Gladiators

The Brand family house in London was held together by three things: strong tea, weak promises about screen time, and Alfie’s sense of responsibility.

“Barry, stop licking the radiator,” Alfie said one Tuesday morning, without even looking up from tying his shoelaces.

“I’m checking if it’s hot,” Barry explained.

“With your tongue?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not how thermometers work.”

Barry considered this. “Then why is it warm?”

Marmaduke, who had been invited over before nursery because his mum had an “important breakfast meeting,” nodded thoughtfully. Marmaduke believed almost everything Barry said. This included the entirely false claim that penguins exploded if they got too warm.

The two boys sat cross-legged on the floor wearing pirate hats made from old takeaway menus.

Mr Brand rushed around the kitchen searching for his car keys while balancing a laptop under one arm and accidentally drinking orange juice from Barry’s paint-water cup.

“Why is this crunchy?” he muttered.

“Nutrients,” said Barry confidently.

Meanwhile, Mrs Brand stood by the window in her work clothes, staring at her phone with the expression of someone who had just remembered she’d left a ferret in charge of a fireworks factory.

“Well,” she said slowly. “That changes things.”

Everyone looked up.

Except Marmaduke, who was trying to staple a banana.

“You know my elective surgery slot?” Mrs Brand asked.

“The one you’ve waited six months for?” said Mr Brand.

“Yes. They’ve had a cancellation. It’s Saturday.”

“Oh.”

Silence.

Then all heads slowly turned toward Barry.

Barry smiled. The kind of smile normally seen moments before a smoke alarm.

“No,” said Alfie immediately. “No, absolutely not.”

“I haven’t even said anything,” Barry protested.

“That’s what worries me.”

Alfie had been invited to the birthday party of a school friend whose parents apparently had “more money than sense,” according to Mrs Brand. The party was being held at the NEC in Birmingham, which Alfie originally thought was a typo because nobody had birthday parties in exhibition centres unless they were secretly hosting agricultural machinery conventions.

But this party was real.

They were going to the Gladiators Experience, to test their skills at ‘hang tough’, ‘duel’, and the famous travelator!

Best of all, one parent had to compete alongside each child in a huge family tournament.

Mr Brand had been absurdly excited.

“I’ve still got it,” he’d announced the night before, patting his stomach confidently.

“Got what?” Mrs Brand asked.

“Competitive instinct.”

“You wheeze tying shoelaces.”

“That’s tactical breathing.”

Now, however, came the complication.

“You can’t take Barry,” Alfie said gravely, as though discussing dangerous chemicals.

“I have to,” Mr Brand replied. “Your mum needs to go to hospital.”

“What about Marmaduke?”

Marmaduke looked up from the banana. “I can come.”

“That’s exactly the issue,” Alfie sighed.

The organisers had kindly said Alfie’s brothers could spectate and join the Nando’s dinner afterwards. Mr Brand had assumed that included Marmaduke, mainly because explaining to Marmaduke that he couldn’t come anywhere was like explaining taxes to a goose.

So by 8.45a.m., Mr Brand was driving north on the motorway with:

• One deeply serious seven-year-old.
• Two four-year-olds with the combined judgment of a dropped yoghurt.
• Three emergency juice cartons.
• A packet of wet wipes already losing the will to live.

“Are we nearly in France?” Barry asked twenty-seven minutes into the journey.

“No.”

“Now?”

“No.”

Marmaduke pointed at a cow. “Horse.”

“That’s a cow,” Alfie corrected.

“It’s a horse having a difficult time,” Marmaduke insisted.

The NEC was enormous.

Barry stood in the car park staring upward.

“It looks like an airport married IKEA,” he whispered.

Inside, children raced everywhere carrying glowing wristbands and balloons larger than their own heads.

Music blasted.

Lights flashed.

Mr Brand looked terrified.

“Right,” he said, kneeling dramatically before Barry and Marmaduke. “Listen carefully. You stay with me. You touch nothing. You climb nothing. You press nothing. Understood?”

Barry nodded sincerely.

This was always a terrible sign.

The family met with the party organisers, passed check-in and waivers (how Barry and Marmaduke were allowed to proceed was beyond Mr Brand) and made their way through to the main arena.

Alfie and Mr Brand got changed and collected padded helmets, elbow pads and knee pads. Barry and Marmaduke were made to stand in the cubicle next door to Mr Brand and each stick a foot under the barrier wall into his cubicle, to prove they were still present.

When it was their turn to enter the main arena, the party parents and children went through, dressed in their new gladiators outfits and padding. 

“I will be so disappointed with you both, if you let me down today,” Mr Brand said to Barry and Marmaduke. “This is someone’s birthday party, please just behave yourself and don’t spoil it for them by getting into trouble.” He thought a firm stance on this from the get-go was better than allowing them exploration space. 

The party planned to do the travelator first because, apparently, the queue to do it was longest, and it was therefore the queue to stand in before you first scan your wristband. You had to hand it to the party family, they’d organised with military precision. 

Alfie did well. Mr Brand mostly looked like a man discovering exercise unexpectedly.

Still, they managed giant foam challenges, extreme monkey bars and climbing walls, surprisingly well.

Barry and Marmaduke watched from the benches scattered around the arena. They ate overpriced crisps that tasted faintly of cardboard and regret.

“Look,” said Barry suddenly.

A staff door nearby had swung slightly open.

Beyond it lay a dim corridor.

And at the end of that corridor…

…a golf buggy.

Not just any golf buggy.

A shiny silver electric buggy with NEC STAFF ONLY written on the side.

Barry’s eyes widened.

Marmaduke gasped.

Neither child possessed the brain development necessary to ignore this.

“We probably shouldn’t,” Marmaduke whispered.

“Exactly,” Barry agreed.

Three minutes later they were inside the buggy.

Barry sat behind the wheel while Marmaduke operated absolutely nothing but looked supportive.

“How does it go?” Marmaduke asked.

Barry pressed a button.

The headlights came on.

Another button activated windscreen wipers despite there being no windscreen.

Then Barry spotted the accelerator.

“Science,” he murmured.

The buggy lurched forward.

Not fast.

Not dangerously.

But definitely illegally.

Meanwhile, in the arena, Alfie completed a climbing challenge while Mr Brand collapsed onto a giant beanbag making sounds like an exhausted walrus.

“Where are the boys?” he asked, suddenly looking around. 

Alfie froze.

The spectator benches nearby were empty.

Back in Corridor C, Barry steered magnificently badly.

The buggy bounced gently off a wall, narrowly avoided a stack of folding chairs, and rolled directly into a delivery area where several workers stared in confusion.

Marmaduke waved politely.

“We’re inspectors,” Barry informed them.

“Are you now?” one man said.

“Yes. We’re checking… wheels.”

The man sighed. He had worked at the NEC for fourteen years. Nothing surprised him anymore.

Then Barry spotted something even more exciting.

“Look!”

Ahead stood an enormous hall filled with giant inflatable castles awaiting another event.

Hundreds of them.

Pirate ships.

Dragons.

Slides.

Obstacle courses.

It was paradise.

Barry parked the buggy against a traffic cone with all the elegance of a collapsing supermarket trolley.

The boys climbed inside.

For ten glorious minutes, they bounced freely through inflatable kingdoms while workers elsewhere searched frantically.

Security radio messages became increasingly specific.

“Missing children. Both look naughty but capable.”

“Repeat: naughty but capable.”

Mr Brand sprinted through corridors sweating catastrophically.

Alfie followed, unusually pale.

“This is exactly what I warned everyone about,” he muttered.

Eventually, they heard laughter echoing from Hall 11. Gladiators Experience was in Hall 12, but given the enormity of the NEC, it had initially seemed unlikely that the boys would leave the Hall. 

Mr Brand burst through the doors to discover Barry and Marmaduke sliding down an inflatable volcano while eating someone else’s candy floss.

“BARRY!”

Barry looked delighted.

“Dad! We found extra party!”

A security guard approached.

Mr Brand prepared for prison.

Instead, the guard shrugged.

“Happens more often than you’d think.”

“Really?”

“No. Usually worse.”

Alfie folded his arms.

“You stole a vehicle.”

“It was electric,” Barry said. “That’s environmentally friendly.”

“You disappeared!”

“We stayed indoors.”

“You could’ve been hurt!”

Barry paused thoughtfully.

“We were actually having a really nice time.”

Mr Brand rubbed his temples.

At that exact moment, his phone rang.

It was Mrs Brand.

“How’s it going?” she asked weakly from the recovery suite at the hospital.

Mr Brand looked at Barry dangling upside down from inflatable rigging.

Marmaduke had somehow acquired a whistle.

Security guards were taking selfies with them.

Alfie appeared one inconvenience away from becoming an accountant.

“…Fine,” Mr Brand lied.

The family returned to the main arena to meet up with the party. A finale of contenders was planned, but it wasn’t clear if guests were supposed to let the birthday child win or not. 

“Bother that, Alfie, we can win this,” Mr Brand said to Alfie. Barry and Marmaduke were invested in Team Brand now the sugar levels were dropping. 

As the countdown began, Barry and Marmaduke sat with the audience.

“Go Dad!” Barry shouted.

“Don’t die!” added Marmaduke helpfully.

The horn blasted.

Chaos erupted.

Parents bounced wildly.

Children sprinted.

One man lost both shoes immediately.

Mr Brand committed fully.

Unfortunately, his body did not.

Halfway through the course he attempted a heroic leap and became wedged between two inflatable rollers like a determined sausage.

The crowd roared with laughter.

Alfie, however, remained calm.

“Left leg first!” he instructed.

Mr Brand wriggled free, remembering his recent experience in soft play. 

Eventually they crossed the finish line in second place.

Alfie received a silver medal.

Mr Brand received an ice pack and a free energy drink.

Barry treated both rewards equally respectfully.

By evening, everyone was exhausted.

They sat together in Nando’s surrounded by noise, chips and the unmistakable smell of peri-peri sauce embedded permanently into furniture.

Barry had consumed:

• one full chicken wrap,
• half of Mr Brand’s chips,
• three sachets of ketchup,
• and, mysteriously, a lemon wedge.

Marmaduke was asleep upright holding a chicken wing.

Alfie examined his silver medal proudly.

“You were brilliant today,” Mr Brand told him.

“You got stuck again.”

“That was strategy.”

“You screamed.”

“It was tactical.”

Barry grinned.

“Best day ever.”

“For you, maybe,” Alfie muttered.

But secretly, even Alfie had enjoyed it.

The drive home was quiet.

Marmaduke snored softly, having been carried to the car in North 1A car park by Mr Brand. 

Barry stared out the window at motorway lights flashing by.

Then he asked:

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Are we banned from Birmingham now?”

Mr Brand thought carefully.

“…Possibly certain sections of it.”

Barry smiled happily and fell asleep.

When they finally reached London after midnight, Mrs Brand was home recovering on the sofa.

“How was the party?” she asked sleepily.

Mr Brand looked at the sleeping children, whom had been no mean feat to carry in together from the car. He had fleetingly wondered if real Gladiators had to do this type of real-world training?

At Alfie clutching his medal.

At Barry still wearing a security lanyard nobody could explain.

Then he sighed.

“Well,” he said carefully, “nobody was arrested.”

Mrs Brand nodded.

“That’s usually your benchmark for success.”

“It’s important to have achievable goals.”

And upstairs, as London hummed quietly outside, Barry rolled over in bed and murmured one final sentence in his sleep.

“Needs more golf buggy.”