Tom Reynolds's Blog, page 9

Sweden

Sweden has long been held as a perfect example of socialised healthcare, that and the UK. I went there to find out how Sweden coped with the first outbreaks of CLBD-7

I'm speaking with a Doctor Anders Kask in a beautiful park. Judith meanwhile is next to some trees aggressively smoking a cigarette while watching some young men play football. She's got her back to me and I think it's the first time she hasn't had her eyes on me. I swear she waits outside the toilet for me to finish, eyeballing ...

Two Rumours

A short break from the NaNoWriMo posts so that I can tell you about two rumours that I've heard. Note that these are rumours, if I had the time/energy/inclination I'd check them out to see if they are true, instead I'm just relying on the trust I have in the person who told me them.

If anyone knows if these rumours are untrue, feel free to let me know.*

Rumour number one is that a man from the Department of Health visited the ambulance service recently and told people that the moment the...

A Written Statement

I really need to get hold of a proper written statement so that I can make sure the format and language is more realistic, rather than sounding like one of my statements to a coroners court. What this hopefully shows is that the story is not going to be all first person/interviews.

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Personal report of Cpt. P. Almert, Bureau des Impôts 12th March 2011.

On the date in question I was commanding an armed fire-team at Jersey Airport. Our duties for that day were to provide a rapid response to...

Jersey

Once more I find that I'll be checking some research when I come round to editing this. Right now I'm struggling with SAD. Where I was on schedule two days ago I'm now dropping behind because I'm self-medicating on World of Warcraft which is the only thing that'll get me out of bed at the moment. Maybe I'll get a chunk done later today.

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I got to Gatwick airport for our flight to Jersey with plenty of time, despite my luggage (one carry on and one booked suitcase, plus several pockets...

Judith

I'm suspecting that this section will be a bit longer when I edit it. Say hello to Judith. She shares a surname with a friend of mine who does rather splendid webcomic type things.

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Back on the train into London and I'm left deep in thought about what Doctor Aldbride told me, about how once the retrovirus mutated we didn't stand a chance. How maybe if it had mutated another way it would have died off, or been less infectious, or would have had no effect on us at all.

I spend the rest of...

Cambridge

Loads of medical stuff that'll need researching and checking here - essentially just assume that the whole section has QQ throughout it. It's also where I explain that the normal isolation procedures wouldn't work with CLBD-7.

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After all the packing and the promise of travel I'm somewhat disappointed that my first appointment is at Cambridge.

I'm here to speak to Dr. Robert Aldbridge, I've already done an online search for him and it appears that he has the most peer reviewed articles...

The Whirl

Not massively happy with this, I suspect that this section will be completely rewritten in editing.

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The next few days are something like a whirl. I'm prodded and poked for the new biometric passport when it turns out that my old one was just that, too old. Photographs, fingerprints, DNA markers are all now needed on the chip in the passport. All nicely encoded, but of course that hasn't stopped a few thousand people from having their identity cloned and used in the commision of fraud.

I m...

Steve's Office

So, one of the things that I've discovered about a 1,667 words a day production schedule is that when you work twelve hour shifts, spend about an hour each way getting ready and driving to work and then add on eating and sleeping, 1,667 words is a hell of a lot.

Especially when all you want to do is go to bed so that you have some energy for doing it all over again - the next day.

So what I'm finding myself doing is not writing for a few days and then having to 'catch-up' as it were on my days ...

Day One Of NaNoWriMo (Waking Up)

So here is the first bit of my NaNoWriMo project. Be aware that this is a first draft, there has been no editing and I'm making it up as I go along.

I hope you enjoy it and find it interesting - not every blogpost will be self contained, it'll just be as far as I have got during that day. In other words, I'm not writing to any sort of cliffhanger, or short form structure - it's just a wall of text.

If I do finish this draft it'll be interesting to see how it differs once I start editing it.

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Let The Evidence Fit The Policy.

I understand that there is a job going in a government advisory agency.

All you have to do is call yourself a scientist, and then agree with everything the government and the newspapers say - ignore all evidence and keep your mouth shut.

Seriously, is there any political party that understands science, that makes decisions based on evidence rather than on what Paul Dacre or Dominic Mohan publishes?

Anyone fancy starting said political party?

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So, the decision is made - NaNoWriMo, here I come ...