I should have a new title added after my name. 'Professional waker-upper'.

Two calls in the space of one shift to people who are sleeping in a public place.

One person fell asleep in a magistrate's court, waiting for his friend to be finished in one of the courts. His friend must have been so excited not to receive a custodial sentence that he left his friend behind.

Smelling slightly of alcohol he'd bedded himself down and fell asleep. We were called by one of the security officers, no-one seemed too happy to shake him awake.

One application of slight pain from the nice ambulance man and the patient woke up, thanked me n his own language and walked off home.

The second patient was asleep on a bus, he'd had a bit more to drink and needed a bit more... ahem... stimulation to wake up.

No thanks from this patient, but at least he didn't make good his threat to punch me. And we didn't need to call the police on him either. A good result all round really.

It's strange that some people seem to think that you need an ambulance in order to wake someone up. I've even been called to nursing homes when one of their patients has been asleep at 3am in the morning.

In fact the whole shift was like that, fourteen jobs in twelve hours with only five of them travelling to hospital.

Ho-hum. Easy money I suppose.