Blood, Sweat and Tea

Have you ever wondered what’s going on inside the ambulance you see screaming past with its sirens on and blue lights flashing?

Does it contain a heart attack victim fighting for their life, while trained medical professionals administer emergency treatment? Or have you considered that it might be yet another ‘Matern-a-taxi’ ordered by a woman who can’t be bothered to book a real cab and who then complains she can’t smoke on the way to hospital?

Meet Tom Reynolds. Tom is an Emergency Medical Technician who works for the London Ambulance Service in East London. He has kept a diary of his daily working life since 2003, first as a website called Random Acts of Reality and now for the first time as a no-punches-pulled book. His award-winning writing is, by turn, moving, cynical, funny, heart-rending and compassionate.

From the tragic to the hilarious, from the heart-warming to the terrifying, the stories Tom tells give a fascinating – and at times alarming – picture of life in inner-city Britain, and the people who are paid to mop up after it.