WARNING - VERY LONG POST…
“Dancing in the moonlight ………”
- 0336? 0336! What is that? A pin number? A keysafe code? A catalogue number? What?
In actual fact, it was a number that held me utterly entranced for a brief moment in time – a moment when my befuddled brain struggled in a fruitless search for an underlying reason for the importance of that number which - by way of full disclosure and explanation - was actually the time displayed on the phone that I was holding and gawping at in a state of mild confusion. I simply could NOT work out how or why the phone was in my hand and I certainly couldn’t recall having picked it up from under my pillow at that utterly unGodly hour …… but, thankfully, the confusion was very short lived in my still sleepy head when the damned thing rang again and the name of the SWBB Duty Controller flashed on to the screen. I eventually managed to work out the correct direction to swipe my finger over the cracked and crumbling screen (I know, I know, but a brand new phone HAS actually been purchased and is ready and waiting to go …… but my neo-Luddite reluctance to move even somewhere close to “with the times” just keeps deterring me from making that all important move to switch over the SIM and get the new device up and running. Soon, I promise ………) and make a noise that, for me and at that time of the morning, was as good as it was going to get in terms of a meaningful response to the rude awakening!
“Good morning Adrian. Sorry to disturb you at this time of the morning!” ‘WHOA! WHOA!! STOP RIGHT THERE!!’ was my immediate thought and mental reaction but (thank the Lord) NOT my actual response. I think I managed to mutter some inane and platitudinous drivel about the fact that if I was being ‘disturbed’ at 0336 I was pretty damned certain that the caller – Rob, the duty South West Blood Bikes Controller – had, self-evidently, also been disturbed and probably at least 15 minutes or so earlier and that there was, therefore, absolutely NO need for the use of the word “sorry”, however ironic it might sound! Ooooohhhh, I mean - imagine – 0315 and the phone rings so you just KNOW that, as Duty Controller, you’re going to have an URGENT job request; you’ll need all the details; contact names; item details; collection point; destination; and numbers; purpose and reason for the request and on … and on … and on! The innate demand on a Controller for a sensible level of calm, coherent thought and action is always quite scary and never more so than in the dreaded “wee small hours”! All I had to do was listen for the simple details of “what; from where and to where”! At this time of the morning it HAD to be URGENT and HAD to be important or the two of us almost certainly wouldn’t have been in ANY form of discussion, so – at that time and in those circumstances - little else mattered …… to me, at least. I was undoubtedly getting the better and infinitely easier part of this particular ‘deal’ so …… time to put on the ‘big boy pants’ and get to work…….
“I’ve got an URGENT sample to go from RD&E to Birmingham, Adrian. I’ll try for a relay but are you OK to go all the way if a relay’s not available?” Am I OK to go all the way? Heck, man, you’re talking to the kind of motorcycling idiot that would regularly and on a whim ride 250 miles each way in a day to take flowers to my mother!! Granted, that was at least ten years ago (I KNOW – wherever did those years go?) but it would have been in the saddle of a 900 Hinckley Trident – a very fine machine indeed, but not exactly the greatest touring or long distance motorcycle ever built! I resisted the urge to get too wordy in response – the circumstances weren’t exactly right for convoluted conversation - so I replied with a simple, “yep, of course!” and tried to quietly leave the bedroom without waking the cat and whilst still dragging on my trousers – there was, by the way, little chance of waking the wife as I’m now confined to a spare bedroom for the very reason that I’m writing this drivel ………… OH, and I snore heavily. Allegedly!
Where was I? OH, yeah, exiting the bedroom on tiptoes and heading to the kitchen to get the hot coffee that was advised by Rob., before donning the bike gear and wheeling the BMW blood bike out of the garage and into the chilly early morning darkness. The air was cold and damp – we were getting the autumn mists but the mellow fruitfulness seemed like it hadn’t yet had the call to make an appearance, though at THAT hour of the day I had endless sympathy with mellow fruitfulness for demanding an extended holiday or even just a lie-in!!
The big Beemer purred gracefully through the moonlit, sleeping village and out towards the M5 motorway junction some 4 miles away. At this time of the day you might expect the journey to be quick and easy but unclassified rural lanes present unique and extra hazards at this time of night with wild animals roaming unafraid and, perhaps worse, unseen hazards like mud from ploughed fields laying almost invisible on the gritty surface with a light layer of rain reflecting the Beemer’s head and spotlights and masking a real and present danger to that all important tyre contact with tarmac! Nevertheless, I made it safely and breathed a sigh of relief as I reached the roundabout interchange with the M5 motorway and accelerated towards the southbound slip road. And that’s where it all, quite literally, “went south” in what felt like a BIG way! The on-slip was closed and a diversion was in place on what was now a VERY busy B road towards Exeter. The southbound traffic – even at four o’clock in the morning was heavy, in every sense of the word ……. a long line of articulated trucks snaked its way through the towns and villages that had once sat on the busy arterial route south through Devon towards Exeter. Overtaking in these circumstances was a game of complete chance and much of the journey was on roads already speed limited to 50 mph so I had little choice but to sit and wait it out – hold my position; hold my breath; and hold my nerve until I could make a safe and legal overtake or ‘filter’ through at lights. A couple of truckers obviously saw the fluoro livery on the bike and slowed to wave me past – thumbs up and ‘thanks fellas” from me – but the journey seemed agonisingly slow and torturous despite the detour adding no more than, realistically, 5 or 10 minutes as we rejoined the motorway at the next junction.
I made my way through blissfully traffic free and quiet streets to the RD&E Hospital and, the life of this particular Blood Biker never being easy, encountered my next ‘challenge’! I think 0430 counts as “wee small hours”, don’t you? So, having presumed that the hospital would retain only one open entrance at that wee small hours time of night/morning I went first to the main entrance rather than to the entrance nearest to the Labs that we normally use only to find that entrance locked and in darkness. I took the bike around to the usual “labs” entrance and – yes, you guessed it – found that entrance also locked and unlit! By luck and the greatest of good fortune, my rising frustration levels were quelled when a nearby ambulance crew member saw me forlornly standing by the locked door searching my pockets for my phone so that I could try to phone Rob and let him know I was on-site and on the clock but way off the mark with a means of access to the Labs hatch collection point! The kind and helpful (probably goes with the territory in that job!!) ambulance crewman came over and punched the code into the secure keypad entry lock and with a huge sigh of relief and an expression of endless thanks I dripped my way up the stairs and finally managed to collect the precious cargo, plan my way out of the city, on to the northbound M5 and off to the relay point that had been arranged and notified by Rob – another example of my Controller doing all the “hard miles” behind the scene whilst I had the pleasure of ‘exercising’ my gluteus maximus muscles and my concentration!!
I decided that, with a long journey ahead and a half empty fuel tank I should stop and top up before joining the motorway. I had no doubt there was enough fuel to get me to where I needed to be – I’d received notification from Rob that I should rendezvous with Simon, a Severn FREEWHEELERS rider, at 0700 at a fuel station on the A46 close to Junction 9 of the M5 near Gloucester. That was a journey of around 118 miles and I had just over 2 hours to make it so I thought that a fuel top-up before leaving would be sensible as it would allow for any potential diversions or issues; prevent me worrying about consumption en route and mean I could simply ride non-stop to my RV destination. So, I made my way to the Tesco superstore assuming that, being a 24 hur opening store, the fuel service would be open and manned. You know what they say about “assume”? Well, as you might guess, the fuel station IS 24 hour operational but it isn’t 24 hour manned………
I was, apart from a tanker driver delivering fuel to the station, the only soul around. I stepped off the bike at a ‘lit’ pump and tried to pump in some of Tesco’s “finest” unleaded …… I swiped both of the fuel cards through the electronic reader; I tapped both of the fuel cards on the pump’s magnetic sensor pad; I danced around the pump in my version of the rain dance hoping to invoke some unseen ‘God of All Octane Ratings’ to come to my assistance and deliver some of the noxious but utterly precious fluid to my eagerly awaiting tank but I got …… nothing. Nix. Nada. Oh, no, wait - I DID get utterly frustrated and probably looked for all the world like a frustrated 3 year old with a broken, friction powered Tonka dump truck that was no longer working. Wonder if I could pick this pump up and smash it violently against the ground……
The tanker driver obviously heard my frustration turning the otherwise silent air into a comic opera of frustration and disbelief. I was about to start searching my pockets for my wallet and debit card when the driver came over and asked if I was having problems. I explained that I’d hoped the fuel cards would enable me to use the “contactless” feature of the pump but clearly not so. “Not to worry”, he said, as he swiftly got HIS OWN debit card out, fired up the pump with a £20 prepay and said “There you go – consider that my donation to South West Blood Bikes! You guys do a great job!” I was - to coin a somewhat distasteful phrase – gobsmacked!! I asked his name and I THINK he said it was Richard (anybody that’s read any of the drivel I occasionally produce will know that I have the memory capacity of a geriatric slug!!) and I expressed my profuse (and utterly sincere) thanks for his kind and generous donation. So…….Richard - or whatever the name of the Tesco fuel tanker driver that delivered fuel to the Exeter superstore Digby Vale at 0500hrs on Friday 11th October 2024 ……
THANK YOU!
Your kind, generous and very helpful actions and donation assisted not only South West Blood bikes and me personally, but also an unwell patient awaiting the results of URGENT and important blood tests; the Severn Freewheelers rider, Simon who wasn’t delayed by my quick fuel stop – I made it to the RV point and handed over my sample at 0700 as scheduled – and the lab waiting to process the sample. You, SIR, are a true gentleman and I’m very grateful to you.
I rejoined the motorway with a full tank now and as quickly as possible set my mind and sights on the target of the fuel station near Ashchurch, Junction 9 M5 northbound. Traffic was light though, not surprisingly, started to get busy in the Bristol environs as early morning commuter and light commercial traffic headed off to early start work. It was cold and mistily damp across the levels and the rise up out of the mist co-incided with a slight but noticeable rise in ambient temperature that helped, slightly, keep the chill off the backs of my hands. My palms were, of course, warmed by the Beemer’s heated grips but, being a ‘Police’ spec model (it’s an R1200 RT/P) the bike has NO HEATED SEAT!!! And, boy, did I know it! It’s quite amazing how much difference a heated seat makes to maintaining a decent core body temperature! Although it’s something I would have openly derided a few years ago, experience is all and the proof of the pudding, and all that!
Nevertheless, I was able to make good progress on the relatively quiet motorway and met with my SF counterpart at just before 0700. I was shivering with cold by the time I made the meeting – a cold that was probably felt more intensely through the early start and intense concentration of a two hour ride. The fact that, only the previous day, I’d ridden to a rendezvous at Strensham – another 5 or so miles north of the Ashchurch RV location – didn’t actually occur to me until I went in to the shop at the busy BP fuel station where the RV had been arranged, and ordered a “hot, strong, black coffee, please”. The young lady serving me leaned over the counter, checked my SWBB id badge and said “Oh, you’re EVS – that’ll be £1.50 please”! That was a large Costa coffee at less than half the listed price and considerably less than the price of coffee at a motorway service station! It was a much needed caffeine shot to ease away the early hours cold, revitalize me and reset the clock on the caffeine and I expressed my gratitude for the drink, the very welcome discount and recognition!
The caffeine levels restored, core temperature elevated and mental adjustments made in preparation for what I knew would be busy commuter and daily traffic through the Bristol and North Somerset regions, I notified my Controller of return journey departure about 30 minutes after arrival and headed southwards as the day began to brighten. The sun rose a misty, red ball painting the eastern horizon to my left a grey tinged pink. A low, wispy mist rose quite eerily out of the lowland levels to my left and I had some absolutely stunningly beautiful views to my right of the Severn Valley buried in a deep narrow blanket of thick, inversion layer cloud that hugged the river! The sun filtered softly through the mist to the east, and shone magically, almost mystically on the top and sides of the inversion layer to my right, highlighting the tops of the Malvern Hills that struggled upwards through the cloud and up towards the cobalt blue of the gradually lightening sky above us. . I wanted to stop and take photographs – this is the kind of sight people would pay to see, or that photographers would flock to experience and it was presented to me as a gift, albeit a fleeting momentary gift but one that will live in my memory for ……. well, with my memory, who knows? But, I experienced it; I saw it; I ABSOLUTELY LOVED it and it made a worthwhile task even more enjoyable.
It was suggested shortly after I notified my return to home from my early morning ‘jaunt’ that I might be substituted for the remainder of my duty shift, or at least moved to second call rider. As much as I understood, respected and welcomed the offer I declined without hesitation. I had actually enjoyed almost 6 hours of sleep before I was called (I’d had an early hours start the previous day to prepare for a scheduled run up to Strensham with a Donor Breast Milk relay) and so had retired to bed quite early. The journey back from my relay with the Birmingham bound sample had enervated me with the unique display of the peerless natural beauty of an early autumn dawn in rural England. Why would I NOT feel excited to be alive, and to be entrusted with doing some of the very best and most spiritually, emotionally and practically rewarding riding of my long (ish – so far!) life?! I wanted more – much more - not less of this kind of opportunity.
I’d experienced the very best of humanity in the kindness of an ambulance crew member; the generosity and helpfulness of the Tesco fuel tanker driver (thanks again, buddy!), the respect and generosity of the Ashworth BP station staff and the pleasure of meeting a fellow Blood Bike rider. I’d enjoyed nature’s unabashed flaunting of her very special artistic talents in the live view painting of an autumn dawn and, perhaps most important of all …… I had (I hope) helped somebody in a perhaps seriously unwell condition, to get the levels of patient care and attention that might give them the chance, at least, of enjoying similar sights to those I’d enjoyed on what was, after all, just “another day in the life of a Blood Bike Volunteer!”
