Free The Lampo Circus by Alexandra Adornetto Page B

only offered when a child grazed a knee or developed a headache. Oslo was incapable of offering comfort but also could not afford for anyone to be rendered useless due to medical reasons. He would brusquely direct patients to Nonna Luna, who was sitting crocheting doilies in the first-aid tent that had been erected nearby. The children soon discovered that much of the equipment from the first-aid kit had long gone missing. All that was left was an ice pack, cotton swabs, some iodine, a bottle of antacid so old the contents refused to move and boxes of assorted bandages. You could go to Nonna Luna with any numberof complaints and emerge streaked in iodine and wearing a plaster.
    Despite her efficacy as a nurse being severely limited due to lack of resources, Nonna was the closest thing the children had to an ally. Her speciality was homeopathic remedies (she and Aunt Bulb would have had much to talk about) but these could only be administered from the privacy of her kitchen. Nonna Luna also carried in her apron pocket a little tin of pea-sized sweets she called caramelle. These were rock hard (which meant your taste buds could enjoy them for a while) and came in various tangy berry flavours. One of these sweets worked wonders in raising a child’s spirit and ending a flow of complaints. A teary Gummy Grumbleguts visited Nonna’s tent halfway through the rock-dodging class complaining of a bellyache. He emerged with a bandaid plastered across his stomach as well as the smile of gratification that two caramelle dissolving on his tongue managed to produce.
    Milli noticed that Finn and Fennel were different to the other children. The latter complained readily at the smallest of mishaps; abump to the head, a blistered finger. But when Fennel found a splinter the size of a toothpick lodged in the palm of her hand, she just grimaced and plucked it out calmly with her teeth before carrying on with the task.
    The children had worked up quite an appetite when lunchtime finally rolled around. Despite their hunger, however, they felt miraculously full once lunch appeared. The main meal prepared by the camp cooks was a dish that in classy Italian restaurants goes by the name of Carpaccio. Although I have never been foolish enough to try it, I am told that Carpaccio is a delicacy usually prepared by slicing raw beef into paper-thin slices. You arrange them on a platter and drizzle them with a dressing made from lemon juice, olive oil and crushed herbs according to preference. As far as I am concerned, you could not pay me enough to try such a thing. But that’s probably because I am privileged enough to choose from other items on menus that are usually extensive. I am not so sure any of us could say with certainty what our decision would be if we were faint from hunger after agruelling training session and it did not look as if anything else was going to appear on the table.
    To make the decision even more difficult for the children, their Carpaccio had not been prepared in the customary manner. As a rule, one would use quality beef for such a dish (perhaps fillet or sirloin steak) that was devoid of any sinew or gristle. Unluckily for the children, Battalion Minor operated on a budget and the herb and olive oil dressing was about the only part of the recipe that resembled the original. The raw beef served up to them was sliced as thick as bricks, marbled with fat and clumped with roughly chopped herbs.
    ‘How are we going to swallow that?’ wailed the younger children. ‘It’s horrid and not even dead.’
    ‘I have an idea,’ Milli said brightly. ‘Why don’t we chop it into the tiniest of pieces, think of what we like to eat best and imagine that’s in front of us now?’ One child looked dubiously at her. ‘That’s not going to work.’
    ‘How do you know if you haven’t given it a try?’ a staunch Milli supporter argued.
    So the children thought wistfully about Sweet Nothings, which was the name of Mrs Jube’s