Lets get this first bit over with quickly… You might think that because I haven’t posted a blog for a year, I might have nothing to say. Not been up to much. 9.00 – 5.00 office worker, nose pressed flat against someone’s shoulder in the District Line crush to and from the Royal[…]
Read More »Nicole Skeltys
Composing cool tunes for warm people
From the blog
So lets imagine the Queen, a teenage war time ambulance driver and mechanic, this year decides to ditch her carefully crafted annual Xmas address to the nation and instead reflect upon the history and meaning of ambulance services. We’d switch on the TV, ‘A Message from the Queen’ in important[…]
Read More »
So next week, my temporary contract with the Barts Centre For Trauma Sciences winds up. And how many times can you say that your job has changed your life? Here are some experiences/ images that I will take with me to my grave. 1) Shooting a video, with fellow Australian[…]
Read More »
Sex and Death A London Ambulance Service union official commented to me a few months ago that the very nature of emergency services work is that front-line staff have to “rush into situations from which human instinct tells everyone else to RUN AWAY”. Perhaps the medical situation that most people[…]
Read More »
The Fight to Save One of the World’s Greatest Wonders: The NHS In October last year, I was inspired by Ken Loach’s film ‘The Spirit of 45’ to blog about the NHS , and remark that it was a world historic achievement in organised human compassion. I’m not the only[…]
Read More »
How to improve royal weddings Today I recalled the wedding of Kate and William (I was there, in front of the television) and how struck I was by the awfulness of the Church of England wedding rites. Read in funereal tones by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the vows bore no[…]
Read More »
Where the Streets Have No Name One of the challenges of UK ambulance Trusts trying to meet response times in rural areas is that sometimes the streets have no name. And the cottages and farmhouses don’t have numbers. In the centuries old lanes and byways of country England, some no[…]
Read More »
On waiting in an NHS cancer clinic In early October, I found myself sitting in the MacMillan and the University College London Hospitals Foundation Trust Cancer Center, not far from the toff looking streets around Warren St Tube. I was in a granite and glass reception lounge, draped with[…]
Read More »
“Who has a why to live can bear most any how” Neitzsche Freedom House In July, I stopped over in Pittsburgh, caught up with some of my dear friends there, and made a remarkable discovery. In the late 1960s, a bunch of Pittsburgh doctors and civil rights activists set up[…]
Read More »
Sleepless in Los Angeles Downtown, in the City of Angels, on the night of 14 July, I didn’t sleep that well. Again. I was only four blocks from Skid Row, but that didn’t bother me. After all, I was in a gated community, in a condo owned by Bob N,[…]
Read More »