What’s Bugging Us?

Week Fourteen: Sunday 31 December – Saturday 6 January

What a week it’s been: what a welcome to the 'New Year'; our first family Christmas, and now new year, in Falmouth Cornwall. All three of us have had a fantastic start to 2007, and two thirds of us have subsequently fallen down the other side and seen the ying and yang of the balance of life.

Hogmanay was celebrated with style and panache, and a healthy amount of fun and laughter. One of the ladies on my course, another former teacher, and her partner, still a teacher, moved to Cornwall in September last year from Brighton. They have become good friends in a short space of time, as so many on the course have, and hosted a marvellous evening of classic fancy dress, mixed with PlayStation at its best, to see in the new year.

They live in a little hamlet, just outside Falmouth; we were picked up in the town centre and driven to a beautiful, sprawling by our cramped, yet homely, comparison, renovated large stone barn. It was a real ‘wow’ moment as the car pulled up; a wee dream home tucked away in the country. Indoors it was tastefully refurbished; spacious and natural, with lots of wood and stone. Twenty or so virtual strangers found there way to the remotely located house, and showed up in various forms of fancy dress and guise; and we had a ball.

Lots of early chat to find out more about these ‘new’ people, a few cerebral party games, and then what I’d been eagerly waiting for, having heard so much about it: SingStar or SongStar! Completely new to me: now I’m hooked.

All I can say is, for me, it’s the singing equivalent of being in a motor racing booth in an arcade, your mate sat next to you, both of you taking part in the same race in front of you. What a game, what a ball!

We stayed the night as a family, and our daughter saw in her third new year, as she approaches her third birthday, with a rousing rendition of Auld Lang Syne (a first for several present). Then it was off to bed for her and Mama: leaving Papa to party; it took two days for me to recover.

Just as I was getting back ‘into the groove’ I got hit by a nasty stomach bug and was laid low again. I managed to avoid sickness, but elsewhere I was definitely experiencing discomfort. No sooner had I spent two days dealing with that, while trying to function as a husband and father too, than our daughter came home from nursery complaining of having a sore tummy.

She doesn’t know the meaning of the word complain, so we took notice: before long she got her first experience in projectile vomit; it was prolonged and mixed with lots of retching when there was nothing to bring up. An introduction to the very same kind of backside that I’d had, every time she sipped any fluid, then followed for several hours.

It was a long night for all of us, not least for our wee trooper who was experiencing the most uncomfortable dis-ease she has yet encountered.

We all eventually got some proper sleep around 7.00am: she was up by 11.00am and ready to play; after the past 20 hours she had had?! She just hates to be ill and out of sorts. But she was tired and dehydrated. At one point in the night we had called the NHS out of hours service and my wife spoke to a doctor: we were that concerned. The advice was to see it out and keep trying to get fluid down, even if it came straight back up.

It was tough going till the early hours, mainly because of the sheer worrying without showing it and frustration at not being able to just take it all away. She never cried once, barely whimpered, and by morning she was up for having fun. What a child!

She faded fast enough though, was still prone to a bit of stomach action, and nothing solid to speak of elsewhere; and she was shattered, physically and emotionally. We managed to convince her that she was a bit ‘poohie’ and needed a bath and fresh pyjamas (not that we had much left that was clean after the number of changes during the night – I am talking PROJECTILE!). Then, eventually, she settled down with the worst hopefully behind her and, believe it or not, a little milk: rice milk maybe, but a little milk nonetheless; and no reaction.

So it’s been quite a first week of 2007 for my daughter and myself. My wife, her mother, our lover, has aided and tended to us with her customary grace, good will and love.

I’m back to ‘school’ and my daughter and I go our separate ways a little, till the next holiday. It’s been such a treat, such a gift that money couldn’t come close to, far less buy, to have a month to spend each and everyday with my wife and with my daughter.

Maybe that’s what’s really bugging me and her; it’s time to stop chilling out each and every day, playing and having fun. My wife must have escaped the bug because she’s politely delighted that I’m going to be out of the house more, and she can have her home back to manage properly.

Happy new year to any, and all, of you.