No surfing with the horses

After trudging across a boggy field I spy what must be our patient standing with a small group of people, I can tell it's our patient as this gent in his later years has a mass of white hair, all apart from the rather large red patch occupying the back of his head. Ouch!

If he's up and about, he can't be that bad, can he?

On reaching the patient, we find one very jolly Irishman who can only be politely described as 'In Drink' more precisely, s**t faced on 8 pints of Guinness. He is also sporting a rather gooey mess to the back of his head, where he lost the fight with gravity and the pavement.

He is insistent that he is fine and wants to go home for his dinner. This is really not an option, as he is covered in blood over his head, face, chest and back and the wound to the back of his head is still bleeding.

We have a sensible chat with him about the fact that he needs to go into hospital to be checked over. This rapidly deteriorates into a stern telling that he needs to go to hospital, combined with a half walking, half dragging tactic, towards the Ambulance.

Half way there, he collapses to the floor, sobbing that the IRA had killed both his parents during the troubles, this then manifests itself into leaping up, banging his head on the nearby wall in the process, shouting and being quite aggressive about how the terrorists were then dealt with, or not, which appeared to be his point. Don't have an issue with this as long as he does not go down the path of 'transfer of aggression' and we become the focus for his anger.

We finally get him into the Ambulance and secured on the stretcher, when he turns into hug mode, now would not normally mind this but he is covered in blood and now so am I. Gloves only cover so much of you.

Spend the trip into hospital trying to bandage his head, all the while trying to avoid him putting both his bloody hands on my face.

When we unload at A&E he then decides that he is fine and wants to go home, trying to climb off the stretcher. This takes 10min more persuasion to keep him from falling off and banging his head again.

We go through to Minor's and attempt to get him into a chair in the cubicle, this takes another 10mins of shouting and 'gentle' prompting from us.

The nurse examines his head and cannot see anything due to the amount of blood and matted hair, so a trip to the nearby sink to wash him is planned. You can guess this took a good 20mins.

He insists on walking back to the cubicle, shrugging us off on the way and promptly misses the chair and lands on the floor...................banging his head! The staff decide he should stay there as less likely to anymore damage if he is already down on the floor, so a mattress is brought in for him to lie on. This he takes offense to and leaps up shouting and swearing, where he then lands a punch on my crew mates chin, who promptly grabs him and secures his arms. I get spat on and told in no uncertain terms what he will do to us once he gets free.

We hatch a plan. Let's just take him down face first onto the floor and hold his head while 1 porter and 2 Ambulance crew sit on him and the nurse can staple his head closed. Despite the small bang to the front of his head he received on reaching the floor (Ooops - he did miss the mattress on the way down due to his struggles) this plan worked like a dream. 2 quick staples later and he had been treated. We left him in the company of several less than amused Police Officers.

I pondered after that unlike the advert, serious quantities of Guinness do not make you think you can surf the big waves with the white horses, it just makes you a complete and utter, obnoxious twat!