Entering the car park Elms muttered under his breath. His parking place had been taken up by a badly parked car which he angrily recognised as Mrs. Perks, the office secretary. To Wyse it made no difference, he had never owned a car but he understood it was a matter of pride strongly defended within the hierarchal ladder where your parking space was.
The new ex-fire brigade ambulance station dwarfed the surrounding houses, its red and black fire brickwork impressed upon you the solid foundations of such an organisation as a place of safety and refuge amidst urbanisation. Wyse wondered what the residents thought of the new ambulance station, the public seemed to have a distorted view of the emergency services which hadn’t helped relationships. Of course this was mostly due to the press and their bias reporting over the years of anything to do with the emergency services. The Police and Fire Brigade would always be mentioned heroically saving lives but the Ambulance Service would be conveniently forgot even if the accompanying press picture only showed ambulances attending the incident.
Elms reluctantly parked next to the Fire Brigades practice smoke tower and looked pensively upwards at the row of pigeons greedily waiting for an opportunity to see if they could eat his new car ariel and then in all likelihood perform some amazing acts of defecation upon the shiny car.
The large wooden French doors which would have comfortably accommodate a double decker bus, folded back on themselves and the glass panels that had not been smashed from the seasons indoor cricket tournament, miraculously remained intact much against expectations. Filling the area with a loud wooden clattering echo a much softer noise followed the pair walk across the littered garage floor.
Tapering from the relatively narrow opening the garage widened to allow several vehicles to be parked at the front of the station, exhaust fumes hung in the air mimicking the pea soupers of London lore. Yellow paint peeled from the walls and old painted Fire brigade signs refused to be scrubbed away, a constant reminder to them all they were the recipients of charity and confirmed their place in the emergency service pecking order.
Even in such dire circumstances a rueful tut escaped Wyse’s lips at the wastefulness of the Ambulance Service, along with the abandoned French ambulance presumably to show them no matter how bad things were they weren’t that bad, there was the clutter. Numerous boxes of equipment had been haphazardly stacked and randomly discarded on the floor. Each forgotten box contained defunct or such highly specialised items that no one could remember what they were for, let alone how to use them.
Navigating the supposedly defunct seven pin charging plugs dangling down from the ceiling, they swayed menacingly at eye level. Designed for ambulances which were far too old to be used for emergency work but had a nasty habit of always reappearing in use, no matter what catastrophic accident had occurred to it the week before. The new vehicle charging wires were equally devious, designed to garrotte the unwary instead of blinding them and stretched across the garage to the numerous ambulances waiting for their next shift. Ignoring the ambulance mess room door which was always the first port of call for a cup of tea richly deserved, they instead entered the male changing room.
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