The duality of man

Last weekend was one passed in extreme good cheer, spent with 14 friends at an enormous house in Oxfordshire we'd rented for the weekend. We 'Orphans' organise our own Christmas each year, going away for a couple of days to do things our own way before we head to our families. Drink is taken, much food is eaten, music and singing done well and done terribly, real fireplace, the lot. Jolly bally good times had by all. My love, respect and thanks to all who were there, and to absent friends who couldn't make it this time round.

Drama on the way home, though. We'd not been on the road fifteen minutes when we saw, right in front of us, a cyclist sprawled in the road, flat on his back alongside his wrecked bike. The car who'd hit him was just pulling over, as did we and a car behind. We ran to him to find him unconscious and bleeding heavily but breathing. I won't go into too much detail, but while we waited for an ambulance and stopped traffic from ploughing into him (and us), the minutes felt like they stretched into hours.

One of our number was particularly superb in her response. (You know who you are!) I salute her calmness, caring nature and willingness to literally get blood on her hands to help this man. Anyway, the ambulance turned up after what was probably around 10-15 minutes, but felt like years, closely followed by an Air Ambulance, a helicopter which deposited more paramedics in a field adjacent to the road before taking off again immediately.

While the paramedics were tending to the man - 'serious head injuries', 'life threatening', 'not stable, non-responsive' - the farmer whose field the chopper had landed in mooched over for a chat. "Whose idea was it to land a helicopter in my field?" We pointed out that there was a man lying seriously injured in the road and that they put down as close to him as possible. Clearly this didn't satisfy our landowning friend. "I've got animals. They get spooked." I'm not entirely sure why he was directing this at witnesses - perhaps he felt we'd demanded that the thing land right on his field, dropping smoke flares to better assist the pilot in getting exactly the right spot to scare the horses to maximum effect. Obviously, you know those waggish pilots, they did what we asked rather than worry about what was best for the injured bloke. "Who do I take this up with?", mister farmer asked one of the police officers.

The dichotomy of response between my friends, other witnesses there, the medical crew and police, and this totally solipsistic git with not the slightest care for the well-being of somebody badly hurt basically on his doorstep, was startling to me. I assume the bloke will, in the event he ever needs emergency medical treatment, insist on road transport to get help to him, lest his livestock be bothered again. Merry bloody Christmas, mate.