That was a long day.
By 0900 this morning I was already on a Landrover heading out of base and up to the Neuadd valley. I’ve spoken of the Neuadd valley before, but this time there was no snow. We had a missing 24 year old man, who’d gone out to take photographs of the sunrise. By the time we got there, a weather front had moved in and light drizzle didn’t help a cloudbase of around 600m. I led one of the three parties and headed up the Roman Road, searching downhill with Wyn’s party searching the slopes above the Roman Road. The cloud and drizzle varied in thickness, with the occasional patch of rain making life interesting. We finally reached the gap, where we stopped for a breather as the terrain was very poor – boggy ground, grassy tussocks, hidden streams – it’s not a nice area to search.
From the gap, Wyn and I split up with his party heading up over the top of Cribyn, and my party taking the lower path. We could hear on the radio the third party making its way along the Neuadd Ridge. Finally, we had a radio message – a nearby walker had reported into control that he’d seen a man matching the description of our casualty heading down the middle of the Neuadd Valley, along the river itself. With such a strong sighting, the plan changed and the other two parties headed into the area indicated while my party headed back to Echo, who by this time had managed to come up the Roman Road and was parked up at the gap.
We stopped at Echo for some refreshments and set up some kit when the call came in – the casualty’d been located. We grabbed the kit and headed back along the bottom path for the second time and met up with some of the lads near to the casualty site. Getting the stretcher across proved interesting, but we managed it and the casualty was quickly packaged up ready to move. Once he was in the stretcher, we needed to lower him down to the river over a very steep bank, so with 6 men on the stretcher and one on a rope for assistance, we lowered him down to the river.
Friends may recognise our casualty from this picture, yes it was indeed none other than our very own , fortunately, as you can see from this picture, he was happy enough as he’d agreed to be our casualty for this exercise (either that, or we’ve given him a little too much morphine!).
Time was getting on a little, so we cut the exercise short there and headed back to the pump house for a cuppa, a debrief and then back to base to repack the kit. Jon seemed to have enjoyed himself…I think we may have a new recruit next year.
I blame .
I’ve been studiously avoiding drinking coffee on a regular basis since I came back from the US in 2000 – mainly to avoid the stinking headaches I’d get on Saturday mornings from the caffeine withdrawal. However, has brought in some particularly nice hazelnut flavoured coffee into the office “for general use”. It’s the first coffee I’ve had which I’m actually inclined to get a cup because I like the taste enough.
Git.
Of course, he does have his blonde moments too… *patpats* Well done Jon, it’s a ssh agent. Tomorrow, we’ll do scp. *ducks and runs*
What a great start to the day. Oh, look out, make sure you don’t slip on the pool of sarcasm that’s dripping off that last statement…
I’m still at home at the moment, having been called on my way and sent back home to try and work out what’s going on with all of our customers’ sites. It transpires that the people we host our DNS with (DSVR) have a problem with their DNS servers. Oh joy.
Fortunately, after yesterday’s early start for a migration for another customer, I got a good night’s sleep. The same can’t be said for my boss unfortunately, who was woken up by the monitoring alerts that I slept through and was trying to fix various problems throughout the night. The fact that I slept through them isn’t a problem – as she pointed out to me on the phone this morning, I don’t get paid to do that.
Ooh, the sun’s just come out. Good, the weather was looking really crappy until now. Right, off to the office. I may be clairvoyant, but I sense an emergency DNS hosting migration on the horizon….
We’ve just had a quick callout, a search though it’s been quickly stood down as the misper was found. I have scant details at the moment as I left my pager behind today – my kit was in disarray last night, my diesel state this month is poor and I have shedloads of work to do at the office, so when I didn’t pick it up this morning I wasn’t too worried. Typical.
Details will, as usual, be forthcoming after the debrief on Thursday I expect.
So that was a busy weekend.
Friday night Sean and I went out for dinner to Fwrrwm Ishta in Machen, which is a cracking good quality restaurant. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, the food was incredibly good and the atmosphere although busy, was very welcoming.
Saturday was the stag night of one of the lads from the team, Tim. All in all, we had a fun evening though there were a few dampeners on it.
We started off with a meal at Taurus, which is one of Cardiff’s steak houses. I’ve heard really good things about this place, so I was looking forward to it. The other two places to get steak in Cardiff are Charleston’s of course and The Brasserie – all 3 are situation at the bottom end of St Mary’s Street all within a 100yd stretch. I ordered steak mornay – their selection was mainly centred around rump and sirloin steaks – unusual for a steak house, as I’ve found their offerings usually tend to centre around a fillet. We were 18 in total and I have to admit, the food did arrive quite quickly, however a few things.
We had to send food back because it was ordered wrong – when you have people ordering “blue” steak and it arrives more like medium, it just doesn’t work. Some steaks were just plain wrong, and the people who ordered fillet got….well….something that looked like sirloin, but we were assured it was fillet. My steak had plenty of gristle and fat around the edges and was quite tough – I really had to work with my knife (see the best knife sharpener) to get through it, and Sean’s garlic steak was tough and dry. The side dishes arrived separately after the rest of the food, which was bad, since most people were well into their meals by then. Still, the taste was nice, they had plenty of mustard and other sauces on the table (including English mustard which I love) and coupled with the alcohol, things went OK. Price was reasonable, but considering what we had, I’m not inclined to go there again.
After that, we’d been booked into Tiger Tiger, where penny had arranged that we were on the guest list as an “official team” party (apparently they don’t take stag parties) – which it was in a way, it’s just we were celebrating Tim’s marriage-to-be. *grin* Coupled with the fact that Penny and Lynfa were with us, we headed off down Queen street. Now, that morning I’d found out that the dress code was collar-and-shoes which prompted a manic and none-too-cheap shopping trip for Sean, so when we arrived and Sean was turned away for being under 21, I was somewhat less than amused. Still sober, I know the futility of arguing with door staff (they don’t make decisions, they just implement them) and not wanting to spoil Tim’s night, we left and had cocktails at Old Orleans before some more drinks at the Golden Cross. We finally met up with the rest of them at Flares, where we grabbed Mal’s keys and headed back to his place – our night somewhat soured and both of us fairly tired by then. I think we managed about 2 hours of sleep before Mal, Lisa, Lynfa and Chris descended on us, pissed as newts. Mal and Chris decided that more whisky was a good idea, and after a good laugh we finally got back to sleep about 0600.
Sunday was a relaxed recovery-type affair for most people – Sean and I hadn’t drunk much, but Mal, Lynfa and Chris were suffering. After Chris, Lisa and Lynfa had disappeared, Mal, Sean and I headed into Canton for a fry-up at the Tuck-In before deciding we’d go for a bimble. We headed back to Senghenydd where we fixed my car and headed up to the waterfalls in the Nedd valley again. Apart from a quick detour when two police cars came past us and we followed them into Dinas Rock (as a pre-emptive strike) where we found a gaggle of fit shirtless young guys to ogle (sorry, no pics), the walk went fine and we headed from Clun Gwyn into the falls. Mal’s got some great pictures of us in Sgwd yr Eira, but we’d started quite late and nightfall came before we could see the rest of the falls, so back to the car and back home, where Sean had to pack – he left for London this morning to get his things sorted for University. It’s going to be odd without him around.
This week: exercise with a vengeance. I’ve slacked off with Sean around (cuddling with him in a nice warm bed is far too tempting to resist) so I’ve got some catching up to do now.
I was reading this at lunchtime today and it came to me why I don’t do the geeky things that I promise people I will do at home. Why my PC, despite having a bust motherboard, is still lying in pieces some 3 months after I took it apart. Why I have a server that hasn’t moved. Why I have an old laptop that’s got the approximate power of a 186 that’s heavily sedated that I use to talk on t’Interweb. It’s because I have no cave – I’m not comfortable in my computer room.
In Brunswick Street, I had my room downstairs with The Desk. Now, I like big desks. I like to have this bit here for typing on and that bit there for all my pet projects and that bit over there for my printers – oh and that bit over there for working on that bit of hardware that’s broken, and that bit there, well…that’s for anything else I might need some desk real estate for. So really, my ideal desk is this one. When we moved to London, I almost bought that one, but instead cobbled something together from 3 MFI desks that I had. It was big – two desks in an “L” shape with a third short piece to almost form a U. It filled what was the entire “living room” of that house. I would spend hours, days on end in there, geeking, chatting, doing things.
The house I live in now, I’ve had to use the third bedroom as a computer room. I’d prefer to use the second double, but as my tenant currently lives there, that’s not going to happen. So my current computer room is smaller than what I’m used to. On top of that I never really unpacked properly – I mean, I just performed the ultimate action of retail therapy – I bought a whole HOUSE! The toys, things that need doing…
On the bright side, now I realise what’s wrong, I can do something about it. I’ll chat with Sean tonight, he’s good with props and scenes on a stage, let’s see how good he is at a computer room reorganisation. I suppose what I really need is to get a big raise, so I don’t need a tenant, throw him out and use the back room as an “office”. Hrm.
It’s been a nice weekend. Sunday we decided to get a few things done, so I measured up the Window in the spare room and headed off to Ikea in the bay to pick up some blinds. We passed Pizza Hut on the way which prompted a typically-student-like response from Sean, so after mooching around Ikea for a bit, we headed out for a pizza. On the way, Sean got me worried.
“So there’s something I want to say. But I don’t actually want to say it.”
“Er…what?”
“Well, I don’t want to say it in case something goes wrong.”
WTF-look
“You know. Something about recent events. Your pager. It’s been a while.”
So that’s what he’s getting at. Yes, it had indeed been quiet recently. Typically then, halfway through our starters, I jumped a foot in the air as my hip started buzzing. Of course, I’d left my pager on vibrate…
“You had to say it didn’t you….”
So a few more messages later, we get the details. It’s a search for a missing 11-year old in Llanelli. Woo, home town. So we grab the pizza in a box and leg it. Making good time, we arrive in Trostre park and in my head I already have the route to the police station worked out. We pull in 2 cars behind alpha who’s driving without blues, unusually. As we approach a roundabout, I speed up, pull alongside on the roundabout as Alpha’s about to head off down to the docks, beep and wave “this way” to Mark, who’s driving. Up through town and we quickly get to the police station. We wander around Morfa for a few hours looking for this kid while Sean heads off with Bev in the Landy do assist, but there’s no sign of him and we get called back for a re-group and some food. So off we toddle to the chippy on Station Road. I’m all of 20 yds from the door when the pagers go off. Ooh, standdown I think.
Is it bollocks – I realise as our team comes running at me from the chippy. We leg it back to the police station and jump into vehicles. Back to Ystradfellte for another search. By the time we’re there, however, it’s all over and I grab my kit from Alpha before heading home – without doing much shopping.
It’s all Sean’s fault.
While up at base last night Mark and I were talking and he showed me a thank you letter we received from the family of the little girl in this callout. With the kind permission of the author, I’ll reproduce it here for your reading pleasure:
Hi Mark
I would like to thank you and the endless stream of people who came out to my niece Georgina on the 11th August. We are all so grateful to the team for the assistance they gave, really words just aren’t enough to thank you.
It was my sister, brother in law, niece and nephews first trip to Wales, indeed they had only just arrived at midday. They were camped at Pencelli campsite and we (my partner and I) were at Brynich, we were there for the Jazz Festival. Having come early we decided to make the most of our time and get out in the fresh air and do some walking, starting with the waterfalls walk. As my partner and I had been several times before we were very careful and warned the children and parents of the dangers, holding their hands and generally being taking as much care as was possible. We were having a lovely day, the children were thoroughly enjoying the walk and my partner was enjoying telling them how the area was formed over thousands of years. It was almost a perfect day, until Georgina turned to say something, let go of Simon’s hand, then went to carry on walking but took a step back…………. and the rest you know about. Sadly the next few seconds are so engraved in our minds, we are all suffering nightmares and flash backs – it was pretty horrific to see.
However Georgina is making a good recovery although it will be a few more weeks yet and she may even have to wear a back brace if it doesn’t heal correctly. The doctors have assured her parents that she will make a full recovery and of course we are all looking forward to that. We will also be coming back to Brecon next year so we can lay to rest the ghosts of this years camp and do some of the things we had planned, fortunately Georgina’s family have not been put off by the accident.
So that’s it, just wanted you to know the outcome and please, please pass on our sincere thanks to all who helped that day. You are all our Heroes. Thank you.
Regards,
Sue – Georgina’s Aunty
Now that has really made my day. We occasionally get letters like this from family members of our casualties, and it really is what makes it all worthwhile. It also goes to show, that no matter how careful you are, accidents happen to the best of us.
Some time ago, one of the guys from the team talked to us about the Welsh Ambulance Service Community First Responder schemes.
More recently, reading a post from Tom, I was reminded of the scheme and thought about joining. With the medical training the Mountain Rescue gave me, I have a reasonable knowledge of the basic care already, and this would give me valuable first-approach experience when dealing with casualties. So as I was wandering through the shopping arcade in town yesterday, I stumbled across a WAS display board, publicising their public access defib scheme (they had the same defibs as we use – the PowerHeart from Cardiac Science), and stopped to ask about the CFR scheme. It turns out that the Caerphilly scheme is about to go into a round of training for new volunteers. They seemed enthused by my existing training, so I’m waiting for an information pack for now to see if I can get involved.
Watch this space…