the first aids

On Tuesday evening I took to the tube to Clapham where I met up with my bro and Al. It was still a pretty evening but a little cold so we chose to sit inside after a few blustery cigarettes on the roof garden. Shortly after a hysterical conversation about Boxing Helena (I laughed so hard I nearly tore a rib) we were joined by Harry and O and after another pair of Courage Bests my bro and I left them to it and we went our separate ways home. Myfwt popped over for some beans and a chat and on account of her having just moved from a rented room to a flat, picked up some stuff that I’d been storing on her behalf. I had an early night because Wednesday was going to require a little more focus than the usual day at the office.

I arrived at Blackfriars with just enough to time to smoke a tab in the sunshine. Taxis and buses carrying commuters passed the throngs of pedestrians that sloshed about me as I located my destination, screwed my cigarette on my shoe and went upstairs.

On entering a colleague said ‘good morning’ and some badly tattooed wag with spiky hair and an American football t-shirt grunted ‘we’ve been hearing all about you…’ An embarrassed rumble of sotto laughter descended as quickly as it had rose. ‘Christ’ I thought to myself ‘its going to be one of those days’.

On contrary it was not. The whole day was as much an exercising in undoing bad so-called first-aid practice as learning the correct procedure. The group, a motley combination of ten -managers, teachers and office types –and one trainer (a pleasant Asian estuary-English-spoken woman, typical paramedic if you’re familiar with such types) introduced herself, as we did to one another, and dropped us in the thick of a horrific motorcycle crash related scenario and quizzed us on our actions.

Having some basic knowledge of first aid, possibly more when it comes to those relating to motorcycle accidents so I thought (having been on the receiving end of a few) I was amazed to discover that if I’d been first on the scene the fictitious patient in question would’ve died a screaming agonising death. Possibly in flames. It’s okay to move them, even remove their helmets in order to check they’re breathing and take it from there, sounds obvious doesn’t it but so many myths and archaic ‘facts’ had been piped into me over the years I was immediately concerned about being on the receiving end of incompetent treatment of people like myself…

What was slightly annoying about the day was the perpetual interjection from the hooligan with the spiky hair, he was a nice enough chap actually but had a mouth bigger than the Blackwall Tunnel and seemed to me at least that just about every possible injury known to a human had occurred to him in some form or another, including incidents of ‘when I was 6, right…’ and ‘this geezer, right…’ until he bowled us a googly when it transpired his brother was a 26 year old autistic epileptic lad with Spina bifeda and he’d pretty much been his sole carer in his brothers life. Trouble is he realised he’d touched a communal nerve so he kept on about it ad infinitum and decided this was a good opportunity to discover every possible nuances of what to do when someone has a fit, which is essentially nothing save calling a fucking ambulance. I was more interested to know about what to do if someones guts all came out or how to help a person squashed under a train, or something. We didn’t learn this either… but I do know how to stop someone from carking it if they get stabbed or slashed open and shit.

It was a fascinating day, even more delightful was that but 2.30 we were done. I took the tube back with my colleague and stopped off at that awful Wimbledon place to procure an espresso maker for IC and got back with plenty of time to write some of this and take a much-needed shower.

I met IC at the local in the beer garden for a couple before departing back to the flat with sushi, we watched a very insubstantial documentary about the Austrian lunatic who imprisoned and raped his daughter and their subsequent children for a quarter of a decade… it was shit.

Another beautiful day, gee, I hope it doesn’t rain or anything.