I’ve won a few awards in my time. Some good, some not so good, some funny, some serious. I won a penknife in the team a few years ago for my attendance at incidents. I won the “Kermit the Frog” award at my last job for a Friday afternoon mishap that was categorised as severe “muppetry”.

Tonight I won two awards. The first was the “What the sh** was that?!” award for going above and beyond the call of duty in rescuing a casualty as we crossed the range in an international archery championship and stopped the competition in order to rescue a young lady.

In addition to that, I won a second award – this one was the “Phwooar!” award for a “most convincing display of flirting with a member of the Royal Family”. In my defense, I will say I wasn’t flirting, though it might have been a different case if it had been his younger brother….

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.