Some Sundays I give an elderly couple a lift to church. The husband was a member of Gloucestershire police serving in Cirencester in the early 1960s. With another colleague he was called upon to attend a ‘domestic’ in the quiet village of Down Ampney.

The officers, unarmed of course, knocked on the door and were confronted by a gunman who had already killed two people. They did their duty and the gunman was disarmed and arrested, but not before one had been wounded, happily not fatally.

It was some time before former PC David Smeeton told me of this. To him it was not a matter for boasting about. He was just doing his job.

This has recently provoke much thought. Do we take our emergency service for granted? The fire service, police service and ambulance men do a crucial job every day.

They do not know what to expect as anything can turn up at any time. We just expect them to cope and get on with it.

They have suffered cuts in resources in recent years but the demands of the job have not diminished. It is a job that because of its nature effects families as well. Our emergency service workers, in order to do a proper professional job often have to stay at the scene for some time. This means they are late coming off duty and therefore family plans can be disrupted.

Happily there is to be a chance for us all to recognise the work constantly being done on our behalf.

On Thursday May 30, there will be an afternoon of community engagement in Cirencester Market Place involving all our friends in the emergency services. That evening, in the parish church there will be a service of thanksgiving for the Emergency services. This is the first of this type anywhere and will give all of us a chance to say thank you for those who, on a daily basis work hard to realise the worst of society’s problems.

David Smeeton, who opened that Down Ampney door to a gunman, received the Queen’s Medal, and rightly so but how many of our other emergency staff have every received any thanks at all. On May 30, we can remedy this - we must never take them for granted.