Switchback Fair

At the Switchback Fair medical tent, Dr Galaxy was preparing to be engulfed with swine flu false alarms. At 8 in the morning the first patient arrived, looking anxious and mildly unwell.

‘Please take a seat,’ said Dr Galaxy.

The man looked, panicked, at the seat, but a reassuring smile from the doctor persuaded him to sit down. He couldn’t quite face the full sit-down, though, and ended up hovering about a centimetre above the seat. Then he sneezed.

‘I’m so sorry doctor!’ he said. ‘I couldn’t find a face mask anywhere in the house.’

‘Never mind,’ said Dr Galaxy. ‘You’re worried that you have swine flu, I imagine?’

‘That’s right!’ said the patient. ‘It’s the H1N1 strain, I’m sure of it!’

‘What makes you think that?’ asked Dr Galaxy.

‘Well, I was watching a travel documentary about Mexico last night, when I started to feel a bit ill. Then I realised that I’d had a bacon sandwich for lunch, and I’d been to tea with mother, and she’d just come back on a flight -’

‘From Mexico?’ said Dr Galaxy.

‘No, Tenerife. But they speak the same language, don’t they? It all adds up!’

‘You’ve got a cold,’ said Dr Galaxy. ‘Don’t worry about it. If a pandemic hits the fair you’ll be the first to know, I promise.’

The patient looked disappointed and left, muttering to himself.

Next door to the medical tent, a new stall had been hastily put up. A handwritten sign declared:

SWINE FLU EVALUATION AND TREATMENT CENTRE

The patient’s eyes lit up. He ran up to the stall.

‘I think I’ve got swine flu!’ he said.

‘Hold out your hand,’ said Old Granny Marlowe. ‘Ah yes, I see. You’re right, you do have swine flu. You’ll be dead in 24 hours without medical intervention. But you’re in luck – I’ve got just the pills you need.’

‘Tamiflu?’ said the patient.

‘Way better than that mush,’ said Old Granny Marlowe. ‘This is Marlowe’s Famous Patented Flu Remedy. Tried it on a dead pig yesterday, it was resurrected within the hour.’

‘I’ll take it!’ said the patient.

‘A very wise choice,’ said Old Granny Marlowe. ‘A dozen doses should do the trick. That’ll be two hundred and thirty pounds, please.’

Old Granny Marlowe prepared for Easter the same way she always did: by considering opportunities for crime.

‘Here’s the plan,’ she said. ‘We switch the eggs for the egg hunt with our own eggs, which we’ll have injected with a sleep-inducing gas, and then round up the children who find them for ransom.’

But her grandsons, Ricky and Shane Marlowe, were troubled by the plan.

‘Security will be tight around the eggs, grandma,’ said Ricky. ‘Why don’t we intercept the children on the way to the egg hunt instead?’

‘Because I’ve got five hundred decorated eggs and two hundred  kilogrammes of sleep-inducing gas in my basement and I’ve got to start using them up somehow, that’s why,’ said Old Granny Marlowe.

‘Why don’t we intercept the easter bunny and ransom it?’ said Shane.

Sensing the boys were still in need of convincing, she took them down to the basement.

‘Here is an egg,’ she said, holding up an egg between her thumb and index finger. ‘You can identify it by its ovoid shape and pale colour. Now, the eggs you see here are hollowed-out, so you will have to take a small piece of chewing gum’ – she took some gum from her mouth – ‘and use it to seal the hole, before pumping the gas in.’

She pointed towards the cannister.

‘Shane, you can try the gas first. Now bef-’

‘Easy!’ said Shane. He jumped towards the cannister and before her grandmother could stop him, open the valve to full.

Old Granny Marlowe tried to tell him exactly what she thought of him, but they all fell asleep before she could start. By the time they woke up, the egg hunt had finished for another year.