police

Ambulance stories (22)

~ beetleypete ~ 35 Comments

The Hammersmith Swordsman

In the early 1980’s, female circumcision was not something that I was well acquainted with. In truth, I don’t recall that I had heard of it at that time, though in recent years, it has received a lot of attention in the media. For those of you who are not that intimate with this practice, I will give a very basic version of what is involved. A young girl, sometimes only a baby, has parts of the outer lips of her vagina cut off, usually including her clitoris. The resulting wound is then stitched together, in a somewhat rudimentary fashion, with a small opening left, to allow the flow of bodily fluids. On her wedding night, her husband then cuts the sutures prior to having sex, thus ‘guaranteeing’ that he has wed a virgin. I think this is the process in a nutshell, please forgive me for not going into greater detail, a lot more information is available on the Internet.

This practice is most common in countries in north-east Africa, such as Sudan, Somalia, and others in the Horn of Africa, though it is carried out elsewhere, especially in western nations with a large immigrant population from those places mentioned. As well as the ‘proof’ of virginity, the removal of the clitoris is thought to stop any possibility of infidelity, by removing any pleasure that could be gained. To the cultures that continue to see it as normal, it has both traditional, and religious associations. In other countries, it is considered to be archaic, and barbaric. (And rightly so, in my personal opinion).

Late one evening, we were called to a flat, inside a large house, in the Hammersmith area of West London. A midwife, on a routine call to a pregnant female, was being denied access to the patient, and was concerned for her safety. The Social Services had become involved, and after a long drawn out attendance at the address, they had decided to involve the Police as well. As pregnancy had been mentioned, the Police summoned an ambulance, in case it should be needed. The flat was at the top of the building, and the social workers and Police were trying to gain access, by shouting through the door, and repeated loud knocking. After this had gone on for a few minutes, the door was suddenly wrenched open. To the surprise of all of us assembled in the stairwell, a tall, thin, somewhat elderly man appeared. He was wide-eyed, and dressed only in thin cotton trousers; he was bare-chested and barefoot also. His hair was unkempt and wild, and he sported a straggly beard. But what really got our attention, was the fact that he was wielding a huge sword. This was not an ornamental weapon, of the sort that might have been mounted above a fireplace, but a very real,  traditional item, that looked as if it had once seen action. The blade was a good three feet in length, and the long handle, complete with wrist guard, was taped with cord. Moreover, he was brandishing it in the manner of someone who knew how to use it, and was prepared to do so.

We all made a hurried retreat to the lower floor, including the few Policemen present, who were only armed with truncheons. The man held his position at the head of the stairs, screaming at us in a foreign language, and waving the sword from side to side, with menacing strokes. The wide blade looked more than capable of taking off a limb, perhaps even severing a head, so nobody was taking any chances, and Police reinforcements were summoned, as a matter of urgency. They arrived after some delay, equipped with riot gear, helmets, and shields, though none had firearms of any kind. After a brief, further attempt to reason with the crazed man, the Police eventually charged him, using the shields to protect themselves from the swinging blows of his sword, and manged to pin him down on the stairs, and disarm him. This was done with considerable courage, as none of them had more than a shield, and a riot baton to hand. Once he had been handcuffed and secured, he was removed to a Police van, and we were all able to enter the flat.

We found a young female of African origin, aged about 18. She was on the floor, in some distress, with a high fever, and blood issuing from between her legs. On examination by the midwife, it soon became clear that she had a bad infection inside her vagina, which was still stitched up, in the fashion previously described. It seems that once pregnancy had been confirmed, she had been re-stitched, by someone from her own community, to await full term of her labour, and to make sure that she did not have sex with anyone else. The wound between her legs was very distressing to behold, grossly swollen, with thick cord sutures cutting into her flesh, some bleeding apparent, and a noxious odour issuing from the whole area. We got her down to the ambulance on a stretcher, and with the help of the midwife, the stitches were cut, to relieve pressure, and the young lady taken to a local hospital for further treatment. She was six months pregnant at the time, but was so thin, it was barely noticeable.

We found out later, that the elderly man with the sword was her husband, and she was only one of a few wives he had. His reason for taking this action, was that he did not want any westerners, especially men, to examine his wife. This was my first close encounter with both female circumcision, and an angry swordsman. Thankfully, it was also my last.

Ambulance stories (14)

~ beetleypete ~ 27 Comments

Is he dead?

Depending on where you work, a job in the London Ambulance Service will put you into contact with violent crime, and scenes of such crime; this may involve serious assault, rape, and murder. In a city of such size and diversity, crimes like these are sadly more common than you may suspect. Many are never reported in the media, as the culprit is quickly found, admits guilt, and only a cursory trial is deemed necessary. Despite living all my life in London, even I was surprised how frequently people are murdered, and how often I would come into contact with this crime during my time as an ambulanceman.

Unlike other incidents, people killed as a result of a crime, whether obvious, or suspected, are not removed by ambulance crews. The scene of the death will be secured by the Police, the local area canvassed for potential witnesses, and the CID will be handed the case, to begin their investigations. We have all seen this well represented on TV, and in films, to the extent that most viewers could probably carry out a reasonable investigation themselves, given adequate access, and resources.

What is rarely portrayed, is the initial arrival by uniformed Police Officers, and the first actions taken, on the discovery of a dead person. I am writing here about the mid 1980’s, and at this time, an ambulance was routinely called to the scene of a violent death. For the first Police Officers on scene, actual death had to be formally established, irrespective of the extent of the injury, and what commonsense may have indicated. Once the ambulance crew confirm that they can do nothing for the deceased, then an on-call doctor is summoned, to officially decree the same, by reason of their qualification to do so.

Late one evening, we were called by Police to a flat in the Westbourne Park area of West London. The call was given over the radio, as ‘male stabbed, query fatal.’ As the call had originated from Scotland Yard, we could assume that the diagnosis would be reasonably accurate, depending on the experience of the officers on scene. On arrival, we were met by a P.C., who asked if just one of us could accompany him to the flat. This was not unusual, as it reduced contamination of the scene. As I was the attendant (not driving) for that shift, I grabbed the first aid bag, and walked up the steps to the ground floor flat, which was part of a conversion of a much larger house, into numerous small flats. Another policeman waited in the doorway. I knew him well, and he nodded to me, muttering ‘it’s not too good in there.’

I walked into the entrance to the flat, and looked around the door. What had once been a large drawing-room, now served as living room and kitchen combined. At the rear, two doors led off this area, one presumably led to a bedroom, and the other to a bathroom and toilet. The decor was a matter of taste, best described as ‘early 70’s garish.’ The floor was covered in vinyl flooring, and a faded rug outlined the space differential between kitchen, and living area. It had been a very long time since any of the interior had seen a coat of paint, and cleaning was obviously not a priority of the tenant either. To my left, stretched out on the floor, was the naked body of a man. He looked to be aged about 40, and the whole area around him was completely covered in a thick pool of blood, extending to the edges of my boots. A six foot man, weighing about 12 stones, will have approximately 12 pints of blood in his circulation. If you can imagine getting 12 milk bottles, each holding a pint, and pouring them around your living room floor, you will have some idea of the extent of this blood loss.

The complete chalk-white colour of the body indicated that life was well and truly extinct. People who die in such situations are whiter than you can imagine. However, to play my part in this farcical scene, I had to touch the man, and confirm that there was no pulse, and no possibility of resuscitation. I walked through the blood, the few paces necessary to get close enough to do so. On examination, I could see that his throat had been cut, with some force, and a large spray pattern of blood up the nearby wall, confirmed this as the probable fatal injury. His nose had also been completely cut off, sliced away, leaving a strange appearance to his face. As his trachea was visible through the wound in his neck, and his body was stone cold, and pulse-less, I concluded that we could do nothing more. From the doorway, the first policeman asked, ‘is he dead?’ There was no irony implied, and none taken; we all knew the ropes.

I had to give statements of course, though I never had to attend court, as the murderer had actually been in the flat, and it was him that had originally called 999. I bitterly regretted the loss of my most comfortable boots, which had to be surrendered for forensic examination, and despite promises received, were never returned to me. We left the scene shortly afterwards, and would have not known any more about this job, if I had not bumped into one of the officers later that year.

It seems that the resident of the flat, the dead man, had made the acquaintance of his killer in a nearby pub, and invited him home for drinks. After a few glasses, the older man had disappeared into the bedroom, returning completely undressed, and made sexual advances to the other. In his defence, the killer stated that he had not expected this to happen, and tried to leave, the other man preventing him from doing so. In the struggle that ensued, he had grabbed a large kitchen knife, and in his words, ‘just waved it about.’ During this ‘waving’, he managed to completely slice off the man’s nose, and then cut so deeply into his neck, that he partially detached his head from his neck. He pleaded to manslaughter, with mitigation for self-defence.

I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Ambulance stories (9)

~ beetleypete ~ 24 Comments

The fainting woman

After a very short time in the Ambulance Service, you soon learn to disregard the diagnoses given by Ambulance Control. They are at the mercy of the caller, and their own desire to end the call, within their protocols, as soon as possible. So, there is a constant repetition of the same diagnosis given for the call you are being asked to go to. Others can be wildly inaccurate, perhaps because of language problems, or lack of observation on the part of the caller. After a while, you do not expect what you are told, to be what you actually see on arrival.

One morning, we were returning from the Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith, when we were called to a well-known high-rise estate, not far from our base. We were told to meet a caller outside the entrance to one of the highest blocks, and that he would take us to the victim. The job was given as, ‘Female fainted; possibly unconscious’. We understood that this could mean anything. She may well be unconscious, possibly not. She may have fainted because she was pregnant, or she might well have tripped over a kerb, and not have fainted at all. There was a good chance that she had suffered a cardiac arrest, and an equally good chance that there was nothing wrong with her whatsoever. Either way, we would not find out until we got there, so the sirens and lights were engaged, and off we went.

On arrival, we saw a man at the end of the service road, directly outside the block address given. Although there was no other traffic, save an ambulance making its way at some speed, lights flashing, heading directly for him, he still felt the need to wave frantically at us, his arms flailing as he repeatedly indicated the point that we should bring the vehicle to a halt. This behaviour was so common, that I gave these people the affectionate nick-name of ‘Wavy Daveys’. He was standing next to a woman in a collapsed state, crumpled on the floor, and looking very pale. On first examination, she seemed to be uninjured, though getting a history from her proved difficult, as, confirming her Mediterranean appearance, she was speaking in what I knew to be Portuguese. She was gesturing to her right, around the other side of the entrance porch, her mouth flapping like a puppet, as she repeatedly exclaimed something in her own language, that we could not understand.  We decided that we had best get her into the vehicle, out of the cold, and examine her further. The trolley bed was brought over, and she was blanketed, lifted onto the bed, and placed into the vehicle. She finally managed some English, interspersed between her Portuguese ramblings. She wanted us to open the back doors she said, there was something important to tell us.

We could not calm her down until the doors were opened. As we did so, she pointed again at the side of the entrance porch. “There, there, look there” she shouted, before sinking down onto the pillows, uttering a stream of religious incantations. To placate the distressed lady, I walked over to look in the area that she had indicated. Just out of sight of the road, in a corner aspect of the building, a few feet away from the entrance to the block, was the shattered body of an adult male. From the amount of blood and bodily fluids, and the bizarre positioning of the limbs, I knew at once that this was someone that had fallen from a great height. The briefest of examinations told me that nothing could be done, and I returned to the ambulance to summon the Police on the radio.  I also asked for a second vehicle to deal with this new job, and returned to the body, to carefully cover it with a blanket. We then waited the short time for the arrival of the assistance, and our lady in the back grew calmer during this interval.

She had indeed fainted. Then again, if you were just about to go up to your flat, and a body whistled past you, hitting the ground with a never-to-be-forgotten sickening crunch, you might well faint too.

Ambulance stories (8)

~ beetleypete ~ 28 Comments

Experience not necessary

This is another example of how experience does not always guarantee good performance, and how the wisdom of age can be cast aside by events.

One evening, I was working with the oldest, and most experienced man on our Ambulance Station. I was almost 40 years old, and he was over 50. Between us, we had some 38 years of experience in the job. Towards the end of the shift, which had been very busy, we were called to a traffic accident. It was described as a ‘hit and run’, a pedestrian had been knocked down, and the car responsible had left the scene. We had some way to travel to this job, and on route, we were updated on the radio; the situation was believed serious, Police on scene had advised us.

On arrival, things did indeed look serious. A man in his 30’s was lying across the road, which had been partially closed by Traffic Police. On examination, it appeared that the man was semi-conscious, smelt strongly of alcohol, and had a visible wound to his head. His shirt was wet around the abdomen, despite dry conditions, so my colleague removed it, to better examine the male. We immediately saw that he had organs protruding from a wound there, and soon ascertained that it was his intestines that were clearly visible. We applied a very large dressing, dampened to protect the exposed tissue, and advised the nearby hospital that we would soon be arriving with a seriously injured man.

I drove off, blue lights flashing, sirens wailing. In the back, my colleague administered oxygen, and closely monitored the patient, during the short journey to the local Casualty Department. Arriving at the hospital, we rushed him in to the Casualty, where a special Trauma Team was waiting. They quickly removed his trousers, to reveal a dislodged colostomy bag. What we had believed to be a torn abdomen, was in fact a surgical stoma, where a piece of intestine is left exposed to attach to the colostomy bag. The man was well-known to the staff there, and  he later confessed that he had been drunk, and tripped over the kerb, hitting his head, and detaching the bag attached to the stoma. There had been no car, and no traffic accident, all of that had been presumption on the part of the Police, and bystanders who had happened across him. Had we not allowed ourselves to get caught up in the drama, no doubt we would have worked this out for ourselves.

We both felt pretty stupid, and it took us a long time to live that one down.

Ambulance stories (5)

~ beetleypete ~ 44 Comments

The missing leg

It doesn’t matter how much experience you have, you can still miss something. At the time referred to in this job, I had around 15 years experience working in emergency ambulances, and my colleague that night was also no new boy, having been in the job for about 10 years. So, with 25 years service between us, you think that we could get it all right, without schoolboy errors.

That night had been busy. Weekends usually were busier, especially in Central London. We found ourselves at the Accident and Emergency Department of St. Thomas’s Hospital, just south of Westminster Bridge, opposite the Houses of Parliament. This was not one of our usual haunts, but the level of work that night had pushed us across from West London, and we had finally ended up here. As soon as we became available, we received a call . It sounded serious, a motorcycle had hit a pedestrian, and there were three casualties.

The Police had also closed the road, which was Victoria Embankment, an arterial route around London beside the river. Luckily, it was very near, just across the bridge, so we arrived in a couple of minutes. There was a man lying motionless in the road, and a bit further along, a large BMW motorcycle was on its side, with two crash-helmeted figures lying nearby. The Police told us that the motorcyclists were father and son, and the son had been on the pillion; they were injured, but both conscious, so we should concentrate on the pedestrian. We called for more ambulances to attend, and went to examine the man in the road.

What we saw, was a well dressed man, wearing a dinner jacket and bow tie. He was tall, about 6 feet 4 inches, and had a large build. He also only had one leg. Removing part of  his trouser leg with scissors, we could see that the leg had been ripped off with some force, probably from contacting a part of the fast moving motorcycle, and was missing from about four inches above the knee. The man was also unconscious, had poor vital signs, and there was an obvious head injury. Our main concern was the loss of blood from the traumatic amputation of the leg. There was a small river of the stuff running from underneath the man, leading down into the kerb; so, no time to mess around.

My colleague set up an infusion, and I applied a large dressing, incorporating a bag of ice, kindly supplied by the nearby Savoy Hotel. We got the victim into the ambulance, connected oxygen, drip bag, and monitor, then put in a radio call, to tell St. Thomas’s that we would be there very soon, with a serious case. I asked a policeman where the detached leg was. He hadn’t seen it, he replied. Frantic requests to his colleagues produced the same answer, nobody on scene had seen the missing leg, or had even thought to look for it. A cursory search was made in the immediate area, but we did not have time for niceties, so would have to go without the leg, losing any chance of it being re-connected later, if found. I asked the other ambulance crews, who had arrived to tend to the motorcyclists, to look out for it, as and when they got the chance, and we left at great speed, making the short journey back to the hospital.

On arrival, we were met by the trauma team, who wasted no time getting the poor man straight into the Resuscitation Room. I sheepishly told the staff that we had not brought the other leg, as we had not managed to find it. They were not too concerned, as he had deteriorated rapidly, and they would have to work fast to save his life. As they began to remove his clothes, one of the nurses had difficulty with the cummerbund, which was wrapped tightly around his waist. I proffered my large shears to help, and she cut through it with ease. As she did so, something fell out of his shirt, crashing heavily onto the floor. It was his other leg.

Amazingly, the impact had not only severed the leg, it had been forced back up the trouser leg, wrapping around his waist, giving the appearance of a pot belly. In all the excitement, and the adrenaline rush of a serious accident, none of us had noticed. You couldn’t make it up if you tried.

I don’t know what happened to the man, but he was not expected to live, and I very much doubt that he did. Fortunately, the matter of the missing leg was immaterial to the outcome.

Missing girl in Wales

~ beetleypete ~ 2 Comments

No one can be unaware of the main news story of the week in the UK, that of the missing five year old girl, April Jones. We have all seen the various reports, Police updates, and film coverage of the extensive search for this child. Today, a man has been charged with her murder, and it would appear that the Police are now looking for her body, and not expecting to find her alive.
This has been a tragedy for the small community where she lives, and has been followed with interest and sympathy by people all over the World. During the course of the week, we also heard that young April suffered from Cerebral Palsy, somehow making it all seem even worse.

Now I may have missed something, but can anybody tell me how a small, five year old child with Cerebral Palsy, was allowed, by her parents, to be playing outside in the street, presumably out of their sight, at 7pm in the evening? Tell me if I am wrong, and have overlooked some detail in the news reports, but I have not seen any criticism of the parents of a child who should at least have been at home, if not already tucked up in bed, rather than left to play in the street unattended. I am sensitive to the fact that it does not help matters to question the behaviour of grieving parents, and it will not change the fate of the poor child. However, I cannot get this out of my mind. This may not be a popular post, but I had to get this question asked, and I hope that someone has the answer.

Police murders in Manchester

~ beetleypete ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday, two female Police Officers were murdered in the line of duty, in a district of Manchester. You have no doubt seen a lot of coverage of this event on the television, and in the newspapers. Various politicians, and senior Police officials, including Chief Constables, have paraded before the cameras, expressing grief and disbelief at the event.

The slain officers have been rightly praised for their professionalism and dedication, and there has been a tangible sense of loss shown by their colleagues. Much has been written about the murderer, his motives, and his cowardice in luring these young women to their deaths. Had he wished, he could have told the call centre that he was armed, and then he would have had to deal with specialist firearms officers. Surely the outcome would have been very different if he had chosen this option.

However, this post is not about the two officers, or their killer. It is not about arming Police all over the UK, or commenting on the motives of the criminal, who will hopefully never set foot outside of prison again. My thoughts today concern the blatant hypocrisy of the senior Police Chiefs and the platitudinous bleating of the politicians, on all sides of the political spectrum. These same men and women have spent the last few years plotting and planning to reduce Police numbers nationally, as well as cutting pay, pensions, and reducing privileges for officers all over the country. Police Authorities, in collusion with Chief Constables, and local and national politicians, have been scheming to reduce budgets, cut numbers in real terms, and make the officers pay more to keep the same pension that they were promised when they joined. Police Officers still have no right to take any industrial action, and they are seeing their annual salary package effectively reducing year on year. The people droning on on the news yesterday are in no danger of getting shot doing their jobs. Their pensions are secure, their salaries five or ten times those of the two dead officers, their children are going to Eton or Harrow, and they will be talking about something else today. Away from the cameras, they will still be planning job cuts, pay freezes, and pension betrayals; still expecting brave young women to lose their lives to protect them, for less than thirty grand a year, probably about the same amount that they pay for their health club membership and wine bills.

I hope that the two young women rest in peace, and are fondly remembered by their loved ones, and colleagues. I also hope that the bigwigs stop disrespecting their memory by pretending that they ever cared a jot about them.

The Beetley Ferret

~ beetleypete ~ 43 Comments

Ferret

This morning, Julie and I were sleeping in, after a late night . At 8.45am, We were awakened by the sound of the doorbell. This may not sound like a big deal, but this is Beetley. There are no Jehovah Witnesses visiting on a regular basis, and we were not expecting a parcel, so the doorbell is always a surprise. I donned my dressing gown, and went to the front door.

There was a neighbour, from the ‘back’ (Spinney Close), accompanied by his grand daughter. I recognised him from a brief meeting, whilst walking Ollie in the nearby meadows. His opening line was, “Have you lost a ferret?”. Now in my former flat in London, this would have been answered with a guffaw, so I had to remember that I was now in Norfolk. ” We have just seen a ferret in our garden, heading your way. It was this big”, he continued, opening his arms in the way of a boastful angler, indicating a size approximating to a slender fox. “You will have to be careful that it doesn’t attack your dog”, he warned, adding that he remembered Ollie from the encounter in the meadows.

I assured him that I had not seen a ferret, did not own one, and knew of nobody nearby who did. He left, with advice to keep my dog in, in case the said mammalian carnivore should appear on my patio. His bemused grand daughter was texting on her mobile phone throughout, no doubt updating her Facebook status as ‘hunting a ferret’. I went back inside, and told Julie what the excitement was about. We decided to get up and prepare for the day ahead. As I was enjoying my morning drink, the doorbell sounded again. After hearing a commotion, and loud Norfolk accents nearby, we guessed it concerned the ferret.

Julie answered this time, and there was another neighbour, also from Spinney Close, warning us of the roving ferret. This neighbour also recognised Ollie from the meadow, where he had enjoyed a play with her dog, Winston. When Julie told her that the other man had previously warned us, she made her apologies, and left. We later heard loud conversations, and quite a few people out and about (for a Monday), presumably in search of the hapless ferret. To the best of our knowledge, it was never seen again, so presumably made good its escape. (See below, for an update)

This led us to reflect on how different life is in Norfolk. Less than a year ago, in Camden, we could well have had a Police helicopter hovering a hundred feet above our flat, searching for an escaped gunman, or there might have been a door to door inquiry, following a fatal stabbing two hundred yards from our front door. Since living in Beetley, nothing has happened. The incident of the ferret has been the biggest cause of animation among our neighbours, and caused us to receive our only unsolicited callers, in seven months.
It makes me feel glad to have moved here.

Here is an update to the above post. The ferret has appeared! When I was out walking Ollie the next day, Julie spotted the big beige-coloured animal lurking around the back of our leylandii hedge. She went outside to take a photo of it, and it ran towards her. Scared it might bite her, she retreated inside the house, and the ferret went into the shed to investigate. When she had seen it leave the shed sometime later, Julie locked it, and stayed inside the house until I returned.

So there really was a Beetley ferret, and it turned out to be an escaped pet.

We all have a book in us

~ beetleypete ~ 3 Comments

How many times has this been heard over the years? Approaching Retirement, I was often told, ‘now is the time to write that book’. After all, I had led a comparatively exciting working life. Over 20 years in a front line ambulance, followed by more than 10 years behind the scenes working for the Metropolitan Police. I had attended bombings, and major disasters. I had delivered babies, cared for victims of terrible burns and injuries, and ended my working life deploying firearms officers in Central London. There was also the possibility to inject humour, with unusual tales of quirky events, mistakes and errors made, and the strange characters that I had dealt with, or worked alongside. I had travelled a fair bit. What about experiences behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ in Soviet Russia, or visiting East Germany many years before the wall came down?
If this did not provide fertile enough ground for that book, there were always my personal interests. History, Civil Wars, Cameras and Photography, Dickensian London, and the development of weapons through the ages. Maybe I could use my experiences with the Police, to write about modern crime-fighting in the Metropolis? There was always the possibility that my new life in Norfolk would yield great material for a book about the transition from London to the countryside. I would definitely look into it. After all, didn’t my life deserve a printed legacy, or to be available as an electronic download? Surely I too deserved to be in the remainder bins at half price, or in the window of Waterstones as the cheapest of the ‘buy 3 get 1 free offer? Failing all that, I could adapt these experiences and interests, to write a work of fiction, loosely based on something I knew a bit about.

I considered all the options, starting with the obvious. My Life in the Ambulance Service. An interesting read, with a few chuckles, and lots of gasps. From the end of the 1970’s, to the start of the 21st century. Strikes, civil disorder, changes in the NHS, advancements in care, yet the job was essentially the same. There have been a few written already. They didn’t sell well. There was one exception to this, the marvellous ‘Bringing out the dead’, the only work to ever get inside the darker aspects of the job of a Paramedic. Generally though, people don’t want to read the truth about injury and illness. It just isn’t entertaining or informative.
What about Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War? I have always been interested in that period. I am a member of the Cromwell Association, and I live in East Anglia, so research should be easy. I was forgetting Antonia Fraser. Her definitive biography of the man and his times, as thick as a telephone directory, immaculately researched, and a great read for anyone interested in the subject. No point trying to better that.
Perhaps a crime thriller, drawing on my Police contacts? I remembered the novel ‘By Reason of Insanity’. Probably the best book about a serial killer, and those hunting him, ever written. Then there were the books about forensic detectives, pathologists, or those with a gritty, authentic feel, like the ‘Rebus’ series. Could I do better than all these?

I doubt it.
How about a non-fiction work of importance, say the history of a great city like London? Oops, Peter Ackroyd beat me to that one.
This leaves the fish- out- of- water transition to a strange land, as my best bet. Hang on, am I forgetting Bill Bryson, or ‘A Year in Provence’? My feeble musings on a life in Norfolk are never going to hold a candle to these best sellers.
So, it had to be a well-researched, thought-provoking work about the unhappy lot of the working class in Victorian London. I would start right away. I had the credentials, as I came from the poorest district in South London, Rotherhithe. Nuzzling the south bank of the Thames, this was a place that had changed beyond recognition, from unspeakable slum, it had become a fashionable, dockside development. The docks had closed, and the inhabitants mostly moved away. There had to be some mileage in that surely? No. I had forgotten Charles Dickens, not to mention Mr Ackroyd (again).

My conclusion is that we do not all have a book ‘in us’. Writers and authors have books in them. They get up early, write long and hard. They research, they study, they read other books, and they strive for excellence. They are their own harshest critics, and they give their lives to their work. Families are shunned, homes re-mortgaged, lovers abandoned, luxuries are foregone. They also have good ideas, and act upon them.

The recent meteoric success of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ and its sequels, fuelled by social media sites on the Internet, is a good example. Written by a lady who waited until she had seen her family grow, and her career aspirations satisfied, she embarked on her trilogy of lust, bondage and dark love. It has probably made her a fortune, and she has the film rights to come as well.
I could have had that idea. I could imagine sex and bondage, vulnerable females, and a dark central character. It can’t be that difficult can it? But I didn’t have the idea, and if I had, I wouldn’t have acted on it. E. L James had the idea, and she did the work necessary to get it into print. She reaps a just reward, good luck to her. That is the difference between writers and readers. If you want to be a writer, you have to act on those ideas, and be prepared to work hard to make them appear on a page. They don’t always have to be new, but they must catch a mood, and be of their time. Just because you did something interesting, doesn’t necessarily make that thing, or you, interesting as well, when translated to the written page.

Keep reading, and enjoy those books. I choose to stop believing that I have a book ‘in me’. I don’t.