What I did on my hols

Am on leave. Am not resting much. Got bags under eyes which weren't there before I went on leave. This wasn't really the idea.

Night before: Conor's school talent show, night one. School is seventeen light years away from home. Leave early, get home late, in between, slight crisis when someone fiddles with Stuart* and Stuart loses an arm. Angry Conor. Sad Stuart, I imagine.

Yesterday: dreaded phone call from school, please fetch him, he's hurt his arm. Conor, not Stuart; although there are striking similarities.

Another seventeen light years of travelling with added panic, alleviated somewhat by his explanatory tweets. Apparently one was swinging one's walking stick to hit a ball, as one does when one is THIS one, and one's arm went G-R-R-R-E-R-K. Ouch ensued.

One's walking stick, you understand, which one's mother has always expressly forbidden one from taking out in public, and which one only did this time as it's a prop for the talent show. See above. One is okay though, one tweets.

So, conscious and with the full complement of limbs, then. But not for long,sonny.

Arrive to find this:

Drama. And angst.

 

So off the casualty to get checked out. We have to take Stuart* along, as he's also in the talent show and will not be able to get there by himself. Clearly.

Hour long wait at casualty, nurses and doc seem most uninterested. I'm not usually a stroppy patient or customer and don't ever mind waiting for stuff as I understand about procedures and that I'm not, in the great scheme of things, more special than anyone else. This time, I was hungry, tired, cold, just barely dressed (having almost forgotten to change out of comfy pj pants when leaving the house in a panic) and facing down the prospect of NOT being able to go home again before talent show. I was cross and mean.

Conor keeps saying he's fine, let's just go. Motherly duty won't allow me to leave a hospital with a child who has not been seen by a doctor, even though the oddly swollen shoulder is shrinking all the time and feeling better, apparently. So we wait. Eventually someone notices we're alive (just in time) and so we spend 2 minutes with doc who says it's just a sprain and not dislocated but by the way have you even broken your clavicle cos one side is much bigger than the other? Um, no? Not as far as I know, I sputter unconvincingly (to my own ears, at least)

Doc may have thought I doth protesteth too much cos he gave me a strange look, probably calling the social workers as soon as we left. Unexplained broken bones and a mother with a crazed look in her eye, looks like she hasn't bathed in a week? Ja…. suspicious.

Fast forward to  home time, past dodge Engen meat pies, dodge looks at the skanky looking mother lurking around outside school smelling like meat pies, painkillers and a number of boys who seemed to be TRYING to hit me with their soccer ball. Plus the show, of course.

Gotta bring Stuart home with us again, he's staying for the holidays, poor dear. Discover that some cruel joker gave him  a Hitler moustache and the unfortunate soul didn't even know it was happening. There was also a tense moment when my mom was moving Stuart from one car to the other and the police drove past. I think they were looking for me, the collar-bone breaking mother. They saw Stuart being moved and probably went off to secure a more comprehensive search warrant.

He's happy now, in his little spot. Conor is Ibuprofen'd up to the eyeballs and is also, obviously, happy.

I have washed, and slept. So I am also happy. Handbag still smells like meat pies but one can't have everything.

 

Stuart. I swear he looked like this when we got him