Nee naa nee naa nee naaaaaaa, that’s the sound that ambulances used to make when I was young. They just came in plain wrap vanilla white with a red cross on the side, a revolving red lamp and that siren. Nowadays it’s any colour as long as its plastered with strips of lumo green reflective tape. Inside the ambo officers keep patients alive with saline drips and catheters and blood transfusions until they hit the emergency room at hospital X.Y or Z – whichever one is not on bypass…..

During war it’s meant to offer some form of protection like a force field, a white band around your arm with a red cross, an insignia on a tent seen from above. They also supply food parcels to those in a prisoner of war camp. Letters from home, chocolate, clothing, rations. maybe there’s a secret message baked into the fruit cake that only officers have been given info to read.

When storms or flood or tsunami bring home devastation, Red Cross are ready to get in there at the relief effort, planes of cargo , volunteers ready to distribute aid. Hercules at 30000 chugging along with silver crates of life-giving donations. It’s cold out in the hold at 30000, keep in that nice little compartment up front. The rear door will not be folding down this time, only on arrival… unless the airport is unserviceable. people with shreds of hunger tearing at their insides, their goose pimpled skin shivering in the cold will have some relief tonight. Maybe there’ll be a riot, if there’s not enough supplies- will common sense prevail…..