Asthma

What a day on Monday! It was going to be a big getting-last-minute-things-for-school day. But first LSS had to fall by Barnes to let the cleaners in. On the way, he thought Curly was wheezing rather heartily (I think this is not unrelated to the fact that she has made one of our large cardboard boxes into a bed, using a feather duvet and a sofa cushion, and is insisting on sleeping every night in her "bed in a box"), so he popped her round to Queen Mary's Barnes to be nebulised. But lo! there was no doctor at the A&E at QMB (I mean it's an NHS hospital, what was he thinking?) so they took them (in an ambulance!) to Kingston Hospital.

Now in HK when you take a child to be nebulised, it takes them five minutes and the after-patient-care consists of them saying, There you go, you've been nebulised, now give us your money and f**k off. In the UK, they say, we'll just keep her for a few hours to see how she goes. In the meantime, the cleaners are ringing from Barnes saying that they've finished and want to go but they can't get the door to shut (crappy Yale lock). LSS is unreachable by mobile because he's in an hospital. Chaos prevails. He finally escapes the hospital and has to go back to QMB to pick up the car, but oh no! he has no money for the taxi. At last he finds the bank (never has that red and white hexagon been more welcome), then he has to look for a taxicab firm. Gets rid off the cleaners, goes back to the hospital - now they have decided to keep Curly overnight, "just for observation". Curly of course is absolutely fine, bouncing around the ward, insisting that she HAS to stay the night, charming the pants off all the hospital visitors and regaling the nurses with the sad tale of how Daddy threw away her best friend, Johnny Stick - the aforementioned Johnny being, yes, a stick, that she found on Wandsworth Common at the weekend.

So my poor baby spent the night in Kingston Hospital. But don't worry everyone, she is fine and has eaten a mountain of hospital food. The big kids like the look of the hospital sausage, baked potato and beans so much that they insisted on it for dinner too. Which reminds me: there was a pastry star on top of Larry's steak pie on Sunday. "Look!" says Curly, "A star of meat!" That would make a good name for a band: Stars of Meat.

So of course absolutely nothing was bought for school on Tuesday and the big kids went off to school all askew, with hair untrimmed, emitting an air of general neglect and unkemptitude.

Went to the Dali and Film exhibish at the Tate Modern yesterday, organised by work. Fun to see the Tate after hours, especially as you go in through the staff entrance and have to wander round all these concretey back-corridors, just like the basement back at school.

Tube strike not too bad as the good old Northern Line and the fresh young Jubilee Line were not on strike, which are the only lines I use. So, I'm alright, Jack!

My visa has finally come through - Mexico City here I come!

Went to dentist this morning. He under-anaesthetises. I don't like him.