Shameless…!

Standing by around the corner we listened to the engine cooling down with the occasional ‘pop’ and ‘fizzle‘ after our drive from station towards the scene. We had been told to ‘Stand Off! and await arrival of Police.’ Reports had come in of a street fight still in progress with half the neighbourhood apparently involved.

Occasionally a car would come screeching around the corner either in an attempt to flee the scene or just in the normal standard of driving around here on the ‘Beelzebub’ Estate. After approximately five minutes we both could hear the approaching sirens of the Police coming up behind us. Along side us a Police patrol car pulled up and my mate wound the window down.

“Are you the Ambulance?” asked one of the Police officers to my mate who was in the  driving seat. I detected a nano second of hesitation before my crew mate replied “Yeah, that’ll be us right enough!” cleverly disguising his annoyance at been likened to a big green and yellow truck. “See you round there then!” And off went the Police ahead of us to the street fight.

Turning into the street we were met by a large crowd of people either side of the road in some kind of ‘Mexican Standoff’. In the middle of the left hand crowd we could just make out a small group huddled around someone on the floor. Once safely parked up we walked towards the person on the floor taking with us the O2 bag and trauma kit not knowing what we were going to.

It soon became obvious that the person on the floor was an elderly ‘lady’ laying face down on the concrete driveway. She was conscious and complaining of pain in her upper arm. After checking for other injuries we turned her over and placed her arm in a sling and put her in the back of the truck. Now we could find out what happened without all and sundry putting in their two pence worth.

As I started taking more detailed obs and filling in paperwork, the injured ‘lady‘ who was in her late sixties (with teeth missing, normal, huge cheap swag earrings, normal, mis-spelt tattoos, normal and dyed blond hair, normal) told me what had happened. She had got in the middle of a fight between her son and her grandson over some dogs and some birds. Every now and then her story was punctuated with “I ain’t pressing no charges!”

Her son kept pigeons and her grandson kept ‘Staffies‘ (The fashionable ‘yob dog’ at the moment). Unfortunately the dogs had been eating the pigeons which hacked off the dad no end. And so an argument had ensued that resulted in negotiations breaking down and ending in father and son beating seven colours of s**t out of each other. This is where our patient had come off worse as she was knocked to the ground, accidentally, and broke her arm.

Because this had moved from inside the house to the street, neighbours and passersby got involved and a ‘Wild West’ fight had started. As one neighbour said as I passed him leaning against his front door smoking a roll up “Its like a f******g scene from ‘Shameless’ better than watching telly this lot!” And I had to agree with him. Assorted youths were hanging around with approximately one in five of them holding a ‘Staffie’ straining at the leash. A lot of the houses had the old ‘tin curtains’ up to prevent youths breaking in and torching them.

The Police eventually caught up with father and son who had legged it from the scene and both were arrested. After booking in the elderly ‘lady‘ at A/E her son was brought in by the Police to sort out his very large and nasty looking split lip! Having handed over our patient and sorting out the back of the truck we stood outside A/E and watched a steady procession of assorted family members go into A/E. Every other word that we could hear from nearly all of them involved f**k, and ‘revenge’ and ‘b*****d’ and other famous old Saxon verbalization.

I am glad that I do not live anywhere near one of these estates and if I did I would be getting out sharpish!