Spork - Webism - Random Acts

If you asked Tom Reynolds, he'd say that he can't write very well, and that his life isn't very interesting. Strange then, that he would be the author of one of the most gripping and enlightening blogs on the internet. "Tom" is an Emergency Medical Technician for the London Ambulance Service. His blog, Random Acts of Reality centres around the jobs he goes to in his ambulance.

Writing a good blog takes more
than just having the equipment.

The word "blog" has really only entered into the public lexicon in the last year or two. There's been an explosion of blogging, and it seems like every second person is now publishing their inane inner script on the internet. Too many of these, in my opinion, are the work of people who've jumped on the blogging bandwagon without having much of real interest to say. Random Acts of Reality is different. It's head and shoulders above the pack. Tom has an engaging way of telling his stories, and the realities of crewing an ambulance in a rough part of London furnishes him with a vast store of drama, tragedy, frustrations, triumphs, and perhaps even a little dark humour.

Check out this unusual post from last year:

These Boots...

Have walked along train tracks.
Have been washed in the blood of murder victims.
Have kicked in doors to get to unconscious women.
Have stepped in more urine, in more tower blocks than I'd care to think about.
Have kept my feet warm and comfortable on long nights.
Have been allowed into a mosque.
Have climbed fences to reach dead bodies.
Have run across football fields to try to save a life, and failed.
Have been spat on, vomited on and shit on.
Have stood in "remains".
Have tried to find purchase while walking backward down narrow stairs.
Have defended me from drunks and druggies.
Have been run over by a 22 stone trolley.
Have been stared at by a daughter when telling them their mother has died.

(from here)

Tom would describe himself as a cynic, but his writing is suffused with a deep-seated humanity. No matter how many times he moans about having to attend the same drunks and druggies over and over to treat trivial injuries, he also takes pride in delivering an unswervingly professional standard of care. He summed this up himself in a recent entry about a callout to the squalid flat of a chronic alcoholic:

I persuaded him to go to hospital for a 'check up'.

"I don't want to waste their time", he mumbled, "I'm just an alcoholic".

"It's alright mate", I'd reply, "We look after everyone, even alcoholics".

Too many "maternataxis"

In fact, the general impression one gets of all the LAS staff through Tom's blog is of a deeply committed group of people working against considerable frustrations to try and do something to help their fellow man. Until I started being a regular reader I had no idea just how much of their time is wasted attending pointless, nuisance, and trivial jobs. His frustration at being called to endless non-emergency cases is evident. There could be people in genuine trouble who need an ambulance but can't get one, and that bothers Tom. Top of his shit list are the ubiquitous "maternataxis", where women in labour who are many hours away from delivering call for an ambulance (instead of simply being driven to hospital by their partners) and people with a bit of a cough who mention "chest pain" on the phone and thus bump themselves to the top of the priority list.

The "Big White Taxi "

That's not to say that Tom never attends exciting or dramatic jobs. He has posted about difficult jobs, such as an upsetting call to a child who collapsed and died at school, despite Tom's frantic efforts to resuscitate her. He has also shared his agonising wait for test results with his readers after a patient with AIDS vomited into his mouth. Thankfully the tests came back negative, and in the meantime Tom used the opportunity to try and inform his readers about what treatment is given in these cases. It turns out the chance of being infected by HIV through exposure like this is as low as one in 5,000. Still, i'm sure most of us would rather not have to take that gamble when we turn up for work.

All in all, his blog is engrossing, and it's easy to get hooked on. His rise to fame among the secret society of superstar bloggers has even inspired others to follow on, and among the better allied blogs is Neenaw, penned by an LAS dispatcher.

So if you've got a few minutes a day and even a passing interest in humanity, then you could do a lot worse than bookmarking Random Acts of Reality. Or better yet, subscribing to the RSS feed. If you don't know what that is, then you should go here. Or if you're still stuck browsing the web through Internet Explorer you should first go and upgrade to either Firefox or Opera. They're both free.

And in the meantime, Tom will continue to patrol the streets of East London in his big white taxi, "trying to kill as few people as possible" as he puts it in his typically self-effacing way. But the fact is, modesty aside, he makes both London and the internet better places to be.