Touchdown!

Paramedic, writer and emergency medicine lecturer/tutor Kelly Grayson wrote yesterday to the people about to start their paramedic programs in the US about What Every Paramedic Student Should Know. One part in particular caught my eye, not just appropriate to US SParas but to everyone involved in pre-hospital care, from first aiders upwards. Reproduced below, the football metaphor might not make complete sense to all the readers of this blog, but the core message will get through. And it’s something always worth baring in mind, when that inevitable point strikes when you think, “Why are we bothering with all this?” We rarely save lives ourselves, but through our interventions and hard work we try to take a hopeless case and make it as easy as possible for the hospital to do so.

You aren’t here to save lives.

I know that flies in the face of every recruiting pitch we use to draw students into paramedic classes in the first place. It contradicts every piece of PR propaganda we use to educate the public about EMS. It may even contradict your very motives for choosing EMS as a profession.

Doesn’t make it any less true, though.

Bottom line is, we don’t save many lives. One the rare occasions we do, it’s largely the result of luck and good timing, and pretty much any yahoo with a CPR card could have performed the lifesaving intervention. Ask any experienced EMTs how many lives they’ve saved, through their actions and their actions alone, and if they’re honest the number will be damned few.

And frankly, if saving lives is the only thing you’re about, you might as well stay an EMT-B. Of the existing research on the efficacy of EMS, the only things that are proven to reduce mortality are BLS interventions: early CPR and defibrillation. But before you go patting yourselves on the back about how wonderful EMTs are, keep in mind that those two things are also considered layperson interventions as well.

But if your motivation goes beyond the adrenaline rush of lights and sirens and the occasional code save, paramedicine has much to offer. Much of what we do, if administered appropriately and in a timely fashion, makes the patient’s injury or illness less stressful, and makes the job of the Emergency Department staff much easier.

A few years ago at an EMS conference, after our respective sessions were done, a colleague and I set forth down Sixth Street in downtown Austin in search of beer and hot wings. Over a platter of spicy wings and not a few pitchers of beer, we proceeded to solve all the problems of EMS. Of course, most of those solutions were lost in the fog of the next day’s hangover, but one thing my buddy said to me that night stuck with me ever since.

“Kelly,” he had said, “it’s not our job to score touchdowns.”

“More hot wings, less beer,” I advised. “You’re starting to babble.”

“No, seriously,” he insisted, punctuated with a gentle belch of Fat Tire Ale. “We’re the special teams of emergency care. It’s not our job to score touchdowns. That’s the job of the offense.”

“I see where you’re going,” I mused, eyeing him speculatively. “So who, exactly, is the offense in your little analogy?”

“The Emergency Department,” he answered. “The offense is the doctors and nurses in the Emergency Department, and occasionally the surgeons or the cath lab.”

“And EMS is special teams… how, exactly?”

“We receive the patients and advance them as close to the goal as we can. We provide the ED staff with good field position. It’s hard to score touchdowns if you’re consistently stuck with bad field position. On the other hand, if your special teams are very good, it makes it that much easier for the offense to score. We don’t save many lives ourselves, but we can make it much easier or much harder for the ED staff to save a life, depending upon our performance.”

“We score touchdowns… er, I mean save lives,” I protested.

“Yeah, but only a tiny fraction of the time,” he explained, “and only if we’re very good or very lucky. Our job is important, dude. We can’t win the game by ourselves, but we can damned sure lose it for everyone else. You can’t win consistently without good special teams. But it’s not our job to score a touchdown on every play.”

“Screw you, Brosius,” I retorted. “I’m a game breaker, baby. I’m a threat to score every time I touch the ball.”

My bravado aside, you’d do well in your careers to heed my buddy’s analogy and consider yourselves the special teams of emergency care. The plain truth is, you’re not going to save many lives in your career, and you’re setting yourself up for a world of disappointment and disillusionment if that’s what you expect.

On the other hand, if you’re not all about the glory of scoring touchdowns, you can find a great deal of career satisfaction by making your patient’s time in your rig a little less stressful, no matter how trivial their chief complaint, and delivering them to the hospital in a little better condition than when they started.

And occasionally, when you do score a touchdown, no one will begrudge you celebrating with a funky end zone dance.

Crunch

As anyone who’ll listen has found out, I am now a tiny step along the way to my dream of owning a Honda Civic Type R (yes, I know it’s chavy, but I don’t care). Yup, I own a nearside wing mirror. This is why:

A few more like that and I’ll have the Ikea version!

Memories I didn’t want

Working with PTS, I end up seeing a great many people a day (unless we’re placed on standby for a rediculous amount of time in somewhere rediculous due to lack of communication within YAS). Now this is a little difficult for me, because although I have a fantastic memory for faces, names is a real tough one. I’ll recognise someone on the street, maybe even remember where from, but have no clue whatsoever of the name.

Fed up of having to subtly read the patient’s notes if I want to ask them a question en route or shrugging my shoulders when a recieving hospital asks, “and what’s the patient’s name?”, I tried a trick from Darren Brown’s “Tricks of the mind” which I read instead of revising last year. The idea is quite simple – imagine the person with something about them associated with their name. The weirder or more disturbing the better, as it is burnt into your head that way. A couple of examples (names have been changed to protect the innocent):

• John Brown. The guy who works our desk is called John, so imagined the patient dressed as he would, and also being a black guy (ooo, racially insensitive!)
• Rose. I imagined her head on a stem growing from the ground, surrounded by flowers.*

Not quite...

The worst though, was an elderly lady named Jenny. Now, I knew a girl at school called Jenny. That is, being a teenage male with hormones running wild through my body, I knew of a girl called Jenny, mainly due to the fact that she had large breasts and wore an exceedingly short skirt on a regular basis. One day I was walking into school through the bus stop we had out front, as the door of a low sprung sports car popped open, narrowly missing me. I turned to confront my assailant, and there was Jenny climbing out, showing her long legs and the day’s choice of underwear to the entire world. This image was seared into my testosterone fueled brain, and no matter how hard I try not to, the first thing the word Jenny triggers in my memory is this girl in school uniform leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination and imprinting herself in the memories of all the guys getting off the bus that had just pulled up alongside.

This unfortunately meant when I tried to remember the name “Jenny”, my first thought was this old woman, complete with nappy and beard, dressed in school uniform complete with a strip of fabric which was probably sold as a “wide belt”, long legs encased in dark brown tights, and a pair of white knickers clearly on display. At this point the rest of my brain shut down protectively, so that I couldn’t even think of a replacement image and leaving those poor neurones who were stuck with that picture trying desparately to top themselves.

The image stuck with me for the entire trip, and so in that way served its purpose. But it still won’t leave me alone, even two weeks later which is why I’m writing this thing!

* While writing this, it occured to me that an even more disturbing way to remember Rose – the wrinkly old lady laid on a bed of rose, with stratigically placed pettles covering those parts that no-one would ever want to think of, American Beauty style. Excuse me while I now go and get hidiously drunk to forget these images.

Focus on this, and try not to imagine what I just wrote

On reflection

I don’t want to flog a dead horse, so this’ll be the last I have to say on the matter. But I’ve had some time to reflect, and I feel that what I have to say needs to be said and this is the best medium to publish it in (especially as the post in question got 102 hits yesterday alone). Apologies in advance for any sarcasm or cynicism, but I’m a bit pissed off! It’s a bit long, but if you’ve been following the blog for the last week (or heard about what’s going down) I’d encourage you to read – there’s an “executive summary” at the bottom for you busy types…

There’s an organisation I’m a member of. I won’t say its name or link to it, but it’s involved in providing first aid cover at events. You see, that’s one of my favourite hobbies – providing first aid cover.

Most of the time, I love working with said organisation. On the whole, being a member is a fantastic experience. But as with all things that big, there are inherent problems. These range from the minor (“our shirts should be green not white“) to the more major (“people from here are better than people fro there“, “people of this age are better from people of that age”) to the frankly dangerous (“we’re so much better than the people from there that we’re going to use this bit of equipment, and this driving technique, and make these types of diagnoses”). The problem is exaserbated because those involved are all volunteers. There’s no real heirarchy like in a large corporation, instead everyone fights for power for reasons that even they themselves barely understand. People seem to crave the rank, the positions of importance, from “just because I can” to “I’ve failed in where I want to go in my life, but I’m damned well going to boss someone around”. There are those up there who deserve the rank, deserve their place running the organisation. This is because they care about the organisation, and want to make those changes. Unfortunately, their lives are blighted by the power mad or the “it wasn’t like this in my day” brigade.

The organisation also has a great strength in fixing these problems – again, we’re all volunteers. And when volunteers spot these kind of things going tits-up, then often they have the time and the love of the organisation to attempt to fix these. Some even see it, and they should, that they have a duty to those involved to try and change things for the better. If you care for the organisation, give a lot of time and effort to it then you want to see it succeed. I’ve always tried to help the organisation and fix things that I see going wrong since I first got heavily involved. I was (and still am, for that matter) passionate about rolling out the new corporate identity (something I feel very strongly about as it’s the one thing that will most affect the public’s perception of us, and having a coherent, modern and professional identity is very important. It’s not perfect, but it’s a damn sight better than it used to be). I’m now involved in sorting out some training issues, because that’s where I thought I could help out (the issue here is just lack of time available to the training people given the reams of paperwork and faff that have to go into each course, so any help that can be offered is gratefully received!). I try to get involved in regional issues if I feel I can help or if I spot something going pear-shaped. In the same way that you’d be expected to pull someone up for a clinical issue, you should as a volunteer for the organisation feel that it’s also your job to pull someone up for a management issue, or a training issue, or whatever.

The problem is that the majority of those who have the power within the organisation don’t take kindly to this. Why? Is it because they faught so hard to get this power that they worry someone might come and take it from them? Is it that they love this feeling of being in charge so much? I honestly don’t know. What I have come to realise, from bitter experience, is that the higher you get up the chain of command the harder it becomes to change things, the harder it is to make it clear that yes, there are clever people within the organisation with ideas and initiative, and maybe listening to them will make the whole thing work a bit better. Lets take the case of Matt Dinnery. When the new corporate identity was released, we were provided (after a while) with plugins for Word and Powerpoint to allow us to use it on letterheads, presentations, etc. Matt realised, as several others did, that not everyone in the world uses Windows, or can afford Microsoft Word. So he used some initiative, and made templates in OpenDocument Format. For this he was kicked out of the organisation. Pretty reasonable response for providing a much needed service, don’t you think?

I’ve had issues with the organisation. Things like proprietary software usage rank low on my scale of annoyance, but I still try and make people notice the problems, and I’m grateful to those like Matt who actually enable a linux user like myself to comply with the CI. I’ve also had issues with trainers and the way they train courses – I’ve gone straight to these people, we’ve chatted, and they’ve changed some things and as a result of the dialogue I’ve realised some things. This works because they’re, more or less, my peers within the organisation. My main annoyance is with operational issues (things going wrong on duties), and that’s where it gets messy.

The problem is that these operational issues are almost always due to the action of someone “above” me. They often happen on “out of county” work too, so not under the command of people within my own region of the organisation. If you have a worry, and feel that you should express it, for any reason from the professional appearance of the organisation or the sanity of your colleagues through to patient safety, as I said earlier you have a duty to report it. This is a arduous and horribly drawn out task. On multiple occasions I have done, as have several of my confrères (great word!) have tried too.

We’ve tried writing a letter as a group. We’ve tried writing individual letters. We’ve tried phoning and speaking to those “in charge”. In all these cases, nothing has happened. It seems like the people who could actually make a difference don’t want to listen, and they’re shielded by a bunch of people who might want to make a difference but can’t due to those above them, or are too busy trying to keep their position near the top of the pile to care. What’s the solution?

I use this blog to write about things that I like, things that annoy me, and just about anything that I fancy. This includes my hobbies. People who share my interests in life read this blog. So I thought – why not post some of the issues I’m having here! They’re comments that need to be said, that people need to take notice of, and if my peers can read them out here then perhaps they’ll see that it’s not just them, perhaps they’ll feel that they can take up the fight too and that those at the top will have no option but to respond. To that end, I wrote a long blog post about a recent event – one that I gave up a whole day of my free time and £16 for, and one that went horribly horribly wrong from a making-volunteers-happy perspective. This is something that needs fixing, because without the influx of volunteers that event could never go ahead. I even came up with what I thought the problem is (and what a lot of other people do), and perhaps even started on the road to some solutions.

To some extent, it had the intended effect. Colleagues saw it, they posted replies, it started some good dialogue going both in the comments thread and by email. It even prompted someone to forward it on to someone with a higher rank, someone who might be able to take note of the issues raised and do something about them.

Immediately, I was told to take the post down.

Why is this? Because it gives the public a bad impression of us? Perhaps, but then how many members of the public who care read this blog? I think the answer is “out of sight, out of mind”. We can ignore a letter, lose it on a desk somewhere, fob them off with an “I’m sorry”. But a post of the internet? Where like-minded people can find it? Where people can comment on it? That’s just down right dangerous. People will talk to each other. People will think. And people will realise that things need changing. And the more people get together, the harder it’s going to be to sweep the issue under the carpet.

A lot of it comes down to the age problem – we’re “too young” at mid-twenties to know anything of the organisation, apparently. Us young upstarts don’t know the organisation like it used to be, how those in charge would like it to be. And if any of us show initiative, that obviously means we want to take over, and those in charge don’t like feeling like there may be someone better for the job than them out there. But old guard, you have to realise a simple point:

We are the future members. We are the future users of the service. We know what people nowadays think of the organisation, and what they want of it. We can see what is broken, what needs to be modernised, and how the organisation needs to evolve to survive in this modern day. And we’re prepared to fight for the organisation to be everything it should be.

Telling me to remove a blog post doesn’t work – people have already seen it, commented on it (both online and individually). Removing it actually does worse for your credibility:

“How many people find a deleted post more telling than post explaining things from a personal perspective?” (Mark)

The thing is, blogs are the perfect medium for this kind of discussion. Now people are talking, agreeing, and it’s making them think about what is wrong and what they can do about it. Kind of my original aim, but it’s now taken off better than I could have hoped. The reason is that I do actually care, quite strongly, about making the organisation work. I can’t emphasise this enough – I don’t write this kind of thing to just have a go, I do it for a reason.

On a side note, why can’t I blog about this organisation? I blog about the good and the bad with regards to films, food, music – why can’t I do the same with my hobbies? If I said “the organisation is ace” I’d be commended, yet if I say “this is something wrong with the organisation, this is my opinion why, this is how I think it can be changed” I’m a very naughty boy. Strange.

“Funny, I don’t recall the ‘As a member, we may instruct you to terminate your right to free speech’ term in the policies…” (Matt)

I think that’s all I have to say. Just so it’s all covered, here’s a summary:

• In general, I, like a lot of people, enjoy being part of this organisation. It’s as a whole friendly, fun, and useful
• However, as with any other large volunteer organisation, there are some major issues
• The majority of these issues are political ones, bought about by people who have power who shouldn’t who are frightened by change
• The young people at the base are the future of the organisation. They’re the people most in touch with the public, especially the future service users. They’re the people who can see the pros and cons of the organisation as it is, and who can see how to change it
• Unfortunately, these young people are being ignored. Luckily we‘re pigheaded enough like the organisation enough that we will fight for it to evolve for the better
• So please, communicate with us

I just want to do what I can to fix the problems that will prevent this organisation being all it should be. If anyone involved would like to speak to me about this, please please please leave a comment or email me.

If the NHS delivered pizza…

Because we were chatting about it in the pub yesterday:

“Hello, you are through to dial a pizza, can I confirm your phone number please?”

“Yes, my number is 121-3456″

“Ah, I have that as number 12 Anyroad street”

“Wow great yeah, how did you do that?”

“Dial a pizza has invested in some new software that was going cheap, it is called ‘Call Connect’ and we think it’s great”

“‘Kin Hell! what else does it do?”

“Well you will be pleased to know that a 12 inch margherita is on the way to you as we speak”

“Why have you done that?”

“Well, come on, you phoned us, chances are you will want a pizza so we sent you one the moment we picked up the phone”

“But hold on, how do you know that you’re sending me what I want?”

“Look, you phoned for a pizza, we are sending you a pizza, it should be about half way there by now”

“But I haven’t placed my order yet, why have you sent it already? This really stinks”

“Okay I hear what you are saying but it isn’t my fault”

“What do you mean it isn’t your fault?”

“You phone a pizza house, we send you a pizza”

“I might want a kebab”

“Ah yes. Well, although we are a pizza chain and we do do kebabs, the government have decided that you should always get a margherita within 8 minutes on 75% of the occasions you call us when you are really hungry. Let me see, our computer says that the delivery guy should be there any minute now”

“That’s just fucking stupid”

“Sorry sir, that’s the way it is. Now may I take your order please?”

“Order? I was just phoning to see if you were open on Wednesdays”

“Oh shit! Hold on a second, I’ll just see if I can call the delivery driver off, we have a call coming in from someone who really needs this pizza, he is saying that it’s a life or death matter… Nope, sorry, it looks like our driver is committed. Right, okay here’s what we will do, our delivery guy will just check you over to see that you aren’t hungry now and I am sure he will happily explain our opening hours whilst he is filling in the Response Not Consumed paperwork”

*knock knock*

“Pizza Delivery”

[Shamelessly stolen from email linking to BWTS.org] 

In which Nick spends New Year’s Eve with drunks

… And not the usual type of drunks on NYE, where I’m one of them and we’re all playing silly party games safely in the confines of Helen’s house. No, instead I went and volunteered to spend NYE in London, helping to keep the capital’s streets free of the extremely drunk and trivially injured.

And I survived! I lived through Jamie’s driving, a man for whom speed limits are mere suggestions of a boring velocity. I managed to avoid being molested on the tube despite my highly inconspicous attire. I didn’t get food poisoning from the dodgy “self heating” meals we were offered. And I failed to be swept away by the hoards of quite pissed firework viewers despite wandering through them on regular occasions.

In a move that will make certain friends jealous and confirm my tragicness, I also managed to get excited by meeting “Tom Reynolds“. I’m trying to work out if it says more about my that I asked the Sterophonics if they were famous, yet managed to recognise a blogging EMT in the dark, or that I left Jamie to cope on his own in the back of an ambulance with a casualty who spoke no English and was complaining of chest pain (in reality he had the flu, but we had to dig out an Arabic translation book to ascertain this – and also discovered that his stools were not black along the way) to swoon in a fanboyish way and blag an autograph…

The event itself was manic. Actually, it was pretty quiet until Big Ben went bong a few times, with just the hardcore drinkers coming in to visi (by means of all three emergency services) including a gentleman whos vomit actually made me gag for the first time in a year and a young lady who’s significant other was following the Casino Royal school of resuscitation, where you stick your tongue down the throat of someone who’s having issues breathing. I’m not sure how it’s supposed to help – needless to say I didn’t try it myself.

But there must have been something in the fireworks, because after watching those (and posing for St John publicity photos) the shit hit the fan in a major way as every man, woman and child (I kid you not) and his/her/it’s dog decided to get either completely mashed, injured or develop an interesting illness (often a combination of the above) and need looking after. We ended up getting sent away from our lovely LINKS run post (with competant managers and only one London type, but she made bacon sarnies and so can be forgiven) to another which was overwhelmed with piss heads, and was suffering even worse due to being run by a dinosaur from London District with a complete lack of either management or clinical skills and a bad case of rankitis.

[A note for the non-initiated: St John has a series of military style ranks, intended for people doing things within divisions through to county staff. But instead of meaning something useful, in a lot of cases rank (especially at lower levels) is given out as a freebee for hanking around for a long time. As a result, rank means pretty much Jack when it comes to operations, and most counties know this. Except of course for London, where they take birdshit on the shoulder very seriously, and the person with the "highest" rank runs things regardless of their actual ability, leading to many a "hilarious" situation.]

The casualties themselves throughly pissed me off, though this again was affected by the lack of serious leadership at the post. At one point I was dealing with four people myself, only one of whom was actually injured through no fault of her own and hadn’t even had a drink, as well as running around as my “advanced skills” (or as I prefer, l33t PTA skillz ) were in high demand (my ability to actually bring an O2 cyclinder to the worst stocked post ever administer oxygen and take blood pressures made me a king amongst men). In no way should the majority of those people been there, it was just selfish being so incredibly drunk that you needed four people to go and pick you up out of the crowd, carry you to the post, and tie up other people to make sure you didn’t choke on your own vomit or stop breathing when there were other people who actually needed our help and attention. By half one all my social skills and patience had disappeared, and I was on the verge of ramming an airway down the throat of the any drunk who played unconcious on me (waving a huge orange pipe in the face of a pissed 16 year old while poking him in the eye socket – leading to his friends asking the police if I was allowed to cause him pain, and the police response ,”he can do whatever he wants” – and threatening to stick it down his throat did actually get him to sit up and start drinking water like a good little boy, that and the threat of his mum coming to pick him up off the street).

Despite all this, it was great fun. Being rushed off my feet was fantastic, even if the casualties weren’t hugely serious – it was nice to get back to doing some proper first aid as opposed to sitting around doing either nothing or paperwork like I spent most of last term doing. And, with the few exceptions noted above, I was hanging around with friends and great people. The whole thing also re-enforced my decision to [try and] study medicine, as despite not getting home until 0630 (0200 stand down my arse!) 13.5 hours after I left the house, I’d happily go and do it all again. And that wasn’t just tiredness talking (though I’m writing this at quarter to three as my body clock is still broken), I still feel that way in the cold light of day.

Speaking of podcasts…

Having just mentioned all the time to listen to podcasts, by following various links I came across…

MedicCast – Dealing with dehavioral emergencies

I really need to warn that this is not for the faint of heart with regards to mental health, as it gets quite serious and could upset people with a history, but of a lot of interest to me given the events of the past few years (and especially Download!). I hope the tips within it never have to be of use to me in the future, but they’re useful to know…

Disturbing Technology Inc

Now you too can experience the joys of having a child…

Sounds like an idea (not necessarily a good one, but the Japanese robot industry doesn’t appear to have the same definition of “good” as sane people do). At least until you watch the videos. If only the thing could do something other than flail its arms about and make “honk honk” noises it might be slightly less creepy :S

And in other news, only three days left. Then it is off to here for the weekend.

Balls, bikes, and a synonym for New Hall beginning with B

It’s scary how fast the term is going without me doing any appreciable amount of work! However, this did have the useful side effect of the SJA Cambridgeshire Ball appearing unannounced on Saturday. So after a hasty phone round all the taxi firms in East Anglia, withdrawing an obscene £200 from the bank, and rushing around trying to find a) My smart shoes (I couldn’t) and b) My uniform shirt (not for the ball, but it had gone missing from the laundry room* and is kind of important) we were on our way to Peterborough.

The night, though expensive, was amazing. Much merriment was had, even if it turned into the CUFAS and BGE clique vs Old People. And surprisingly, not that much drinking due to the ridiculous prices (£10 for a vodka martini!). And Ana, for a change, stole a lot of balloons. So many that she couldn’t fit into the toilet cubicle. So many that they couldn’t all fit in the minibus for the trip home.

Despite having not drunk much, getting up six hours later was still fraught with hangover. “Why get up that early?” you might be asking. Well, for some reason it would be more fun to learn to ride a bike. I can already do this however, but I had to do this course as “jumping through hoops” so I could play on the nice new SJA bikes.

They’re pretty similar to the above picture (in fact, they are the same bike and panniers) but I look less effeminate (is that a dude or a woman?) and our bikes are better stocked (the saggy bit behind the seat should hold the end of a cylinder) and use a less lame siren. As you may well be able to guess, we all passed easily, but I have decided I want one of the bikes (costing a mere £1100) as they are just so good to ride.

Still working hard, it was off to New Hall for the birthday party of our Queen Natalie (wearing the crown in the above photo). Not content with embarrassing her in front of the whole of SJA Cambridgeshire when the clock struck midnight, we turning up at New Hall, got horribly lost trying to find the JCR (I was using the Dirk Gently method of following someone who looks like they know where they are going – I did find some odd looking giant metal beetles though) and then 0wnz0red (lolroflwtf!!!1!one) at Pin the Tail on the Donkey. The whole affair shocked me slightly though – despite the stories, I didn’t know New Hall was actually like that. I don’t mean rampant hot lesbian orgies in the corridors before you gents go running up there (at least, there were none while I was there), but the whole girls school sitting-around-in-pyjamas, curling-up-on-the-sofa(-in-a-none-sexual-manner) and bouncing-up-and-down-in-excitement-at-some-cake type thing. Odd.

And finally, yet another lol internet moment to lighten up what would otherwise be an even more poring and trivial post. While looking on SP Services for a belt pouch (honest!) I stumbled upon their Mobile Refrigerated Mortuary. Disturbing as this was, the more disturbing thing was their associated products section, which was unfortunately named “family products”:

*Turns out the shirt had been taken by someone because his shirt had gone missing. So not thinking to look through the pile of white shirts already in the laundry, he took the one with St John logos on it from the small pile of clothes, the other two peices being my greens, in retribution. He then proceeded to wear it to the bar yesterday (which ignoring the illegality of him doing so, is just taking the piss!), Apparently it was being returned last night – it had better be washed or in at least a serviceable state as I need it tonight (though I quite like the idea of LINKS invoicing him for another one…

Best moment ever (perhaps slight hyperbole, but…)

Bunch of typical long haired rock goth metalhead types, some carrying bags, crowd round a casualty.

Me: “Look, could you guys just piss off”

One of them: “But we’re with the band”

Me: “I don’t care, you’re not going through that door”

Casualty’s friend: “You can’t tell Trivium to piss off!”

… uncomfortable pause…

Me: “Yes I can”

This may have been more significant had I known who Trivium were (apparently they’ve sold the most metal records in a single year, or in the words of someone there, “The best band in the world, EVAR!”). And they were actually pretty nice people!