8 miles high.

Diary of an accident victim
Part three

Here I an in hospital, the Accident and Emergency unit (A&E). The lights are bright, the room is warm, and I feel like crap and I’m in a lot of pain. Lots of people seem to be seeing me, every voice seems to be different.

A male voice, “Let me help you with that pain”. A shot of morphine.

A soft feminine voice, “Let’s get you out of those clothes.” There’s something I don’t hear often enough. Snip snip, more scissors.

“Your wife is here.” She meets me as I get wheeled under the x-ray machine. A voice I recognise, this is reassuring. I ask for my spare glasses. She phones home and gets Matthew to bring them. He gets here about 15 minutes later, we live less than a mile from the hospital.

I get turned a little under the x-ray machine, agony upon agony. More morphine. I still feel lots of pain, but somehow I don’t care as much. Good stuff this morphine.

Eventually the examinations are over. It’s time to deal with the head wound. I get moved to a side room. There’s been a shooting elsewhere in the town, and the police are taking over the A&E department. The nurse cleans the wound and adds stitches, either she’s very gentle, or this morphine is better than I thought.

Eventually I get wheeled to the hospital ward and moved to the bed. Despite being as high as a kite the movement, particularly from the trolley to the bed is excruciating.

It’s midnight, time to sleep.

…to be continued.

This was first posted on St Pixels blog on 13 May 06

To see the blogs about the accident and recovery together please use the “ouch” link under Categories.

As the slogan goes, you either love it or you hate it.

However those who I speak to who hate metal are usually those who have never listened to it properly. Or those who find it disturbing.

Well it is disturbing. Come to think about it I find Marmite disturbing too, but this is not a blog about Marmite. Chord sequences going to the minor third of a major scale (e.g. E major to G Major) or to the flattened fifth take listeners outside the comfort zone of the root, subdominant, dominant seventh three chord trick (or their relative minors) that makes up most of the music that is heard in the West.

What exactly makes up metal? The term heavy metal for music came from the lyrics of Born to be wild by Steppenwolf. However what was called heavy metal in the 60s would not be regarded as heavy enough today. Musical categories are fluid.

Which brings me to the latest album in my collection, the album Lulu by Lou Reed and Metallica.

With Lyrics  written by Reed based on plays by German dramatist Frank Wedekind this is not easy listening. It is written from the point of view of a woman who has relationships with men without emotional involvement and who is abused by those she meets the album manages to be both deeply disturbing and yet uplifting at the same time. Plus it has killer riffs.

And that is what metal as a musical genre does best. It isn’t just heads down no nonsense mindless boogie, it also makes you think. Mindless music for intellectuals.

Ambulance ride

Diary of an accident victim
Part two

BANG! I was hit.

Next thing I know is that I’m lying on the floor in the road with people standing around me. And I hurt. A lot.

I’m being told not to move, and that an ambulance has been called. Every time I try to raise my legs to ease the pain I’m told not to move. (A St. John’s Ambulance person happened to be passing. Someone says that the driver is here, I look up, I think it’s the guy in blue, but my glasses were broken by the impact, so I can’t see more than a blur.

WOOWOOWOOO… The sound of an approaching siren, and more blue lights, it seems the police are already here. (There is usually a good police presence in this area. I did say I commute through the red light area, didn’t I? No?)

The ambulance crew are here, and start checking me out where I lie. Snip snip, The polo shirt is cut open, the rugsack taken from my back and the helmet removed. The examination takes forever, or seems like it.

“We’ll have to put you on a board, just as a precaution,” I hear.

Just as you think the pain can get no worse I get moved. My head is fastened looking straight into the falling drizzle. I now know there are things more uncomfortable to lie on than the road.

The policeman has found my mobile phone, it is unbroken.

“What is your home number?” I tell him.

I later find out from my wife, Linda, that the call comes in at 8:20. I’ve been on the floor 35 minutes.

I get lifted into the ambulance – more pain – and just get to see blue light flashing from both sides, the ambulance and police car are parked so that no vehicle can get to me.

The doors close. WOOWOOWOOO… We start moving, not the racing through the streets you’d expect, but slowly, very slowly so as not to shake me. Every bump hurts a lot, and I mean a lot. Corners hurt even more. We arrive at the hospital, and I’m lifted on to a stretcher – even more pain. The lights in here are dazzling, but at least, having been treated on the road with no shirt, it’s warm.

… to be continued

This was first posted on St Pixels blog on 13 May 06

To see the blogs about the accident and recovery together please use the “ouch” link under Categories.

This was first published on St Pixels blog on 11 May 2006

Ow

Diary of an accident victim

Part one

Here I sit waiting. Not working, or anything else, just waiting.

Waiting for my bones to heal, waiting for the Crown Prosecution Service to decide on whether to prosecute the driver who hit me, and generally just waiting because the job I do can’t be done with a foot in plaster.
FLASHBACK…

March 14 2006, 7.45pm.

I had finished work for the day, and was cycling home, still wearing the high visibility vest I wear at work, and with lights on the bike on. I was looking forward to the corned beef hash and bread and butter pudding that would be waiting for me when I got home. Traffic was light. So was the rain,

I turned off the main road, crossed the canal and was approaching where the road went under a railway bridge. Just before the bridge there is a crossroads, and I looked left down the road to check for traffic. Nothing, the road was clear.

I turned to face forwards. There coming the other way was a car, Close… Very close, and it had already started to turn towards me. Let me say at this point that the road, coming from the car’s direction, has a dogleg just after the bridge, so the road ahead cannot be seen, never mind the junction.

BANG…

… to be continued.

I’m disappointed with 2012.

Not this year, but the film of the same name.

In fact I’m disappointed with a lot  of modern films. The problem is CGI, or rather what the film-makers do with them.

Take 2012.  When the effects start the story takes a back seat

Or take the latest remake of King Kong. The scenes with dinosaurs running around on the island, or Kong in the streets of Manhattan are fun. But you end up remembering the films for their effects and not the story.

Which is not a criticism I could make of the films of Ray Harryhausen.

Harryhausen was a stop motion film maker, responsible for the effects in films like  Jason and the Argonauts and One Million Years B.C. as well as many Science Fiction B movies. It may look corny and quaint in these days of CGI and 3D IMAX films. But it was cutting edge stuff for its time, the models interreacted with the actors in a way that had not been done before. In fact if there had been no Harryhausen there would have been no Star Wars, and without Star Wars dragging Sci Fi out of the B movies and into the mainstream the current trend for films with effects may never have taken off.

But more importantly, in Harryhausen’s films the effects played second fiddle to the story. The effects were there to enhance the film, to help to tell the story, not to detract from it.

Which is what is lacking in modern effect films. Yes they are blockbusters, they make millions at the box office. But I can’t stop myself from wondering if they have gained an audience but lost their soul.