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27 January 2013

St John's Ambulance


It was a surprise to have a St John's Ambulance man knocking on the door during the recent winter weather.   He was visiting people to check that they were coping okay in our snowbound area. People in the road I live in are predominantly old folk (koff koff) so it is heartening to know that people care. The cynic in me says the visit was an ideal opportunity to obtain contributions, but deep down I know that without such professional organisations a lot of people would suffer even more.

Years ago, what this guy did was automatically done by neighbours. Now, people are lucky if they even see a neighbour from one week's end to the next. People have their own lives to lead, they don't 'neighbour' anymore, not even to borrow a cup of sugar. It's often a case of I'm alright, Jack! Of course, it depends on the area in which they reside, some districts are more neighbour friendly than others.

The saying goes that only if someone has children or pets do they get to meet others with children or pets. Dog walkers make friends easily, and taking kids to school guarantees bumping into other parents, but if you have neither kids nor dogs the reasons for going outside the four walls are greatly lessened. Imagine what it will be like in the future when even the shops don't get visited, when internet buying becomes the norm.


Before he left, the St John's man gave us a useful leaflet, folded to credit card size, which contains useful information in case of such emergencies as a stroke, heart attack, choking, bleeding, unconsciousness, or if someone has stopped breathing. Methinks I should read thoroughly in case one of the above occurs, I mean it would be awful in one of those situations to waste time reading up on what I had to do!


6 comments:

  1. Hello Valerie!

    I may be re-joining the blog land again! Not been on since last June!

    Thought I'd pop by and say hello! Hope your Christmas and New Year was full of good food and family :)

    Martha :)

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  2. Hi Marthaamay. Wondered where you'd disappeared to. I checked your blog and found you'd gone private. Hope everything is okay with you and yours.

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  3. Yes it was a really useful visit and he didn't want any money either!

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  4. I agree. We've become a society that ignores its neighbors. We're among the lucky to actually know our neighbors, and we take the opportunity to invite them over for functions. And and it's nice to know that if we go away on vacation that we'll have people we can trust to check in on out cat once in a while ;-)

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  5. That's great, Herman. Long may your neighbourly relationship continue.

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  6. How very true - we don't visit our neighbours as often as we should, that's for sure. However, our truly elderly neighbours (next door) have their forty-something son living with them and we see him very frequently so we know they're OK. Everyone else is younger and in pairs. I hope if it were different, I'd behave more sociably!

    How nice of St John's to send people round. I have two of those foldy credit card sized first aid thingies - not from St J, but bought somewhere or other. One is for general first aid the other for heart attack. Now the problem is... I don't know where they are!!

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