Stumbling in Flats

The Teenager has been poorly.

To make sure he wasn’t blagging, I immediately ran the Playstation Test – waving the controller in front of him to check for a response. Nothing.

Just to make absolutely certain, I resorted to the Nutella Test, offering to fetch him some toast slathered in the stuff. Not a flicker.

Oh. It was probably serious.

The Teenager is rarely ill, so when he is, he seems to display a dazzling array of symptoms, as if he’s been saving them up for a special occasion. Luckily he made it to the loo in time (and time again), the Bloo was changed and I sloshed a bottle of bleach around (in the toilet, not on The Teenager).

He lay in bed, tossing and turning. I then heard through the rugby-grapevine that a load of kids had been felled by the same bug. All Sunday and into Monday I was the butler/nursemaid. I fetched this, I carried that, I soothed and reassured. I had to work part of Monday so my mum took over, dashing down to my house with sandwiches and treats plus the ubiquitous biscuits for the cat (she’s not daft, she hears my mum coming a mile off).

She called me in work – ‘Well, he’s had half a sandwich, a wee bit of lettuce and some Smarties and the cat’s had all her biccies. Oh and I found that dead bird she left outside and put it in your recycling bin, dear. It was a robin, poor thing.’

By Monday evening, he was returning to normal, managing a short Skype call with his friend – ‘yeah, it was mega – all over the bathroom, you should have seen it.’ By Tuesday, he was wolfing down a pie, asked for chocolate and watched a football match on telly. All back to normal. A sigh of relief.

He was packed off to school this morning, totally recovered and no doubt with a stronger immune system but without his chemistry homework completed. All was right with the world again.

I got to work. Gah. The boss turns up clutching a medical cupboard full of cough/indigestion/headache/throat tablets. He’s unable to eat his usual morning pastry and orders an immune-boosting smoothie at our coffee-house catch up meeting instead of his usual caramel macchiato. Here we go again.