Let’s get this straight here, there’s an armed man who’s wanted for murdering a number of people and has made threats against both the police and members of the public in general. He is likely to be highly stressed, emotional, tired and not really thinking clearly. Oh, and he’s got a gun. Police have found him and they’re “negotiating”.

Great, fine, important news. How do you think that should be reported?

How about by broadcasting a live telephone interview with someone who has a line-of-sight view to the proceedings? By having your presenter stood at the edge of the inner cordon after being asked to stay in his vehicle? By trying to catch a glimpse of the gunman through the trees? By intervewing an emotional woman about the fact that her mother was told in no uncertain terms to stay indoors for her own safety and rebroadcasting the clip where she says her mother had a gun shoved in her face?

Am I the only one that believes that those tactics are completely irresponsible?

I see that Northumbria Police have now created a 10 mile exclusion zone.

I hope they enforce it. I also hope that the BBC gets a damn good lambasting for its behavour – I’m just as disgusted with Sky who apparently have been doing similar things, but I expect this kind of sensationalist US-style news reporting from Sky. I don’t expect it from the BBC.

I sat down and re-assesed my options, talking to Sean. I felt as though I was still missing something and Sean was still happy with me doing somethign in addition to Mountain Rescue. I’ve always enjoyed the medical side of Mountain Rescue and I really missed dealing with patients as I used to in the First Responders. So, what could I do?

Enter St John Ambulance. I called national headquarters, based in Cardiff and was referred to Father Andrew, the Divisional Officer In Charge (DOIC) of Cardiff Central. After a long conversation with him, it sounded like I’d hit on the perfect unit – they perform mainly front-line ambulance duties and don’t have a cadet contingent which mean the unit concentrates on training and duties for their adult members.

The first night set the tone really – they’re mostly insane, much like Mountain Rescue. I passed them all the information I could about the training I had complete with Mountain Rescue. Things were looking great…and then a letter came through the door.

South Wales Police had started up its recruitment again. This caused a bit of a dilemma – leave St John and concentrate on the Police? Stop the recruitment process with the police? What to do?

I carried on with both (well, all three including Mountain Rescue) for a while, but this really wasn’t sustainable. Coupled with the fact that I had changed jobs and was considerably busier than I used to be, something had to change. So, after a long conversation with Sean, I decided to withdraw my application to South Wales Police for now. It’s something I’d still like to do, but I’m limited in how much time I have in life – I do like to sleep occasionally!

Last weekend, I passed the 7th course I’d taken in 5 weeks. It’s been a hectic month, but passing my PTA course now means that I can go out with St John Ambulance to do what’s called HDS duties (High Dependency Service) – these are thigns like Doctor’s urgents (when a patient needs to go to hospital urgently but isn’t life-threatening enough to call 999) and hospital transfers. I’m also one of our division’s two drivers currently – so looks like I’m going to be kept busy driving a lot.

On Thursday my uniform arrived – that’s right, look out for me wandering the streets of Cardiff in a natty green uniform. In fact, my first duty is this Saturday, when I’m joining two experienced members for my first HDS duty.

So, er, yeah, that’s where I am, that’s why I haven’t been blogging much of late. Work is taking me to London again this week which means I won’t (again) attend Mountain Rescue on Thursday. Look out for updates on the weekend from the HDS duty, as well as a whole bunch of rants and other stuff I’ve got queued up ready to post.

Tally ho!

Every morning I jog 2 miles, careful to keep my heart rate towards the lower end of the cardiovascular exercise range – around 65%. This ensures that I’m working my cardiovascular system and if it slows down a little I’m into the “fat burning” range, either way it’s good. It’s 2 hilly miles as well which gives me a few opportunities for a few sprints in there just to push things along a bit. So that’s 5 of those a week…

…at work, every Thursday, we play badminton for an hour. It’s fun, it’s energetic, it’s mostly aerobic exercise…

…today I started playing badminton a second time every week. So practice on Tues, play the league on Thursday…

…in the evenings I’ve started doing something – walk a few miles over the hill behind the house, a quick run, test my fitness using a multi-stage fitness test (aka bleep test), even cleaning the house which if you do it right can be aerobic exercise…

Throw into that the fact that I’ve cut down on my tea and coffee, replacing them with water and my eating has become a lot more healthy. Hopefully all this will work wonders and in a month or two I really will have lost some weight.

I do wonder however if I’m overdoing it slightly – I’m not sure if I’m tired today because I do too much, or if it’s because I didn’t sleep until late last night. Meh, early bed tonight I think…

Of course, being away over the weekend and spent much of the end of last week tied up in the evenings, so when I came home tonight, I had a stack of things to watch on TV, notably two episodes of the Bill. It’s quite interesting to watch – a double episode covering an 8 year old girl who goes missing. They eventually find her body and so far, the killer looks like it might be a 10 year old boy. What’s really interesting from my perspective, quite apart from the storyline, is watching the initial process of someone being reported missing. Eventually there’s a big search in an area of undergrowth – very reminiscent of what we do when we search for a missing person. Eventually they find a body and the programme then follows on where we stop – the investigation and arrest. It’s quite interesting – one of the areas of police work I’m most interested in is search management and dealing with missing persons, so with my application to the police progressing, I do hope at some point that I get to be involved in this kind of work.

Anyway, back to the Bill…

I’ve had a few people asking me why I want to join the police, and while the answer is complicated and multi-faceted it boils down to one event. A few months ago I was out third manning with a paramedic. We spent the evening on the Rapid Response Vehicle responding to calls around Bargoed. It was a Saturday evening and most of our calls were to drunk people, although a few of the people we saw really did need our help – like the woman with a third-degree heart block who was rushed in. To top it all off, it was the evening after the day that Wales beat England at Rugby in Twickenham – what a day!

It was late, and we were driving up through the center of Bargoed when I spotted around a dozen young men and woman (mostly men) fighting next to a parked car. We came to a halt and Rich flicked the blue lights on. I looked out of the passenger window at the men who were almost lying on top of the car’s boot and for a second, they all stopped and turned to look at the lights…until they realised it was an ambulance car and they went back to their fight. Richard, calling for police backup on the radio, got out of the car and I joined him as we approached the group. The next few minutes passed very quickly as a woman was accidentally knocked over by the fight and when she went down her head hit the kerb. Rich rushed over to help, keeping her still while he assessed her and tried to keep the group at bay. The police arrived and immediately started chasing the ones running away, followed by a second unit which came over and helped us make the scene safe – by this point, Rich had ascertained that the woman wasn’t injured, just very, very drunk.

What really made me concerned was how I reacted – it was an uncomfortable and volatile situation and I shrank back from it. I wasn’t much use to Rich, and I hated that. I hated being that uncomfortable with that situation.

I’ve faced this before. Most relevantly when dealing with casualties in Mountain Rescue – theory and classroom exercises will only take you so far, and when faced with a real, live person, with complex problems that don’t quite fit the textbook…

So, realising that I needed something that I wasn’t getting – experience – I went looking for it. The ambulance service provided the ideal place to get that experience and meet my innate need to help people – the First Responder scheme. In a very short period of time, I got more experience than I had in my entire time in Mountain Rescue. Over two years several things have happened. I’ve had a lot more experience of dealing with people – sufficiently so that I’m comfortable with dealing with casualties now. The second thing is that my role in the team has changed. I’ve still got my qualification with Mountain Rescue, but recently I (along with two others) started training to be Party Leaders – consider it the management track within Mountain Rescue.

Those two things coupled together meant that I needed experience of dealing with situations where I had to establish control and to lead people – something that working with the Police would be great for. Of course, I couldn’t do all of the things that I do – I’d need an extra 8 hours in every day. Conveniently, I’m tired of the politics of the Ambulance service and had decided to leave anyway.

So there it is.

Anyway, I have been doing some figures. My morning run is just short of 4km (2.5miles-ish). I can normally finish that run at the moment in about 55mins. That’s a long time I hear you runners say (do I actually know any runners?). In fact, it is a long time…given the assumption that you’re running a flat 4km circuit. I, on the other hand, live in Wales. Flat is what happens when the valleys flood, and even then you can’t really run on it. Flat is what happens when you get to the tops of the hills. Flat is the one thing my route doesn’t have in it.

With a bit of map-reading, it looks like I’m climbing about 150m from the start point to the midway point before turning around and going back down again (via a slightly different route). Just over 130m of that is over a 500m stretch of the first km – yup, that’s one hell of a climb. So, some rough calculations using the amended version of Naismith’s rule, gives me an estimated total trip time of about 1hr 15min at 4km/hr. So, given some figures about the fitness level I want to reach, I need to be running this circuit in….umm…carry the one….31 minutes. Right. What?!

31 minutes. Owch. Best I’ve managed so far was about 47 mins and that was a while ago.

So, some work to do then…look out for a fitter, healthier, slimmer Aled near you soon…

Reported widely on the BBC, I read it today and was surprised to see the MSP at odds with the police already – along with both Scottish Labour and the Lib Dems:

“I thought there was an over-reaction in terms of deploying riot police which possibly enflamed the situation…” MSP Fraser, BBC New

Personally as soon as I read his comment, I though his opinion was unlikely to be true. The police certainly weren’t amused and neither was Machester council leader, Sir Richard Leese, who said:

“If you are going to put blame on anybody you put blame on those people for their behaviour – they have to take responsibility.” Sir Richard Leese, BBC News

The police, who where policing a very difficult situation it seems felt it necessary to issue riot gear to the officers on the ground in order to control the crowds. Given that the MSPs in question weren’t there, I have to wonder how they think they’re talking anything but absolute rubbish. Of course, they’ve ended up with large amounts of egg on their faces now as GMP have released CCTV footage of the crowds, shown here on the BBC website. Quite frankly, looking at that footage, I think if I was that poor officer I’d be shitting myself with a mob of violent, angry and likely drunken hooligans bearing down on me. I can only imagine what that must have been like for him and all respect to him.

Of course, the wrong and allegedly honorable MSP Fraser has now issued a statement, not to camera this time, where according to the Beeb, he’s had to “temper his comments”. Apparently, after viewing the CCTV “the situation was more serious than [he] first suspected” and “The attacks on police officers and paramedics are deplorable and have to be condemned without reservation.”

So apart from thinking that the hooligans involved in the violence and riots should be strung up, I have to admit that my opinion of this MSP is now very low given that he seems to think he can judge a situation better than trained and experienced officers on the ground. Idiot.

First of all my car died. I ended up renting one for a week, followed by borrowing one from a used car dealership that was able to get me out of a very difficult situation, but that’s a different post. Finally, I managed to find a new car – a nice shiny red VW Golf estate which has impressed me a lot. I’m loving it.

So in my nice new car I was heading to base this morning, not to work and for once not to a callout. Meeting at base at 1000 we set about to prepare ourselves and the base for today’s event – a royal visit.

At about 1400 today, a number of cars pulled up outside base and out stepped Prince William. As the news reports, he was visiting a number of places in the valleys and stopped off to see us as his final visit of the day. We had some fun prepared for him – some hobnobbing with the local dignitaries, a light lunch and then change and head up to Morlais Quarry where we took him to the top off the cliff and he got to lower someone down a cliff – I don’t think his protection detail would have been too amused by my idea of lowering him off the edge of a cliff, but nevertheless, we had some great photo opportunities. It was a great day with fantastic weather and we all thoroughly enjoyed.

That’s when it all went downhill though, because on the way home, some drunken twat drove into my nice shiny new car and drove off without stopping. The damage isn’t too bad, it was a glancing blow but it’s knackered one of my wheels (it’s bent the actual metal bit) and twatted my rear door and rear wing, and after a drive tonight, I think it might have done something to the suspension or thereabouts. I only managed to grab a partial index – “S633…”, and I know it was a pale blue or silver hatchback – a large one, quite wide. Beyond that, the prick didn’t even slow down – no brake lights. I’ve just got home after filling in a police report which was gratifyingly easy and quick, though the nice young PC didn’t hold much hope of catching the turd, and reckoned he was probably drunk anyway.

Great.

The shift started off quiet with no calls from Ambulance control until Saturday morning, meaning that I could get a decent night’s sleep. Of course, a lie in was out of the question as the phone rang at just before 0900 for a call to an elderly lady with a PR bleed. I headed off to the home – it’s a fairly decent place, but it’s more of a sheltered home than a nursing home offering full medical care. Apparently, the lady had been sent home from hospital the week before with a perforated bowel, though that seemed unlikely. Either way, she was in pain and so after only a few minutes of getting her details the crew arrived and she was rapidly taken out to the ambulance. I headed back for some breakfast and a cup of coffee.

Off into Caerphilly at lunchtime to meet an old friend. We managed a decent meal without interruption and I started thinking that I might even be able to get some DIY done today. Of course, on the way back from Asda I had a call, so seeing as I was 20 yards from the house I dropped Sean off, he grabbed the shopping and off I went. The call was for a 54 year old female who’d fallen and had a back and shoulder injury. I found the house OK and headed in – the husband pointed me upstairs where I found the lady bent double over the bed. She’d slipped while showering in the bath and fell backwards onto the taps. She was fairly comfortable so long as she maintained that position and just as I started getting some basic obs the crew turned up. They listened to her chest and suspecting a pneumothorax caused by a broken rib, we got her out to the ambulance quickly and she was blued into A&E.

On the back from that call, I had another, this one to a 98 year old female who’d fallen. Off I went across Caerphilly to find the lady had fallen coming out of the kitchen and had bruised her knees. I took some basic obs, reassured myself that she was ok – the walking around the house proved that. Control called to get an update while I was there which is unusual – they asked if I could clear and since there was a crew pulling up and I said yes. Things had suddenly kicked off with an RTC, a collapse, chest pains, several Difficulty In Breathing calls and a “?CVA – unresponsive”. So I got the CVA. When I got there, the “unresponsive” part was true – he was sitting up and breathing fine but wasn’t responding to us. The crew was coming down the road as I walked into the house, so I gave the chap some oxygen and let the daughter bring the crew up to speed. I assisted in getting him out to the truck and headed back to the car. There was an RRV on as well and I heard him heading off to another job as I packed the car up.

Hoping to go home to get a cuppa, I was still a mile away when the phone rang again – 41 year old female, ankle injury. Ok, no worries I said, where? The answer – “The burger van, Caerphilly Mountain.” “Excuse me?” I queried how far from the road she was and was told that the caller said that she was near the road. I asked to put Mountain Rescue on standby, just in case. I got there quickly – it’s an easy run from where I was and traffic was light – the rain however, wasn’t. I got to the top and there was no sign of anyone with a broken ankle. Back to control who called the reporter, asking me to keep a look out for a woman with a dog. Spotting her across the car park, I asked her for some details. Apparently the lady was some distance from the road. I headed back to the car – by now the rain was heavy and the sky gray – or was it the other way around? Either way, it was cold and wet and getting wetter. I called control back and asked them to arrange for Mountain Rescue – I’d need some backup on this one especially if she was any serious distance from the road. I slung a decent coat on, grabbed my MR kit and my Ambulance bag and off we went.

She was some 500m from the road on a muddy and slippery path. The ankle in question was swollen and slightly deformed and moving it was causing some pain, so I got my KISU tent out (naturally, it was the first thing I thought about this time) and insulated her from the ground. There were 3 other family members and her son, so I put them under the KISU tent too. Meanwhile, I had Mountain Rescue and Ambulance control to coordinate. The ambulance arrived and held at the RV which was the burger van. Police arrived soon after with 2 WPCs slipping and sliding their way up. Helimed – the air ambulance – was rejected due to the fact that the casualty was in trees and Gwent’s helicopter couldn’t fly in this weather. Rescue 169 was an option and after a discussion between myself and one of our MR Incident controller’s, was stood to and asked to make their way to us. The police were happy to leave things to us – the terrain wasn’t good and although they offered the fire service, we really needed MR. Our stretchers are designed to have people strapped into them instead of balanced on top and on this kind of terrain I wasn’t happy with anything else. I had a few conversations people and I think it did show a little of the fact that people aren’t that aware of our capabilities as mountain rescue.

Pretty soon we had plenty of people there and with a blast of entonox, we packaged the lady’s ankle in a vacuum splint and stretchered her off. The team had assessed the path on the way in and stood down 169. Within half an hour she was in the back of the ambulance on the way to Cardiff. I called Ambulance control and advised them that I was going off-service for a while – I had to follow the vacuum splint to Cardiff to retrieve it and then head home to get changed out of my soaking wet clothes. I had a thanks from control and from the police Sargent whom I’ve now seen on a few incidents in the area. I had a chance to chat with the lady in A&E and found that she had indeed fractured her fibula right on the ankle. I wished her well and picking up the splint headed home for chips and a shower and some dry clothes. Despite going back on service the rest of the night was nice and quiet as was the rest of the weekend – I’ve even managed to (finally) finish painting the bathroom.

How was your weekend?