A valiant return

Sorry for the breakdown in service here; in my defence we have been fairly busy, but mostly I’ve not been very well.

Saturday night I went out to see Richard Hawley at the Royal Festival Hall, but first met up with a friend from my previous job.  We had a few drinks, I then saw a marvellous performance from Richard Hawley and just managed to catch the 10.30 train home (although, buses were involved as well due to engineering works that left non-car-owning denizens of Bexley effectively marooned for the entirety of the weekend).

Got home safely, had some toast and a cup of tea and went happily to bed

A few hours later I woke up thinking, “Crikey, I feel rough – surely I can’t be hungover, I didn’t have that much to drink!” before running to the loo to vomit.

I did this a few times and woke the Lovely Melanie up.

“I thought you weren’t going to drink much at this gig?” she said.

“I don’t think it’s a hangover,” I replied from the bathroom.

Today, finally, I’m feeling a bit better, thank goodness, and have probably lost most of the weight I put on over Christmas, but I really don’t recommend this diet to anyone else.  Plus, I’m expecting my appetite to kick in with a vengeance fairly soon – having eaten nothing but a few water biscuits and cheese for almost three days now…

But enough about me.  Amber had quite a nasty fall last night and has gone to nursery this morning with a bump on her forehead and a lurid looking graze under her nose.

It was just after bathtime, she was bouncing on Millie’s bed while the Lovely Melanie was combing Millie’s hair (which is now quite long and needs conditioner using on it as well as shampoo).  I was next door being poorly when there came an almighty THUMP! as though some particularly heavy books had fallen onto the floor.  You could tell it wasn’t books, however, because the Lovely Melanie suddenly shouted, Ooh! Amber!

The way she described it made me smile, but it was a nasty knock.  Basically, she says Amber was bouncing behind her and suddenly bounced over her shoulder and off the bed, landing face-first on the floor.  There were many tears.  Millie was also quite upset by the whole thing, but she was an excellent big sister, stroking Amber and fetching some tissue to wipe her nose.

Unsurprisingly, it took Amber about ten minutes to recover.  I was struck by the fact that you could tell this is our second child because if Millie had done that we’d probably have phoned an ambulance.  With Amber we matter-of-factly checked nothing was broken, wiped her (only-slightly) bloody nose and gave her lots of cuddles.

She went to Mummy first, but Mummy was unable to make everything immediately better, so she then asked for Daddy, who was similarly incapable of fixing everything, so she ended up going back to Mummy again.

Downstairs afterwards, she’d occasionally stop drinking her milk, look at one of us and say, with a serious face, “Bed,” and we would nod seriously about the bed.

Still, on the bright side, I think her grasp of basic physics has significantly improved!