How to Move a Hospital 4: Sciennes to Little France

Hip-hop-hup, a flit’s coming up – the Sick Kids is crossing the City. We’ll scoot by skateboard, zoom with balloons. At Little France, we’ll hang in a cocoon until… crack-crick-split… there’s a new Sick Kids!

Drawings collated by Cate James and words by Linda Cracknell following suggestions by patients 

The poorly Hospital is getting closer to Little France, the place in a valley where she’s going to get a makeover and start feeling better. The jangly loud band accompanies her with drums and trumpets and the hamsters, mice and rats are still spinning their exercise wheels underneath her, along with the Giant bicycle.

She points to an old-looking castle perched on a rocky hill nearby. ‘Take me there!’ She says.

The hamsters, mice and rats squeak to a halt. They are already panting. ‘We’ll never get up there,’ one of them says. ‘It was supposed to be downhill all the way now.’

‘I want to go there on the way,’ demands the Hospital.

Luckily the million butterflies, the balloons and birds that first helped the hospital away from Sciennes have heard her demands. And in they fly, ready to help.

‘You’re even older than me,’ the hospital says to Craigmillar Castle as they approach.

‘I’m 350 years older than you.’

‘And what happened to your roof?’ the Hospital asks.

‘It blew away a couple of centuries ago. My eyesight isn’t that good anymore. Come closer. Let me have a look at you,’ the Castle says. ‘I see you have a unicorn above your door too.’

And then the unicorns start chatting, comparing ages and the colourfulness of their coats and all the magic tricks they know.

It’s breezy on the hilltop. ‘Don’t you find it cold up here?’ the Hospital asks. ‘I’m planning to go down there to the valley at Little France.’

‘I can see my enemies coming from here.’

‘Enemies?’ the Hospital asks. She notices then that the castle is surrounded by nettles and thistles and that it only has a very small low door, tucked away behind high walls.

‘My motto is “the difficult-to-get-in door”’, says the Castle.

‘I think we have different priorities. My motto is “the ever open door”.’

‘You’ll like it at Little France,’ says the wise old castle and she offers the Hospital some sound advice: ‘Hold onto your hat and stand your ground.’