Stroud Half Marathon, Hockey, and a Wasted Journey

After waving goodbye to Liz and the 3 children, who are off on holiday (I am joining them tomorrow), I continue with preparations for the Stroud Half Marathon, which is taking place tomorrow. I am not running in it (obviously !) and for the first time in living memory I am not the Duty Officer for St John Ambulance - this "honour" falls to Dan, who is taking on his second "big duty".

I set off down to HQ to meet Michael and Dave, to sort out the bikes, and pick up the response car. Michael had beaten me down there, and had already got both bikes out, and was going through the kit, so I start sorting out the response car, including replacing the defibrillator (the "Stand clear- Shocking" machine), which was complaining of low battery. Time for coffee and a cigarette next, while I have a chat with Coral, who has arrived to pick up an ambulance for a PTS job (Patient Transport Service) in Dursley.

Everything sorted here, so I head for home, via my parents house, where I pop in for a coffee and a chat, then off to St Peters School, to play hockey against a team from Stroud. As I get out of the car, the rain stops, and it loooks like we are going to be lucky with the weather.

We comfortably win the game 4 -0, and after a cheese salad baguette for tea, I head for home, planning to start the task of looking for my camera bits and pieces to take away with me tomorrow, but this is thrown into disarray by a phone call asking me to return the response car, as it is needed this evening. After a bit of internal swearing about piss - ups and brewerys, I headed back to HQ to drop it off, but what do I see when I arrive there, the crew member driving out through the gates in an ambulance. "Don't worry about the car Jim, I will go out in this" he said, and disapeared down the road. Cue a bit more swearing about having wasted half an hour returning a car that did not need returning.

Back home for some well earned rest- clocks go back tonight, which should cause some confusion tomorrow!

Now where is the camera tripod......

Almost a weeks worth !

It's been quite a busy week, and I have not managed to update the blog at all, so I will do a quick roundup of what has been happening.

Saturday

I spent the morning working at home, tidying up the garden and cutting up some wood. Just after lunch, my parents-in-law popped in for a coffee, which resulted in a mad rush to get ready for hockey! I arrived at the hockey pitch in Cheltenham (only a few minutes late) and we had a good game, but we ended up losing 3-1 after some very dodgy decisions by the umpires!

Sunday

Up early, and as I was going to cut up a tree today, I tried out my new chainsaw in the garden before 8.30 ! I decided that might upset some neighbours, so turned it off again straight away!
A friend of my parents had taken down an apple tree in their garden, and had no way of cutting it up, so my mum had volunteered me for the job- in exchange for the wood- fair deal.
I went round, the chainsaw did its job well, and I half filled our trailer with wood for the fire.
In the afternoon our friends Jon and Tracy came round to try out putting up their new tent in our garden. This test run went ok, and they are all set ready for our camping trip in April.

Monday

Can't remember a thing which went on today!

Tuesday

Got to work today to find Michael, the technician, looking very poorly. He sat at his desk all morning not getting a lot done, so I sent him home at lunchtime. He did not want to go, as he has only recently started working here, but I told him that I didn't want to catch anything, so he had to go!
First aid was needed again today, as a student had accidentally put their arm through a window, causing quite a deep cut to their forearm. I put a dressing on it, and sent her down to hospital, where it was glued back together.
In the evening I went to my St John unit for a training session, and a teacher from a local school came to present me with a cheque for £50, which his students had raised by doing a concert. They had not had any links with us, so that was nice of them.

Wednesday
Michael was still ill, so I was by myself in the office today. We had a demonstration of the SIMS learning gateway- a way of accessing school data over the internet.
After work I went to the staff gym, and did 30 minutes on the treadmill- 10mph for 21 minutes of that, and 5mph for 9 minutes. My first target is to get to the full 30 minutes running at 10mph on the cross country setting.
In the evening I had a church council meeting, to which I was nearly late due to some temporary traffic lights which kept me waiting for almost 10 minutes on red !

Today

This morning I went to an open session at the college hosted by our chaplain, called Prayer Story, where he goes through 12 pieces of art in the conference room, talking about the meaning in them. This series of events is to get outside people to engage with the college, and they have been quite successful so far. As I am a Governor, I was asked to go along, and I found the session very thought provoking.
This evening I have been to a Community First Responder unit leaders meeting. CFRs are members of the public who are trained in Basic Life Support and Automated External Defibrillation, and are volunteers who are on call to the ambulance service to answer emergency calls in their area.
We were shown a new piece of software which can log when CFRs log on and off via text message, and also provide reports, and real time status updates. This is a really good development, and hopefully we will be going live with this soon. I also managed to acquire a new uniform polo shirt!

Wood chopping, hockey and babysitting.

Early start this morning, as I had plenty of work to do in the garden. Moving a woodbunker, and then sorting and chopping up logs for the fire.

This afternoon I was playing hockey, but our 11th man did not show up, so we only had 10. This was ok until about 10 minutes into the match, when one of my team mates got hit on his hand by a stick, and split his finger open quite badly. After practising my first aid skills, then sending him off to hospital, we resumed the game down to 9 men. Despite a valiant effort, against a full side, we ended up losing 2-3, not bad considering we failed to convert a penalty stroke which would have made a draw.

Had to dash back home after the match as Alex, the heating engineer, was calling to have a look at our combi boiler. No good news from that visit, as we now have it confirmed that our boiler is not working properly, and will need replacing soon.

We are doing a favour for some friends, and are looking after their 5 month old daughter, Libby, overnight. They arrived at about 4pm to drop her off, and so far she has been crying for about 2 hours non-stop! Hopefully she will stop after she has had her bottle, otherwise we will not be getting much sleep tonight.

Nothing else planned for tonight, just a relax in front of the telly, and a fairly early bedtime, as I have to be up for the motocross duty in the morning.