Passing and out

Every now and then in the darkest corners of the darkest nightspot after more than a few too many units of alcohol some of our valued and friendly clientele take it upon themselves to bed in for the night. Some voluntarily, others by this point having lost any control over their free will.

We clip on tied creatures of the night normally find these folk on our wanderings around the place on our usual checks and we know where to be looking for those napping. The human creature seems to have a common sense of where's a good place to stop for a nap and where is not a good place to stop for a nap. Common sense however is not present in the pickled minds of some of our punters. The roosting spots of drink addled minds can be quite befuddling and on a rammed out weekend night they can be very hard to find. The best finds to date have included a lady found sleeping, sat on a ledge, head in hands on the main dancefloor propped against a bass bin, similarly a lady was found squatted unconscious in the space usually reserved for the swing of the double doors she was propped next to. To add a curious insult to our beloved bar staff there has been a gentleman propped at the bar sound asleep, clearly the wait for his next beverage proved to long and the teasing view of the harassed, sweating, nubile young ladies serving failed to keep him out of the land of nod.

What do we do when first we encounter a sleeping beauty? Well we usually shout a hello to the nice folk and hope they can hear us, if they can they may be able to pull themselves together enough to keep inside the venue. Some require a gentle shake and a stand well back, the punters occasional retort to being disturbed from their inebriated dreams being to redistribute some of their hard spent liquid wages upon all and sundry. This or any other response is usually accompanied by a "Time to head home now" and the offer of assistance, usually accepted, to help them to the door. The ones who don't wake up lead to a whole new level of concern, a quick pulse check to assure ourselves and if it's not racing like desert orchid or wallowing like an Orangeman’s slow march we proceed. With no response to verbal or light physical stimulation a gentle pain response is tried, even the most extremely hammered lump will likely respond to a firm pinch on the back of the hand or a twisted earlobe. We're not looking for them to bounce awake and start normalising Schrödinger’s wave equations but some movement/noise/vomit/change in gormless expression lets us know the brain is still in gear, reverse maybe, but still in gear. I’ve found that if there's a response to a little pain, a return to full consciousness can be achieved with a good knuckle crunched into the sternum. May leave a funny U.D.I. in the morning but it's always better to walk out than be carried, especially when you're nearer 20 stone than 6

This is when the radio call goes out to get enough muscle to extract the unconscious individual to the fresh air of outside and only if there's no recovery will the blue lighted drunk kidnappers be summoned to poke, prod and give a bed for the night to our punter. If their pulse is worrying or their brain has fallen completely out of gear then we'll call the drunk kidnappers and let them pick up the fools and cover our arses for getting them into this state. Now all of this is what I think the non-thinking punter expects from us though you'd be surprised at the number of folk who think that in our rush to take money from our punters and keep it from the hands of lawyers and their settlements we should let sleeping punters lie. We take a different view and the cold night air has remarkable restorative properties for those conscious impaired amongst the hordes.