Speaker 1: Here we go.
Speaker 2: You see that there is the sound of leeches, leeches
Speaker 2: on society, users of the National Health Service. It's the
Speaker 2: sound of people who take more than they give to society.
Speaker 2: Here's me a picture of health. None of my family,
Speaker 2: well we've all got colds. None of my family doing
Speaker 2: anything other than giving to the greater good. And there's
Speaker 2: you two taking sucking at the teat of Britain.
Speaker 3: Mine had an air ambulance as well, so I think
Speaker 3: that's a charity we've costed as money of as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you Callum, you know you've just got back.
Speaker 2: I mean they go, you see off. So listen, dear
Speaker 2: listeners of Country Slide. Perhaps we should explain this isn't
Speaker 2: the crappiest start of casualty that you've had special you see,
Speaker 2: because this is what Country Slide is all about.
Speaker 1: We did We're going to clap into the depths.
Speaker 2: Of everything that goes wrong, largely in the countryside and
Speaker 2: occasionally it's good bits. And this week we're talking about
Speaker 2: well we didn't intend to talk about health, but unfortunately
Speaker 2: we don't.
Speaker 1: It overtook us.
Speaker 3: I think Callum should go first because his story hopefully
Speaker 3: is shorter. Yeah, he got jealous of Vine and had
Speaker 3: his own I really.
Speaker 4: I really don't want to be in any way close
Speaker 4: to like a topper. It sounds almost it's like it's
Speaker 4: like I've done this for the contents.
Speaker 1: It was not.
Speaker 5: It was not a great moment.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I've updated you briefly and probably like barely
Speaker 4: anybody knows about this because it happened late last night.
Speaker 4: So there might be a few of my friends listening
Speaker 4: that are like, you didn't tell me, so you know.
Speaker 3: So this is Tuesday, and public get this on the Friday.
Speaker 5: This is breaking news to most people.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So my two year old is at a stage in
Speaker 4: her life where she will look you dead in the
Speaker 4: eye and do horrible things that will make you shout
Speaker 4: at her because she thinks that's brilliant. So that could
Speaker 4: be pulling clumps of hair out of her brother's head.
Speaker 4: She quite likes doing that. Yesterday, she trapped him in
Speaker 4: the Wendy House first and then started pulling his hair,
Speaker 4: so he was screaming in the Wendy House, and then
Speaker 4: she was just smiling watching me and then slowly reaching
Speaker 4: for his hair to pull while I then told her
Speaker 4: off and had to try and I don't know if
Speaker 4: you've ever seen a six foot man try and drag
Speaker 4: a child from a Wendy house. But there's all sorts
Speaker 4: of angles that is where it.
Speaker 5: Doesn't really work. That was fun.
Speaker 4: The next one was she had a fistful of coins,
Speaker 4: which sounds a bit like a like a Western. I've
Speaker 4: watched that spaghetti Western. Yeah, it sounds like a new
Speaker 4: thing on Amazon Prime. She had a fist full of coins,
Speaker 4: and then she sort of looked at me and then
Speaker 4: put them towards her mouth, and I said no, And
Speaker 4: then I went over to retrieve that a fistful of coins.
Speaker 4: She'd put them into her mouth. I inverted her, tapped
Speaker 4: her on the back. Coins fell out, so did at
Speaker 4: about six Easter eggs and a blue raspberry ice cream
Speaker 4: that she'd just had, and a moosaka in the that
Speaker 4: kind of luminous blue, chunky aubergine, all over the dog bed,
Speaker 4: all up the wall, over the skirt in.
Speaker 2: Just to confirm here, callum, this was vomit, not that
Speaker 2: she was holding it all in her cheeks like a hamster.
Speaker 5: Ye, No, that was indeed vomit.
Speaker 3: This wasn't It wasn't like a a slot machine paying.
Speaker 4: Out right, no, no, unfortunately, and then and then she
Speaker 4: was sick, and then we kept an eye on her,
Speaker 4: and about an hour later she still kept being sick intermittently.
Speaker 4: So at that point we were like, okay, I don't
Speaker 4: like this, So we went to UBI, went to A
Speaker 4: and E and they.
Speaker 5: Saw us quite quickly, which was really nice.
Speaker 4: And at one point they pulled a metal detector out
Speaker 4: and scanned over the the top of the child and
Speaker 4: it went deep. And then she went, I'm not wearing
Speaker 4: any rings. Can we just double checks she's not got
Speaker 4: any metal on it anyway?
Speaker 5: Beep beep.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm going to pass you on to somebody else.
Speaker 3: You get the special treatment now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, now we think you're full of coins, so you
Speaker 4: would go to somebody else. So then we had several
Speaker 4: X rays and then it was it was stuck in
Speaker 4: her esophagus, so it hadn't gone down the windpipe, which is, you.
Speaker 5: Know, the the good bit.
Speaker 4: But it does make you does make you reflect on
Speaker 4: that it could have got a lot worse.
Speaker 5: And then.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we ended up going to having to see who
Speaker 4: could take the sedation of a two year old on
Speaker 4: as a as an antist, which everybody would willing to
Speaker 4: take it until they heard it was a two year
Speaker 4: old and then they were like, nope, we don't want
Speaker 4: to do it. So Adam Brooks shout out Adam Brook's
Speaker 4: Cambridge Hospital.
Speaker 5: They decided to take it on.
Speaker 4: So we went in about nine o'clock last night and
Speaker 4: we left at three o'clock the following day. So it's
Speaker 4: it's very long, it's been a long time.
Speaker 3: What was your blood pressure like do you think during
Speaker 3: you know, from from a handful of coins right through
Speaker 3: to when you message me saying it's out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's there's the anesthetic bits, the really the scary bit,
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 5: And also they were worried that in the.
Speaker 4: Ambulance that it would it would come back up and
Speaker 4: get so they had to take a like a recess
Speaker 4: guy in the ambulance from Harlowe to.
Speaker 5: To there.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that was there was lots of scary moments,
Speaker 4: but we did the right thing. The NHS were wonderful.
Speaker 4: The staff were really good. You got the sense that
Speaker 4: all of them were really really good. But they were
Speaker 4: working with their with their one arm tied behind their
Speaker 4: back because they were super stretched for resources, and they're like, well,
Speaker 4: we like helping people, because that's kind of why we
Speaker 4: work here. But we just don't have the ability to
Speaker 4: get it done basically, So it took a lot longer
Speaker 4: than they wanted it to and but that's the best
Speaker 4: they could do, and they did a great job and
Speaker 4: it got retrieved. Nothing terrible happened. I am mighty relieved.
Speaker 4: Blood pressure was probably through the roof. Yeah, you do
Speaker 4: think of all the it's weird.
Speaker 5: You just.
Speaker 4: There's no point welling on terrible things, But you do
Speaker 4: think of the of the terrible things and how much
Speaker 4: worse it could have been, and it could have been
Speaker 4: a choking situation, and it does get very scary, but thankfully.
Speaker 3: And up until yesterday evening, you weren't thinking about a
Speaker 3: child swallowing a coin that was that was a sort
Speaker 3: of the pile of hypotheticals in your life, like asteroid
Speaker 3: impact and.
Speaker 5: Well, choking is a really serious thing. Like there's all
Speaker 5: sorts of things that people give.
Speaker 4: To children that are really bad choking hazards, things like
Speaker 4: balloons and popcorn.
Speaker 2: Soldiers when I was a child, really yeah, lead soldiers.
Speaker 5: Anything that can block the airway people give.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think most people know now to cut
Speaker 4: grapes up and stuff like that, because that's cut grapes
Speaker 4: up for kids, because they are the perfect size for
Speaker 4: blocking an airway.
Speaker 3: It's more than your little finger. Yeah, tiny, tiny thing.
Speaker 5: Well, not a good thing to be ingested whole.
Speaker 1: So let's let's come to the quick.
Speaker 5: Here.
Speaker 1: Have you got the coin back?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: And all of the there was almost a sweep steak
Speaker 4: because all they could see was the x ray, but
Speaker 4: not obvious sign the coin's value.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 4: It was a one pea coin. It's the lowest denominations.
Speaker 1: Coin in our pocket.
Speaker 5: I don't know what you I was going to check.
Speaker 1: You have to get it sort of dis mounted. I can.
Speaker 2: I can make a stick for you and put that
Speaker 2: penny and I'll glue it to the top of the stick.
Speaker 2: If you've got it, I'll make it.
Speaker 3: Just remind you and next time that child starts eating things,
Speaker 3: you can swing that stick towards them.
Speaker 5: It should go with the x ray as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think my I'll be honest the x
Speaker 2: ray that Callum is showing us. If I actually started engraving,
Speaker 2: would you bet that was a one p It looks
Speaker 2: to me x ray that it's about a sort of
Speaker 2: two pang coin. It's massive mine, just supposed to have
Speaker 2: got a little ribcage.
Speaker 4: Isn't They effectively said, there was a sweep steak going
Speaker 4: on in the back room where they were guessing what
Speaker 4: coin it would have been that was ingested, and they
Speaker 4: were really interested. And I think the money came from
Speaker 4: a little bag of coins that my son has, which
Speaker 4: contains all stuff from all over the world, like all
Speaker 4: the random change you collect from.
Speaker 3: All those old little euro ones that.
Speaker 4: So once I opened it up that it could be
Speaker 4: you know, ten kona or some Icelandic denomination currency there.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, my child swallowing. We're a very cosmopolitan family here,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yes, Well, then they start looking at your socioeconomic status
Speaker 3: and working out where you've been to on holiday. It's
Speaker 3: not going to be anything Austrians.
Speaker 4: No, I think there's a there's an old Belgian king
Speaker 4: Leopold coin in there.
Speaker 5: He was a good guy, I think, yeah.
Speaker 1: Very popular in the in the in Africa.
Speaker 2: So we have seen how you have leeched off society
Speaker 2: by feeding your child coins. We now move on to
Speaker 2: mister Prido, who obviously this sadly is one of those
Speaker 2: podcasts that doesn't stretch to having a camera, but just
Speaker 2: to go and paint the picture for you, dear listener.
Speaker 2: So Callum's in his little eerie, I'm in my study
Speaker 2: and Richard is propped up in bed. Imagine the scene
Speaker 2: if James Robertson Justice was one of the patients in
Speaker 2: carry On Doctor rather than the senior doctor. That's what
Speaker 2: we're seeing is he's propped up in bed. He's got
Speaker 2: various rather grand paintings surrounding him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it looks like an antique shop and a charity
Speaker 4: shop of.
Speaker 2: Yes, so we've fallen into an antique shop in Lavenum.
Speaker 4: I like the candles as well, so he could I
Speaker 4: could hold his own vigil exactly.
Speaker 2: There is there is something of the antique shop meets
Speaker 2: crypt about where. So why are you Richard propped up
Speaker 2: on a bed? And why have you got a bell
Speaker 2: from the front counter of a hotel next to you?
Speaker 2: Which is the sound you heard, dear listener at the
Speaker 2: start of the show.
Speaker 3: I think addressed the bell first because it is rather magnificent.
Speaker 3: This was a gift from a mystery mystery supporter in
Speaker 3: Suffolk who lays hedges. He thought this bell that summons
Speaker 3: people to this room where I'm invalided would be a
Speaker 3: good way to cement security in my marriage and wider
Speaker 3: family life. So here you go. Yeah pleasant, actually quite.
Speaker 3: It's also exactly the same tone as a Great Western
Speaker 3: Railway signal box bell, how lovely?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well.
Speaker 3: I could reenact my own version of Charles Dickens the
Speaker 3: Signal Box, which is yeah. So again, six people got
Speaker 3: that right. It has been known that I occasionally turned
Speaker 3: my hand to cutting down trees. So working on a
Speaker 3: maiden coppice, which is basically a bit of woodland that
Speaker 3: hasn't been coppised yet. You're cutting the trees down for
Speaker 3: the first time, so then they'll regrow and do all
Speaker 3: the shoots, and you've got to do that more or
Speaker 3: less by the end of March. So this was week
Speaker 3: last Saturday, so I think it's like twenty eighth of
Speaker 3: March or something like that, and just trying to get
Speaker 3: them all down, and this bit I was working on
Speaker 3: was the'd been a bit of wind movement through the
Speaker 3: trees anyway, so everything was a bit gnarled and hung up.
Speaker 3: So I'd got one down and this is towards sort
Speaker 3: of four o'clock, thinking I'll just do this one and
Speaker 3: with a finish for the day, you know, got it
Speaker 3: down on the ground. It was still slightly attached at
Speaker 3: the hinge went off and checked all the little This
Speaker 3: is for all the arborists and foresters who are listening,
Speaker 3: who were trying to work out whether I screwed up massively,
Speaker 3: and sadly the answer is we're still not sure because
Speaker 3: it kind of shouldn't have done what it did. But
Speaker 3: basically I cut through it.
Speaker 5: Even need to explain it, like.
Speaker 3: I'm okay, trees, that's that's what thing, that's what wood's
Speaker 3: made from.
Speaker 1: M hm.
Speaker 3: This tree is now it was a big vertical tree, yeah,
Speaker 3: and now it's cut over and it's horizontal.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's about forty centimeters in diameter, so it's quite
Speaker 3: a big, chunky tree, okay. And I need to cut
Speaker 3: it just so to get the end on the ground
Speaker 3: because what I want is a nice clean stump and
Speaker 3: then I can rebuild my all the coppicst new shoots
Speaker 3: will grow from that because then I can cut up
Speaker 3: the bit on the ground later, because that can be
Speaker 3: done next month. But I need to get all of
Speaker 3: these down by the end of March.
Speaker 4: And she just had like a little bit left on it.
Speaker 4: How much are we talking?
Speaker 3: Oh? The bit I was cutting through was a whole
Speaker 3: tree's with because it's just that it was still attached
Speaker 3: at both ends, which is for anyone who cuts trees.
Speaker 3: That's foreshadowing. Anyway, I'm trying to make the story quicker.
Speaker 3: The tree had a hell of a lot of tension
Speaker 3: in it, which I cut for and expected to be there.
Speaker 3: What I didn't expect was this weird corkscrew tension thing
Speaker 3: that built up as it had fallen and twisted and
Speaker 3: moved and things, which meant there's a special cut you
Speaker 3: do to cut through windblow, which I did. But I
Speaker 3: got to the very last sort of centimeter of that cut,
Speaker 3: and I don't remember much until I was on the ground.
Speaker 3: What happened was the tree sort of kicked up and
Speaker 3: then out and then sideways and then down and kicked
Speaker 3: me about three meters off to the side by Imagine
Speaker 3: a really big tree shaped horse kicking you just in
Speaker 3: the shin, just below the kneecap. If you've ever walked
Speaker 3: into the towbar of a pickup truck, yeah, you know
Speaker 3: that feeling on your shin. Imagine that. But about seventy
Speaker 3: miles an hour.
Speaker 4: So that bent my knee back to coffee table in
Speaker 4: the dark.
Speaker 3: Oh it's still there. I've got a spray painters and
Speaker 3: else I'm merely one allowed to kill it. Now they're
Speaker 3: going to mount it on the wall. So the kind
Speaker 3: of sort of came to I don't think I lost consciousness,
Speaker 3: it was just sort of I don't remember the mid
Speaker 3: air bit, chainsaw still running on my leg, got that
Speaker 3: dealt with, call for help, and then it became a
Speaker 3: bit of a is that broken? Is it not broken?
Speaker 3: Is it broken? Is it not broken? And you know,
Speaker 3: when you're not moving your feet are you're thinking that's
Speaker 3: probably a good sign. I'm go okay there and start
Speaker 3: doing my own primary and secondary survey in my own
Speaker 3: first aid, and I think this is okay. I think
Speaker 3: I've just bruised and winded myself and got away with this.
Speaker 3: And then I go to stand up, and then there's
Speaker 3: the crunchy pain and the crunchy pain. Normally it's broken
Speaker 3: a bone. They know what the crunchy pain is.
Speaker 4: I've never broken a plone, but I can sort of
Speaker 4: I can picture it well, any kind of crunchy pain,
Speaker 4: I can picture it in my head and I don't
Speaker 4: like it.
Speaker 3: It's like an ache and a pain and you can
Speaker 3: feel the sharpness of different bits of both edges of
Speaker 3: bone hitting each other that shouldn't hit each other. So
Speaker 3: Amy got to be at this point, and we were
Speaker 3: actually first called non emergency number because I thought the
Speaker 3: NHS is craping whales. It'll take forever to get an
Speaker 3: ambulance and I'll die forget the hospital. So I want
Speaker 3: to find out which of the English hospitals has got
Speaker 3: the least que at the moment, because I'll drive an
Speaker 3: hour to get seen there. And I got through it
Speaker 3: all the way through the do you have a mental
Speaker 3: health emergency? Do you have this? Do you have that?
Speaker 3: Got through to it and they said your call will
Speaker 3: be answered in sixty seven minutes. What sad that? So
Speaker 3: then rang nine ninet nine and so straight away Amy
Speaker 3: gives the situation things as it's a forestry thing, but
Speaker 3: it's a crush injury sort of. It's a it's not
Speaker 3: a chainsaw injury. This is where we are, this is
Speaker 3: what the casualty is doing. Answered all their questions. They
Speaker 3: were fine on the phone. Did what three words for
Speaker 3: the gate to the woodland and what three words remained
Speaker 3: crap because I think it was like livingness or something
Speaker 3: was one of the words. It's not a real word,
Speaker 3: you know, technically it's in the dictionary, but it's not
Speaker 3: a word you'd ever say. You have to spell it
Speaker 3: out forty seven times. But did all that, and then
Speaker 3: they said, okay, and the ambulance will be three hours.
Speaker 1: Don't die.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well I can't. Yes, Well, I'm just gonna I've
Speaker 3: got to get to the edge of the wood anyway.
Speaker 3: So I started hobbling, and there's a couple of bits
Speaker 3: in this story which that hobble of about three hundred
Speaker 3: meters hopping on one leg holding a very big sort
Speaker 3: of ash pole as a walking stick, and Amy holding
Speaker 3: me on the other side. It's not the hopping that
Speaker 3: was a problem of it was that every time I hopped,
Speaker 3: my broken bone.
Speaker 1: Went separated so nice.
Speaker 3: And then clayed together. And that was you know, you've
Speaker 3: got your pain scale go zero to ten. That was
Speaker 3: about a ten point five every single step step. I
Speaker 3: don't know, you'd have to ask Amy, but there was
Speaker 3: a lot of grunting and noises and unpleasantness, you know,
Speaker 3: probably sudden she's quite familiar with anyway. The the.
Speaker 5: That's what she wrote in.
Speaker 2: That's Usual February the fourteen stuff that.
Speaker 3: I didn't scream that hopping out was, without exaggeration, the
Speaker 3: hardest thing I've ever physically done in my life. Wow,
Speaker 3: no contest, and I've done some stupid stuff. About halfway
Speaker 3: through that heard a very low helicopter approaching, which became
Speaker 3: very close, and I said to Amy, I really hope
Speaker 3: that's not for me, And it turns out yes it was.
Speaker 3: It was the brand new EC one four five Air
Speaker 3: Ambulance of the North Wales branch of welsh Are Ambulance,
Speaker 3: who just happened to be in the area, saw the
Speaker 3: job them in and thought they'd come and have a look.
Speaker 3: So they landed in the neighbor's field.
Speaker 4: Imagine just talking about the helicopter and just thinking, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a bit like the poor patrol, you know, suddenly
Speaker 4: rubble rubbles, he's going to get a job on.
Speaker 5: It's it's like the uber gig economy, isn't it.
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I love that one.
Speaker 1: Did they pick you up in this helicopter then, Richard?
Speaker 3: No, So what they did was they sort of arrived
Speaker 3: and they had some students on board as well, so
Speaker 3: I think that's also so they were I was being
Speaker 3: train a training tool, but.
Speaker 5: A wild forester. They don't come out, but when they
Speaker 5: do well. They injured themselves did a very geeky.
Speaker 3: Thing when I when I arrived, because I was sort
Speaker 3: of like Amy had gone to meet them at the
Speaker 3: gate and they came ahead of her, so they arrived
Speaker 3: to meet me in the field on my own, and
Speaker 3: I'm sort of lying on my side, so I did
Speaker 3: my own handover sort of. It went into autopilot a
Speaker 3: little bit from something a long time ago, saying, Okay,
Speaker 3: so I'm a male forty two. I don't I've had
Speaker 3: a crush injury to my left lower lege.
Speaker 5: Brilliant.
Speaker 3: I don't have any allergies. I don't have any Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and I think I got told to shut up. So
Speaker 3: the doctor saw me there. She was great assessed. She said, yeah,
Speaker 3: it could be broken, might just be a really massive bruise.
Speaker 3: You're not going to die immediately. But here have this
Speaker 3: big green whistle that says pen Throcks on the side
Speaker 3: of it. Now, Penthrocks is amazing. It's they used to
Speaker 3: give you sort of ketamine for big broken bones and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. But no, now they give you this
Speaker 3: stuff because it doesn't last very long. But it means
Speaker 3: every time you need to move, you just take a
Speaker 3: big hit on this little whistle vaporizer thing and you
Speaker 3: have no feeling for about thirty seconds.
Speaker 5: So it's really good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just my little burst of something for superhuman
Speaker 4: for sort thirty seconds only.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could just take take a hit on this.
Speaker 3: You're hovering in the corner of the ambulance thirty seconds
Speaker 3: and then you come back down. It's quite nice. They
Speaker 3: packaged me up and then a road ambulance turned up
Speaker 3: and they said, well you're here that you can take him,
Speaker 3: and then they flew away again.
Speaker 1: Nice to feel wanted.
Speaker 5: You didn't get a flight, You just got a sort
Speaker 5: of a drive by.
Speaker 3: We're muttering something about sort of load and weightissues and
Speaker 3: stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well sorry, mate, we can't take you. We've got
Speaker 1: all these we've got all these students on board. Haven't
Speaker 1: got space for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, students survived on beans on toast, so they
Speaker 4: can get like four students to one predo.
Speaker 1: That's actually a measurement, you know.
Speaker 2: It's a bit like double degger buses and the size
Speaker 2: of whales and football pitches. There's four students to one prido.
Speaker 2: That's that's what it is. It's a proper measurement for
Speaker 2: the BBC US exactly that.
Speaker 3: So then it was just an into a any our
Speaker 3: local A and E has been well. The whole trust
Speaker 3: here has been in special measures since about twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: They had a brief break in during COVID where they
Speaker 3: just turned off being in special measures, but now they're
Speaker 3: back into being in special measures, which means very limited
Speaker 3: budget for staff, although the executive seemed to get loads
Speaker 3: of money and no one else on the ground seems
Speaker 3: to get anything. And it is oh, it's a legendary
Speaker 3: shit show. When they talk about the problems of the
Speaker 3: NHS in Wales, we are the problems of the NHS
Speaker 3: in Wales in our little, very rural northern half. So
Speaker 3: went into there. Benefit of being seen by a doctor
Speaker 3: already is you don't have to go through triage, you
Speaker 3: get sent in for X rays. X rays were normal
Speaker 3: fun stuff. Although are sort of shouting through into the
Speaker 3: little cubicle bit saying can you tell me if it's broken,
Speaker 3: and they're saying, well, no, we can't tell you it's
Speaker 3: the consultant. But the paramedic who'd brought me in, whose
Speaker 3: ex Special Forces and been chatting along about stuff. He
Speaker 3: just looks at leans over looks at the screen, looks
Speaker 3: at me, laughs, and puts the thumb down. So I
Speaker 3: know then it was you know it's a bit broke
Speaker 3: for yeah, fuck mate. Yeah, And then went into slow
Speaker 3: weight to get a bed, and then got a bed
Speaker 3: just before midnight, I think. And then last thing the
Speaker 3: nurse said to me before she turned out the light
Speaker 3: was well, the consultant will see you in the morning
Speaker 3: and we'll see whether you'll save the leg. What.
Speaker 5: No, Yeah, your last words before you go to sleep.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then well I also I'd had to cut
Speaker 3: my own trousers off at this point because she didn't
Speaker 3: know how to deal with chainsaw trousers. I don't think
Speaker 3: she's sort of seen them in Bangladesh. So I had
Speaker 3: to cut my own chainsaw trousers off in bed with
Speaker 3: a broken leg, which was fun. Went for a cat
Speaker 3: scan in the middle of the night. I vaguely remember that,
Speaker 3: and all sorts of things. Then the consultant, he said
Speaker 3: it was a very basically I've cocked myself up properly.
Speaker 3: The break itself is a Shatka type two, which means phibia. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so it's the it's the tibia, so it's the big
Speaker 3: bone and you lower your lower leg, not the little bone.
Speaker 3: And if you imagine sort of a standard bone shape
Speaker 3: like you get from a deer or something like that,
Speaker 3: you get that the top of it, the end of it,
Speaker 3: sort of a weird oval shape with a bit of
Speaker 3: incrustation on it, isn't it, And you get the double
Speaker 3: hoop thing. One a half of those has snapped off,
Speaker 3: which means if I put weight on it properly, my
Speaker 3: leg would have gone sideways like a twiglet. So just
Speaker 3: come out the yeah, and probably blown all all the
Speaker 3: other stuff with it. And that's what they were worried about,
Speaker 3: was because my leg had gone back was like a
Speaker 3: kangaroo as well, apparently, and they'd found sort of evidence
Speaker 3: of bone marrow in the joint and all the sorts
Speaker 3: of other bits. So info surgery on Sunday. It's been plated,
Speaker 3: it's been fill and lifted and all sorts, and that's
Speaker 3: just over a week ago now, and I can't put
Speaker 3: my I can't put weight on my foot again until
Speaker 3: the end of May, which is kind of one of
Speaker 3: those things to think, Okay, well, I just have crutches
Speaker 3: on a hobble, But it also means you can't walk
Speaker 3: around whilst holding something until the end of May, which
Speaker 3: when you think about, for our lives, how much time
Speaker 3: you spend, you know, holding a tool whilst working somewhere,
Speaker 3: or using a camera or using something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: if you're a practical person, there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: you do that's like that. So and then six months
Speaker 3: for mountains and heavy work on my leg and things
Speaker 3: like that. But it looks it went well. Surgery took
Speaker 3: twice as long as expected. And oh, the anesthetis was
Speaker 3: fantastic because she wasn't worried about operating on a forty
Speaker 3: two year old, incredibly large male.
Speaker 5: Get the elephant one, Get the big, big syringe. I
Speaker 5: love you.
Speaker 3: She came in and she was reassuringly middle aged and autistics,
Speaker 3: exactly what I want for somebody dealing with numbers of
Speaker 3: my health. And she said, you know, do you want
Speaker 3: general anesthetic or you can have an epidural when you'll
Speaker 3: beat you'd be awake, but it'd be under sedationous. General,
Speaker 3: I don't want to be in the room. General, there's
Speaker 3: a risk, okay, okay, And if you if we need
Speaker 3: to give you a suppository during the operation, do we
Speaker 3: have your consent, Darlin, I'm alive at the end of it.
Speaker 1: Trust you me, my dear. This is absolutely fine.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I mean, do I have to pay extra?
Speaker 3: Or is this something that's just part of the service.
Speaker 1: Something this is brilliant.
Speaker 2: Yes, But do you know isn't that fascinating the of yours?
Speaker 2: You know this is something because when you told me
Speaker 2: about this, it was something I did a quick look
Speaker 2: up on some of this stuff. Now, those of us
Speaker 2: who actually physically work hands on in forestry and farming
Speaker 2: make up a mere one percent of the British workforce,
Speaker 2: yet our work contributes to eighteen percent, eighteen one eight
Speaker 2: eighteen percent of all fatalities. And when you describe what's happened,
Speaker 2: you know this is just this wasn't something where you
Speaker 2: went this is a bit of a risky one, or
Speaker 2: you go and think I'll do that just you were
Speaker 2: aware of the risks. But this thing just bit you
Speaker 2: on the ass. And like I say, when you suddenly
Speaker 2: a given that thing we'll see if we can save
Speaker 2: the leg It shows you that that eighteen percent of
Speaker 2: all fatalities at work, which is a disparate portionately large number,
Speaker 2: are made up in agriculture and forestry. And what I'm
Speaker 2: I believe is that what you encountered with the challenges
Speaker 2: that you had there, all the problems of that the
Speaker 2: NHS faces, which no one ever talks about, that the
Speaker 2: NHS in rural areas is basically even worse than the
Speaker 2: NHS everywhere else because you know there are on average
Speaker 2: it's thirty percent.
Speaker 1: Longer response times.
Speaker 2: Is we will get it doesn't matter whether you're in
Speaker 2: deepest dark, darkest North Wales like you or in Suffolk.
Speaker 2: You're facing thirty percent as a minimum longer call out times.
Speaker 1: Yet you are facing.
Speaker 2: A far more likely thing of getting properly smashed up
Speaker 2: or eighteen percent of the time you're actually going to
Speaker 2: get killed because of the nature of what we're we're
Speaker 2: working in. So, I mean, unfortunately, what we've seen with
Speaker 2: Callum was just the malaise of what it's like having
Speaker 2: a two year old child and you think, oh my god,
Speaker 2: you never thought that any coin could kill. But what
Speaker 2: you've experienced, which is probably more app a site to
Speaker 2: Country Slide because it highlights the fact that rural areas
Speaker 2: are short changed. Because this is the funny thing. When
Speaker 2: I was looking up as where the challenges are. In
Speaker 2: the House of Lords report on NHS Failings in Rural Areas,
Speaker 2: it says that the current funding formula fails to account
Speaker 2: for and this is the quote, the unavoidable smallness of
Speaker 2: the population. So in other words, what they're go is
Speaker 2: that they just say, well, we need a hospital per
Speaker 2: x amount of people, and so therefore when you live,
Speaker 2: I don't know what the population my village here is
Speaker 2: four hundred and thirty five people. I think where you live,
Speaker 2: like you say, you look out your back door and
Speaker 2: you don't see any lights, so therefore you know you
Speaker 2: are remote and so therefore by the funding formula is
Speaker 2: that you don't warrant a hospital and the hospital you get,
Speaker 2: by the sound of it, is shit because it doesn't
Speaker 2: give it any money anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's it. It's like, you know, to take
Speaker 3: Callum's point about being able to almost ring around to
Speaker 3: find a hospital within East Anglia that we're willing to
Speaker 3: take on the challenge.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we had Broomfield, which is less than forty
Speaker 4: minutes away.
Speaker 5: I think from from Harlowe.
Speaker 4: You had Cambridge, so you had you had several to
Speaker 4: and several to go at and and you had to
Speaker 4: they pull the resources and you get you get more.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying it's definitely wasn't perfect. There was a
Speaker 4: long old wait. This sort of thing should be dealt
Speaker 4: with quite quickly because it can cause irritation, it could
Speaker 4: have dislodged. There's it's immediately. It's not life threatening, but
Speaker 4: it should have been dealt with a lot more urgency.
Speaker 5: So it was far from perfect.
Speaker 4: And also for like the staff encouraged you to give
Speaker 4: proper feedback on your experience and don't hold back on
Speaker 4: it because they're fighting that could fight as well. So
Speaker 4: it's not perfect. But just like you say, the availability
Speaker 4: is there.
Speaker 3: And people alone can't make things happen like okay, So
Speaker 3: a bit of an example from my stay, because there's
Speaker 3: probably half a dozen little things I could pick up
Speaker 3: on bad it's not the point of the story, but
Speaker 3: something like I was in the same hospital gown that
Speaker 3: I put on myself after I cut myself out of
Speaker 3: my trousers on the Saturday night. I was still wearing
Speaker 3: that same gown when I checked out six days later,
Speaker 3: which I'd had surgery and had blood on from the surgery,
Speaker 3: and I was still in the same sheets. I'd got
Speaker 3: into that bed with muddy chainsaw trousers, so those sheets
Speaker 3: still had the mud from my getting into you know,
Speaker 3: getting into the bed straight after A and E all
Speaker 3: the way through to checking out. And that's just because
Speaker 3: the laundry just doesn't work at the moment, and they've
Speaker 3: got no other hospitals nearby to swap with, so you're
Speaker 3: just not getting clean laundry, which is real basic stuff.
Speaker 4: It's extends to rural school based on the population, and
Speaker 4: so you'll find that when you've got a rural rural
Speaker 4: school versus a well, they close half the rural schools,
Speaker 4: don't they if.
Speaker 3: You amalgamate them into one and you put.
Speaker 4: Me the amount of you know, if it gets to
Speaker 4: like there's only ten students in a class, it's like
Speaker 4: cut that right, You're going to now go to one
Speaker 4: single place somewhere else. And yeah, this, I think this
Speaker 4: is the rural urban difference is amplified across.
Speaker 2: Well if you look at it, I mean, one of
Speaker 2: the few things that I remember from the army myself
Speaker 2: and ase, but also hearing about the learnings they got
Speaker 2: from the great unpleasantnesses in Iraq and Afghanistan was the
Speaker 2: understanding for the immediacy of correct care and pain relief
Speaker 2: after severe trauma. And when you look at the sheer
Speaker 2: scale of numbers that people who are working in agriculture
Speaker 2: and forestry get, it does slightly show that they the hospitals,
Speaker 2: these new mega hospital that they have. Is that say
Speaker 2: We're going to put all our eggs in one wonderful
Speaker 2: basket and it will be all super because we've got
Speaker 2: all these experts, et cetera.
Speaker 1: All under one roof.
Speaker 2: Is it that is not following those principles because we're
Speaker 2: more likely to get smashed up and hurt.
Speaker 1: Let me just think that the tools of our.
Speaker 2: Trade are quite frequently the things that you see in
Speaker 2: horror slasher films being used as weapons.
Speaker 1: Yet they're actually the tools that we use.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm using what a bill hook, a chainsaw,
Speaker 2: and thaw's hammer, So you know that's nearly every single
Speaker 2: film that you could possibly see that's got a mass
Speaker 2: murder in it. I'm using those tools in my day
Speaker 2: job and it is just a matter of time.
Speaker 1: Then you're going to get that book.
Speaker 2: Because in Suffolk you've got two hospitals, You've got Ipswich
Speaker 2: or you've got West Suffolk over embarrassent Edmunds.
Speaker 1: Ipswich is not a very good.
Speaker 2: Hostel because it's over pressed by the sheer scale of
Speaker 2: individuals who live because our county is just basically Ipswich
Speaker 2: is the one large conurbation and that's it. And West
Speaker 2: Suffolk it's quite a nice hospital. You get well looked after,
Speaker 2: then you get seen quite quickly. So I can't really
Speaker 2: honestly say hands on, BUTOK, what they have done is
Speaker 2: that all the smaller cottage hospitals, like we had one
Speaker 2: in Eye which was here, you had one in Halesworth,
Speaker 2: you had one in Southwold. You had all these little
Speaker 2: cottage hospitals where you could have got those individuals into
Speaker 2: very quickly. You could have got the immediacy of the
Speaker 2: trauma stabilized, that leg of yours would have been sorted,
Speaker 2: you'd have done all the things that were needed, and
Speaker 2: then you trianged that patient off to where the expertise
Speaker 2: was done. That's all been taken away. So I think
Speaker 2: one of the learnings we got of the immediacy of
Speaker 2: care that you need, and there is a greater need
Speaker 2: for that immediacy of care because we are statistically much
Speaker 2: more likely to get severely hurt and injured at work,
Speaker 2: far more so than any other trade in the country.
Speaker 2: That you think, well, it's not working our OWNHS system
Speaker 2: for this, because it's not providing the care that we
Speaker 2: need for the majority of stuff where you're going to
Speaker 2: end up actually dead. And it is it is, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: We pay the price for a rural life, don't we.
Speaker 6: An interesting an interesting observation of that is that the people,
Speaker 6: the family units that I see in rural places often
Speaker 6: mean that the man is the breadwinner, the provider.
Speaker 4: They usually are everything to the family. And if that
Speaker 4: person you know, slips with a chainsaw, that's that's wife,
Speaker 4: that's kids, that's the family farm, that's a lot that
Speaker 4: goes you know, that goes to key with. Whereas, like
Speaker 4: i'd say, a much larger proportion of the urban I mean,
Speaker 4: I know quite a few people that they're other halves
Speaker 4: because we're in towns and cities and commuting into London.
Speaker 4: Their other halves have got fancy jobs in the city
Speaker 4: and often they earn more than them. But when you're
Speaker 4: when your economy isn't necessarily it is practical things where
Speaker 4: you're out, you know, doing hard.
Speaker 3: Job, present on sites at that time to do the.
Speaker 4: Thing now usually yeah, usually it's the man that has
Speaker 4: the is the breadwinner because it's not it's not necessarily
Speaker 4: knowledge work, so that it doesn't become a fair level
Speaker 4: pegging between female gender roles usually, So.
Speaker 5: I think huge risk for.
Speaker 4: Rural families to have terrible health care and to take
Speaker 4: such risks.
Speaker 5: But that's the reality.
Speaker 3: There's an aging population level to that as well, which
Speaker 3: is a thing for rural areas where increasingly it is
Speaker 3: the place you come to retire. You move out of
Speaker 3: the towns, out of the suburbs. You don't need to
Speaker 3: be next to a place of work, so you can
Speaker 3: buy probably the more expensive property out in the country,
Speaker 3: or you steered the end of your career so that
Speaker 3: you would retire in a nice house in the countryside,
Speaker 3: which is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it does
Speaker 3: mean that we have an aging population generally. That's that's
Speaker 3: calling on the NHS and in my particular case, in
Speaker 3: the whole orthopedic ward, I was the youngest person there
Speaker 3: by a margin of twenty years. Yeah. Everyone else over
Speaker 3: there was over sixty.
Speaker 1: They'd all had a full.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or d replacements or just hips, or they were
Speaker 3: waiting for the care home to take them back or
Speaker 3: something like that. And it was you've got this in
Speaker 3: the economically inactive aging population, which the local services have
Speaker 3: to gear up towards. Meanwhile, the economy that runs it
Speaker 3: is based on a functional lower age bracket which is
Speaker 3: finding it increasingly hard to do anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's absolutely true, I think to your point, callum,
Speaker 2: I think, well, it's an interesting thing is that I
Speaker 2: think that you'll find most farms, and my own business
Speaker 2: is a good example of that, is that my wife
Speaker 2: and I rely upon one another wholeheartedly to make my
Speaker 2: business work. I'm out there doing the hedging, but she
Speaker 2: does all the paperwork, She does all of the the marketing,
Speaker 2: pr comms, everything along that front. All the work comes
Speaker 2: in because of the work she does. Are pushing it
Speaker 2: out there. I go out and do it. And I
Speaker 2: think that that is a lot of the time. On
Speaker 2: the farms, you'll find so often is that the farmer's
Speaker 2: out farming, but his wife is the farm secretary, the
Speaker 2: person who's doing all the paperwork for dephrah, the person
Speaker 2: who's doing those.
Speaker 1: Jobs more locally in the yard.
Speaker 2: If they've got mixed farming practices, then you might find
Speaker 2: husbands out working away from the yard. The cattle getting
Speaker 2: fed in the yard are done by a wife. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's something which sounds to probably some urban ears, this disgusting.
Speaker 5: Sort of paper bierarchy.
Speaker 2: But it's the reality, you know, It's just how shit happens.
Speaker 2: Because let's be perfectly honest, in an arm wrestle between
Speaker 2: me and Claire, I'm going to win. That's the long
Speaker 2: and the short of it, because I've got more muscle
Speaker 2: and a lot of our work relies upon on nothing
Speaker 2: more than a bit of time, serve knowledge and that. So, yes,
Speaker 2: you're quite right, it's one of those links. We are knackered.
Speaker 5: This is the point you said you lose.
Speaker 4: One of those links being being the farm secretary very
Speaker 4: unlikely to get gored by metal machinery because you're the.
Speaker 2: Sight in the yard and then gets knocked over by
Speaker 2: the tractor. That's that's the where you're going out. The beef.
Speaker 3: Or the shared children you have between you, they're the
Speaker 3: ones that get run over, or.
Speaker 4: All the episodes of Casualty you've ever watched, and what
Speaker 4: the what was it reversing into the.
Speaker 5: Gas calor gas you.
Speaker 2: That work, that work, anything, basically, any single thing we
Speaker 2: do as a job is like the opening credits of Casualty.
Speaker 2: And here we have Richard.
Speaker 5: I've seen you at work.
Speaker 4: I do know the day juggling.
Speaker 1: Why are you juggling those chainsaws? Because we're bored, That's why?
Speaker 5: Do you remember the day? I said?
Speaker 4: Pictures of Xavier with a chainsaw helbit and a chainsaw
Speaker 4: in his hands to CALLI and also looking down down
Speaker 4: a scope of.
Speaker 5: Twice the size of him. Yeah, we're just out here
Speaker 5: having fun, just a big boy's day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, educational.
Speaker 2: I think Charlie was about ten and Claire said, I'll
Speaker 2: go to work with daddy. And I said, well, I
Speaker 2: suppose he's old enough now he can pull some brash
Speaker 2: about the place and stack it up for me behind.
Speaker 1: So I did exactly that thing as well.
Speaker 2: I took a photograph of in my little tiny echo
Speaker 2: chainsaw and I didn't put chainsaw helmet on him, but.
Speaker 1: I did have that. I said, touch how you hold
Speaker 1: is how a log click? Took a photograph.
Speaker 2: So Charlie's working hard, and of course Claire did not
Speaker 2: see that there wasn't sort of a worrying chain and
Speaker 2: a load of dust coming.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was. I've never seen a response to what.
Speaker 2: If the NHS was as fast?
Speaker 5: It's just got three dots typing.
Speaker 7: You're doing you incompetent for so anyway, So we are
Speaker 7: in a situation where, you know, us good tax paying
Speaker 7: folks have finally taken.
Speaker 2: The drawer out of it, and there's poor Richard laid
Speaker 2: up like a like, I say, a character from a
Speaker 2: carry on film and the fare's callum with some more
Speaker 2: loose change a machine for a child, his.
Speaker 3: Child into a money box.
Speaker 1: Excellent. But I think we have highlighted a proper rural challenge, haven't.
Speaker 4: We will count that as income, probably we'll have to put.
Speaker 3: We have the proof of earnings? Where did that come from?
Speaker 3: That penny?
Speaker 1: Exactly? Yes? How did you get this?
Speaker 3: So although while while it was still in there, it
Speaker 3: was unrealized, games, wasn't it.
Speaker 4: And we're just into the new tax year because it's
Speaker 4: the seventh technically ship technically she took a one pence
Speaker 4: piece from one tax year to the next tax.
Speaker 1: Is that tax avoidance or evasion? I don't know which.
Speaker 1: I'd say it's evasion. Yeah, anyway, there we go.
Speaker 2: Look, look, we have been told by Amy that we've
Speaker 2: got to be slick and tight today, and you.
Speaker 3: Know, well, I've got one thing I'd like to just
Speaker 3: finish off on, which is thank you to everyone I've
Speaker 3: you know, who interacted with me on the ground as
Speaker 3: it were. But I want to say thank you in
Speaker 3: particular to Amy and my mother who's had to come
Speaker 3: over here as well, because basically I'm bedridden and you know,
Speaker 3: without going into all the mechanics of that, I can
Speaker 3: barely leave this room at the moment, so every other
Speaker 3: need of mine has to have to be taken care of.
Speaker 3: And I think I've been insufferable, but it is. My
Speaker 3: first job was working in a care home, my very
Speaker 3: very first proper paid paye job working in a care
Speaker 3: home for wealthy Jewish ex Londoners in Cornwall. So I
Speaker 3: know what it's like to be a care I know
Speaker 3: what it's like on the other end of that. So
Speaker 3: I know that this is not easy for them, and
Speaker 3: I want to say thank you to them and highlight
Speaker 3: their efforts for looking after me and not killing me
Speaker 3: in my sleep.
Speaker 1: Excellent.
Speaker 2: I'd like to say sorry to Amy and Richard's mum
Speaker 2: for buying that bloody bell, but I thought it would
Speaker 2: be funny so that he every time he needs his
Speaker 2: ass wiping, they know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well this is this is it, this is the stuff.
Speaker 3: But there will be people up now in the country
Speaker 3: listening to this who either have been in the situation,
Speaker 3: are are going to be in the situation, their partner,
Speaker 3: their parents have been in the situation. So you know,
Speaker 3: it's it was a bit flippant, but we know what
Speaker 3: it's like. After show.
Speaker 1: Yes, bye everyone, After show
Speaker 3: Bye.