lundi 27 septembre 2010
Northerly latitudes
Off to Brussels to join the 'A' Team for a week. It will feel funny wearing shoes and socks after so long in sandals and bare feet. Still, mornings on the roof terrace here are beginning to get chilly.
dimanche 26 septembre 2010
Alsace sur mer
A surreal experience yesterday, after the usual strenuous lifeboat exercises in the morning. One of our crew is off to Strasbourg to start nursing training, executing a 90° or perhaps 180° career turn from his former calling of notary's clerk.
To honour his send off, the station had organised a farewell alfresco lunch down on the quayside, next to the lifeboat. Lots of people, grizzly veterans of the open boats of years ago, chappies who gravitate around the lifeboats because they lend a hand on the mechanical front, spouses and children. It was good fun, but the main course, in a none-too-subtle nod to Strasbourg, was sauerkraut, or choucroute as it is known in France. It is the first time we have had outdoor choucroute on the Côte d'Azur. Very strange...
To honour his send off, the station had organised a farewell alfresco lunch down on the quayside, next to the lifeboat. Lots of people, grizzly veterans of the open boats of years ago, chappies who gravitate around the lifeboats because they lend a hand on the mechanical front, spouses and children. It was good fun, but the main course, in a none-too-subtle nod to Strasbourg, was sauerkraut, or choucroute as it is known in France. It is the first time we have had outdoor choucroute on the Côte d'Azur. Very strange...
lundi 20 septembre 2010
Another flag
You may have seen the rather ragged Tricolore in a previous blog. Well, there is one spanking new flag around here, brought back by some of the Normans on the lifeboat crew. The Norman flag, far bigger than the French national flag, was hoisted at the mainmast in a position guaranteed to cause apoplexy amongst the Bretons. Still, on the leaflets the national SNSM sends us, the picture on the front, of a lifeboat just like ours, shows a Breton flag fluttering proudly in the shrouds.
Propaganda and Proof
Saturday and Sunday were the Journées du Patrimoine, or Doors Open Days. Lots of buildings not normally open to the public were for once accessible, and guides were there to explain what went on in them.
One of the buildings in Antibes which opened its doors was the Coastguard look-out station, or 'sémaphore', up on the Garoupe plateau next to the lighthouse and the church. It is manned, 24/24, by specialised French Navy personnel, and since they still had their job to do, they asked the Lifeboat Service for a hand in showing people around. It was a nice assignment, as we met a lot of people, and working with the sailors (many of them now female) was good fun.
We profited from the forced presence of dozens of people queuing in the hot sun to vaunt the utility of the lifeboats, pointing out that when the coastguards identified a vessel in trouble, they usually sent us, even though we were unpaid civilian volunteers. To be fair to the sailors, they spent their whole time praising us, which was embarrassing but nice.
Just to prove our usefulness, our beepers rang three times during the day, so we piled into whatever cars were available (old wrecks) and headed down the corniche into town and on to the lifeboat station. For the first two beeps, we had already started to cast off, with the motors roaring, when the order countermanding the sortie came through on the radio. So back to the Coastguard station, handling crowds and questions...
The third beep came just as we were about to tuck into a delayed lunch. This time it was for real. We sped out of the harbour in search of an injured jet-skier in the water, with suspected spinal injuries and difficulties in breathing. Not easy to spot against the sun, but we found her and started the slow, painstaking job of getting her (it was a young woman) onto an orthopaedic stretcher in the water, stabilising her head, shoulders, pelvis etc, and craning her onboard with the minimum of movement to her body. Here is her wetsuit, afterwards: needs a bit of needle and cotton work before it can be put on again. I suspect it was hired...
As you may have gathered, once on the lifeboat a couple of us attended to her, unceremoniously cutting off her wetsuit with scissors to check for bleeding or embedded objects, whilst others administered oxygen and checked her blood oxygen. I have to stress that she was wearing a bathing suit, but we would have removed the wetsuit all the same. Meanwhile, we needed to get the boat ready for coming alongside a suitable landing stage to put the casualty near to an ambulance.
She didn't die on us, which was good, and this lunchtime I had a telephone call from the coxswain to say that though she was still in hospital having her - probably serious - injuries assessed, she wasn't at risk of paralysis.
So back, in the battered old cars, to the Coastguard station, and more people to show around. After the last curious visitors were chased out of the military precinct, the officer commanding the base offered the ubiquitous pastis to all and sundry, as the sun set, and the lighthouse began its regular illumination of the Coastguard barracks. Eaten alive by the mozzies, though, as they thrive in the dank plantations of all the millionaires who have houses on the Cap d'Antibes.
Finally got a lift home, or nearly home, in the car of my parrain, or lifeboat buddy, which alarmingly conked out about thirty times coming down the hill. I thanked him, and then walked the rest of the way. Hope he got home...
One of the buildings in Antibes which opened its doors was the Coastguard look-out station, or 'sémaphore', up on the Garoupe plateau next to the lighthouse and the church. It is manned, 24/24, by specialised French Navy personnel, and since they still had their job to do, they asked the Lifeboat Service for a hand in showing people around. It was a nice assignment, as we met a lot of people, and working with the sailors (many of them now female) was good fun.
We profited from the forced presence of dozens of people queuing in the hot sun to vaunt the utility of the lifeboats, pointing out that when the coastguards identified a vessel in trouble, they usually sent us, even though we were unpaid civilian volunteers. To be fair to the sailors, they spent their whole time praising us, which was embarrassing but nice.
Just to prove our usefulness, our beepers rang three times during the day, so we piled into whatever cars were available (old wrecks) and headed down the corniche into town and on to the lifeboat station. For the first two beeps, we had already started to cast off, with the motors roaring, when the order countermanding the sortie came through on the radio. So back to the Coastguard station, handling crowds and questions...
The third beep came just as we were about to tuck into a delayed lunch. This time it was for real. We sped out of the harbour in search of an injured jet-skier in the water, with suspected spinal injuries and difficulties in breathing. Not easy to spot against the sun, but we found her and started the slow, painstaking job of getting her (it was a young woman) onto an orthopaedic stretcher in the water, stabilising her head, shoulders, pelvis etc, and craning her onboard with the minimum of movement to her body. Here is her wetsuit, afterwards: needs a bit of needle and cotton work before it can be put on again. I suspect it was hired...
As you may have gathered, once on the lifeboat a couple of us attended to her, unceremoniously cutting off her wetsuit with scissors to check for bleeding or embedded objects, whilst others administered oxygen and checked her blood oxygen. I have to stress that she was wearing a bathing suit, but we would have removed the wetsuit all the same. Meanwhile, we needed to get the boat ready for coming alongside a suitable landing stage to put the casualty near to an ambulance.
She didn't die on us, which was good, and this lunchtime I had a telephone call from the coxswain to say that though she was still in hospital having her - probably serious - injuries assessed, she wasn't at risk of paralysis.
So back, in the battered old cars, to the Coastguard station, and more people to show around. After the last curious visitors were chased out of the military precinct, the officer commanding the base offered the ubiquitous pastis to all and sundry, as the sun set, and the lighthouse began its regular illumination of the Coastguard barracks. Eaten alive by the mozzies, though, as they thrive in the dank plantations of all the millionaires who have houses on the Cap d'Antibes.
Finally got a lift home, or nearly home, in the car of my parrain, or lifeboat buddy, which alarmingly conked out about thirty times coming down the hill. I thanked him, and then walked the rest of the way. Hope he got home...
vendredi 17 septembre 2010
Coming apart at the social seams
The president of the republic is getting a bit hot under the collar about how his policy towards illegal encampments is being represented abroad. The problem for him is that France, despite its boasting about having invented human rights and having given the world liberty, equality and fraternity, has had - like many European countries including the UK - a murky and none-too-glorious history when it comes to aliens and minorities. This history comes back to haunt...
There is a distinct feeling here, at the moment, that many of the values of the republic are being flouted. I don't know whether the Tricolore and the triple motto of Liberté Egalité Fraternité are consciously linked in their threefold symbolism, but a peek at the flag flying over the Chateau Grimaldi in Antibes last night showed that the red part, for me the best of the colours politically, was rapidly becoming detached. Is that a portent?
mardi 14 septembre 2010
Trousses de pharmacie
Spent the night lying awake, not out of worry, but out of curiosity about how to organise a spreadsheet to deal with the need to replace, at wildly varying times, the many medical supplies the boat carries. Some of the products, like injectable adrenalin, a real life-saver, need to be ultra-fresh. Pretty well everything we carry has an expiry date.
The inventory system needed to be simple, because other people than me will be having to modify and update it, and it needed to be transportable, because it is to go on several different computers. It also had to distinguish which of the two medical kits the item belongs to, so more than one search criterion will have to be applied.
I finally decided against a spreadsheet programme, as the learning curve is high, and there is no need, anyway, for any inter-cell calculations or formulae. I opted instead for a table within a bog standard word-processing package, on the grounds that pretty well everybody can use one of those, and most computers come with a compatible one already installed. The alphanumeric and numeric sort functions could deal with names and dates, provided I turned the dates into pseudo decimals, such as 2010.09 for September 2010. The different locations could be accommodated by a simultaneous secondary sort instruction, probably numeric (a simple kit 1 and kit 2).
Cracked it this morning, and started entering the data: a tedious business. Boy, do medicines have strange names! There is no obvious relationship between the names and what they do, as far as I can see, and certainly no relationship between names and the active ingredients. The chief research, if not the most costly, in drug companies, must be pseudo-lexical invention. Wouldn't mind doing a bit of that myself, if the money was right.
This afternoon I am off to the lifeboat station with my computer to try out on the cox whether it is easy for somebody else to understand. The trouble is, he is as sharp as a razor. More than I can say for all the crew, but he'll have to do.
The inventory system needed to be simple, because other people than me will be having to modify and update it, and it needed to be transportable, because it is to go on several different computers. It also had to distinguish which of the two medical kits the item belongs to, so more than one search criterion will have to be applied.
I finally decided against a spreadsheet programme, as the learning curve is high, and there is no need, anyway, for any inter-cell calculations or formulae. I opted instead for a table within a bog standard word-processing package, on the grounds that pretty well everybody can use one of those, and most computers come with a compatible one already installed. The alphanumeric and numeric sort functions could deal with names and dates, provided I turned the dates into pseudo decimals, such as 2010.09 for September 2010. The different locations could be accommodated by a simultaneous secondary sort instruction, probably numeric (a simple kit 1 and kit 2).
Cracked it this morning, and started entering the data: a tedious business. Boy, do medicines have strange names! There is no obvious relationship between the names and what they do, as far as I can see, and certainly no relationship between names and the active ingredients. The chief research, if not the most costly, in drug companies, must be pseudo-lexical invention. Wouldn't mind doing a bit of that myself, if the money was right.
This afternoon I am off to the lifeboat station with my computer to try out on the cox whether it is easy for somebody else to understand. The trouble is, he is as sharp as a razor. More than I can say for all the crew, but he'll have to do.
lundi 13 septembre 2010
Who are these blog followers?
I thought I'd just check how many had been looking at my blog, by country: the results are curious...
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