I was going to produce Chinese Calum calendars for 2009, but the production charges on QOOP and Bonusprint were prohibitive to the point that, even if I was to sell them just to break even, I’d have to charge you guys £25/$50 plus. And I think that that’s going to kick even the most slavering Chinese Calum fan in the teeth.

Also, I haven’t ordered them…and I think the last ten minutes of the last morning of a year is probably a dumb time to try and order calendars.

I’m an eejit.

So…those of you who heard I was planning them and expressed an interest? Sorry.

And also, anyone know of a reasonably priced calendar producer?

Bit too pished to do this…might regret it in the morning…

But…take two photographers, add wine and a box of plasters…

Oh dear

Click image for slideshow.

This is totally going to bite me in the ass later…but at least I’ll not smell it.

I mentioned in a previous post that my parents are moving house. If you’d asked me a few months ago I would have said that they were “Thinking about moving” or that “The house is on the market”.

But I would have said those things with an unspoken proviso in the back of my head that said, “It won’t really happen…the house won’t sell…nothing will change…”

This visit I’ve realised (because it’s been bloody obvious) that things do change, that the house is selling and that it’s really happening. I’ve come to this conclusion by the way people keep coming to the house and saying suspicious things like “Mmm…we’d like to buy your house.” and my parents making comments along the lines of “We’ll have to think about that when we we sell this house and buy another one and live in it in England.”

And then, if you’d asked me why that freaked me out?

I’d have told you it was because I grew up there, that I spent my adolescence in that house, that I worked for my parents’ business in that house. I became the person I am, to a large extent, while I lived in that house.

I probably would have used some chocolate box emotive bollocks about “childhood memories” and “family home”.

And if you’d pressed me, I probably would have told you about a pretty difficult adolescence. My time with my family was happy and supportive, but life at school and in the town we lived in wasn’t so rosy. There were periods that were pretty shit, really.

I’ve been reviewing how I feel about this little town I grew up in and I’ve realised that my pangs about my parents leaving have little to do with the house and more to do with family and friends. I don’t want to lose touch with the friends I have here and realise that I’ll have to work harder than I currently do to maintain those relationships once my parents go.

The problems that I had in this town leave me with a bitter tasting resentment for a place trapped between the sea and the end of the road. I wish I could see this place as other people do, fresh eyes each time, but I still walk down the street with my head down, an accidental victim. That hurts. I hate it. I can see its beauty, but need a little more time, I think, before I’ll really enjoy it.

It’ll be strange to see my parents in a house that I’ve never lived in, with which I have no history. But they and the contents of our various homes remain a constant. The enormous kitchen table at which my five brothers and I slurped hot Weetabix as kids? The embroidered sampler my (great? great great?) grandmother produced for her daughter that hangs in the frame. The “Magic Cupboard” we kept our toys in, the framed pictures, the brass telescope that belonged to my father’s godfather, the dresser that has more woodworm than wood holding it together.

And my folks.

That’s my history, that’s my family home.

The house I grew up in hasn’t been my home for nearly seven years. I’ve not lived in it for almost as long as I did live in it.

It’ll be a wrench when things change and will take some getting used to, but the brickwork box the people are in doesn’t hold a shred of the value that its contents do.

-

When I was a kid moving south from Orkney, we’d sit in the kitchen and play music, almost constantly. I still love “Anchorage” by Michelle Shocked and “Looking Into You” by Jackson Browne; the lyrics to both mean a lot to me.

“Looking Into You”

Well I looked into a house I once lived in
Around the time I first went on my own
When the roads were as many as the places I had dreamed of
And my friends and I were one
Now the distance is done and the search has begun
Ive come to see where my beginnings have gone

Oh the walls and the windows were still standing
And the music could be heard at the door
Where the people who kindly endured my odd questions
Asked if I came very far
And when my silence replied they took me inside
Where their children sat playing on the floor

Well we spoke of the changes that would find us farther on
And it left me so warm and so high
But as I stepped back outside to the grey morning sun
I heard that highway whisper and sigh
Are you ready to fly?

And I looked into the faces all passing by
Its an ocean that will never be filled
And the house that grows older and finally crumbles
That even love cannot rebuild
Its a hotel at best, youre here as a guest
You oughta make yourself at home while youre waiting for the rest

Well I looked into dream of the millions
That one day the search will be through
Now here I stand at the edge of my embattled illusions
Looking into you

The great song traveler passed through here
And he opened my eyes to the view
And I was among those who called him a prophet
And I asked him what was true
Until the distance had shown how the road remains alone
Now Im looking in my life for a truth that is my own

Well I looked into the sky for my anthem
And the words and the music came through
But words and music can never touch the beauty that Ive seen
Looking into you — and thats true

“Anchorage”

I took time out to write to my old friend
I walked across that burning bridge
Mailed my letter off to Dallas
But her reply came from Anchorage, Alaska

She said:
“Hey girl, it’s about time you wrote
It’s been over two years you know, my old friend
Take me back to the days of the foreign telegrams
And the all-night rock and rollin’… hey Shell
We was wild then

Hey Shell, you know it’s kind of funny
Texas always seemed so big
But you know you’re in the largest state in the union
When you’re anchored down in Anchorage

Hey Girl, I think the last time I saw you
Was on me and Leroy’s wedding day
What was the name of that love song they played?
I forgot how it goes
I don’t recall how it goes

Anchorage
Anchored down in Anchorage

Leroy got a better job so we moved
Kevin lost a tooth now he’s started school
I got a brand new eight month old baby girl
I sound like a housewife
Hey Shell, I think I’m a housewife

Hey Girl, what’s it like to be in New York?
New York City - imagine that!
Tell me, what’s it like to be a skateboard punk rocker?

Leroy says “Send a picture”
Leroy says “Hello”
Leroy says “Oh, keep on rocking, girl”
“yeah, keep on rocking”

Hey Shell, you know it’s kind of funny
Texas always seemed so big
But you know you’re in the largest state in the union
When you’re anchored down in Anchorage
Oh, Anchorage
Anchored down in Anchorage
Oh, Anchorage

Go and read this and try not to grin.

Because I think it’s cool as fuck.

If you’ve got two days history of snuffles, shivers, wet but not productive cough?

And then this morning, in the shower, you blow your nose?

And Cthulhu comes out from behind your eyes?

Do you think you might have sinusitis?

Because I do.

Blech.

I had nine days off planned for Christmas. It was on my roster, nine days starting on Christmas Eve. Perfect. I would work two twelve to midnight shifts, then have a week and a half off work while the festivities went on. My parents are selling their house up north, moving to…well, they’ll tell me when they decide.

One last family christmas up north, with friends nearby and a bit of history thrown in.

Without an establishment of my own (property, partner, offspring), my parents are still my next of kin. I’m four hours drive from them, but still feel like an annexe of the family, orbitting away down here in Edinburgh, not truly independent. If it all goes wrong tomorrow, I tell myself, I’ll pack a van and head on home.

But that option’s finishing soon, so I’d have one last Christmas before I really became a grown-up. One last hurrah of childhood.

On my final week of hospital placement, I heard through the grapevine that shifts at work were changing. A shift review was taking place and, in the mean time, all relief staff were to be returned to their normal ad hoc duties.

While I’m rostered on with Pally, I’m officially ‘relief’; we are the staff who get our hours week-by-week, filling in holiday and sickness deficits. My position with Pally was always on the basis that management could, if need be, pull me back down to fill gaps without notice.

And so they did.

No more nine days off.

No more home-for-Christmas.

No Christmas morning with my parents.

Instead? Four night-shifts, starting on the 22nd. Night-shift on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day.

It’s hard to get into the holiday spirit when your plans are getting fucked in the ass without lube.

I worked to swap, I really did, but knew in my heart that nobody was going to volunteer to work those shifts.

To make matters worse, I had an invite on the 22nd that I desperately wanted to attend.

Christmas was fucked.

But one afternoon, driving back from station where I’d been trawling the shift boards looking for someone to swap with, it struck me.

I don’t have to swap WITH someone.

I can just swap.

I u-turned and headed back to Station and there, found my Christmas.

An overtime shift on the 21st, uncovered.

I went and found an officer.

“You guys have made a total cunt of my Christmas plans. I’m not making a big deal of it, I recognise that shifts need to be covered. But I need the 22nd off. I’ll work the 21st instead. Ok?”

The office at work has been dealing with countless people bumping their gums over the recent shift changes. I think they were so relieved to find someone coming up with a solution that they said yes before they even considered what I was offering.

So, on Tuesday night, a scrap of paper in hand with an address scrawled on it, I wandered down a street in central Edinburgh, houses on each side that I will never be rich enough to live in, let alone own.

A doorbell, buzzer and the front door clicked open for me. But no stone-stair tenement this, the front door opened into the reception hall of a huge house, spatchcocked into two multi-storey apartments.

Behind door number one was J, a plate of mince pies in one hand, a jug of mulled wine in the other. I’ve met J once before, but he beamed when he greeted me.

“Kal! Merry Christmas! Come in! Wine?”

The first glass of several that lubricated one of those evenings where you don’t know many folk at the party, but don’t care, because everyone’s in such a good mood.

I bumped into one of my colleagues in the kitchen, the host a mutual friend of ours, and we nattered about work until J caught us at it.

“God! You ambulance boys! Shop, shop, shop. Stop being so bloody depressing! It’s Christmas! Come and sing carols.”

And so we did. Forty grown adults gathered around a piano in the living room, some mumbling, some in full voice. Some doing that rather embarassing “I sing in church and by God, I’m going to let you know about it” thing. My colleague and I giggled our way through most of the carols, joining in lustily on the ones we knew, murmuring into our glasses for those we didn’t

I left the house feeling festive as fuck.

Then two days later, I finished my Christmas Eve nightshift and headed straight to Sarah’s. Pyjamas and bed and I slept until noon when she woke me up. “

“Merry Christmas! Get up! We’ve got champagne!”

“Mmmmf…I’ve got night-shift.”

“Get UP!”

So I did. All our plans fell apart. We were planning a “Poker and Pyjamas” theme for Christmas, but were scuppered by Sarah’s flatmates getting dressed up. Sarah went for the same option, but I had only PJs or uniform.

I plumped for PJs.

The four of us spent a fantastic day lounging around, eating junk, watching movies, failling to play poker (I brought my poker set, but neglected to check for a deck of cards inside) and asking Jules if she was sure she didn’t need any help cooking?

She certainly didn’t.

Roast duck with veggies for Christmas dinner? Impossible to carve elegantly, but tasty as it comes.

By the end of dinner, I only had an hour or so until I had to leaveor work, so gradually got dressed while the girls gradually got pissed. A few daft photoshoots and fights later and I was on my way to work on Christmas night.

And working Christmas is shit.

But you don’t have to have your Christmas all at once. You can spread it over a week, gathering a little festivity here, a little there and packing it all away inside you to tide you through those moments at 4AM on Boxing Day when you wish you were in bed somewhere.

Plus, who REALLY wants all their presents all at once? Far better to spread them out, you get to really enjoy them that way.

Diluted Christmas. It’s the way forward.

Christmas evening, Nos and I have spent the shift rattling back and forth across the town, patching and gluing, cleaning and dressing. Stitching society’s moth-holes back together in the night like little murine tailors.

We see more than a dozen patients in the twelve hours; only three of which require transport to hospital. One regular called back immediately after refusing our transport, she was disappointed to see that our familiar faces back on her doorstep.

We had words.

Christmas makes our punters drunk and violent, casually injuring themselves and each other, at midnight I’m standing in a deserted shopping centre, checking over my shoulder for the zombie hordes that would, were this a horror movie, come cascading down the concrete terraces towards us. The patient isn’t injured, but is covered in blood - “It’s not mine, I’m fine,” she insists, cramming her feet back into her sparkly black stilettos.

Twenty minutes later we’re gluing the scalp of another young woman, not a hundred yards from the shopping-centre-of-drunken-zombies. It would seem that she’s been smacked in the head with something heavy, with a sharp point. Say, a very small ice-pick, or a precipitious pair of Jimmy Choos. We have a CSI moment and give our previous patient’s details to the attending police.

Come the early hours of the morning we’re parked up in The Meadows, under the spreading arms of a bare sycamore. It’s dark and we’ve found the one street lamp that’s burned out, making our cab even darker. Dark enough, say, that one could rest one’s eyes for a few moments. Our rest is interrupted by the terminal whoo-whoo-whooing. Another emergency, another job. The location at the top of the screen, and below it a brief description of the nature of our call.

“50YOM, D&I, UNABLE TO GET UP STAIRS”

We’re both in the midst of swearing at the computer when another text message arrives, the mailbox button flashing red, the speakers letting us know with their repetitive “Boonk. Boonk.”

The message is from our dispatcher, it reads simply,

“Ever get the feeling they’re just taking the p%&h?”

Well yeah. Especially considering the job’s description is all in caps, the brand of a call that’s been passed to us from NHS24.

So, to recap, someone has phoned NHS24 because their friend/partner/neighbour/relative is too pissed to walk up the stairs to their house and, instead of telling them to grow a pair of stones and deal with their own problem, NHS24 have decided that that’s a job for the ambulance people.

Which is just indicative of the whole situation. Nobody DEALS with shit anymore, they’ve got to have the State intervene and help them out. Nobody is able to think “Well, this is a pickle, I’d better find some way of sorting this out.”

And I lay this accusation firmly at the feet of NHS24, too. You can ALMOST forgive the public for calling, but having our own ‘colleagues’ relay this shite to our door?

It should make me want to spit.

But it doesn’t, really.

Because what am I doing? Am I en route to a choking? A cardiac arrest? A persons reported?

Nope.

I’m dozing in the park. I’m not busy.

And maybe they really needed our help.

It’s possible that the caller is in her eighties, she’s been out with her husband at a Christmas bash and he’s hit the whisky a little too hard. He got into the cab alright, but (in that way that we’ve all experienced) he’s now suddenly more drunk than he thought he was. He’s too big for her to carry, to drag. She’d old and alone and doesn’t want to leave her man on the cold doorstep. She needs some help.

I could help.

But should I?

I’m a firm believer in a society’s right to demonstrate, if need be disruptively, to make their point. I’ve never seen the point of violence against, for example, police officers or members of the public.

However, this is the best “fuck you” to a city’s government I’ve seen in a long time.

Steven at The Sneeze today linked back to a Christmas post from years back, where he bought his four year old a bike-horn (with a scooter attached). The soundbite is hysterical.

I make the same noises when I get changed for the start of a shift - Mako thought the idea of me riding a bike and whistling was so terribly funny that he bought me a bike-horn when he came back from his honeymoon. It now lives in my locker and on those days when the world seems fit to fall around your ears, I start my shifts by squeezing it lots.

All together now

Hoo-ah-hoo-ah-hoo-ah-hoo-ah-hoo.

Or “Wow. Maybe the training department really DO know what they’re doing…”

They always bring it up, that scary job, the one you never think you’ll do. They have you hypothesise about your response, your approach, your actions, your relationships on scene. By the fourth time you’ve discussed it in class, it trips from the tongue, your youthful arrogance telling you you’ll never need to remember this.

But when the radio updates you on the way, you don’t have to remember, your instincts have been carved into you, all the training swings back into place. It’s there when you need it and it keeps you safe.

To the training department?

Thanks