The illness - what happened next...

Where did I leave you? Oh yes, with Tom running a temperature and us attempting to manage our tendency to expect the worst.

Well you'll be pleased to know that it all ended well. Tom got over his illness, life returned to some semblance of normality and we all caught flights to snowy Switzerland and a week's skiing.

This return to normality was not as straightforward as one might have hoped. It took us via a GP who wasn't taking any chances, a referral to A&E where we encountered an equally risk-averse SHO (and supervising Registrar) and an overnight stay for Tom and Nik in the all-too-familiar Queen's Medical Centre. That is one of the assorted legacies of a medical history that features a life-threatening illness and febrile convulsions.

One is not dismissed as an over-anxious parent. One is not dispatched with a slightly patronising suggestion to administer Calpol and leave it a day or two. Indeed, everyone is at great pains to reassure you that you've done the right thing and they would do the exact same.

As it was, it was just a temperature - Tom was bouncing around on his hospital bed the next morning in a manner that suggested he was well on the road to recovery. There had been no need to get that anxious. There had been no real need to instigate a chain of events that led to expensive rescheduling of flights and an uncomfortable, stressful sleepless night for Nik - one that, coincidentally, featured the UK's largest earthquake for many years.

An alarming, terror-inducing portent of something much worse... that passed very quickly and
is all but forgotten now.

The same goes for the earthquake.

So what will happen next time Tom gets a temperature? Will we cope a little better? I don't know. If anyone has any strategies we'd love to hear them.

One thing that reassures me is looking at pictures like this, taken a week after this little drama.

Do you think Tom watches too much TV?

I've been lax, I've been busy, we've been on holiday and blogging just hasn't made it up the priority list for a few weeks. That's just the way it goes sometimes.

That's not to say things have been uneventful - far from it as anyone parenting a three year old will only be too aware. If you have a read of finslippy's open letter to five year olds you'll have a rough idea of where we are at.... which of course is utterly perfect in a tiring, perpetually astounded way.

The whole roleplay thing has expanded to encompass nigh on every waking minute. I do not jest. This is combined with the challenge of remembering which particular script we're following at any given moment. Actually, that's a lie. They all involve being chased and hiding, regardless of the cast.

But I don't get to be Shrek much any more - Tom has decided he makes a much better hero. Even when the (oh so frequent) running away and hiding from the dragon scene has been reshot to death we'll look around and catch Tom silently putting on his invisible armour and sliding his pretend visor down over his face. I hope the day when he's embarrassed that we've caught him doing that is far, far away.

(I hope the day he's embarrassed that we've caught him playing with his winky yet again is a little closer but that's a story for a different time.)

So I spent long periods of our French vacation being Shaggy to Tom's Scooby (the hire car was instantly and permanently named 'The Mystery Machine' although I defy you to find a similarity between them.)












There was also the occasional Spongebob/Patrick double act (more often than not I arrived late to this one and got the rather 'down the billing' part of Squidward. Not that it mattered as far as the chasing was concerned of course.

The only respite from the chasing came when Tom played fast and loose with gender specifics and assumed his Maisy persona. For reasons the director has yet to share with me, I became Eddie the Elephant . In Tom's interpretation of this marvellous set of books this meant I had to do everything he did; ride on his imaginary bus and, much to the amusement of numerous Dutch families in the park, paint the play house with imaginary brushes.

In retrospect I should have had more foresight and explored my role further - maybe come over all method and not relied so heavily on the direction. In contrast, despite protestations by Maisy about this flagrant improvisation, Nik played the Little Black Cat very straight and simply lay in the sun. I know where the genius lies in this family.

What Tom did next...

This last few weeks Tom has mostly been...


running around the French countryside while bossing his parents and grandparents around...


Trying to unlock chateaux with his grandpa's car keys. Marks for creative thinking are deserved, I think, along with a sigh of relief that he has moved on from trying the handles of parked cars. That was a slightly disturbing (but criminally amusing) habit.
There was time for looking radiant with his mother and reminding me what a lucky man I am to have a family like this...

We caught nothing bar a few small stones but that kind of effort is tiring y'know?

Holidays are splendid things aren't they?