All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551
or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.
I am not on YouTube or social media
He haplessly fell, and helpless, I could not get up
[ 10 minute read ]
There was a man lying in the road yesterday; on one of the dual carriageways in the city. He had tripped and fallen and then went to sleep. Most people don't know what to do in these circumstances. We have seen television programmes of Americans calling , 'Stay with me! Stay with me, buddy!' but that is their language, and it is for the birds and film studios.
Sure enough, by the time I arrived there were five women ineffectively gathered around the fallen man. It might just as well have been five men, none of them was in charge and none of them seemed to know what to do next. One woman was crouched down near his head. They didn't want to drag him off the road, and I was there for about seven or eight minutes before someone decided to phone for an ambulance.
It is these two parallel actions that are the tells of the inefficacy of these helping bystanders that marks them out to be note-worthy, but also entirely normal. It would only take a nurse to roll up and the scene of slapstick chaos would be complete.
At least two of these 'helping' women had witnessed the man start to cross the road, and as he got to the middle of the two lanes he tripped and fell, and then didn't get up. I got there perhaps within two or three minutes of this occurring.
'What happened?'
'He tripped and fell'
'Choose someone among you to be in charge, 'I said.
One of the woman mumbled and pointed to the woman crouching by the man's head. I assumed everyone had slotted into their positions to follow her. I didn't really care. In most cases, a man showing up to an unusual scene of five women standing over a prone person lying in the road is going to end in tears, if he tries to take control of the situation.
'Is he bleeding?' I asked. No-one answered but there was no blood on his face or the road.
I refrained from asking if he was breathing or if he had a pulse. A quick glance told me he was a 'homeless' elderly man. He had no shoes on and there were none to be seen. he had a long, untrimmed salt and pepper beard and was wearing a black great-coat. There was a petrol service station he seemed to be heading for and it was about twelve noon.
'He might be a bit drunk.' I offered though uselessly. It made no difference to anyone's idea of what they should do. They just carried on ineffectively looking helpful and it seemed to me, barely managed to appear concerned, to the passing drivers.
Sure enough, just to complete the farce, another woman turned up. It was always going to happen. Sometimes, it is an extra man but only if there are already a lot of men who outnumber the women. If there are a lot of men a female nurse never appears out the blue. What happened next happens regardless of whether there are men or women around. Being 'nuts' is not gender specific.
'I am a nurse.' Her voice should have triggered a warning in my head, but her breathless tremor was not really so evident that I noticed anything amiss at the time, and I was distracted by my own inability to make them all turn their backs so I could drag the man off the road and onto the central median.
'He tripped and fell,' I told her. She barely acknowledged me. There were now six women and she was laying the foundations of a wall she hoped the others would labour on. I didn't notice any of the other women's attitude towards me change. 'Family Law', to them, would only ever be just two words together.
I have high-viz fluorescent green paint on my bicycle front forks and, since no-one was watching the traffic, I positioned myself and my bike to 'protect' the carriageway that these 'helpers' were stubbornly occupying. I thought about all the drunk students just twelve days ago, with traffic cones on their heads, and wished I could summon them before they had ever got home. 'Do your bit, lads and lasses, then take them off here.'
At this point, many people would think I am callous. 'Drag him off the road? You brute!' Look at it this way; If you were on a drunken night out and your friend fell over on a road, drunk, what would you do? Exactly! Since a couple of these women witnessed this man fall over they should have moved him off the road. Maybe he had a heart attack? Moving a heart attack victim won't sever his spinal cord. Maybe he has a brain hemorrhage? Take control and protect the scene.
After I had been there for five or six minutes and the nurse had showed up, someone phoned for an ambulance. The nurse came over to me and angrily said, 'Does someone want to direct traffic, instead of just.....' And there it is!
'Everyone is behaving well. The traffic is moving and no-one is panicking. You shouldn't try to confuse people if they act acting responsibly.' I replied. Another woman came over to me after another minute or two.
'If you want to get going, I will take over. I have a hi-viz in my car.' she offered. She was helpless but calm, and not at all like the hapless woman pretending to be a nurse. She knew I was acting as a lookout.
'I'm fine. Hi-viz forks,' I said pointing to my front forks.
'Where did he get hit?' asked the nurse of the other women. You will remember that I had already told her that he had tripped and fallen. Two of the women pointed to the pot-hole in the road and told her they had seen him fall without being hit. The helpless and hapless 'nurse' however, looked around on the road, downstream of the traffic.
'Where are his shoes? Where did they get flung to?'
'He doesn't have any,' one of the women patiently replied; like the others, helpless, now a spiky non-conversant worrier had turned up.
'You had better phone the police too, because he is lying in the road.' The nurse shrilled. That won't help, I thought. I think the other women silently agreed, since no-one had already done so. One of them, a slight Indian woman complied.
The hapless barking nurse was beginning to sound a bit like the Martians in the film, 'When Mars Attacks!'. 'Ack Ack Ack!' The same words over and over, and only the intonation changing. We had stopped listening to her.
The traffic was passing at about eight miles an hour, and giving a wide berth to the gathering bodies around the man. A few drivers slowed down to a crawl to lasciviously rubber-neck, and I silently hoped their partners would eventually see the light and finally leave them for someone a bit brighter and more socially responsible.
The hapless pretend nurse, it was obvious, had no experience of crouching on a portion of a dual carriageway, and eight mile an hour moving vehicles was freaking her out. No-one else was at all bothered. One or two of the women stopped the traffic so they could cross the road to get to a building, and then come back again. Nobody braked sharply or swerved. The cars that stopped for them remained stopped until I beckoned them on. All of them were sensible.
Because, I suspect, the women would never have allowed me to drag the man off the road by his wrist, I wanted to loop my belt through one of his own belt loops to prevent him from waking, attempting to rise, and end up falling into the open carriageway. If I had done so, the scary and fizzing pretend nurse would have had a melt-down, I thought. I resigned myself to having to sacrifice my bike if the man decided that the attention was fine and fun but the road was too cold now, and it was time to get up. I knew that I would have to throw my bike in front of a moving car to make them do an emergency stop; just in case he blindly shoved one of the women away from him.
Plainly, the rabid hapless nurse wanted to stop the traffic, but there was no way I would do that, unless it was entirely necessary. I have a huge amount of experience of being in, blocking, and clearing carriageway lanes across the whole of Western Europe. I have experienced the different national styles of driving; a myriad of accidents both happening in front of me and old ones too. I have seen cats run over, and dogs and people flung into the air, and I understand the practicalities of panicking people into doing something other than what their nature tells them to do. On the autobahns of Germany with no speed limits, the only cars that are rear-ended, and are on the side of the road, have British number plates. I also know that stationary traffic causes accidents.
Backing up the traffic leaving the city, would paralyse the whole city. It is a tiny University city. The police and fire station are in the city centre, a five minute walk from the mouth-foaming witch who had decided to take charge. The onus of the position she had placed herself in was just too much for her. Man, woman, child; we all feel like that for a day or so, or if it is longer we upset our families.
Thirdly, and everyone ignores this; only a police officer can direct traffic and not get sued if there is an accident as a result of a driver following traffic controlling action. Yes, you will see road-workers controlling traffic, and, Good Crikeyness, you should obey them, because your insurance company recognises their experience and desire to protect both themselves and others' property.
Eventually, a rapid response ambulance turned up and squeaked its horn to alert us that it wanted to run us over if we didn't move. 'I am here; watch out!' Actually, the driver was just saying 'Be careful, because I am about to do an unusual thing by crossing the central median'. I moved and rode on, but not before I noticed a police car stop on the other, entirely clear and freely moving, carriageway. 'Great', I thought, 'That should slow the traffic down on that side of the road too!' I shook my head and was glad to be out of it and on my way.
When I got home, I waited for someone to phone me as a follow up to a business appointment I had in the city. I don't like waiting for phone calls, so I listened to LBC. The topic was on social media for under sixteens. There was a caller.
'[...] I am fairly sure that I don't think original thoughts anymore. If I come across something unusual in my everyday life I think, "That reminds me of a TikTok video I saw last week, or something I read on X. I don't think for myself"
Not everybody has the same experiences in life and we don't act appropriately in many situations.
Someone at the scene of the fallen man should have taken charge and been able to answer questions; The marionette nurse should have had her strings cut and sent on her way because she was confusing everyone with her lack of experience; the woman who said she has a hi-viz jacket and was standing in the road should have been wearing it; The cars parked half on the road and half on the central median should have been fully on the road with their hazard warning lights on (none of the three there had them on); Someone should have been making sure the man did not rise up in mental anguish and start attacking people around him; and someone should have been shouting to get him to wake up.
Why didn't I do more? I think it is obvious; experience cannot be explained to inexperienced people. It didn't matter if the attending people were male or female; most people don't have original thoughts any more. Anyone who does is an alien.