Old

I had blog-off in something of a hurry last time, as William was on the rampage. As it is now the 29th March, there is an evident implication that he has been on the rampage for seven days. This may well be true, but there has been time for some other things as well. Like my birthday. When I watched docilely by, whilst Hope and Ellie rummaged through my cards, and professed how delighted I should be with the fudge that I knew would disappear within hours unless I put it under lock and key. I thought back to the Walnut Whips I had bought for dad back in the latter years of the last millennium. There had to be a reason why he declared his desire for such an apparently revolting confection. I think I’ve now worked it out. And the girls haven’t found the chocolate mango pieces that Lindsey bought me. Though I may have made a tactical error putting them in Sarah’s bedroom.

Still, I managed to smuggle Sarah out for the evening, as Margaret, William’s nurse, stepped into the breach, and took on babysitting duties all night. Sadly, the Milne family’s babysitting needs are not able to be met by a pubescent girl acting out her maternal fantasies by sounding a little stern, phoning her boyfriend for three hours and collecting a tenner at the end of the night. The ability to access a Hickman line comes as a pre-requisite, as does the ability to spot any potentially life-threatening infection. So William justified Margaret’s qualifications by spiking a temperature the next morning. Not the news you are looking for as you blearily contemplate dawn’s rays through a Guinness hangover. He is not, thankfully, very ill, but William is now back in hospital. A current estimate of the time he has spent at home in 2007 is running at two and a half weeks.

This all means that I am in charge of the family home. Highlights of the last time this happened included my applying an Elastoplast to a cut head that the school later decided required a trip to casualty, and Ellie relieving herself in the street. “Then I realised I need a poo.” I chose the path of least resistance last night, and took the girls for a takeaway pizza. Experience has shown that this can also solve the inevitable morning ‘what can we have in our sandwiches?’ crisis. Surrogate Fatherhood has come naturally to me. But doesn’t extend far enough for me to have dealt favourably with Hope’s expectation that I would iron her school shirt this morning. Frankly, as I needed a machete to cut my way into their bedroom this morning, and as I know that the offending article was somewhere on the floor, she was lucky it hadn’t turned into compost.

So, a moment of repose this morning. The girls are at school. Sarah is with William at the Mayday, and I am waiting for a delivery of some newsletters for the charity that Sarah runs. There is a slight frisson even to this, though, as I typeset them, and have only a little idea of what I am doing with a DTP program. And people are rather more willing to forgive you mistakes when you are editing school magazines. You can blame spelling mistakes on the schoolboys.