PARAMEDIC Dave Watkins has a tale or two to tell after more than three decades on the job.

There was the time he and a colleague carried a man on a stretcher while being chased through a field by cows, or when he faced a man with a shotgun who had threatened to kill himself.

Or the early morning ambulance crash which left him with four broken ribs.

He has delivered more than 30 babies and helped countless people across the borough.

This rollercoaster of assignments would be enough to put anyone off working as a paramedic – but Dave has stayed in the job for 34 years and maintains his cheery disposition and positive outlook. He said: “You don’t survive if you cannot cope with what you see, and the way I have always done it is to make sure I do not take it home with me. We have always tried to talk it out back at the depot. There is counselling as well, and I was a counsellor myself.

“I think it really helps if you get on with the person you work with as you support each other, and I have been very lucky in having very good relationships with the people I have worked with.”

Originally from Dagenham, Dave, 60, moved to Colchester in the mid Seventies with his wife Maureen, 70.

He decided to join the ambulance service after changes in his job with the gas board.

He recalled: “I loved it straight away, and I have done ever since.There is no job like it.

“The money was never any good. I think I earned about £36 a week at first, but every day was different, and I just loved meeting people and helping them. In those days, it was about picking people up and taking them to hospital, but that changed in the Eighties and they started to train us up as paramedics.”

He began work at Colchester Ambulance station in 1978, and then helped establish the base in Greenstead in 1996 where he stayed until four years ago. Dave then transferred back to Colchester in a more senior position.

He said: “The hardest thing has to be when you are not able to help people – when children die or I have been called to a cot death.

“Obviously you want to be able to help everyone, but when it is someone young you do think they had their whole lives ahead of them.

“The thing is, you just don’t know what you are going to get sent out to, and often you just have minutes to prepare yourself.” Dave was one of the first on the scene of a devastating crash in Head Street in February, where Cassie McCord, 16, died after being hit by a car which veered off the road.

He said: “You do prepare yourself for terrible things, like accidents, but that was one of those where you just did not expect it to happen there, and at the time it did.

“It was a Monday morning in the middle of town. You expect major traffic accidents to happen on the A12.

“And when it is such a young person it is hard. In those situations I always made sure I just really talked it out before I went home. You have to have a lot of empathy.”

Dave, who has a son Simon, 32, and daughter, Clare, 30, has worked most bank holidays and over Christmas for the past three decades, but says he has always accepted this as being part of the job.

Retirement has come at an opportune time for his family – Clare is expecting the couple’s first grandchild in January, and Dave is keen to be a hands-on grandad.

He said: “Clare is a nurse at Colchester General Hospital, and I should imagine that has a lot to do with what I do.

“But it is very different as well. Clare has said to me at the hospital there is always someone you can go to, but when there are two of you in the ambulance and you are first on the scene, you often have to make split-second decisions and then stand by them.”

Dave plans to indulge his love of gardening and singing during retirement.

He is a member of Lexden Choral Society, but one thing is for sure – he won’t be watching any TV medical dramas.

He added: “I can’t stand those programmes. I tried to watch the one about paramedics, called Sirens, but only managed about ten minutes.

“It just doesn’t happen that way. Some of it is factually correct, but then they put these silly dramatic stories around it.

“If you had to deal with all those dramatic crashes and situations every day, you would not last very long in the job.”