>One of the nurses on 5B got reminiscing about working nightshift on Rosenmontag, the culmination of the Karneval season.

‘What really pissed me off’ she said ‘was the way the parents would turn up and mollycoddle these semi-comatose kids who were covered with vomit and whose lives we’d just saving by pumping out their stomachs’

‘It’d be like ” Oh you poor little thing! You just sleep it off and Mumsy will bring you some clean clothes and take you home to bedsywedsy” ‘

‘If I’d gotten into that state’ she said ‘my Dad would have made me walk home through the village so that everyone could see just what sort of a tramp I was.’

‘And if it were up to me, I’d film them having their stomach pumped and give them the DVD to remind them just how demeaning the whole thing is’

‘In fact’ she said in a conspiratorial whisper ‘ I used to take a couple of pictures with their cellphone and put it back in their pocket.’

‘Just something to show their mates….’