'Male, collapsed in street - cannot see if he is breathing'.

Once more I found myself speeding towards a drunk in the street. It's *always* a drunk in the street, except of course on the one occasion when we don't whizz to scene - then they will be dead.

The Sod's Law of collapsed or deceased patients.

Like many of the drunk calls, we also had the information that 'caller will not approach patient', of course not, because the 'possibly dead' person is drunk, smelly, and possibly violent. That, after all, is why we are called to wake them up and move them on.

In this case however, it was much more reasonable, the caller was a CCTV operator.

So we rolled up and found our man snoring gently in the middle of the pavement. Hopping over the fence between us and the patient I went up to him and woke him up.

The man was apologetic (or at least I think he was apologetic, but then sheepish smiles and a bowed head are pretty universal despite the patient not speaking English). He then walked off to catch a train.

I looked around to see which CCTV camera had 'caught' him, and spotting the only one I could see I gave the camera a thumbs up, and then mimed drinking from a bottle.

The operator obviously got the message as the camera nodded up and down in acknowledgement.