ice

OK, I have now received the ICE email four times. I get the message. But at least this time it is actually a genuine campaign (though I wish people would send the URL of the campaign page to show it is genuine, and to give the proper details of what to do).

The problem with it is that whoever you put as your ICE contact number then comes up when they're calling you as ICE instead of their actual name, if the first letter of their name comes after "i" in the alphabet.

Anyway here are the links to the actual campaign and information pages:

www.eastanglianambulance.com/content/ice/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/4667193.stm

(note that the email that is going round gets it wrong, as it doesn't specify that you should put ICE and then the name of the person, e.g. "ICE MUM" not "ICE in case of emergency" as it says in the email.)

Oh, and another thing we should all do to help out the emergency services - put your house number clearly on the front of your house. If an ambulance was trying to collect you from your house, vital minutes could be saved if they could find the house by being able to see the number from the road. Our front door faces away from the road, so we put our house number on the meter box on the front of the house using one of those self-adhesive numbers. I've just been reading Watching the English by Kate Fox (excellent) and her theory is that the reason people don't display their house number properly is for reasons of obsessive privacy. Not only is the Englishman's home his castle, but he doesn't want you to be able to find it in the vast and trackless forest... of suburbia.