As I drove by the guy, my consciousness kicked in and I thought I couldnt leave this guy – I parked up as soon as I could, and basically ran to the scene of what happened. There were 3-4 dominoes pizza drivers, so I thought they might have known this person, but im not too sure now. I asked around, asking if anyone has called the ambulance, I didnt get a reply. I asked if somoene had called the police, someone said “Yeah, yeah we have”. I quickly pulled out my phone, dialled 999 and spoke to the ambulance operator, who told me that they have been notified by the police, and if the man’s situation deteriorates, call them back. After this point, I decided to kneel down and have a chat with the person, and see if he is actually alive.

When I knelt down, I could smell ETOH (alcyhol) on him, and I thought “Oh, hrm, probably a drunk”, but I still stayed there. I noticed he was wearing fairly decent clothing, he was just drunk – it was a Sunday night around 9:30, just guessed he was out for a few pints. His face was scratched up (He was laying down on his left hand side, I saw blood on the RHS of his face). He also had scratched up hands. I looked up and down him, and saw some scuff marks on his boots.

He seemed to be conscious, his eyes were open and blinking, he was breathing fine, I put my (gloved) hand on his arm and told him that everythings going to be fine, that an ambulance is on its way, and everythings going to be ok. I put my knee right upto his back and kept a hand underneath his head, because I thought there was a risk to his spine. While I was doing that,  I asked around to see if anyone knew what happened, and a young chap, around 25, clean shaven, fair hair, grey jacket, about 5ft8 said that the guy had tried to cross when “the light was red – green for cars” and just got hit by a car. I knew that holding the guy’s head up would be a good idea, man vs car there is going to be some problems for the spine.

After a few mins, the patient said to me “Im ok”, I told him something along the lines of “Ok, dont worry, the ambulance will be here soon”. After a minute or two, he said the same thing, and tried to get up – I held his head down, and told him not to move, that the ambulance will be here very soon and they will check him out. He muttered something about “that f***ing c**t didnt stop for me”.

A few minutes later, someone said “The ambulance is on its way” – he was standing up, I was kneeling on the floor, but after about 30 seconds it became clear – there were blue flashing lights heading this way. I told the patient (who once again said he was ok that the amublance is here now and they will look after him and not to worry), but it wasnt an ambulance, it was a police car (A new police car with LED flashy lights, instead of the old swirly lights).

One of the policeman got out of the car and headed straight towards me, and started asking me a question – I cut him off, and asked him “Do you have anything to cover him up with? He is cold”, he said “Yeah sure” and wondered back off to his car – he came back empty handed, so I told him to take off his coat which he did and covered the guy. After that, he told the crowd of gawpers to back off and there was nothing to look at here, and they should go. The other police officer closed off the road and started redirecting traffic – phew, because I was getting worried that I might get run over. The police officer who I ordered to take off his jacket was on the blower, saying (to his Sarge) that there was a male adult on the road whos been hit by a car and they were closing the road off…

A few minutes after that, a big yellow taxi (also known as an ambulance) turned up, and out jumped 2 paramedics (I heard the female one say “Wow, someone who knows what they are doing” when they got out of the ambu), who told even more people to shoo away, and worked around me. They left me there to hold his head up, trusting me to do a good job. The male started asking the patient questions such as what is your name (Mark), what happened, have you had anything to drink (the patient got defensive, then the paramedic said something along the lines of we dont care, we just need to know for our purposes, then the guy admitted to 3 pints), then asked if he had any heart trouble or diabetes. The paramedic then called over to the guy who hit the patient with his car, and asked him what speed he was doing, he said something like “25 or 30″, the paramedic then asked “Did the guy hit the windscreen, did his head ” then mimed bouncing off, the driver replied with “Yeah yeah he did”. The paramedic then asked the patient if he lost consciousness, he said “Yes”.

The female paramedic came back with 2 kitbags, and started unfolding a cervical collar, and started by trying to take off the patient’s coat, but wasnt managing it. She told the patient that they were going to cut it off, and he got agitated and tried to get up – me and the male paramedic held his neck down and told him to be calm and that it would be ok – the female paramedic tried to take off his jacket again, and with some fluffing around we managed to do it. I moved my knee, held his back with one arm, pulled his jacket off, then put my knee back where it was – it was aligning his whole body with his neck, as he was laying on his side.

She also started unfolding a metal board scoop thingy (A scoop stretcher), and adjusted it to his height – when we were going to roll the guy over onto the board, she asked me to get a police officer to help – one of the police officers was directing traffic, one was questioning the person whod run the poor guy over, and one was half in his police car, talking to his sarge over the radio – I pointed at him, and did the “come here now” sign, and he rushed over, telling his Sarge on the radio “Ill get back to you Sarge, im assisting the LAS”.

We manoevered him onto the board, and rolled him back onto the ground – then the female paramedic started screaming about her leg so I helped lift up the board a bit so she could get her foot out. The male paramedic set about trying to strap the patients head down to the boards that keep the head steady, when the female paramedic said “We need you down that end”. As I got to the other end of the patient, he tried to get up – when the paramedics shouted at him to keep still and dont try to get up. They managed to strap him down and told him to stop moving and stop trying to get up. Me, and the female paramedic were at his feet, the male paramedic and the police officer at his head, lifted the patient onto the board. WOW, he was alot heavier than I thought, even with 4 of us carrying him.

The paramedics loaded him up onto the big white taxi, and that was it for me. They thanked me for my help, and the male paramedic asked why I was helping, and if I ran him over – I explained to him that I was passing by and I thought id help out with my first aid skills.

After the whole incident, I followed the police officer (Who I ordered to take his jacket off) to go look at the car that did the “running over” – 55 reg BMW, had a nice spider web pattern on the windscreen, on the drivers side, presumably where the guy’s head hit the windscreen. I waited for the police officer to complete his enquiries on the radio, then I explained to him what I heard some of the witnesses saying – I asked him if that would have been any help, he said it was very helpful, because no one came forward and told the police that they saw what happened. He took my name and address and mobile phone number down and said I was very helpful today, and thanked me, then shook my hand.

So I decided to decimate it and see what was up.

Heres whats inside a top of the range Microsoft Natural Keyboard:

After cleaning it out with compressed air and making sure the membrane thingy (With all the dots and the lines thing) wasnt stuck to the keyboard base (As it was with the R and tab keys), I put it back together.

After an hour of looking where I missed a screw out, I managed to put it back together, and its working perfectly!

string hql = "SELECT max(map.HighestNewRating) FROM XXX map WHERE map.Id = ?";

Im guessing that you can only use SimpleQuery to return values that have been initialised, and you cant return anything else, whereas the ScalarQuery can be used for Ints and strings and stuffs like that – in my opinion that is just overcomplicating things, why not just have one query structure, instead of two? Both implement from Castle.ActiveRecord.Queries.HqlBasedQuery but then just add their own flavour of blah’ness ontop to make things extra complicated.

string hql = "SELECT max(map.HighestNewRating) FROM ModelClassTypeMap map WHERE map.Id = ?";

SimpleQuery<int> query = new SimpleQuery<int>(hql, id);

int[] response = query.Execute();

Will give you an error, whereas this wont:

string hql = "SELECT max(map.HighestNewRating) FROM ModelClassTypeMap map WHERE map.Id = ?";

ScalarQuery<int> query = new ScalarQuery<int>(typeof(ModelClassTypeMap), hql, id);

int response = query.Execute();

return response;

Also, why do you have to declare the type when doing a ScalarQuery ? Whats that all about?

I felt a bit sorry for the guy, as he didn’t realise that you don’t have to wear it immediately after leaving the house, but when you reach the Miqat – the pilgrimage boundary which is a about 200km around Makkah.

A small note – some Sunni’s say that you should perfume your body when you enter the state of Ihram – they are wrong, as perfume is one of the 25 “banned” things.

*Edit – I stand correcte d – it turns out, that if the flight goes over the boundaries of the mosque (a few hundred km in each direction), you still have to be wearing the full Ihram kit, so thats a possible reason to be wearing it on the plane. My dad had to do the same a few years ago, when he flew from Kuwait.