Week 201: Poor decisions

July 9, 2022

One of the things about being a parent of young children that only just occurred to me is why you get sick a lot more. Of course, you do all the things, wash your hands after you use the toilet, don’t pick up random bits off the floor and eat them etc etc. But your two year old doesn’t. And because they’re your special little guy, once they get sick from their own poor decisions, that sick invariably gets on you, and even if you’re really careful about washing your hands, washing the soft furnishings, washing him, wiping down the hard surfaces with hospital grade disinfectant wipes, even if you do all that, the odds are, some of his baby germs are going to get into you.
On Sunday Lachie and I were supposed to go see Stewart Lee at the Southbank Centre. A show I bought a ticket for in 2019 which has been postponed up until this week. Instead though, Lachie and I both had a vomiting bug, courtesy of wee man.
This bug was really really bad. Worse than Noro.
A few days after Lachie and I got sick, our daughter threw up and continued to do so for 48 hours.
On Saturday, before Lachie or I were properly sick I had this feeling of deep foreboding. It was in my gut, I felt restless, anxious, just really really worried. I decided maybe I needed a walk, so I put C in is buggy and went out for a doom stroll. While I was out I remembered something someone told me once about how your gut is about as clever as a cat, Googling that, it seems… sort of true. Anyway, when I remembered this I realised I had caught C’s vomiting bug and the sense of dread I felt was a real physiological symptom.
Although for a lot of the time that I was sick I also had to look after the kids, i did manage to spend a few days in bed while they were at nursery. Our room is in the loft and we have solar panels on the roof. Under the solar panels are at least two pigeon nests so during these days I lay in bed listening to the Grapes of Wrath(?) audiobook and the sound of pigeons cooing and scrabbling around less than a metre away from my head. Why did I chose to listen to Grapes of Wrath? I don’t know. I don’t know.
On Friday night Lachie and I went to see some comedy at “The Brighton Comedy Festival” which is in a park next to our house. We went specifically to see Tim Key who was utterly utterly hilarious. Once his set had finished I immediately wanted to watch the whole thing again.