They told me its one of the best duties to do and they were right. It was my first Summer Solstice duty with the St John Ambulance and I was a little nervous to say the least having heard the tales of the previous years.

It all seemed rather relaxed to begin with me fortunate enough to see the air ambulance take off and land behind our unit amongst all the calm.

So I used the opportunity to wonder round a bit and take a couple of pics. Here are the stones before they let the flood gates open.

And here are the stones again filling up.

And that was the last photograph I took because shortly after the fun and games kicked off suddenly just like someone had switched a switch and I was kept rather busy dealing with the injuries of the great unwashed. We were somewhat hindered amusingly by the fact that we weren’t allowed to use the flashing lights on the ambulances as apparently the hippies can’t deal with them and it freaks them out a little so you can imagine the difficulty we had navigating through the drunken, stoned crowds with just our hazard lights on. However the highlight of the evening would have to be the huge fight between a mob of 10 year olds, a group of 16 year old girls and security which happened right outside the ambulance I was in. Well if you’re going to smash ten bells out of one another best do it close to where you can get treated I guess. I was left wondering as I scraped the drunken victims off the floor where on earth would a 10 year old learn to fight like that - probably on the estates I concluded as I was forced to listen to the Vicky Pollard version of events that I had just witnessed.

Now I’m trying to catch up on the sleep I’ve lost but finding it difficult during the daytime. The tiredness is even impacting on my enjoyment of watching the lower classes argue over the DNA tests on the Jeremy Kyle Show which even featured a rough family from my home time of Grantham too.