Ear we go again!

When Joseph briefly mentioned that his ear was hurting last week, I have to admit to not taking too much notice (boo, hiss, bad parent). Similarly, my Mum said he’d complained of an itchy ear while they were out on Wednesday but again, I didn’t make too much of it.

By Thursday night however, with the oozing gunge starting to seep from his lug-hole, I finally thought, “hang on, that doesn’t look right”.

A short trip to the GP on Friday morning and he was the proud owner of a prescription for anti-biotics, which were administered with clinical precision by M; all 5mls of it.

The weather on Saturday morning screamed “garden day” and that is what we did. Some friends very kindly donated their surplus composter and so tidying the garden now has a purpose other than just making it look nice.

As well as being helpful in telling us what to compost, the instructions were very good for boosting our “eco warrior” attitude, pointing out that the more you compost, the less you bin, therefore reducing the amount of landfill space you use.

As if to validate this, Joseph and I took a trip to the council tip to get rid of our old shower, very helpfully dismantled by my Dad - thanks Dad - and when you see the amount of cars, throwing away the amount of rubbish that fills the huge number of enormous skips on a daily basis, it’s actually scary.

This is just one borough’s tip and the scale of things is amazing – and this is replicated up and down the country – where the hell do they put it all?

Anyway, if our new composting regime helps even a little, then that is something to feel good about.

Sunday unfortunately saw Joseph deteriorate somewhat, and our trip to my parents for a BBQ was cut short. Not before I’d eaten the first piece of fillet steak I’ve eaten in years and years though. It was delicious and cooked perfectly too – thanks Mum.

And so it was that we found ourselves at A+E again, swabs being taken, confirmation of prescriptions and so on and so forth.

It looks like, after his very busy week last week where he was doing something different every day and covering the sort of mileage you only read about it an Andy McNab novel, this week promises to be far more sedate.

We shall see how he is this evening.

Annabel on the other hand is on fine form and has taken to walking around, repeating an incident that took place a couple of weeks ago to anyone that will listen.

The children were drawing and colouring together and I was sat with them. My big job was sharpening their pencils; lucky me.

I was in the middle of talking to Joseph about his drawing when I became aware that something was digging into my arm. I looked to see Annabel holding ‘something’ behind my arm whilst absent mindedly looking over at Joseph. I then felt a shooting pain and I yelled out, scaring Annabel whose scream far out done my own.

It turns out she had walked into my arm with a pair of children’s serrated scissors and unknowingly caught a bit of flesh. Not looking at what she was doing, she then proceeded to squeeze the scissors shut until she’d snipped a hole in my arm.

Her first words to everyone now goes something along the lines of, “My Daddy, my scissors, an’, I squeeze it ……… it’s blood”, shrugging her shoulders.

“Poor Daddy”, M said. “Was it an accident Annabel?”

To which she replies very matter of factly, “no”, with just a hint of a smirk on her face.

Minx.