Relations on holiday

[smokingboot]

Today's sunrise is beautiful. The quality of the light lifts my spirits after a fraught time; my cousin, his wife and their toddler have turned up for a week from London. The little girl is full of spark and life, delighted by the array of plushies in her bedroom, dragging down a new one every two hours; the unicorn remains a firm favourite, though she also likes the llama, and a small ex-year-of-the-rooster decoration which has now become Heyhey out of Moana. She's keen on the dragon too, but dragons are definitely naughty in her book. One of her favourite games is when I have a conversation with it, ('Do you eat apples? No, I don't eat apples. Do you eat bread? No I don't eat bread. Do you eat little girls? Yes! I eat little girls, nom nom nom!') At which point it chases her around the room...

This is a matter of delight second only to singing all the songs from Frozen and Frozen 2.

But it was not an easy time for all that. They haven't been to Scotland before, so the plan was to go either to Loch Lomond or Edinburgh while the weather was good and R was on holiday. But my cousin's wife, C, suddenly developed signs of cat allergy, which mean that in order to get a ventilator she had to temporarily register here, then wait for a phone appointment with the Dr who would then send the prescription to the pharmacist where we would pick it up. It meant we were stuck here for a day, phoning up trying to work out why the Dr hadn't phoned back. My mother added to the mental strain by texting me to say she hoped that allergy was all it was, and to tell me once again how very imprudent we were all being. Imprudent is her word of the Summer.

I found myself remembering Aunty's disapproval of C. Though beautiful and smart C never pleased Aunty because she regarded her as fragile. As far as Aunty was concerned, if something went wrong you fixed it or ignored it. Emotional delicacy was not her bag. The mystery was solved in the afternoon; the receptionist had got my cousin's phone number wrong. At that point, I took over with such a harrowing Dickensian description of C's condition - Little Nell had nothing on it - that a Dr rang back within ten minutes. It was all sorted, but there was no real time to go anywhere, to everyone's frustration. We begin again today.

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

We call them "inhalers." 😀 The word "ventilator," we reserve for artificial breathing machines you hook people up to in hospitals.

So when I read you were trying to get a ventilator for your cousin's wife, it gave me a little start! 😀

[smokingboot]

😀😀😀!

C kept correcting me on this, I don't know why I keep doing it!