Help me congratulate Onimo

A girl was lying in the street after collapsing (on the
corner of Argyll and Wellington St, next to the Waterloo
pub). People were mulling around her while a bloke phoned an
ambulance. I went over to rubberneck and realised no one had
checked her pulse, breathing, airway, etc. I bent down to
check and she was taking very short gasps of breath. I
checked her heart and realised it had stopped, then her
breathing stoppped to. The bloke on the phone to 999 was
passing all this on and they told me to start chest
compressions and mouth-to-mouth. After two sets of
compressions she took a huge breathe and almost leapt into
the air. She then started jerking and arching her back as if
in a seizure, then her heart and breathing stopped again. I
repeated this sequence three or four times before the
ambulance arrived (which apparently took 10 minutes, but it
felt like an hour), when they had to revive her again before
taking her away.

I have no idea if she's ok but I hope so. Everyone was saying
how it was lucky there was someone there to take control who
knew first aid but all I was thinking was "If I fuck this up
she'll die and it'll be my fault".

(Smart-assedness aside, outstanding job and I hope she comes through okay)

Anyway, thanks to everyone for the cool hero worship :-P
I would say it was nothing but I was shaking so hard afterwards that it's probably the single most intense & scary thing that's ever happened to me.

I wasn't worried about the girl puking in my mouth but the possibility that she was lying there because of some deadly bug and that doing mouth-to-mouth might result in me lying on the pavement an hour later.

I was truly absolutely utterly GOBSMACKED when the compressions brought her back, I STARTED SOMEONE'S HEART! THIS SHIT REALLY WORKS KIDS!

I've no idea how the girl is. I considered phoning round the hospitals to try to find out then decided I'd rather not know.

I'm off to eat my Burns Supper with a well-earned whisky now. Cheers.

You did, you know. You little hero, you.

(Dan's retro joke is way better than the "was she cute" I expected from him.)

Revived, because sometimes we need reminded of who the good guys are.

delurking to wholeheartedly agree. onimo is one of the good guys and sometimes he needs reminding that we think he is.

4 realz

Onimo, you're a grand chap altogether and a great (and v funny) poster/person.

lol at "revived" (given thread subject)

wholeheartedly agree with above sentiments, btw.

yeah, this is pretty amazing.

awesome thread. I can imagine Onimo going around in superhero suit now, with a big O on his chest.

with a big O on his chest.

Roy Orbison??

that's a little different roy couldn't breath because he was wrapped completely in clingfilm.

wow i never saw this thread. well done Ger-Onimo!

KEN! - another hero has joined the thread. Its the DDR demon himself, even with only one good leg.

How is your leg, ken? You recovered yet?

Actually the more I think about what onimo did here, the more I admire his reactions.

We all like to think we'd behave the same way, but I think I may be one of those standing back and waiting for someone else to take over. Which makes me feel quite sad.

I think you'd surprise yourself though, in the moments of absolute crisis other instincts can take over - instincts you never realised you'd had.

yes, but there's also crowd psychology, like thinking "there are so many people here, surely someone must have checked her pulse and breathing already" and doing nothing. it's impressive that he broke out of that.

yeah, i guess i was coming from a 'you're the only person around' type response.

even more amazing when you consider dude hates touching/being touched by other people

http://www.van-morrison.com/van-morrison.jpg
I said O-O-O-O Onimo

I've been trying to revive this for a few days now because it seemed like the right place to say something, since it's about G being great.

Because he was.

We met online about 25 years ago through work. I was going through a divorce which meant I suddenly had tons of time to enthuse about the music I was listening to and we had a dodgy goth past in some of the same clubs in common. We first met in person when I was studiously avoiding the people who would eventually become my in-laws in the Counting House on George Square, back when we thought Wetherspoons were not-horrible. I gave him a CD-R of more obscure post-rock and one of the emerging bootleg/mashup scene. I discovered a website called I Love Music that seemed to be full of people that loved music, and sent him a link to it.

We met when we were in the same city, which wasn't uncommon between work and family visits. Somewhere along the line we visited just to see each other.

We saw the Sisters of Mercy in Barrowland and were so underwhelmed we swore we would never pay to see them again (a vow I stupidly broke last year). We watched a Scotland match in Tennents on Byres Road and later I bumped into a drunk John H***son who admitted he'd faked a sick note to get out of playing at the weekend to go on the piss with his cousin and was paranoid he'd be forced to play because of an injury in the Scotland game. We had a night of legend in the Alpine Lodge where the jukebox played top music all night and G, who hated being touched, spent over an hour touching RJG on the arm because it was winding him up. We met Krakow in the Vale opposite Queen Street station because I hadn't been in it since a Scotland match in the 80s, and it hadn't changed.

We went to a couple of Celtic games because he had a spare season ticket through a guy he worked with that couldn't go but had too good a seat to give up. We missed the first couple of goals as Celtic thumped Hibs because we had watched the end of a terrible Hearts/Motherwell game in the pub (zero shots on target, one off target) then differed wildly as Scott Brown was sent off (I said he was just a daft wee laddie who would grow out of it, he said he was a thug who shouldn't play in Scotland again - I guess we were both wrong in different ways). He told me who his eldest son was named after, but never admitted it again. He once said Tony Watt should play for Scotland just because he scored that goal against Barcelona. He once missed a Shellac show so he could sit and watch the Old Firm game with Mogwai.

I'm not sure how or why we all started going to ATP but the first one, where he flew to ours first, could well have meant no more happened. We had picked up sandwiches from a local shop before we left and G's stereotypical Scotsman kicked in meaning he tried all through the weekend to finish it rather than throw it in the bin, like a drunk Homer Simpson. And of course beer goes off, so he had to drink it all on the Sunday before we went home, which made the journey interesting. In later years we broke GregKitten with rough cider, swapped football stickers with YMOF, G and I did a ridiculous overly Scottish version of A Little Respect on Singstar and we saw a fuckton of bands. Some were shite. Some had G standing on the table shouting CHEAP TRICK FUCKING ROCK MAN before wandering off trying (and failing) to get in to see the Fall. We all sat at a big round table to watch Envy and our wives regretted the decision immediately.

G got an extension to his house and we christened it by listening to the first Suicide album in full, twice, back to back. Something else got put on but didn't last the length of the track before Suicide went back on and stayed on repeat until we were too drunk to put it on again.

We drifted apart when I changed jobs and Barry Hogan went bust. Family problems meant Christmases in Scotland got rarer, we nearly emigrated, COVID. I wasn't a very good friend at times. G lost his mum and I was useless when he just wanted someone to talk to. I let that get under my skin and it became an excuse for not getting in touch.

Then he got ill. It failed to change much - we swapped messages but it took ailsa to kick me up the arse and tell me I needed to speak to him. Despite promises life got back in the way and it still took me a year before we met. His boundless optimism on the cancer thread fooled me that there was always going to be time.

When I was in primary school there was a kid called David Simpson. He was kind of thin. He left early for the summer holidays one year and came back late, fat and yellow. I heard he had had lukemia although I didn't know what that was. I do now. I also know what chemo and steroids looks like. David made a seemingly complete recovery and I remember him being there in one of my final school exams.

I saw G in December. We chatted and the years rolled back. He wasn't up to a long visit because he was going out for A's birthday that night after preparing himself for a couple of weeks. He was tiring pretty quickly and wanted a nap before he went out but was about to start a new treatment round. He was full of hope and optimism but all I could see was David. We made plans for the spring but I secretly didn't expect to see him again.

I'll never get to tell him the guilt I feel for not being there when he needed me. I'll never get to play him a noise record he hates again. I'll never take him to a Hereford game then get drunk complaining about how bad it was. Age is catching up with me and I haven't exactly been in perfect health but it's been nothing like him and I'm still here so it should just get over it.

G was my friend and I miss him.

💚 🤘

^great post, aldo

thanks for the sad update, love to all

Fuck, beautiful and brutal. sending you good thoughts. I hope that lass he saved thinks of him on occasion.

Just remembering that great photo of him going out in full goth get-up, can’t seem to locate it now though.

Ah fuck, this is terrible news. What a wonderful tribute, though, aldo. He will be missed.

I hope that lass he saved thinks of him on occasion.

Aldo, that’s an astonishingly beautiful post. I don’t know what else there is to say, except I’m very sorry for your loss, and of course everyone who knew onimo well. He was lucky to be so loved.

ex-sparkie, goth, lifesaving paramedic - he contained multitudes.

Beautiful tribute aldo <3

❤️

Great post, Al. That night in the Alpine Lodge was an absolute cracker of a night. I recognise so many of these stories and have so many more like them. I'm not going to dwell on the last couple of times I saw him because they cannot possibly be the way I think of him, but I'm glad we had a last night just after his 50th of getting very pissed. I promised him I wouldn't get upset when he talked of not making it, and I told him any of that talk and I'd tell him to shut the fuck up. I worry that shut the fuck up was maybe the last thing I said to him, but I suspect it was a lot soppier than that. I can't remember and I don't want to. I want to remember annoying his family by playing Pogues records until 5am after his 40th. Dancing with pensioners in dodgy pubs in Hope Street. Accidentally getting so drunk on the way to a game against Falkirk in the two hours between leaving work and the game kicking off that we forgot to go to the match. Yelling at each other outside that Envy gig at ATP while A & F wondered just how much damage we'd all done to our eardrums.

I'm glad you got to see him. I'm likely to miss the funeral as I have a holiday planned, but considering going to this instead just to see if he was right: https://www.mooretheatre.net/events/sisters-of-mercy/#.ZEhLm7fTU0

I miss him too.

What lovely and true memories all.

<3 ailsa

Big love to aldo, ailsa & others who were close. I have pals I bonded with over many ATPs so that resonates, what a special thing to make those memories with such an obviously fucking great dude

(& I think I only just got his username!)

Logging in after an extended break from ILX to pay tribute to this kind, sweet man that I was blessed to meet a few times.

Aldo told me that he never knows what to say in these situations, which clearly could not be further from the truth - thanks for that wonderful tribute from you, Aldo and for those reminiscences from Ailsa as well. To everyone else as well, of course: Thanks! Condolences to his wife, A, and to his family and friends. Love to you all.

Rest in Peace, Gerry - and cheers!

I was lucky to be around for some of the ATP shenanigans, and they were truly great times. Gerry was just such a friendly, warm, proper guy. I really feel for his close friends, and for his family. It's heartbreaking.

Lovely post Aldo. My ATP memories are mostly a blur but I do remember that ridiculously Scottish version of A Little Respect! Condolences to you and Ailsa and all who were close to him.

Great posts, welling up here. Will be thinking of Gerry this Sunday as Celtic blooter Rangers yet again!

beautiful thread, everyone, hope we are all remembered so well

Thanks Aldo, I only just found this out having missed it mentioned on other threads.

RIP Onimo

Wonderful tribute posts from Aldo and Ailsa. Heartbreaking and beautiful.

appreciate all the touching tributes, love to you all

Wonderful words for a person whose posts I was always happy to encounter and who I had hoped to one day meet in person. My condolences to those who knew him better than me.

Great tributes.
I only met him (and A) the once as we were leaving a Low gig in Glasgow but they both seemed lovely.
I have many fond memories of us doing the football score predictions and the chat on the accompanying thread on here.
RIP

I admit that I wasn't super familiar with Onimo's posting but it's a heartbreaking situation and these tributes are lovely to read.

thank you for the post, aldo, it says so much. my heart goes out to those who were lucky to know him

lovely remembrances, warm thoughts to all <3

I remember the football stickers - the only year I ever did them! It was always great to see him and it fucking sucks that I never will again - fuck cancer, and love to you all.

<3

FFS just watched the Headhunter video and realised it's really our song. This might take a while.

amazing post. I didn't know him well but now I feel like I did.

aldo, I had a similar reaction earlier to The Shy Retirer. You know I've got you x

<3 <3 to aldo & ailsa and all itt, lovely words about onimo

and idk not to get too feelingsy but honestly maybe this is the best time...aldo, i hope that in time you can forgive yourself. that you found a way to reconnect w onimo, regardless of time passed, is the most important thing. x

thx and love to onimo, aldo, ailsa, and everyone else who has posted something in this thread.

try g___y more

Before the funeral, Ailsa and I are meeting for a beer in the scene of one of the most legendary Glasgow FAPs, the Alpen Lodge on Hope Street. So we don't go to an early morning service hanging and because it's a weeknight and we are all old it will just be a quiet few drinks and not a mad one like FAPs passing. Be in there about half 7/8 o'clock.

The Alpen Lodge, NOT ONIMONO

It would help if I said it was Tuesday night, wouldn't it.

<3