but around 1100, the message came – Simon and Merlin the dog had found him.

So we headed back to the control vehicle where I grabbed a few pics of the scene – I’d had some amazing pictures of the sunrise that morning and I found some nice shots of the scene itself. Insp John Williams was there as well, and managed to arrange breakfast for us in the pub whose car park we’d taken over in the early hours of the morning. Amusingly Dave Cross lived across the street from the pub, but had initially headed for Merthyr when the pager went off. Swinging around and heading for Bridgend police station when he heard the voicebank message, he arrived there only to be told to basically head back to his house and meet in the car park.

So we headed back and I met Dave at my house where he kindly dropped off his old fridge (hurrah, a bigger fridge!), and I tried getting a few things sorted for Saturday night – which was the stag night of Chris the Drugs. Having decided on the Mondeo, I cleaned it out some on Friday and was busy hoovering the back seat when I heard an odd noise. Turning off the hoover confirmed it, it was the pager again.

So, quickly throw stuff in the house and we’re off to Merthyr again. Once again I made Alpha and we’re off down the hill on the way to Barry for a missing elderly lady, blue lights and sirens blaring. Before we reach Abercynon, we’re stood down, and we head back to base. Excellent timing, I jumped back into the car, headed home for a quick shower and off to Cardiff for a night out.

The rest of the night was quite uneventful, and much fun was had by all as we ate in Charleston’s and got drunk in Flares. I have no idea what time we hit Mal’s place, but I was utterly exhausted having had about 3 hours sleep the night before and promptly fell asleep while everyone else was still drinking around me.

Sunday dawned early and I took Chris home before settling down for the day. A quick spin back up Merthyr (I really should think about moving there) to see Mark and family and friends in Mark’s Guy Fawkes BBQ.

Today has been a long day, and I was looking forward to a good session of Call of Cthulhu, until about halfway through the pager went off. Arg. Mal and I jumped in the car, took off for base….only to be stood down just as we turn off the A470. We called into base quickly to say hi and then took off for home.

So another 3 so far this week – let’s see how things progress. I might even get some sleep…