First night of WOMAD and Botanic Park is alive: world music, flags, colour, food. Anne and Julia stroll under the lights greeting friends.

But all is not well with Anne. She has had too many samosas for tea. And what’s more, she’s forgotten her usual reflux emergency kit.

They pass a St John’s tent. Just the thing. Embarrassing to waste their time on indigestion, but there are two young volunteers and no customers, so obviously they aren’t busy.

‘You go on,’ she says to Julia. ‘I’ll catch you up.’

‘It’s nothing really,’ she says to the volunteers. ‘Just a bit of reflux. You don’t have a Quickeze do you? Or some bi-carb?’

By way of reply the young woman pulls out a chair, and the young man sits her down. ‘We’d just better check,’ he says. Before she can object her attendants have rolled up her sleeve and are applying a blood pressure cuff. Oh well, good practice for them Anne supposes.

The man has a clipboard. ‘Any pain in your arms?’ he asks earnestly.

In her ARMS? Anne is puzzled. ‘No,’ she says.

‘Whereabouts do you feel it?’

Anne indicates a point between her breasts.

‘Anywhere else in your chest or back?’

Well honestly, Anne thinks, do they know where my digestive organs are located?

The woman has finished measuring Anne’s blood pressure and pulse and is now listening to her front and back with a stethoscope, tapping as she goes.

‘Have you ever had this trouble before?’ the man asks.

‘Yes,’ says Anne, ‘often. Whenever I eat too much.’

‘Oh,’ says the man, and the woman rolls up her stethoscope.

Suddenly Anne realises what’s going on. They’ve been checking her for a heart attack.

‘Oh no,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make a fuss … ’

At that moment Julia sticks her head into the tent.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I think so,’ says Anne, though she is beginning to have doubts. Is it a heart attack? Would she even know? She feels even more stupid than she did when she first came in wanting Quickeze.

The young man smiles reassuringly at her, as though she is in her dotage.

‘Everything is normal,’ he enunciates clearly, patting her on the shoulder. ‘We just like to be sure. If you do get any other pains come straight back.’

‘I’ll just wait outside,’ says Julia, also enunciating clearly. Anne glares at her.

The young man holds out his clipboard for her to sign. She has no idea why, but she isn’t about to quibble.

‘And do you have any … ’ she asks diffidently.

The young woman rummages in a first aid tin. ‘We can only give you one I’m afraid.’

Anne emerges from the tent clutching her single Quickeze. Perhaps that’s what she signed for. She’s never thought of  Quickeze as a dangerous drug, but what would she know?    Perhaps if you ate enough of it …