RDB describes Dan-O’s words of wisdom, Judas once said something similar.

“Slow down - in your career you’ll treat thousands of patients. There is no need to do them all today.”

The job itself sounds straight forward, 69 year old man fallen, with a head injury. It’s in a house, rather than the street so is potentially less likely to have alcohol at its root, despite it being past midnight on a Friday.

The front door is closed, but opens when I try the handle. Nobody meets us in the corridor but a woman’s voice answers me when I shout my arrival.

“Up here…please.”

In the bedroom a well dressed woman in her sixties stands in front of her husband, his face is caked in dark red blood, it congeals and hardens in his wrinkles, drips from his chin. His entire shirt front is rigid where it’s clotted and it seeps, bright red, from the split across his forehead.

A simple enough job, confirm no C-spine injury, clean and dress the wound, assess for skull fracture and/or neurological deficit and transport.

But the patient is on his feet, his face twisted with rage and as I step across the threshold he lifts his left hand to point a finger in my face.

“You can get out! Get out of my house!”

I rock back on my heels. The patient’s right hand is wrapped tightly around his wife’s wrist, her skin puckered and convoluted as it bulges between his fingers.

“Please, Ronnie…” she begins and he stops pointing at me to lift his hand up and back. I catch his wrist as I step inside the room.

“Just calm down, sir.”

“Let go of me.”

“No sir. Calm down and take a seat. Let go of the lady.”

“You can’t do this! Get out of my house! Shirley! Get them out! I’m your husband!”

Shirley pulls back from him, trying to tug her arm from his grip.

“Ronnie, you’re hurting me…”

“Ronnie, let go of her now or we’ll call the police…”

“Call them then, call the bloody police!”

He twists her wrist a little harder, she glances between her husband and I

I don’t have a problem with aggression, it’s a relatively common feature of the job, to some degree or another. Fear, pain, embarassment, drink, drugs and metabolic discrepancies can all cause a normally placid person to respond to our presence with anger and threats of violence.

I have no desire to get involved in a ruck and will, given the opportunity, get back in my motor and drive away. Verbal threats roll off my back, angry people shout and bluster, but when it comes to attempted or actual violence towards me or a third party on scene, I have no qualms about engaging someone physically.

On the other side, this is no swaggering drunk with a bottle in his hand and a belly full of bravado, no shrieking, cat-fighting woman pulling hair and scratching at her friends. He’s a pensioner, one half of a pleasant couple in a nice house in a nice part of town. He’s shorter and slighter than me with a potentially serious head injury.

I’d happily leave this guy to it, call for police back up and let him blunder around the room, bleeding from his punctured head until they arrive and we can take him up to A&E in cuffs.

But he’s threatening his wife and her eyes plead with me to deal with the situation she finds herself in. She’s begging and placating her husband, promising him that the police won’t come, that everything will be fine as long as he lets her go.

I hear her words and it strikes me that she’s not just calming her husband down, there’s a part of her that’s genuinely frightened this hulking, uninformed brute in the door will go fighting with the man she loves.

Stuck between protecting herself and her husband she again begs with him to let her go and this time he does, releasing her from his right hand and turning towards me, pulling his fist back. I put my hands on his shoulders and push him backwards, he sits heavily on the bed behind him and I, momentarily, lose my rag, raising my voice and hollering.

“You try that again, pal? I’ll put you on the floor, you understand me?”

He sulks back.

“I’ll put you on the floor.”

Aye, and so’s yer maw.

But now things have changed. He’s sat down, we all back off and he resorts to sniping and blustering at us all. We are all bastards, all three of us, his wife is a bitch and should obey him, he’s her husband. He wants us to leave, to get out of his house. It’s his house and he wants us out.

“I can’t leave, sir.”

“Yes you can.”

“No, sir…you’ve had a drink and you’ve…”

“Shut up! Shut up and get out.”

“There’s no need for that, Ronnie. You’re a gentleman, let’s have a conversation like gentlemen, shall we?”

He glares at me.

“You’ve had a drink and you’ve hit your head. I can’t leave you behind, I’d be in dereliction of duty if I did.”

His shoulders slump.

“Right. Fine. Do what you have to do.”

My partner fetches a basin of warm water and a flannel and I put one knee on the ground beside him, keeping my other foot flat. Body sideways, my leg protecting my groin, tucking my chin in over my throat, watching his hands. He relents to my care, lets me clean the blood from his face, mopping and wiping, bathing and scrubbing while he stare straight ahead like a kid who’s been caught playing in the coal bunker.

An awkward silence.

“So….Ronnie…you were at the bowling club tonight?”

“Hmmph.”

“Do you play?”

“I do.”

I recognise a chance for him to regain his dignity and play it.

“I can’t understand that game. I watch it on TV, the way they curl the bowls? I couldn’t do that, never had a head for that sort of thing.”

He is, immediately, engaged and starts telling me at length about the weights of different bowls, how you’ve got to pitch them just so to reach the jack. How golf players make good bowlers because they understand the contours of a green.

Five minutes later we’re laughing together, he tells me he watches “all they programmes” on daytime TV and how “it’s disgusting the way folk get drunk and waste your time.”

“Oh, it’s terrible, Ronnie. It really is. Just tonight I was dealing with this drunken old goat who was wanting to go fighting with me…”

His eyes widen and he begins to commiserate before recognition kicks in.

“Old goat! You cheeky wee bugger!”

We shake hands, make friends, he apologises for his behaviour and I for mine. By the time we get to hospital he’s making sweeping statements that, once he’s out, he’ll take me and “your wife, girlfriend, whatever” out for dinner. He sits forward every few minutes to clasp my hands in his.

I leave him in Immediate Care, Shirley in the waiting room with a cup of tea, her wrist bruised, her hands gently trembling the tan liquid in the plastic cup.

Race day, the day we’ve all been building up to and, despite the organisational difficulties that have come before, I actually feel reasonably prepared for what we’re about to do.

We’re about to help run an F1 Grand Prix.

I am still dressed in combats and a teeshirt, the FIA having utterly flunked out in providing me with a pair of fire-proof overalls that I can actually wear. I have a chat with one of the bosses and between the two of us we agree that I’ll work in what I’m wearing and that “If there’s any chance of fire, stay away.”

Oh trust me mate, I’m a green-suit, I’m a world champion in keeping myself safe at the possible detriment of others. Also? If I make too much of a fuss about things, I have a nasty feeling I’ll end up in the clinic handing out Immodium to Marshalls. I want to be track side.

The day trips past at a fair lick until tea-time when the Formula One boys are scheduled to race. The crowds pile in to the stands and, from our vantage point at the bottom of the VIP “Sun Tower” we watch a steady stream of helicopters and limos deliver a steadier stream of tall men in dishdash arrive, flanked by shaven headed gorillas in black suits.

The F1 cars have zipped past all afternoon, practicing or qualifying or something. I don’t know. As far as I’m concerned cars go vroom-nyeow past us, they’ve been doing that all week; other than the audience of 50,000 people - how is tonight going to be any different?

Bryn and Mark plug their laptops into the cigarette lighter on the car and hijack the WiFi from the Sun Tower, there are websites out there that track races minute by minute and I listen to their excited chatter, recognising the occasional name or team.

Personally, I don’t even know what colour our team is wearing.

Lewis Hamilton drops out because his car breaks, or something. I wait excitedly to see if he’ll call the RAC to come and tow him back to the pit, but like the big spoilsport that he is he just casually cruises back to his team mates and goes off for an early bath. Other than that, I’m completely oblivious to the race’s progress and I wonder how spectators manage. Is there a commentary, or are they, like us, just watching cars going vroom-nyeow? Do they go home and read the results online?

The race ends, chequered flags wave and flash and the hotel alongside the track flashes checks across its illuminated surface. In the excited crowds that throng the pit lane, nobody notices Bryn and I slipping in. We stand under the balcony as the winners are presented with bottles of champagne and it’s only because I take a short step backwards that I avoid tasting it as they spray bubbles over the crowd. It strikes me that there are 50,000 people here today who would kill to be standing where I am now.

It’s fun

And then suddenly, it’s done. We make one last lap of the track and head back to the clinic, where the whole place is a flurry of staff stuffing clothes into kit bag from their lockers and bug out to the gig.

Because the F1 was great.

But we have a date with Aerosmith to be getting to.

At security I discover the best way to smuggle a camera into the gig is to bury it in my bag first under my stinking, sweaty clothes and then laying a tourniquet and stethoscope on top of them all. The guard zips open my bag and stops.

“Oh…doctor?”
(well…not really, but…)
“Yes. Doctor.”
“Sorry, doctor…camera?”
“No, no camera. Laundry.”

He tentatively reaches out for the clothes before the whiff hits him. He zips it shut and waves me through. Thank god for lying and smuggling. What’s more alarming is that at no point did they find my shears/hammer and lock knife. Security indeed. Pshaw.

It turns out I know more Aerosmith songs than I thought and with the lubrication of the occasional light ale, we become increasingly raucous. The photos will remain private for the sake of our professional reputations.

Back to the OV for dinner an drinks, I chat to Gus and Hurls about the Desert Challenge 2010 and they let me know that this year’s team will be cherry-picked from those participants of previous years’. I learn that my strop-fest over evacuating a patient who wound up having a skull fracture has earned me a space already.

Not having to get up in the morning, we all congregate in “the green room” a collection of sofas and tables that have been set up around the cabins. It’s pushing 0300 before I roll back to my mattress for my final night.

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.

Day 5

-

Right.

It’s official.

I love my FIV.

And I love my standby point.

I have an epic view of the first two corners…and the starting grid…and the finish line. There are people over there that have paid a fucking fortune to have a view like this.

I haven’t.

Hehehe.

Also? My FIV has air conditioning. Sweet, sweet air conditioning. The novelty of the UAE’s heat wore off in the desert in March. It’s very nice, for a time. But out here the concrete and polished surfaces reflect everything, heat, light and sound back at you.

Being out on the tarmac is an intense sensory overload. A hot, bright, noisy sensory overload. Inside the FIV are comfy seats, upholstery, Wi-Fi and did I mention the air conditioning?

I’m telling you, dude, that A/C got me through the week. The corner doctor (that is, the doc who guards the corner that we’re parked on, in case anything happens RIGHT HERE) is Zaki.

He plods about in his wellies and overalls, sweating profusely while cars are on the track and then, whenever an event finishes and we have a half hour break while we wait for the next race, he leaps like a red overalled whippet into the back seat, whacks his shades and baseball cap off and bathes in the freezing cold air that pours from the vents in the roof.

Today’s main event are the Porsches and Chevys, souped up street cars driven by keen amateurs. Boy racers, I think, we could call them.

They bang and jostle each other like cows in a lunch queue as they come round our corner and the marshalls’ radio traffic is busy reporting contact between vehicles, cars spinning out and stalling.

The medics’ radio remains silent. Nothing for us to do.

Jolly good.

During the qualifying round for the F2 (apparently differing from F1 because…of the number) one car spins out on our corner and comes to a stop across the track. The marshalls report it over the radio, but Race Control have already spotted it on their array of CCTV screens and deployed a safety car to control the rest of the pack and guide them past the stricken racer. It swings past, wide lights flashing red and amber from its rear and a line of racing cars follow obediently behind like hi-octane ducklings.

As they pass, two racers break from the prescribed route and pass on the wrong side of the car. The driver looks understandably nervous and looks left and right before boosting himself out of the cockpit and preparing to run to the safety of the nearby barriers when a final car comes around the bend and swerves at the last moment to avoid a cataclysmic collision.

I’ve spent days preparing myself for the injuries sustained by drivers whose vehicles have crashed, I’ve thought at length about head, neck and chest injuries in particular. I’ve even thought about the risks of flying debris, after Massa’s incident earlier in the year. Perhaps naively, I haven’t considered what happens if one of those speeding bad boys hits a person. I This is especially stupid, since it may well be myself or one of my colleagues who gets malkied.

I ask around later and the consensus comes back, a F1 or F2 car hitting you at speed is the fastest way on earth to develop a bilateral Below The Knee amputation.

With the driver safely on the sensible side of the crash barriers, the marshalls try and push the stalled car off the track to no effect and a voice comes over the radio “Mobilise snatch team, corner 1”.

I’ve heard about snatch teams in discussions, but haven’t really worked out what they’re for. The only other time I’ve heard the term is when talking to cops - a snatch team is a small core of officers whose job it is to penetrate rioting crowds and remove the main protagonists in an attempt to defuse the situation.

Turns out, out here? The snatch squad is the great big digger that’s been parked next to us for three days, its driver resting back in his seat in shorts and teeshirt, the brim of his cap pulled down over his eyes, snoozing in the heat. Suddenly this massive yellow behemoth snorts and grunts and with a speed that is, frankly, terrifying, barrels out onto the track, shoves its loading spikes through a rope the marshalls loop around the car and seconds later is rampaging back to safety, the car swinging wildly its jaws like a downed gazelle.

Oh. That’s what it’s for.

Watching the marshalls at work really opens my eyes to what they meant when they warned us that the track was “extremely hazardous”. At the time it had sounded pat, like a statement they make to everyone to scare them off getting themselves creamed, but watching the marshalls do something as simple as drag a broken car off the track while dodging the safety car and its howling entourage I start to envisage doing my job out there. It’s not like we can just loop a rope around the patient and get the JCB to pull them out. We’ll be out there for ages if we get called.

By the end of the day I’m standing watching Kings of Leon when I suddenly feel awful. My stomach cramps, I’m soaked in cold sweat and every joint aches like I have flu. I make my excuses and get Nina to drive me back to the OV (via an entertaining tour of Abu Dhabi’s new highway intersections).

On arriving home, I search for a medic to hand myself over to. I’m not going to bed sick without alerting someone else to the fact that I’m nae weil, to do so is just asking for trouble. I find another para who gives me a sachet of dioralyte and packs me off to my cabin. En route I bump into Christina who swings immediately into “Desert Mama” mode and fixes me with a great cocktail of sympathy (thankyou, I’m male, I’ll have lots that), brutal honesty (”Honey, you look like shit.”) and a big fat dose of sulphides, just in case I’ve picked up some little wiggling microbial fucker.

She even walks me back to my cabin and surveys the rehydration drinks I have laid out in front of me.

“You have to promise me you’ll drink at least a litre of water with those sulphides.”

“Ok.”

“Promise.”

“Ok, ok, I promise.”

“If you don’t? I’ll kick your ass.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Good boy. Go to sleep.”

It’s sort of like being looked after by a very professional search and rescue spaniel, endless smiles and fun until she hears the word, at which point she’s all business.

I was better in the morning, though.

Cheers C

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.

Friday:
I wake and congratulate myself on being so terribly organised that I have time for a shower and shave before breakfast and bus. As Tom and I stroll across the OV towards the Mess we’re met by Shereen, Patch’s other half and an almighty organisational force to be reckoned with.

“Morning boys, bus leaves in five.”

Wha’?

No, no, no. Bus leaves in thirty five. That’s the deal. Bus leaves at 0730. That was what they said at the briefing last night.

Hang on.

I remember Beyonce.

And the bus ride home.

And the kebab.

And getting my boots from Gus.

I definitely remember drinking a Heineken that I knew I shouldn’t. And then we went to the briefing.

Didn’t we?

Oops.

Turns out , because we were so horrendously shit at getting on the bus on time yesterday, it’s been decided to pull the bus departure forward by half an hour. I would have known this, if I’d spent my evening not getting blootered.

I grab some frankfurters, ketchup and flat breads from the canteen and pick up a carton of juice on the way out. Sadly I realise that the box I’ve been given isn’t juice at all, but “nectar”. They love this stuff out here, but it turns my stomach. It’s like very runny fruit puree, sort of the consistency of loose phlegm and usually made from things that you can’t actually make juice from, like papayas and brick dust. Thick, gluggy and granular it does nothing to refresh me and my hangover.

Once in the clinic we pile into our vehicles and hoor along the track to reach our post in time for the first FIA medical inspection of the day. The system runs that the FIA med car will make a lap of the track and at each locations where there’s a team, the staff must be lined up along the white line in full PPE, vehicle pointing in the direction of racing with engine on and flashing.

Due to some communication confusion, we’re not quite in position for our first inspection and as the FIA car whizzes past we’re still scampering towards the track, yellow wellies flashing in the sun and puce marigold gloves waving in the wind like some horribly proctologist waving goodbye to his beau on a 1930s railway platform. Duly inspected we park up alongside a fire tender and JCB.

A JCB?

I figure it must be there for picking up all the bit of wreckage that we can’t physically move and wonder (with, frankly, pant-wetting excitement) to myself how I’m meant to integrate into an extrication that centres around a digger.

The temperature outside settles to a bearable 30 degrees (I don’t know in F, you work it out) but with the engine idling and the A/C on the inside of the car is a delightful 18. Practice laps for GP2, Porsche and Chevrolet class are the order of the day. Where they lack the speed of their F1 bretheren they make up for it in their expertise, or lack of it. Many of these guys are little more than experienced amateurs and the team buzzes with the possibility that someone will do something Very Silly And Serious Indeed.

Yas Marina has an unusual layout. The pits pour into a tunnel that passes under the track before looping around itself and exitting onto the grid. Our FIV is posted on turn one and as such we have a view not only of the pits, the tunnel, the starting grid but also the long, sweeping bend that commences the race and swings back against itself in the first few hundred yards. We lean over the pit wall as the cars howl out of their garages and through the tunnel beneath us, the engine noise
echoing around the site. You don’t have to be a motor racing fan (I’m not) to feel an adrenaline shiver in your gut as they scream past.

Evening falls as the F2 qualifying laps begin. Standing on the track side, my fingers itch in vain for a camera; FIA regulations strictly forbid photography on the site unless you have a press pass and we’ve been warned of the repercussions of being caught taking pictures while racing is live. Instead, I reach into my pocket for my notepad and pen and do my best to sum up the visuals in front of me.

“Desert haze, pale yellow setting sun and a background of five graceful pagoda peaks of the main grandstand.

The opening straight is bordered by aquamarine and red paint, the grandstands on either side hold hundreds of cold white lights that compete with the sun, fading at that startling rate it does in this part of the world, leaving you marooned in darkness and humidity.

The grandstand on the left is in shadow, subtly shimmering blue and grey as an electronic chequered flag waltzes across the marquee above the grid. The stand on the right catches the sunlight, thousands of tiny golden reflections twinkle back at us, given depth only when they’re obscured by silhouettes of participants milling excitedly in their seats.

Down the straight come the cars, a tonal whine at distance, then changing their song to a tearing, grunting noise as they throttle off, tires roaring on asphalt and low mourning moan of idling engine.

They spit out a brap-brap as the drivers declutch and gear down for the corner before washing us in a wake of noise and echoes as they doppler away into the distance.”

By the end of the evening we’re back to Ferrari world for another concert, Jamiroquai tonight and this time I manage to get my camera in through the cunning trick of wrapping it up in my clothes and, when it’s first discovered, hiding around the corner and then trying my luck with a different, more glaikit looking guard. It only takes two goes before I’m inside the compound, taking pictures dancing friends and jiggling my booty to some funky acid jazz. It strikes me, while I’m jitterbugging with Christina (that’s Christina the Professor at John Hopkins) in the UAE that five years ago I was a librarian, the most exciting thing that happened to me was the occasional bit of extra work on TV sitcoms or saving the entry cost to a local event by volunteering to first aid for the day. I’m exceedingly pleased I made the career choice I did.

Carpe diem. You want something, you go grab it. Who knows where it’ll take you.

Transport back to the OV from Jamiroquai turns out to be a bit of an issue, there doesn’t seem to be an agreed RDV for the bus to pick us up at, nor an agreed departure time. A dozen of us prowl around the bus park searching for transport home. Phone calls are made back to HQ but we struggle to give them an exact locus from which to retrieve us. “Next to the race track” doesn’t really help.

Some of the group suggest flagging down a passing bus and bribing the driver to take us back to the OV, but it turns out that in these days of relaxed security and a global eradication of terrorism: bus drivers in the Middle East are surprisingly loath to just pull over and let international, non-Arabic speaking strangers pile onto their coach and commandeer them. Who’d’ve thought, huh?

We muddle back and, for the first time, my little cabin in the sand looks a lot like home. Lovely.

Wednesday morning and we’re breakfast and bus to the track for our first day of training and familiarisation. The approach to Yas Marina is on a purpose built highway and as we pull up the gate it’s hard not to be impressed by the scale of the place. Most notable is the enormous hotel that straddles the track, its walls covered in thousands of LEDs; a birds eye view of the place unfortunately makes one realise that it’s shaped like a massive winky, but never mind. Only those in helicopters will ever see that.

Decanting from the bus, Christina gives us a rapid tour of the clinic. Where the camp is basic, the clinic is salubrious and overflowing with equipment and facilities. For an on-site med centre it entirely exceeds my expectations. Inside a covered drive-through ambulance bay a corridor splits left and right. To the left we find a resus bay with three beds, then onwards into the medical directors office and through into another treatment room with another three beds including paeds and infant resus capacity. There’s a wet room with a purpose built burns stretcher. There’s X-ray and ultrasound. Outside is an HLS with space for two aircraft. Front of house holds a pleasant reception centre run by two uniformed security guards who smile and nod like dogs on a parcel shelf as we troop in - “Morning ma’am…sir…sir…ma’am…sir…ma’am…”

The FIA are all over this event, understandably. This is the first time an F1 event has been operated in the UAE and they want to make sure it goes well. As such, our first day on site is fraught and drips with an air of “hurry up and wait”. Every member of staff needs an ID and bib, but we are also issued with teeshirts, caps and overalls and those of us working on the track have already sent our measurements into the organisers some weeks beforehand to ensure our flameproof overalls, track boots and gloves are available in the right size.

As such, I haven’t bothered bringing any boots with me, bringing instead a comfy, knackered pair of Airwalk sneakers (complete with frankly immature laces decorated with silver stars, fuck you, I am *too*a grown up) which were delightful to wear in the plane and while bumming around, but now that I’m standing in the clinic surrounded by proper grownups I’m sort of wishing I’d brought some proper boots or shoes. No matter, I’ll wait until uniform issue and then everything will be dandy. I idly wonder to myself whether our boots will be black leather jobs, or lightweight desert boots such as we wear on the Desert Challenge.

Uhhh.

No.

See, the reason track staff are being issued with boots and gloves is because of the much hyped KERS system (Kinetic Energy ReallyClever Superfast…maybe) which effectively stores up the energy that the car would otherwise waste when braking and pours it into a massive capacitor, which the driver can later tap into for a boost of extra speed. Personally, I thought electricity and vehicles only really worked well with milk floats, but hey, what do I know?

The point is, however, that should these cars crash, there’s a theoretical risk that the KERS will discharge into the body of the car. The carbon fibre body of the car. Making the entire car live. I don’t do physics, I don’t understand electricity, I can barely wire a plug, but I’m prepared to bet that the jolt that bad boy will give you won’t be the same as licking a 9V battery.

As such, our gloves and boots are designed to insulate us against the risks of electrocution in the first moments of a crash.

They are not black leather boots.

They are not light canvas desert wear.

Handed out to us come pairs of knee high, daffodil yellow wellies. Lellow lellies.

It’s 32 degrees outside.

And I’m wearing wellies.

Better than that, i was sort of hoping to wear these boots all day, and back at camp as well, in a luggage economy sort of way.

I’m not wearing these socially. I look like a fireman fetishist.

The dress up game gets better when my overalls arrive. The company that supplied the overalls is apparently more accustomed to providing workwear for the UAE’s batallions of Thai, Indian, Pakistani and Phillipino employees, none of whom are nationalities known for their vast height and bulk.

On hearing laughter I find one of the FIV drivers struggling to pack himself into an overall. His friends haul on the sleeves to pull them up over his shoulders. The cuffs barely cover his elbows, the ankles are at half mast. He’s not a big man, standing a comfortable eight inches shorter and couple of stone lighter than me.

“Fucking hell, mate…” I start “Bet you wish you’d ordered a large, huh!?”

Struggling to breathe, he answers me.

“This is a large.”

Oh.

I unwrap the cellophane from my “extra large” overalls and, stepping into them, immediately regret it. My testicles suddenly vanish behind my kidneys and I have to recruit the assistance of two friends to wrestle me into it. The sleeves are so short and tight I am forced to stand with my arms out to my sides, like that daft public speaking thing Dubya used to do to make himself look even more preposterous. My calves start to shiver in the air conditioning and I fear the elastic cuffs around the bottom of the trouser leg will leave me with pitting oedema after a few hours. I struggle to zip it up, sucking my gut in to such an extent that my bollocks are assailed again, crushed by my sooked in belly against their new nephrological home.

Bending over in this get-up? Forget it. I’ll be absolutely fine as long as all my patients are levitating at chest height and don’t require me to move my upper body.

Or arms.

Or legs.

I get right on my phone and text Gus. That’s Gus as in “Gus the operations boss of the desert challenge”. Gus as in “Gus the professional freelance military commander.” Gus as in “Gus the man where you’re always terribly pleased to be his friend, because you’re frankly terrified of what Gus does to people he doesn’t like.”

So I dropped Gus a text saying “You’re coming along tomorrow, aren’t you? Can you swing by a mall and buy me a pair of Magnums or similar, UK size 11? Cheers.”

So that’ll be “Gus the mercenary personal shopper”, then.

I track down Bryn and Mark, the doctor and driver on my vehicle respectively and we spend an hour or so checking and familarising ourselves with the vehicle, its layout and kit. Working as part of a trauma team, I reacquaint myself with the actions and functions of pieces of equipment that I rarely see and never use. Asherman seals, chest drains and surgical airways.

The vehicle has pieces of kit that make me drool, including a brilliant traction splint that packs down to the size of a shoebox and a tourniquet that, on first examination seems to have been made from all the straps and handles that are ripped from baggage at Terminal Four, but after I’ve played with it make me want to steal it and take it home. Dead simple and super effective. Want.

Packed and prepared, Mark takes us for a…familarisation…drive around the track (this was in no way a jolly. Absolutely not me taking the opportunity to be driven round an F1 track before, say, Lewis Hamilton got a shot). The Nissan Patrol that we’re working in for the week clearly isn’t designed for speed, but it would appear that nobody has told it that. Battering around Yas Marina sideways at 110mph in a vehicle that was originally produced for Yummy Mummys to drop Tarquin and Esmerelda off to school? Bloody brilliant. From the track, the opulence of our surroundings is breathtaking, the track is outstanding fun to drive around and the colossal yachts with helipads on the back that sit in the mraina provide a fitting background.

The afternoon holds an official FIA inspection where the Gary Hartstein, the FIA doctor and general medical-boss-type of the whole venue sets us a crash to deal with. They have a little model F1 cockpit that gets dragged off to a far flung corner of the track while we, the ambulances and extrication teams go and park up in our standby points and await a scramble message from Sean in Control. The job comes in, a medical and KED team (thankfully not us, because I’m in my uniform, and can’t bend over) and after a minute we are all given clearance to proceed to the “crash site” and observe.

By the time we arrive, the KED team have extricated the patient and the medical team are working hard. The story runs that the driver made a slow escape from the track and made almost no impact with the wall, but on arrival is apneic and in cardiac arrest. A full traumatic arrest protocol swings into place and the team do a sterling job stabilising the patient while we all watch. I don’t envy the lead doctor his role, being scrutinized not only by the FIA but by his new found colleagues and team members. The exercise runs in real time from the track to the ambulance, into a resus bay and is only called to a halt by the FIA doctor when we are ready to hot-load the patient into a waiting aircraft.

Brows are mopped, people exhale hard and we all rendezvous in the ambulance bay to be debriefed.

The FIA are the spectre at the feast in all our dealings, a vast organisation that holds ultimate power over all our dealings and we’re all nervous about Doctor Hartstein’s debrief, envisaging a by-the-book dressing down.

Instead he’s animated, friendly and down to earth. He speaks our language, both in medical jargon, slang and (because let’s face it, we’re all emergency staff) profanity. He takes the time to increase our awareness of the peculiarities of F1 that some of us haven’t considered and gives us the benefit of his experience and wisdom. He closes with a smile. We’ve passed and our KED teams are later congratulated at the speed of their operation. It’s official, they are the fastest KED teams in F1 anywhere in the world, stabilising and extricating a driver from his car in two minutes flat.

The afternoon is taken up by more briefings and exercises and there is little for the medical staff to do. We sit in the clinic and, slowly but surely, boredom overtakes professionalism. A spontaenous wheelchair race begins. A competition develops as to who can reverse park the golf buggy with the greatest proficiency. At one point a train is built from an ambulance trolley and a wheel chair and we’re happily turning laps of the ambulance bay when Chris, our Chief Administrator strolls in and catches us at it.

“Just leave, Chris? Please don’t see this.”

He smiles, nods and makes himself scarce.

At the end of the evening we march in a mob towards Ferrari World, a huge structure with three enormous wings. In each armpit of these wings sits a concert venue and its in one of these venues (having had our cameras confiscated by rabid security staff) that we gather to watch Beyonce. I don’t like Beyonce, but I’ll give the girl credit, she can sing and dance. And it turns out? Once I’m a bit pissed? She’s really very good.

We pile onto buses back to the Operators Village and on arriving there we find the canteen is serving kebabs. Beer, gig, bus home and a kebab before bed. My God! I’m back in Leith!

I wake halfway through the night with a mouth like a dessicated badger’s arse and blunder about the room trying to find something to drink. In the desert I’d have taken a canteen of water to bed with me, but it would seem I’ve let things slide with the relative comfort. If I’m coming back here, I’ll need to learn how things work. It’s not the desert. It’s not home. It’s not a hotel.

Must find my niche.

Wednesday 28th
Another taxi ride to the airport, this time shared with other hotel guests and organised by reception. Hotel quotes “£6 a head” but by the time I’ve arrived at the airport this has magically risen to £10.

“Terminal Free, innit?” says the taxi driver, by way of explanation day light robbery justification.

I spend an enjoyable second fantasising about setting him on fire and driving him headfirst into the Terminal building, but quickly remember that this plan has already been done and didn’t end well for anyone involved, least of all John “I won a fight against a man who was burning to death, I’m a national treasure” Smeaton.

Instead, I consider calling him a cunt, do so and enter the airport where I’m wandering about the Etihad check-in area, laughing at their female ground staff who all wear hats with big curvey veils over their right ear. When a group of them walk together they look like an armada of dhows. Wearing silly hats.

“Kal!”

And there, my saviour. Sophia, one of the docs from the Desert Challenge is loitering stage left. We catch up and she explains that she’s waiting for Booker and I tell her I’d arranged to meet Tom for breakfast.

Suddenly I’m not so worried. Suddenly I’ve found my mates.

While we wait for our comrades, we spend an enjoyable half an hour trying to spot other members of the medical team. A crowd of passengers arrive, many of them wearing very shiny and clearly new-bought boots and combat trousers. One amongst them is wearing a linen suit the colour of Cornish ice-cream.

Everyone arrives, Tom in classic bleary eyes and Booker in terrifying organisation. We surrender our passports to him - “Here you go, Uncle Booker” and he marches us off, ducks in line behind him, to check in.

We breakfast, slug coffee and I start to fidget in my chair. I am firmly of the “Be at the gate straight away and wait, then you’ll never miss your flight.” school. Sophia has a different way of looking at it.

“It’s fine, why would you want to sit on the plane when you can sit in a cafe? They’ll call you by name if you’re THAT late.”

We compromise and I manage to drag them away from the table. While walking to the gate I hear Booker and Tom both yell “shit!” and start running.

I have no idea why, but when your friends start running, you follow, right?

Panting alongside him, Booker explains.

“Gate’s closing. Go.”

We step up the pace, pushing onto a travellator and running with it.

The gate is around the next corner. We run all out for about 15 yards and arrive with loads of time to spare, the gate staff laughing at our panicked, red faces.

The flight is six hours long, we lose another four by the time difference. It’s a long haul flight. D’you really want details?

Didn’t think so.

Suffice to say the highlight of the whole flight was discovering that Etihad’s complimentary passenger pack includes a sleep mask which doubles as a handy-dandy improvised set of cuffs, some flight socks which form a splendid gag and a toothbrush/paste holder which comes in what can only be described as a tiny black dildo.

Booker and I entertained ourselves by dressing up as Etihad gimps and grinning at Rolf who was sitting in front of us. He gave us one of those looks you tend to deploy at children behind you in the cinema who won’t stop dropping popcorn down your back.

Passport control in the UAE is a civilised affair, the officers in dishdash smile and greet you pleasantly while meticulously leafing through the pages of your passport in case you’ve ever been somewhere…undesirable. At this point in March, Tom realised he had Israeli stamps in his passport, a relic of flying back to the mother country to visit family. Thankfully, this time he had a shiny new one which posed him no problems. I may have threatened to shout “Mazel-tov!” at him when he approached, he may have countered with a threat to out me to the police. Together, we agree that I wouldn’t mention the J word, he wouldn’t mention the G word and we would become a super hero act, J-Man and G-Boy. Marvel, watch out.

I stopped for a pee.

Trust me, this is going somewhere.

The men amongst you will be acutely aware (as all men are) of the perils of eye position when standing at a urinal. One keeps the eyes forward and looks either up, or down. There is no lateral looking, lest you catch a glimpse of your neighbour’s tackle.

In Abu Dhabi airport, the urinals have automatic flushers above them, encased in silver hemispheres. These, while being aesthetically pleasing, have the same effect as those curved mirrors supermarkets have in the ceiling, that not only are you exposed to the reflected view of the winkies of both guys to your left and right, but your own prick grins up at you from the wall. The curvature of the mirror is not flattering, everything is foreshortened and horribly malformed (it’s the mirror, I promise). Think of those fish-eye lenses?

*shudder*

At arrivals we meet a nice lady with a sign saying “F1” and attach ourselves to her. She has a note telling her that she’s expecting 51 medics and marshalls, but apparently no list of who these 51 are. We play an entertaining game of “put your hand up if you’re missing” before piling onto a coach and being bussed to our accommodation.

As the bus rolls and bumps along its route past expanses of not-yet-built-on concrete foundations and stretches of desert, it dawns on us just how far from Abu Dhabi we really are. The coach turns left, then right and we find ourselves rolling along a high chain-link fence with row upon row of Portacabins laid out under white security lighting posts.

“Hah! It’s Belsen!” jokes someone on the bus.

“Pity the poor fucks that are staying there…” say another.

The bus turns into Belsen.

Poor fucks that we are, we pile off the bus and queue at a “reception centre”, even the names of the administrative buildings smack of refugeeism. I’m in “23A” and I’m pleased to find I’m sharing with Tom and a chap neither of us have met. The whole thing is starting to feel a bit like school camp as we tramp off down the road towards “The eighth column of huts, you’re at the bottom on the left”

Inside our cabin, I’m pleasantly surprised. Three bunks, with mattresses and clean sheets, some cheap hotel furniture and a rather sexy glass topped table and brown foam furniture that have clearly come from 1974. It’s reasonably clean, the air conditioning works and there’s an en suite toilet and shower.

Compared to my tent in the desert in March, it’s luxury.

We return to the main area of the camp, where a roofed off area holds tables and chairs and a team of caterers are serving roast chicken, rice, salad, humus and flat bread. There is a rumour through the team that several people are unhappy about their accommodation. Reports of rats and roaches come to the fore and one group of doctors from the UK (including the gentleman in the ice-cream coloured blazer) are standing by the bus with their bags packed. It becomes clear that they’re insisting on a hotel room, rather than staying here and the organisers are providing same.

I can see their argument, many of them are senior medics who clearly don’t *need* to volunteer for a week at the F1 to further their career and are understandably pissed off at being asked to sleep in a portacabin.

Me? I’m a junior van driver, I’ll take a little sub-standard accommodation over the chance to work at a world class event.

We’re issued with ID and F1 tabards (sort of like those vests you used to wear in PE, all white and blue nylon and tied at the hip). There’s a bit of a fuck up when we find that there are two Kals on the team and one of them has had two IDs printed for him but it all gets sorted.

We down a few beers and Sophia, Tom, Booker and I stroll back to our cabins.

“So, you guys heading out to a hotel?”

We laugh together and Booker and Sophia bring their military attitude out to play.

“I can plug in a hairdryer, I don’t have to shit in a long-drop and I’ve got a shower,” begins Sophia, “It’s practically the Hilton.”

“Hell…” starts Booker, “I’ve been here an hour and a half and I haven’t seen a mortar land anywhere. I might be able to sleep.”

And with those thoughts in mind, we snuggle up on our bunks (though admittedly, I pull my mattress off and onto the floor, I’d sooner sleep down there than risk falling off a bunk, thanks).