So, dinner? Prawns and noodles? And chilli and garlic and ginger and Nom?

Yeeehhh.

In the living room when there’s a FFFASH! noise from the kitchen. I run in thinking that the prawns have caught fire and instead find this:

The lid on the saucepan exploded!

Still served dinner though…think of the starving babies in Africa…

An ambulance passes, rolling to the hospital. Shall we sneak inside and see what’s going on?

In the vehicle a heavily intoxicated woman lies on the trolley while a paramedic sits opposite her. Their conversation runs thus:

“D’you love me?”
“I don’t love you, no. I’m your paramedic.”
“Stop! Stop the car! I wanna get oot!”
“I know, we’re nearly there. Don’t touch your seatbelt.”
“I’m starving.”
“What do you want to eat?”
“Coffee.”
“How’s about steak and chips?”
“Nawwww! Radge…”
“Ok. What then?”
“Yerra fuckin’ radge…..gizza kiss?”
“Away!”
“Ah’m gorgeous! Will you love me in the morning?”
“Hah! My mother warned me about women like you!”
“Yerra fuckin’ radge…you never loved me…fuckin’….fuck’s SAKE…I cannae get oot! Did you ever love me?”
“I’ve never met you before. Do you stay with anyone?”
“Mffgrrhh…”
“Do you just stay yourself?”
“Ah dinnae unnerstan’….”
“How many Valium did you take today?”
“Will you take me home?”
“No. Hospital first.”
“Fuckin’ RADGE!”

Let’s leave them to it…they’re getting on so well.

1995:
A kid at school gets hired by his drama tutor for his first professional acting gig. He makes £20 a day. A day. His allowance is currently £40 a month. He learns to perform, to spin an audience into a little ball in the palm of his hand and…PING! flick them off into laughter, tears and anger.

1999
The same kid, having done a little extra work in between while he finishes school, lands himself a national tour. He travels around Scotland for nine weeks. He grins at people when they ask what he does.

“I’m an actor.”

He learns to sword fight, to wire plugs and pyros.

He learns to juggle.

He learns to crave applause, to push a little harder with each show to get an extra whoop of approval from the crowd.

2002
The kid moves to Edinburgh, home of golden paving slabs and slavering directors ready to hire him, to propel him to stardom.

It turns out?

He’s not the only young actor in town.

He lands a job at a local tourist attraction for the summer, in make-up and costume he performs to thousands of tourists.

He makes them laugh and scream.

The summer ends and so does his contract.

He needs to pay the bills.

He hears of a job from a colleague, her Mum needs someone to run a photocopier in a Civil Service department.

He turns up for the interview and when asked “Are you interested in government or the law?” he falters.

She smiles kindly.

“Do you need the money?”

He nods, she’s honest.

“That’s ok. We all work for money…I think you’re overqualified to do our photocopying. Have you ever worked in a library?”

He has.

He lands a job.

2006.
Four years have passed.

He’s learned intricacies of Scots Law and the cataloguing of legislation that make most people’s brains leak, slowly,down their nose.

He is taught to bow to three different depths, dependent on the context in which he meets people.

He learns a new language of legalese.

He acts a little, but accepts he’ll never be a performer.

He researches sentences for sex criminals. Child murderers.

He runs documents in and out of courtrooms in which landmark cases are being discussed.

It’s a performance, but there’s no applause.

No whoops.

Snow falls each winter into the square outside his desk, covers the statues outside, the grey block walls and ornate collonades.

He stews, desperate for a challenge.

One morning he stares at the tiles in the shower and realises that if he wants to be a civil servant for the rest of his life, he’s doing it right.

If he wants to be a paramedic, like he knows he wants to be, he’s going to have to do something about it.

He does something about it.

2008
He’s working as an ambulance technician on a pushbike at the Edinburgh Festival when he receives an emergency call.

A street performer has climbed onto railings and slipped, ripping the flesh from one side of his hand.

He cycles fast, sprays water into the wound under pressure and dresses it as best he can.

2009
He’s back on the bike. He sees a familiar face.

“How’s the hand?”

The performer shows him a jagged scar.

“The surgeon says my nerves are fucked, they’ll have to transplant.”

2010
He’s patrolling the City Centre and swings into Parliament Square, late afternoon sunshine has dipped below the high buildings that once housed his office.

He peers with interest at the windows as he passes and narrowly avoids cycling into two little lads playing with diabolos.

“Fucking Fringe visitors…” he grumbles to himself.

One of the boys neatly steps back, flicks one stick and sends his diabolo spinning into the air before elegantly catching it.

At the side sit a couple, one of them waves a nearly perfectly healed hand.

“Is this the guy who patched you up?” asks his wife.

They chat.

The two boys, their sons, turn tricks with the diabolos.

He watches them and says to his new friends.

“I haven’t thrown one of those in years.”

His patient reaches into a bag and passes him a diabolo and sticks.

“Wanna go?”

He’s torn.

He’s a grown-up, with a grown-up job.

That’s his past life, who he used to be.

What will people say when they catch a paramedic juggling in the car-park of the Supreme Court?

He takes the sticks and slowly spins the diabolo on the string, remembering the balance points, tilting the sticks back and forth.

He gets braver, whips the string around the axle a couple of times, remembering the fizzing whirr of rope of metal.

He gently hops it a few feet, catches it on the string.

“Higher…” the patient’s wife calls.

Another few feet.

“Higher…” the kids say.

Ten feet, he still catches it.

The patient loses patience.

“Go on. Just fucking throw it. Do it.”

He slams the strings apart and the diabolo rockets into the sky, above the roof level of the surrounding buildings, catching on the sunshine at its new altitude before falling back to the outstretched strings.

Three sections of his life shiver, realign themselves and fall into a new frame.

He wraps the strings back around the sticks and hands the equipment back.

Maybe he’ll go buy one.

It’s been a while since he threw a diabolo….

Last Wednesday evening I was sitting eating dinner with the Digitals, watching DigitalLouis do his “How Much Mucus Can One Child Produce?” cabaret when DigitalKatie said to me.

“If he’s like this tomorrow, he’s not going to nursery. Can we call you?”

So it wasn’t with much surprise that I answered my phone to her the next morning - can I look after a snotty wee boy for the day?

Does Rose Kennedy own a black dress?

So Louis and I spent the day watching CBeebies, doing paperwork, learning about cocaine’s anaesthetic properties and nibbling on chocolate biscuits. The whole “limit cross contamination” thing kinda goes out of the window, however, when your patient just wants to spend the entire day coughing into the side of your neck.

So firmly showered in germs, I handed him back at the end of the day and packed my bags for Berlin.

Because, yes, I was flying out to Germany (yes, again, shut up) to go and see the lovely Aarayan. Because she’s lovely and wonderful and was in no way an attempt to stop her phoning me and shouting “You never come and SEEEEEEEE MEEEEEEE.”

Last time I was in Berlin I was seeing Kiri, but she was (unbeknownst to me) in Scotland so I spent the entire weekend hanging out with Aarayan.

And we did nothing. It was amazing.

An average day went:

Lie in; brunch; little stroll around funky indy art galleries and craft shops and flea markets; coffee; cake; beer; dinner; beer; ‘nother bar; beer; ‘nother bar; beer; ‘nother bar; white russians; oh jesus; stagger; sleep; repeat.

Guttered. Guttered and lovely.

Aarayan introduced me to some of her friends, who are all amazing and I even got to learn some more German.

I can now say “Excuse me.” “Same again, please.” “Can I pay, please?”

There should be a badge that one can wear that says “I am just learning your language, please do not say anything to me, just nod and smile a lot.”

Because I was going “Excuse me, can I pay, please?”

And they were smiling and coming over to the table and handing me a bill and just as I was digging out the right amount of money, they’d go.

“German german. German german german? German, german german german!”

And I had to go.

“Ummmm….Sorry.”

And then they’d segue into PERFECT FUCKING ENGLISH and make me feel inadequate in two languages.

Sad face.

So it was that on Monday morning at 2 o’clock I was sat in a bar drinking pints of wheat beer and saying to Aarayan “I have to get up in four hours for my flight, I should probably go to bed.”

Bed. Woke up drunk. Ryanair.

Shudder.

Thanks, though, to the Ryanair steward who, in heavily accented English, made the following announcement.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention please. Travelling with us today is a passenger with a peanus allergy. If this person is exposed to peanus they could become very sick, therefore we would ask that if you have any peanus with you, you do not unwrap it, nor that you eat any peanus while on the flight today. To repeat, there is to be no peanus eaten on this flight today. Thankyou.”

I swear, I nearly puked laughing.

Over the next few hours it transpired that I was not only harbouring Louis’ cold, but that my weekend of endless drunkeness had smothered it completely.

And now that I wasn’t drunk any more? Just terminally hungover?

Why that seems the PERFECT time to get chills, shivers, snotty nose, storming headache and joint pain.

Coupled with the kinda of intestinal joy that comes from 72 hours of strange sausages and beer.

Whoosh.

There will be no more poo references, I promise.

Continuing my aging theme of “Don’t Do That.” I have just come out the back end (ok, one more poo reference) of a three day hangover, with nightshifts throughout.

Ich bin ein massive jake. As the Germans would say.

If they couldn’t speak English.

Or German.

Stay in school, kids. Don’t drink, don’t do drugs.

Anyone got an Alka Seltzer?

One of those nights between Christmas and Hogmanay, nothing much to celebrate but no framework of work and routine to hang oneself from, she swallows pills and vodka.

We puzzle over foreign medications, pharmacological mysteries tangled up in Ks and Zs, Ws and Js, a family friend is called to translate, the phone shuttled back and forth between us.

I crouch before her and break out my one line of Polish - “What’s your name?”

She responds, with a faint smile. Her husband laughs, clapping my shoulder.

“You speak Polish!”

No, no. Just a few phrases, “What’s your name? Please. Thankyou. Hospital. Pain. Police. Stand up, please. Get up!”

They laugh, the police arrive and I become Polish consultant. Spelling names is difficult when your letters are pronounced differently, the cops take the names of everyone in the room, even the baby staring at us all from behind her drooly fingers.

“Catteeyah?” the policewoman struggles with it. “See-Ay-Tee-Tee-Ee?”

“No. Gee.”

“Gee?”

I wander over.

“Kat-Yah, right?”

He nods, my nerdy love of words and etymology drops into play.

“A Jay, mate. Kay-Ay-Tee-Jay-Ay.”

She writes it, shows it to him, he smiles broadly.

It works.

-

I’m downloading an Audiobook and Course in “Polish for Beginners” as I write. I want to be able to hold a conversation, or at least be able to speak to people who don’t require frog-marching off the street.

With language comes understanding.

With understanding comes decency.

These people live here, they are our neighbours.

Time to make an effort.

So - did you all have a lovely Christmas break?

I did!

23rd, off to my friends Zinnie and Johns’ for their annual “Gather around the pianoforte and sing carols at levels of differing singing competence” gathering.

Sadly I was slightly late and I was greeted with “Hello! You’re late! Here, have a bucket of mulled wine which is mostly made of brandy and whisky and a tiny volume of wine. Oh, also, we had a tiny, tiny baby, would you like to cuddle her?.”

Lovely! Got very drunk and we all told lots of silly stories and it was good and I walked home in the snow and had chips on the way.

24th! Hah! It’s Christmas Eve! Christmas fackin’ Eve! I went to see FlatmateGiles and deliver some presents and then DigitalLouis and I went for a swim while DigitalSean and DigitalKatie went off and bought stuff for Christmas. It was during this expedition to the swimming pool that we discovered that DigitalLouis’ wheelchair totally nearly works in the snow.

Instead of the safe, stable, trundly-trundly thing one would hope with a wheelchair, we instead had skitey slippery ploughing-through-the-snowy thing. I got round this by power-sliding around corners and singing the riff from Sabotage. Then I packed up my car to drive to Gala to spend Christmas with the Nerfs. The problem was that there was snow. No, in fact, there was…

Snow.

So I packed a bag full of presents for the Nerfs, then I packed up a bag of MY presents to take down (because I was fucked if I was sitting at Christmas morning opening nothing). Then I packed a bag of clothes to wear. Then I packed a bag of uniform and kit for my nightshift on the 25th. Then I packed a bag full of camera. And then, because of the Snow, I packed a bag of thermos and blanket and shovels and Ikea bags. Because I’m from up north and, as such, am unable to drive through the snow without preparing for some form of Arctic disaster.

Which was good thinking and totally redundant, because all the snow was politely stacking itself on the side of the road.

Christmas Eve was a very festive affair with a carol concert and snow and beer and Rock Band and Guitar Hero and present stacking and snow and a puppy and beer.

Mostly it was snow and beer.

It was awesome.

Then Christmas morning! Presents and snow! And terribly excited kids! And presents! I’m pretty certain there were presents, on account of hearing Nerfkid barrell down the stairs at 0530 and howling.

“PRESEEEEEENTS!”

Yes, indeed, presents.

Nerfkid got a massive lego police station from Santa, so all three grown ups sat in his bedroom and built it for him. We were, in no way, just playing Lego. Absolutely not.

Maybe a bit

I’d forgotten how brilliant Lego is. I’m very, very tempted to make this a Christmas tradition, whereby I’ll buy a HUGE Lego set at Christmas and build it and then (because, really, I’m not that excited about playing with it, I just want to build it) go and donate it to someone/somewhere. Maybe.

I guess, my point is, that building Lego on Christmas morning is brilliant. You should try it.

Nerfgirl and Nerfbaby and Nerfdog and I went for a massive tromp up in the hills behind their house while Nerfboy cooked an awesome Christmas dinner of lamb and delicious trimmings and then I had to drive up the road to work.

And that was pants, but fuck it, let’s pretend I didn’t have to, because working at Christmas sucks balls.

Boxing Day!
Boxing Day I went back round to the Digitals for their Boxing Day family dinner, which was very nice of them to invite me along (I do fear I’m becoming one of those single guys who people feel compelled to invite round for Christmas, because they fear that otherwise I’ll be hanging myself over my mince pies and microwave-turkey-dinner-for-one).

Dinner with the Digitals was awesome and tasty and also festooned in presents and culminated in me doing festive ironing of my uniform in preparation for my last night-shift. Oooh! Also, I got bought a beautiful Lomo camera to play with. Prepare for artsy pictures!

And now it’s the 27th and I’m sitting here watching the Eddie Izzard DVD that the Nerfs bought me (thanks guys!) with Aarayan who flies back to Berlin tomorrow.

My song of Christmas has been this, from the wonderful Tim Minchin.

On my first listen, I wound up bawling my eyes out; for some reason I’m missing my family far more keenly this year than I normally do. It’s odd, we’re not exactly a close family, but for some reason I just want to see everybody. I’ve had some good chats on the phone with folk, but I was feeling a little bit lost all Christmas, really.

Tim sums it up nicely though, with his line about “These are the people that make you feel safe in this world.”

Because family is essential, and blood is important, but distance gets in the way sometimes, seperating you from the folks you love. Just as important is spending Christmas with people who make you feel safe. I hope you did.

I did.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

K x

Allow me to add my voice to the tributes to PC Barker, killed on duty while directing the public away from a bridge in Cumbria that collapsed under the weight of floodwaters.

He has a wife and four kids and, I’m sure, left for his shift yesterday as he did for every other shift. Not a hero, but an average guy going to work.

Hug your emergency workers, folks…and never let them leave the house with a cross word.

More F1 stories coming, but this just makes me laugh rather a lot.

I’m standing at a kerb in Newington, preparing to cross the road with DigitalLouis, while DigitalKate and DigitalSean take the afternoon off and swim/sweat in a sauna.

Anyway.

Standing waiting for the green man, a taxi waiting at lights beeps at me and I look up to see Judas at the wheel. He waves and points at Louis with a questioning look on his face. It was a look that said “You don’t have a kid…eh?”

So as we crossed I turned back over my shoulder, said hello to Judas through the open window
and, just to ‘clarify’ why I was wandering down the street with someone else’s kid, I shouted:

“If you find one, you get to keep it, right?”

He nodded and drove off, laughing.

The woman behind me, though?

She wasn’t laughing.

She was scowling at me.

And took the time to tell me I was a “fucking disgrace”.

Splendid…I was getting rather tired of this whole “pillar of the community” thing.

Things have been a little quieter on here recently for a few good reasons. The first is that I’ve had the past week off and have spent it hanging out with with DigitalSean, DigitalKatie and little DigitalLouis. On the ostensible hand, this is because they moved to Just-Down-The-Road a while back and it’s been nice to catch up, but on the other it reflects the fact that Aarayan moved to Berlin some time ago and, frankly, I’ve missed having a mate to just hang out with.

Everyone else works dumb nine to five hours and through the day I tend to kick my heels a bit.

DigitalKate is a teacher, so last week’s Tattie holidays gave us a great opportunity to catch up. We saw Up in 3D at the pictures, had lunch and coffee and on Wednesday she suggested that we go for a swim with DigitalLouis.

I’m not a great swimmer, me, but I enjoy bobbing about a bit. What I did fancy was a long soak in a sauna or steam room. I sent her a text.

“Does your gym have a sauna?”

She wrote back.

“It has three…”

“?! What kind of place are we going?”

“You’ll see, I’d suggest we just swim tomorrow though, not fair on Louis otherwise. We can go back on Friday.”

My experience of going swimming is very much a Cooncil affair. You know the sort, wooden slatted doors, abandoned plasters on the changing room floor, a single hairdryer in reception that costs 20p for a minute and a paddling pool of chlorine and verruca suspension that you’re obliged to splosh through before entering the pool.

She sent me another text.

“Also, just bring shorts. They have towels.”

On the day we headed in to the reception and it suddenly struck me that I may no longer be in Kansas. I had to restrain myself from texting Kate from the changing rooms with a message that would have run “Fuck me…can you spell luxurious?”

There’s just something a bit lovely about a locker room dressed in dark, polished wood, leather upholstery and a waiting area with mirrors and dressing tables.

And yes, I was in the right changing room, thankyou.

Wrapped in my lovely, fluffy complimentary robe I wandered out of the changing rooms trying not to look too lost.

The corridor I walked down didn’t LOOK like it was pointed towards a swimming pool. It looked like it might lead to a conference centre. I was wearing my shorts and a goonie. This could be awkward.

But nothing to fear, because around the corner I found myself by the side of a wide, blue pool with loungers at its side and an array of vast windows letting in natural light.

Now this? This I could get used to.

So we swam and played catch with DigitalLouis (well. We played catch, he played “kick the ball into a grown-up’s face”) and, when the wee man got knackered, Kate said to me.

“I would suggest you go and explore for a bit.”

So I did.

And there I found…(I went to the spa and I lounged in…)
Hammam (like an Imam, maybe, with more ham?), aroma grotto (nicer than it sounds), Rock Sauna (bring your leather jacket), Biosauna (next year, Mech-Sauna!), something called a laconium, (in which I assume one practices laconicism), hot showers (mmm!), cold showers (oooh!), crushed ice rub down, Cleopatra baths (no asses milk) and a rooftop hydropool (as opposed to…a geo-pool? Jelly-pool? Weasel-pool? What the fuck ELSE do you fill a pool with?)

Suffice to say it’s not quite Porty baths.

Nor is it the kind of place one takes a nearly-two-year-old.

So on Friday morning I met Kate after she’d ditched…excuse me… dropped off Louis at nursery and, having stopped off at a supermarket to load up a bag with grapes and juice and other decadent nibblies, we proceeded to spend six hours lying around in various states of heat and humidity including some frankly orgasmic big stone slab bed things. My only regret was that I forgot to take along a decent newspaper.

Next time, though.

I…glided through the rest of the evening. Nothing hurt. My shoulders were down, my neck pliable and free of tingling or bony crunching noises.

You know the noise the TV used to make, after they’d run out of programmes? The little white dot and that “boooooop” noise. That was the noise my brain made when I wasn’t actively thinking about something. It was glorious and it hung around my shoulders for the whole day afterwards.

I’ll be having some more of that, thankyou.

We had an observer out with us this weekend, a young paramedic from North Carolina.

We discussed differences in protocol and practicalities between our two services.

And occasionally tripped up over language.

When we, as Scottish medics, take a blood sugar, we refer to is as a “BM”. I have no idea why, it’s one of those acronyms that stands alone as a word.

I am also aware that “BM” is a term used in the States by children to refer to the excretion of faeces.

“Bowel Movement”

It took our observer a shift and a half to admit that EVERY TIME we said “BM” to a patient, or to each other, she had to struggle to maintain her composure.

We suggested using “poopie” instead.

“Can you take a poopie from him while I get the defib ready?”

“Where did you put that poopie spike?”

“What’s his poopie? Is it ok?”

“His poopie’s down a bit, but he’s had something to eat, so that should sort it out.”