We had a crazily busy day today – looking back, I’m not sure how we managed to fit everything in.
After breakfast (freshly cooked pastries for R and me, and one chocolate Weetabix and three pains au chocolat for the Boy) we headed off out to Broadway for the 10.35 steam train down to Winchcombe. This time R came on the train with us, which he really enjoyed, though sadly it was raining hard, so the carriage windows steamed up and stopped us from seeing the view properly, which rather diminished the experience.
At Winchcombe there was time before the return trip for us to go into the café for drinks and a snack. “Can I have Skittles?” said the Boy. “No. You’ve already eaten all the sugar in the world this morning.” “Can I have a KitKat then?” I sighed, and remembering that it’s only a weekend, and he’s supposed to be enjoying himself, forced myself to put the Baby Milk Action Boycott on the back burner and replied, “You can share a KitKat with Granddad.” “OK!” he said. “Can I have the biggest bit?” “No, you can’t.” R, meanwhile, took one bite of his portion and said, “This is disgusting – it doesn’t taste of chocolate at all. Here – have a bit.” And he wasn’t wrong – I haven’t tasted anything less like the Rowntrees confectionery I grew up with since a family trip to New York, when we made the mistake of trying a Hershey Bar.
Back at Broadway (which is where I took this photo), the rain had just about stopped, so we offered B the chance to go to Croome, for lunch and a bit of running about. Instead though, he said he’d rather go home and do some baking – so that’s what we did. Nigel Slater’s recipe for chocolate banana cake is reliable and quite straightforward, but I think it should come with a warning: if you’re preparing it with a five-year old child, you either need the help of an extra adult, to limit the number of chocolate chips that are picked out of the mixture, wiped clean on an apron, and eaten, or you need to become an octopus. All you need to know now is that I was in sole charge of proceedings this afternoon, and I am not an octopus.
Once the cake was in the oven, R and the Boy began work on a 100-piece jigsaw, then when B got bored with that they went off to R’s study to make a sweet little robot from a STEM kit. At one point I went to help with the threading of an electrical connection that was a bit beyond the current state of R’s eyesight, and turned from the desk to find the child devising a scientific experiment of his own, involving a piano and a Philips screwdriver. The atmosphere became somewhat tense for a while, but good humour was restored by the arrival of the cake, which the Boy pronounced to be the best we’d ever made.
After dinner my weekly Six Things newsletter arrived from Lev Parikian, and having glanced through it, I clicked through to the video about [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3xKx0DAxQw]The Snowy Owls of Logan Airport[/url]. The Boy was playing with his new robot at the time, but realising that a film was happening on a phone, rushed over to see what was going on. After we’d watched it once he asked me to replay it, and I talked through the replay, explaining a few points that I thought he might not otherwise understand. When the map came up showing the owls’ migration route from the Arctic Circle to Boston, I said “Look at that! They make that huge journey – three thousand miles! – every winter, to get to a place that’s warmer and has more food.” To which he replied in a slightly weary tone, as if it was something he’d already explained several times, “Yes. They do it to protect their babies. Can you put it back to the beginning again now? That’s the bit I like best.” At Slimbridge yesterday I was talking about Bewick’s Swans migrating with their offspring, and all I can think is that he absorbed what I was saying by osmosis, because there was absolutely no sign at the time of him employing his ears.
We were putting the finishing touches to a successful day, when – two and a half stories into the bedtime routine – B suddenly announced that he felt sick. And then sicker, and then very sick indeed. And he hates feeling sick, so he began to get distressed, and soon he was sobbing and asking for his parents – neither of whom I could immediately raise by phone – so I summoned R, and we set to work together to calm the situation down. By this time the Boy was absolutely crimson around the ears and cheeks, and when R took his temperature it was 37.5°C, so I took an executive decision and dosed him with Calpol. After a while he allowed himself to be steered back to bed, but declined to get into his own, preferring instead to snuggle into a nest of pillows and blankets in mine. This turned out lucky for him, because a few minutes later he suddenly sat up and threw up, and it was my sheets rather than his that caught the fallout.
While I changed sheets R supervised the Boy having a bath, and it was at this point that L called back. “I ate too much cake, Mummy!” wailed B. “I ate a bug and it made me sick! I want to come home!” Heart – meet floor. Between us we convinced him that it was too late for anyone to make the journey tonight, but I promised that if he still feels the same way in the morning, I will take him home. “OK,” said the Boy, “But it’s [i]my[/i] decision if I stay or go.” Fifteen minutes later, he was chatting nineteen to the dozen to R and his colour had gone back to normal, and when R retook his temperature, it was 36.9. How quickly kids bounce back!
Once we’d completed the interrupted bedtime routine the Boy dropped straight off to sleep, and I staggered downstairs in search of a small bucket of tea. “Do you think it actually was the cake?” said R. “No,” I replied, “I think it’s viral – because I only had the tiniest bit of cake, and I’m currently quite nauseous as well. How are you feeling?” “I’m absolutely fine,” he said, and went off to his study – only to come back about ten minutes later, and say, “…Or, actually… now… I’m a bit nauseous too.” I spent a while just sitting on the sofa with my tea, remembering how much fun it wasn’t when the whole family got Norovirus, but I didn’t feel anything like that ill – Norovirus has the unstoppable quality of a rapidly approaching steam train – so I was pretty confident that we’d all been nabbed by a much lesser bug. And then, after half an hour or so, I realised that the nausea had gone and I felt fine again. With luck, the Boy will be equally fine tomorrow, and I won’t have to drive him back to Wales – but we’ll just have to wait for his decision.
R: L2, C5, D10.
