Trafalgar Square is playing host to a number of things in the run up to Christmas. The tree is there, of course – and it’s been straightened up at last (probably as a direct result of this blog); there’s a melting Polar bear on show (which isn’t melting fast enough) and the main attraction but only because it’s littering the area below Nelson’s Column, is a scattering of coloured tents containing various bodies, all contending to save the world. They call themselves ‘The Climate Camp’ and they are okay but I prefer the bear.

The first call of the day was to attend a cantankerous 70 year-old man who had wandered in to the ‘camp’ and made himself at home. He was given a cup of tea and lots of sympathy by the people there. He lived rough and had a pair of disgustingly infected legs – the direct result of long term abuse of his health. The legs became the focus for the campers and so they called an ambulance and I was asked to check him out. For the entire twenty minutes or so that I was there, he subjected me to a rain of spittle, verbal abuse and reflected anger. His legs were so bad that it was entirely possible they’d fall off if he stood up but he wasn’t interested in my help, except to demand that I bandage them.

I put a couple of dressings on the worst areas – a completely ineffective treatment but it was all he would accept – and tried to persuade him to go to hospital. ‘I don’t want your medicine’, he shouted in my ear. ‘I don’t believe in Western medicine, I use Eastern medicine’.

The campers stood around looking concerned and neutral at the same time and one of them, a bearded fellow that, in my youth would have been labelled a ‘Hippie’, spoke to me about how worried they were about him but that they didn’t know him. ‘So, he just came in here but he has nothing to do with you?' I asked.

‘What do you mean? We are a collective’, came the reply and I found myself being looked upon as if I was the enemy of something or somebody. I had no idea why my question had aroused such suspicion or why such a large chip had been thrown onto his shoulder out of the blue, so I decided, as he began his lecture about ‘us’ and his collective, to walk away from him and seek out an adult. I went back to the lady who had originally spoken to me about the man with the dodgy legs – she was standing with a police officer.

‘I’ve put dressings on his legs but keep an eye on him and if you need us again, just call us back’, I said. Now, I thought this middle-aged lady was a sensible type but she said something that made me realise I might be standing in the middle of a mini-conspiracy.

‘We have a policy of not contacting the authorities if we can help it.’

‘Authorities?’ I replied, rather taken aback, ‘Madam, we are the NHS – not the police.’

I know we have to save this planet of ours and I am 100% behind the efforts to do so but protests that come in this form – where everyone is the enemy if they don’t share the same opinion with an aggressive passion and where every uniform is seen as authoritarian, puts me off the very cause being fought for. The best way to dissuade the majority of law-abiding people about any argument is to act and talk like that. I got abuse and arrogance and all I did was show up and try to help. I didn’t even get a cup of tea!