My First Day as an Ambulanceman

I joined my present private ambulance company in November 2005

The owner of the company, Roy, was annoyed with Danny, a Paramedic.
Danny had taken Roy's jeep to the Pathology Department in the centre of Bristol. His mission was to view a post mortem - the gruesome thing!!

Roy is a member of the Salvation Army and plays the cornet in their beautiful band - they make a super sound - cool as you Americans would say. Roy was due for a practice session in a couple of hours . . . . . AND . . . . his musical instrument, including some of his fellow band members' instruments were in the jeep, which was hi-jacked by Danny and now in Bristol.

Jeepers!!! Roy was fuming!! "Why couldn't Danny take another car?", Roy insisted.

My first ever mission was to seek and locate this jeep at the Pathology Department, find Danny and Exchange cars - sounds simple, but I was not exactly sure where the Path Lab was.

I knew the general direction and called into the hospital where I thought it was and asked for the Pathology Department. I was greeted by a DEADPAN look by a 'thicko' on reception who uttered these immortal words, "Dunno Gov!", with not an offer to find information from elsewhere.

Not wishing to be put off by such negative vibes I proceeded across the road to an older and more promising possible location and knocked on the door - NOTHING! Knocked again - NOTHING!

A woman came out of a building next to this, saw me in my ambulance uniform and asked me if she could assist me. I mentioned that I was looking for the mortuary and had knocked on this door and noticed THERE WAS NO SIGN OF LIFE there!! Thinking this was exactly the criteria I was seeking, and suggesting I had reached the correct location, I was rather put off when the woman went into hysterical laughter and informed me that there were no STIFFS in that building and the place I wanted was just down that lane. She proceeded to give me precise instructions and completed the conversation by commenting I was far too late to assist anyone there from a medical viewpoint. I complimented her on her keen sense of humour and we had a good laugh and I proceeded on my way, sensing time was ebbing away.

With a new spring in my step I strode to the new venue and was transported to the mortuary and into the pathology department. I was aware of locating not only Danny the Paramedic but also a row of silent companions with sheets over them and their feet sticking out of the end as though they were lying at ease, all well regimented and silent. Danny was a bit put out at this interruption - the pathologist was just removing the front of a rib cage, just like Professor Gunther von Hagens did on his rather contentious TV live autopsy programmes. The officials did not mind anyone watching them work but my knees were beginning to shake a bit and I felt a bit squeamish, so I left pronto.

We swapped cars and JEEPERS again I had a huge learning curve because the jeep was an automatic and I had never driven one . . . . . AND . . . . it was a BRUTE and was parked in a small car park with only inches to spare between several cars. So I learned to drive it in the car park and without scraping anything I managed to get the jeep onto the main road and home to base.

I was greeted by Roy, the red faced MD who said, "Well done" and proceeded to take control and dash off into the sunset with blues and sirens going . . . quite illegally since there was no emergency . . . and off to band practice.

That was quite enough excitement for my first day, do you not think?
Oh I did not include a link to an Autopsy website - I sense you are not that keen to see one.

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In conclusion I must apologise for not visiting many of your sites lately - I am very busy with ambulance work and a new job there - I shall visit you as soon as I can. Meanwhile I can still push out an ambulance story or two and I am working on another 'biggy' - watch this space!!!