Ecnalubma

When I sleepily wheeled the stretcher out from the hospital early the other morning there was a little kid standing, looking somewhat quizzically at the front of the vehicle. At first I thought he was mouthing an incantation at the ambulance - perhaps back at the coven, his mother had taught him a protection spell and he was now kindly putting it on the ambulance so we could get home in one piece, without getting another job on the way back to branch.

Anyway, he appeared to be trying to pronounce the funny word written on the front of the ambulance. When I said hi, he got all self conscious and ran off towards where I noticed his mum and siblings were standing. He proudly yelled to his brothers and sisters "It says EKNALUMBA!". I checked and saw he was almost right - then while I was making the bed, I was trying to work out what his pronunciation would have looked like when it was written the right way round. My partner came out and found me standing at the front of the ambulance apparently mouthing strange incantations at the truck. Of course then I got all self conscious.

If you look really closely, you can see me reflected in the bottom right corner of the pic looking tired as the sun comes up over the Northern Hospital carpark. There is even a tiny thought bubble that is me praying we don't get pinged for a job on the way home...