Weather Report

I'm at work in the hospital. Nice and cosy, not too much in the box. I am suturing up a thumb when my 'phone rings. Not much I can do at this stage, but I am on the last stitch, so I cut the thread and, stripping off my gloves, reach for the 'phone when it starts its insistant ringing for the second time. Can I attend a call on the M25? No probs, I leave the cleaning up to my junior and head on out to the car.

The wind hits me as I leave the relative comfort of the A&E. Blinking heck, but it's cold!! I throw on jumpsuit and boots (steel toe caps an essential for M25) and start the engine. As I speed out I depress the lever to spray windscreen wash over my front windscreen. Big mistake. I now have a thin sheet of ice barring all but the tiniest view of the road ahead. I glance at my outside thermometer gauge - -2.5 degrees centigrade! I hit the wipers and they quickly clear enough of a hole in the ice for me to start rolling.

The journey is uneventful, and I reach the scene in record time.

The car is on its side, the driver buried beneath a mound of groceries. He had clearly been shopping, and the bags had had as much of a tumble as the car rolled over and over as he had.

We are all standing around as the fire crew dig him out of loaves of bread, milk cartons and bags of pasta. He isn't badly injured, so the fire crew are taking things steady.

Only one problem - it's blinking cold out here!! We are all shuffling around, trying to keep warm, and yet he is stuck, immobilised both by the fireman at his head and the tins of peaches, the crumpets (oh how good they would be right now, toasted, with a smidge of strawberry jam!) and the root vegetables that surround him.

Eventually he is freed, and we slip him gracefully out on to a spinal board.

"Where to?" I ask the crew. The hospital isn't mine and the patient is only suffering from the cold, so I leave them to it, jump into my car and turn the heater on full blast.

Back at my A&E Department, I decide that my boots are staying on - far to cold to change in the car park.