Mundane Update

It's been a mildly interesting week thus far. The sun came out today, prompting stunned and slightly mouldy residents of Edinburgh to shed their waterproof skins and wear short sleeves out of doors. Unusual, but very enjoyable.

I realised that the Festival is starting because when I left my city centre office yesterday, a gaggle of about a dozen very corpse-y zombies were sitting over the road, chatting and having a smoke. It is a measure of how much weirdness goes on in Edinburgh in August that I didn't look twice. I probably wouldn't look twice if they started recreating the Thriller video on Walker Street (they would probably want money, after all).

I am happy that my work no longer requires me to have to go to court, as the High Street, where the Supreme Court is located, is also Festival Fringe central and thus crammed, CRAMMED with people advertising their shows. And jugglers. Gritting your teeth for a solid month is hard.

Second Born got the week off to a good start by falling over at Holiday Club. A fall would not, in itself, have been noteworthy (his legs are always covered in bruises from minor mishaps) except for the set of concrete steps and iron railings that his head met on the way down. Blood issued forth from said head (scalp wounds, as every parent knows, bleed in a terrifyingly profuse fashion). Then his nose joined in and the Club called me to come and take him to hospital.

The poor staff were in a bit of a state. I can't imagine how stomach-churning it is to watch someone else's child, a child for whom you are responsible, head-butt a set of concrete steps at speed. And I imagine, this being Edinburgh, and specifically Morningside, that they might have worried I was one of "those" parents. The kind that immediately starts looking for someone to blame. Despite being a solicitor, I am not one of those parents so simply thanked them profusely for mopping SB up as far as possible and headed off to the Sick Kids.

SB was fine. I knew he was fine because he was awake, alert, orientated and slightly cross with me for asking him lots of questions. Totally normal. He got the full work-up in hospital anyway, mainly because there were a couple of 5th year medical students in A&E that day and the doctor was enjoying putting them through their paces ("So, that's the 3rd and 4th cranial nerves, now what tests do we do to check the 5th cranial nerve?") SB quite enjoyed being asked to make lots of silly faces and stick his tongue out at actual doctors. I was glad I am no longer a student and even when I was we were never plonked in front of a client with a partner looking over our shoulder going "Okay, so that's his conveyancing dealt with, now what sort of will should he be making?"

SB got the small cut on his head glued by a nice nurse and was quite pleased to discover he can't get the glue wet so can't have a shower for about 3 or 4 days. In fact, I suspect he almost thinks the whole injury was worth it just for the "get out of shower free" pass.

FB on the other hand, has no such pass. The boys were at a fruit farm yesterday with the Club and returned bearing strawberries and covered in mud. (SB announced in the car on the way home "I had better empty my socks before I go in the house". That is never a sentence you want to hear.) FB had been wearing shorts so his actual legs, rather than his clothes, were muddy. I ordered a shower before bedtime (he was overdue anyway) and he reluctantly agreed.

This morning I looked at him and thought his hair didn't look......showered. I asked him if he had washed his hair last night.

No.

Why not?

Because only my legs were dirty.

A lecture on the fact that a shower involves washing everything, not just the bits that have lumps of strawberry patch adhering to them, followed. He was not convinced and will, I am sure, complain loudly when sent tonight for his second "shower" in two days.