Air Ambulance Day

Tuesday morning began with a wardrobe crisis of such magnitude that Mrs Brand briefly considered calling the air ambulance herself.

Not because anyone was injured.

Because Alfie had discovered one of his father’s yellow ties.

“Absolutely not,” said Mr Brand, looking up from his coffee.

“It’s for charity,” said Alfie.

“It’s for crimes against clothing.”

“It’s Wear Something Yellow for Air Ambulance Day. Mrs Abraham said we should make an effort.”

“I am making an effort,” said Mr Brand. “I am making a very significant effort not to throw that tie out of the window.”

Alfie held it up proudly. It was a particularly unpleasant shade of mustard yellow, with tiny navy-blue diamonds scattered across it. It looked as though someone had designed it during a power cut and then been too embarrassed to admit what they had done.

“Where did you even get that?” asked Mrs Brand.

“Dad’s wardrobe.”

“Yes, thank you, Alfie. I can see that. I meant why does your father own it?”

Mr Brand took a slow sip of coffee.

“It was fashionable.”

“When?”

“Before you were born.”

“Ah,” said Mrs Brand. “So during the historical period when people were apparently unable to see colours.”

Barry appeared in the kitchen wearing yellow socks.

They were bright yellow, with little black bees on them, and came halfway up his shins. He had refused to wear yellow trousers because, in his words, “I don’t want to look like a lemon from the waist down.”

Marmaduke arrived a few minutes later wearing a yellow T-shirt that said GOOD VIBRATIONS.

“Why does your T-shirt say that?” Barry asked.

“Because Mummy bought it.”

“Does it mean you vibrate?”

“I don’t think so.”

Barry considered this.

“Perhaps only when you’re excited.”

Marmaduke bounced on the spot to test the theory.

“I’m not vibrating.”

“You are a little bit,” said Alfie. “But that’s probably just because you’re standing on one leg.”

Marjory, who had dropped Marmaduke off on her way to the hospital, gave them both a kiss and reminded Marmaduke to listen carefully at assembly.

“Today’s about the air ambulance,” she said. “They do incredibly important work. They can get specialist medical help to people who need it urgently, often in places where an ambulance on the road might take too long.”

“Like the top of a mountain?” asked Marmaduke.

“Exactly.”

“Or the middle of a dinosaur?”

“No,” said Marjory. “Dinosaurs are extinct.”

“What if it’s a very large pretend dinosaur?” Barry asked.

“Then I imagine the air ambulance would ask you to stop playing with it and explain what has happened.”

Barry nodded thoughtfully. He felt this was a reasonable response, although he suspected that a dinosaur emergency would be more exciting than most.

Mrs Brand looked at the clock.

“Shoes. Bags. Coats. And, Alfie, if anyone asks about that tie, tell them it’s an antique.”

“Is it?”

“No. But it sounds better than ‘Dad bought it when he had no taste’.”

Mr Brand sighed.

There were some mornings when fatherhood felt less like raising children and more like being cross-examined by a tiny legal team with absolutely no respect for historical fashion.

At the school gates, yellow was everywhere.

Yellow ribbons. Yellow hairbands. Yellow scarves. Yellow T-shirts. Yellow socks.

One child had yellow wellington boots. Another had painted yellow stars on both cheeks. A Year 5 girl had yellow shoelaces and a yellow scrunchie, and looked as though she had been personally sponsored by a packet of highlighters.

Barry and Marmaduke were inspecting each other’s outfits when a commotion arose near the entrance.

A boy in Year 2 was arriving dressed as a banana.

Not wearing a banana T-shirt.

Not wearing a banana hat.

He was wearing an entire banana onesie, complete with a pointed yellow hood and a brown tip at the top.

He looked like a piece of fruit that had escaped from a supermarket and made a poor choice of career.

“Why is he a banana?” whispered Barry.

“I think he’s a banana,” said Marmaduke.

“Thank you, Marmaduke. I had nearly mistaken him for a pineapple.”

The boy’s mother, who looked as though she had already experienced three separate disasters before 8.30 a.m., was explaining matters to a teacher.

“I forgot it was today,” she said. “I remembered when we were driving past the joke shop. I have to be at work, so I dashed in and bought the first yellow thing I could find.”

The boy stood silently beside her.

“Does he know he’s a banana?” Barry whispered.

“Of course he knows,” said Alfie. “He’s wearing it.”

“Perhaps he thinks he’s a banana doctor.”

“Barry, please stop trying to give fruit medical qualifications.”

The banana boy shuffled past them.

“Do you like my costume?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Marmaduke kindly. “You look delicious.”

The boy stared at him.

Marmaduke immediately realised that this was not the correct thing to say to a person dressed as food.

“I mean, you look very yellow.”

“Thank you,” said the boy, with the exhausted dignity of someone who had already been asked whether he came in a bunch.

Barry watched him go.

“I wish Mummy had forgotten,” he said.

“Forgotten what?” asked Alfie.

“To buy me clothes.”

“You have clothes.”

“Not banana clothes.”

“You don’t need banana clothes.”

“That’s what people say when they don’t have banana clothes.”

The whole school assembled in the hall.

Mrs Abraham stood at the front with Mr Bloom, several buckets for donations, and a large display about the air ambulance. The display showed a helicopter flying above a green field, and another photograph of a crew standing beside a helicopter on the ground. 

Barry was fascinated.

“Is that a flying hospital?” he whispered.

“Not exactly,” said Alfie. “It’s a helicopter carrying a specialist medical team.”

“Like flying doctors in Australia?”

Alfie nodded. “Yes, a bit like that. There are doctors and medical teams in remote parts of Australia who travel long distances to reach people who need help. The air ambulance here uses helicopters to reach patients quickly, especially when roads are slow or the location is difficult to access.”

Barry thought about this.

“So if you’re in a field and you break your leg, a helicopter can come and get you?”

“If it’s needed,” said Alfie. “But you don’t get to order one just because you’ve fallen over your shoelaces.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You asked whether they deliver biscuits.”

“That was a different question.”

The hall settled as the special guest was introduced.

His name was Mark, and he worked with the air ambulance service. He wore a uniform and spoke calmly, with the sort of voice that made even the teachers stop shuffling papers.

He explained that an air ambulance was much more than a helicopter.

It was a highly trained team of medical professionals who could bring urgent, specialist treatment to people who were seriously ill or injured. They could reach patients at the roadside, in fields, at sporting events and in other places where getting help quickly mattered enormously.

The team worked closely with other emergency services, including road ambulance crews. Sometimes they could land near the patient; sometimes the crew had to reach the person by other means. Every incident was different.

“Why don’t they come to everybody who falls over?” Barry whispered.

“Because not everybody needs that level of help,” Alfie whispered back. “Imagine if the helicopter had to attend every scraped knee in Reception.”

Barry pictured a helicopter landing in the playground while twenty children held out their fingers to show a paper cut.

It would be extremely inefficient.

“And,” Alfie added, “I’m fairly sure the pilot wouldn’t appreciate you asking for a ride.”

“I’d ask politely.”

“Of course you would.”

Mark showed the children photographs of the helicopter, the medical equipment and the crew preparing for a mission. He explained that air ambulance teams could provide advanced medical care at the scene, helping patients before they reached hospital.

Then he began telling stories.

Not frightening stories.

Stories about people who had been seriously hurt and had survived because help had arrived quickly.

There was a child who had been injured during a sports event. The medical team had reached the scene, assessed the injuries and helped get the child the treatment needed.

There was another child who had been hurt at school. Teachers and other staff had called for help, and the emergency teams had worked together to get the child to hospital.

And there was a young person who had been injured at a local fete. What should have been an ordinary, happy day had suddenly become an emergency. The air ambulance team had arrived to provide specialist care, and the person had gone on to recover.

Mark explained that he could not share every detail of the patients’ lives, but the important thing was that people had been there for them when it mattered most.

“Sometimes,” he said, “the difference between a frightening day and a tragedy can be the time it takes to get the right medical help. We work hard to give people the best possible chance.”

The hall was quiet.

Even Barry stopped fiddling with his socks.

Marmaduke sat with his hands folded in his lap. Alfie listened carefully, his expression serious.

The children heard how the crew trained for emergencies, how they worked in difficult weather when it was safe to fly, and how they relied on donations and fundraising to support their service.

Mark explained that the helicopter could not simply fly everywhere whenever someone asked. The crew had to consider safety, the weather, where they could land, and what kind of help the patient needed.

“So it’s not like a taxi?” whispered Barry.

“No,” whispered Alfie.

“Not even a very expensive taxi?”

“No, Barry.”

“Because if it were a taxi, I’d want to know the fare.”

Alfie shut his eyes briefly.

He was eight years old. He had survived Year 3, a family holiday, and Barry’s explanation of why his own belly button might contain a secret tunnel. He was confident he could survive the rest of the assembly.

Probably.

When Mark finished, the hall burst into applause.

Mrs Abraham invited the children to ask questions.

This was an unfortunate decision if she had been hoping to finish before lunchtime.

A Year 1 child asked whether the helicopter had a siren.

A Year 3 child asked how fast it could fly (an improvement on the last question).

A Year 5 child asked about the training needed to become a paramedic.

And then Barry’s hand shot into the air.

Mrs Abraham hesitated.

She had taught Barry long enough to understand that his questions rarely travelled in a straight line.

“Yes, Barry?”

“Have you ever rescued someone dressed as a banana?”

There was a pause.

Mark smiled.

“Not that I can remember.”

Barry looked disappointed.

“What if the banana fell out of a tree?”

“I think we would first need to establish whether the banana was a person wearing a costume.”

Several children giggled.

Barry nodded. This was an excellent point.

Marmaduke put his hand up.

“Can a helicopter land in our playground?”

“Only if there was a suitable emergency and it was safe to do so,” Mark explained. “We would need enough space, and everyone would have to stay well away from the helicopter and follow the instructions of the emergency crew.”

“Would we have to move the football goals?” asked Alfie.

“Possibly,” said Mark.

Alfie considered the logistics. “That could take a while. They’re quite heavy.”

“Alfie,” said Mrs Abraham, “I don’t think we need to plan the landing area today.”

“But if we did—”

“We don’t.”

Alfie lowered his hand, disappointed that an entirely sensible contingency plan had been rejected.

The banana boy raised his hand.

“Would you rescue me if I was a real banana?”

Mark gave him a serious look.

“If you were a real banana, I suspect you would have other problems before you needed an air ambulance.”

The hall erupted.

Even Mrs Abraham laughed, although she tried to disguise it by coughing into her hand.

The banana boy looked pleased. He had achieved something most people only dream of: making an emergency medical professional discuss the hypothetical survival prospects of a piece of fruit.

After the assembly, each class returned to its room to discuss what they had learned.

Mrs Abraham asked the children what had surprised them most.

“That they can give people medical treatment before they get to hospital,” said one child.

“That they have to be careful where they land,” said another.

“That they can help people at sports events,” said Marmaduke.

“Excellent,” said Mrs Abraham.

Barry raised his hand.

“That a banana might have other problems before needing an air ambulance.”

Mrs Abraham stared at him for a moment.

“Yes, Barry. That was certainly one of the points made.”

She wrote three words on the board:

TIME. TEAMWORK. DONATIONS.

She explained that the air ambulance service depended on highly trained people working together, and that donations helped fund its life-saving work.

The children were invited to bring in a small donation if they could. No one was required to give money, and every contribution, however small, could help support the service.

Barry immediately emptied his pocket onto his desk.

Out came a small toy dinosaur, a crumpled tissue, two buttons, a pebble, and a coin.

He examined the coin carefully.

“Is this enough to buy a helicopter?”

“No, but it all helps” replied Mrs Abraham. 

“Is it enough to buy a wheel?”

“Probably not.”

“A very small wheel?”

“Barry.”

Barry put the coin into the donation pot.

It was not a helicopter, but it was a contribution. He looked at the pot with quiet satisfaction.

Marmaduke donated a coin too. Alfie had brought a carefully counted amount from his pocket money and placed it in an envelope marked AIR AMBULANCE in neat handwriting.

Barry looked at the envelope.

“Why have you written on it?”

“So they know what the money is for.”

“Perhaps they’ll think it’s for buying a banana.”

“Barry, no one is buying a banana with the air ambulance donations.”

“Not even a very important banana?”

“No.”

At lunchtime, the yellow outfits continued to attract attention.

The banana boy had been invited to take his hood off while eating, which meant he sat at the table wearing a yellow onesie with a brown point sticking up behind his head.

Barry and Marmaduke sat opposite him.

“What’s your name?” Barry asked.

“Oliver.”

“Do you like bananas?”

Oliver looked at him suspiciously.

“Yes.”

“Good. Because that would otherwise be awkward.”

Marmaduke nodded sympathetically. “My mummy once bought me a T-shirt that was too small.”

“That’s not the same,” said Oliver.

“No. But it was quite embarrassing.”

Alfie, who was attempting to eat his lunch without becoming involved in a discussion about fruit-based clothing, finally spoke.

“Oliver, do you know what the air ambulance does?”

“Helps people who are really hurt.”

“Exactly.”

“And sometimes they fly people to hospital.”

“Correct.”

“And if a banana gets hurt—”

“Oliver,” said Alfie, “please don’t encourage him.”

Oliver grinned.

Barry had found a friend.

This was rarely good news for anyone responsible for maintaining order.

By the end of the school day, Barry was unusually thoughtful.

He had learned that the air ambulance was not just a helicopter with flashing lights. It was a team of people who trained hard, worked together and sometimes arrived at a frightening moment in someone’s life to give them a better chance of surviving.

He had also learned that a donation pot was not a suitable place for toy dinosaurs, however small they were.

Marmaduke walked beside him, swinging his yellow T-shirt-covered arms.

“I think Mark was amazing,” he said.

“Me too,” said Barry. “He helps people when they really need it.”

Alfie nodded. “And he does it with a team. It’s not just one person.”

Barry looked up at the sky.

Somewhere above the rooftops, an air ambulance might be flying to help someone. He imagined the crew preparing their equipment, checking the weather, listening carefully and getting ready to work together.

“I’m glad they’re there,” he said.

“So am I,” said Marmaduke.

Then Barry looked down at his yellow socks.

“I think next year I might wear a yellow T-shirt.”

“Why?” asked Alfie.

“Because these socks are good, but people can’t see them when I’m sitting down.”

“That’s because socks are generally designed to go on feet.”

“I know. It’s a design flaw.”

Alfie sighed.

Mr and Mrs Brand were waiting at the gate. Mr Brand was wearing a perfectly ordinary blue tie, which was a relief to everyone who had witnessed the yellow one that morning.

“How was school?” Mrs Brand asked.

“Brilliant,” said Marmaduke. “We learned about the air ambulance.”

“They save lives,” said Barry. “They go to people who are really hurt, and every moment counts.”

Mr Brand nodded. “That’s right.”

“And they can land in fields.”

“If it’s safe and suitable.”

“And they work with road ambulances.”

“Yes.”

“And they probably wouldn’t rescue a banana.”

Mr Brand paused.

“I’m pleased you’ve grasped the key principles.”

Alfie told his parents about the assembly, the patient stories and the importance of donations. He explained that the crew needed specialist training and equipment, and that the air ambulance worked alongside other emergency services.

Mrs Brand smiled. “It sounds as though you all learned a lot.”

“We did,” said Marmaduke.

Barry nodded solemnly.

“Also, if you forget it’s Yellow Day, you can buy a banana onesie from a joke shop.”

Mr Brand looked at Mrs Brand.

Mrs Brand looked at Mr Brand.

Neither spoke.

They had been married long enough to recognise a warning sign.

“Barry,” said Mrs Brand carefully, “we are not buying you a banana onesie.”

“Not even for charity?”

“No.”

“What if I promise not to eat it?”

“That is not the problem.”

“Then what is?”

Mr Brand put an arm around him.

“The problem, Barry, is that I have seen what happens when you combine an unusual outfit with an audience.”

Barry considered this.

He looked down at his yellow socks, then at Marmaduke’s T-shirt, then at Alfie’s tie.

Finally, he smiled.

“Next year,” he announced, “I’m going as a helicopter.”

Alfie groaned.

Mr Brand closed his eyes.

Mrs Brand began walking towards the car.

And somewhere, in a joke shop not far away, a perfectly innocent banana onesie continued to hang on its peg, blissfully unaware that its career in emergency services might not yet be over.