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YOU might remember Bryony Shaw from Beijing as the Olympian who hit the headlines for swearing on live television.

The windsurfer made the gaffe when asked by the BBC how she felt after clinching bronze in a dramatic race in Qingdao. “I’m quite an emotional and passionate person, and although I cringe in hindsight, it does pretty much sum up how I felt at that time,” she said between laughs at Bewl Water this week. “It would be a dream come true if I got the gold in London but I promise I’ll try and hold back on the expletives.”

I met Bryony, a new resident of Tunbridge Wells, by the reservoir for a spot of one-to-one tuition. “I’m really sorry but there’s absolutely no wind at the moment,” she immediately apologised. “We’ll hold back a bit, have a chat, then we’ll get you on the simulator and once the weather changes we can go out for a play.” I was secretly hoping the weather wouldn’t turn as I was terrified of being snapped in a wetsuit by our sadistic photographer.

Decked out in a sponsor-laden white T-shirt, blue jeans and shades, the tanned 27-year-old, the first British woman to win an Olympic medal in the sport, spoke about the town she now calls home. “My boyfriend Greg grew up in Horsmonden, so Tunbridge Wells is his local town and he didn’t really have to convince me,” she said. “It’s close to the coast and to airports for when I travel, and it’s nice to have a little getaway away from sport. It’s got great restaurants and shops and we eat out at places like Sankeys and Woods. When we found a nice Edwardian flat I was completely sold on the place.”

When not abroad, Bryony is based in Weymouth, where her parents live and where the London 2012 regattas will take place. Her punishing training regime involves lots of weights, cycling, rowing, and as much time out on the water as possible to ensure she can cope with any weather condition which is thrown at her.

“We’re a bit like heptathletes," she said. "When the wind’s light you have to be strong and explosive to pump the equipment. The water can also be choppy, wavy or flat. Jessica Ennis has to be powerful for the shot put but also able to run. She has her weaker events and I’ll have my weaker conditions, but it’s all about playing to the strengths. Weymouth can have varied conditions so I have to be fully prepared.”

Speaking of wind, we still didn’t have any, and our photographer was getting restless.

Was utter calm out on the water a common problem? “England is pretty good for its weather," she replied. “Generally we’ll have weather systems coming through and there’ll be something going on. Sometimes you just have to wait for it to come in. We race over a week in a regatta, and you need a minimum of four races, so you’d hope to do that in that time.”

Light wind was also a problem in Beijing, where Bryony was inspired by a Princess Anne pep-talk over supper after disqualification in one race, for a pre- mature start, left her in sixth position.

“My medal chances were look- ing slim but the Princess was visiting and my Olympic manager asked my coach whether I’d want to have dinner with her. “They thought it’d be a good distraction for me, rather than turning things over in my head all night. She asked me how it was going and, although she’s a Princess, she brought me back down to earth. She made me realise I was in a special situation, I should enjoy it and I had a chance to medal. It was an awesome team de- cision from my manager and coach. They knew me well enough that it would help me and from that day on I didn’t trip up at all. It was quite a turning point.”

What about her prospects on home soil in just over two years’ time? “I’m ranked number one in the world, and I’ve medalled at three World Cup events so far this year. Hopefully the home advantage will play in my favour.”

As she pondered glory and all that it entails, the wind picked up and we wandered over to the sim-ulator, a board on a low metal tripod, for a demonstration. Wetsuit donned, and our photographer happy with the series of degrading photos of me in said garment, we dived into the water for a lesson. Struggling to balance and catch the wind, my confidence gradually grew and before long I was surfing to the opposite side of the reservoir.

“You’re very good, that’s a tippy board you’ve got. We normally start people up on more stable ones,” shouted Bryony from the motorboat. But it wasn’t easy – the series of movements needed to haul yourself up on to the board is instantly forgettable when you’re getting tired. And as soon as I tried turning the board around I’d plunge headfirst back into the water.

The 45-minute lesson left me with a clutch of aching muscles I never knew I had and a new found respect for the professional wind- surfers who dedicate their lives to the gruelling sport.

Back on dry land, I asked what the future held, beyond competing for her country.

“2012 is the main goal. Depending on how I perform there, then I could definitely do Brazil 2016 as well. After that, who knows?" she replied. “There are whispers of me being involved in sport TV presenting, which I would love to do, and potentially I’d like to be a mother and do that sort of thing. But I’d still want to be involved in sport. I’ll always want to be involved in sport."

“I JUST want to die,” slurred the man who’d popped a cocktail of pills and was sitting, wild-eyed and agitated, on a sofa in his lounge. His brother, absent-mindedly playing video games, perched quietly as an emergency co-responder went through his sibling’s medication box, finding out what tablets he’d washed down with a bottle of Diet Coke.

“How many of this one, and this one, and this one?” he quietly asked the bleary-eyed and confused patient, surrounded by a filth-strewn room littered with cigarette ends and magazines. I’d just walked into the second floor flat and stood there in disbelief, rooted to the spot, my heart pounding and emotions all over the place. I was following two West Kent paramedics on a Sunday nightshift – and the evening had suddenly become awfully real.

As a journalist I’m used to writing and investigating these stories retrospectively. We get told about an incident and we sniff out what happened. But here I was experiencing the story first-hand. It’s what Nick Seddon and Stuart Jordan deal with on a daily basis – and I didn’t particularly like it.

The thrill of racing up London Road to that first overdose call in Sevenoaks was exhilarating. Turning out of Kent and Sussex Hospital’s ambulance station, I gripped the handrail as the speedometer inched its way well over 55mph. As our sirens blared and blue lights blazed, cars parted, showing us a courtesy I’ve never seen since moving to the South East.

“I could get used to this,” I shouted over the cacophony of noise as the speed camera by the Hand and Sceptre pub flashed us on our way. We didn’t know what the job involved, only that a man in his 30s was in trouble and someone was already on the scene. I wasn’t sure what to expect – so to walk in on someone who’d just swallowed 200 tablets was a serious shock to my system.

Regaining composure I watched as the paramedics made sure he was stable before taking him to the ambulance foramore detailed check-up. “You’ve got the blood pressure of an athlete,” joked Stuart, putting him at ease, before saying he’d have to go to Farnborough’s Princess Royal University Hospital for treatment.

Waiting for a nurse, the patient pointed to where a handcuffed teenager wearing an England football shirt sat, monitored by Met Police officers, with his eyes rolled back into his head. “You should interview him for your story,” he laughed. His laissez-faire attitude about what he’d done shocked me – but I later found out he was a “serial overdoser”, as the paramedics called him, who’d done the same a fortnight before. This was a way of life to him and it seemed he liked it.

Waiting for the next job to come in, I asked if overdoses were common. “Oh yes, Tunbridge Wells has a big heroin problem. It’s bad on some of the estates, like Showfields, Sherwood and Ramslye, but it happens all over the town,” said Nick. “Tonbridge has it too, but I wouldn’t say the estates there are worse than those in Tunbridge Wells. We have a lot of serial overdosers in both.”

A beep sounded, cutting him off mid-sentence, and it was on to a plush modern country house in Underriver, where a an elderly man had collapsed with chronic back pain. He’d been unwell and had suddenly gone downhill, something which Nick and his six years’ experience soon realised could be a kidney infection. Before long we were on our way back up to Farnborough.

Astounded by the frenetic pace, I wanted to know whether it’d be busy for the rest of the night, and most importantly, when I could tuck into my sandwiches. “It’s normally pretty non-stop until around 3am, then we’ll have a lull, and at 6am older people wake up and fall out of their beds,” said former personal trainer Nick.

Our first three hours had been pretty intense, so what was it like when he first started? Was it an eye-opener? “Yes, definitely. On my first proper night I dealt with a fatal stabbing in Canterbury, the second shift I delivered a baby and on my way to the third there was a crash in front of me so I helped with that too.”

Having dropped off our second patient we were called to a serious two-car crash on Seven Mile Lane in East Peckham. Just as I was registering the fact I could be seeing a fatality, we were stood down. We were too far away and, although we’d have made it within the target time, a crew closer to the incident had declared themselves available and were ordered out instead.

The system, controlled from central HQ in Coxheath, prioritises incidents and allocates them to the nearest available teams. On the way to a job they can be diverted elsewhere, but once they’ve signed in to a particular location they remain undisturbed, allowed to focus fully on the task in hand. It also means the crews could end up anywhere in the recentlymerged counties covered by South East Coast Ambulance Service – Kent, Surrey and Sussex.

This is something the new Make Ready depot system, which has already been introduced into Stuart’s home town of Hastings, will capitalise on. “I love it. It takes pressure off crews as we can pick up clean and fully stocked ambulances and go,” said Stuart, who has one year’s experience and does overtime out of the seaside resort.

I desperately wanted the next call to be local and, sure enough, the control room’s super-computer kicked in and we were in Hildenborough, where an 81-year-old had fallen from his wheelchair, smashed his nose on the floor and broken his upper arm. The paramedics, helped by a staff responder already there, worked quickly, methodically and calmly to pump him full of morphine, splint his arm in vacuum-packed polystyrene balls, and lift him into the ambulance.

Safely deposited at Kent and Sussex Hospital, we were allowed a short “lunch break“, ironic when it was around 2am, where, joined by the other Tunbridge Wells crew who’d dealt with two men smashing their hands through windows, we swapped stories over food. Nick took a couple of bites of his sandwich and the inevitable happened – a woman on the nearby Showfields estate had serious chest pains. We hopped back into the ambulance and careered down the now deserted streets. The 61-year-old was hauled out on a wheelchair for an ECG scan and taken to Kent and Sussex with suspected angina.

Back at the station we were finally given an uninterrupted 30 minutes, but I couldn’t relax knowing that the radio could burst into life at any second. It had now gone 3am the lull started to kick in and we waited... and waited... and waited.

The crew, on shift until 7am, were later called to Sevenoaks for standby, but as my eyes were half closed I called it a day and made my weary way home.

​Trudging through the streets of Tunbridge Wells I reflected on a hectic evening and an incident when a patient’s friend hugged and thanked me for my work. Acutely embarrassed, I quickly explained I was just a journalist and all the praise, and more, should go to the people decked out in green. Interested in my take on what I’d seen so far, she asked me how I’d sum up their work. “Just amazing,” I replied. And I really meant it.

The pièce de résistance of Banksy’s “Dismaland” bemusement park that took over the old Tropicana swimming complex in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, for the summer of 2015 was the Masked Ball on the final evening, when guests were asked to wear masks so that the anonymous street artist himself could freely enjoy himself too.

I donned a heavy, rubbery kind of Batman mask, which, although it led to me posing for many, many photos because of its realism, was very hot underneath.

Massive Attack had been due to headline the event but cancelled, so De La Soul stepped in with a surprise guest apperance by longtime Banksy collaborator Damon Albarn from Blur. Managed to video a bit of the set. I’ll be uploading more of the hundreds of photos I took of the show over the coming weeks on this new website.

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For reasons unknown, the search engine Gods blessed my original “Banter Puns” post on my previous website on Weebly with the coveted no. 1 position. It used to get hundreds of hits per month. So I’m reposting it here for that sole reason:

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Bants, bantz, banta, banter... whatever you want to call it. I've collected a few banter-related puns below.

Banterlope
Bantersaurus Rex
Banteater
Banton Dubec
Bantomime
Bantlepiece
Bantony Hopkins
Banterberry tales
Bantagonist
Banti-christ
Bantidote
Bantasy
Bantastic
Bantennae
Bantom of the Opera
Sweat bants
Robantic
Archbishop of Banterbury
Eric Bantona
Throw a Bantrum
National Banthem
Bantman Forever
Jazz Bant
Santiago Banterbeau
Bantonio Banteras
On the Bantlepiece
Robantic
Bottle of Banta
Bank of Bantander

Hi! And welcome to my new website.

The eagle-eyed may have spotted that this page was actually first registered in 2020, more than five years ago. I’ll explain. Back in those bleak, dark depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, everyone I knew appeared to be jumping on the newsletter bandwagon, when Substack was just that. With a little more time on my hands than usual, I thought I could too, and I eagerly signed up.

But various reasons put me off from publishing anything apart from this very first, generic “Hi” post, the only thing that for years greeted virtual visitors and which I’ve now decided should get the respect it deserves.

“What the hell would I write about?” I kept asking myself. I have plenty of interests: Spain, microadventures, swimming, street art, Banksy, hiking, photography, AI… the list goes on. But should I do a general overview of sharing articles about things I enjoy or should I niche down? How would it actually add any value to anyone’s lives? Would people care? Or was it just a shiny object that I’d dump a few weeks later after an initial burst of enthusiasm?

Life happened, the years rolled on by, and finally I’ve decided how best to approach this platform (seeing as how other social media now appears to be completely cooked, this is pretty much the only place I’ll be posting from now on).

As I already write plenty for my day job as European correspondent for HuffPost U.S., the plan for the time being at least is to showcase my work stories, past and present, from my 20+ year career in journalism. Maybe I’ll add a little update here and there with what happened before, during and after publication.

I’ll also gradually upload my vast photo archive of Spain images, street art and street photography (including the snap above) and see what happens.

Let me know how I get on!

And if you want to pitch any project to me, email on lee.moran@huffpost.com