Halley's Comet

Metaphorically speaking obviously but it probably accurately represents the number of years until Anna's room will be this tidy again.

Today/tonight is the very long overdue promised sleepover for Anna's 10th birthday. Such is our guilt that it has taken us 6 months to get her room finished and make this happen we have thrown the kitchen sink at this sleepover. So Anna's three closest friends* arrived at 9.30am this morning to dump their bags before heading out to spend the day at a Horrible Histories workshop at Anna's drama school. Collected them at 4pm after watching the results of their labours and then, as the sun was doing its glorious stuff, we stopped off at the park on the way home. Back here for football in the garden, dancing and general nonsense. All very good but my goodness do they eat...hot cross buns after the workshop, Taco Tuesday with all the trimmings, a massive bowl of fruit and now they are settled in front of Mrs Doubtfire with popcorn, Doritos and Pretzels. Fingers crossed for a quiet night.

Whilst they were out J and I continued with our ambition to teach Albi a new trick. Baby steps made but we are going to need all our patience. And a bucket load of cheese.

And a lot of chasing and phoning of doctors and letters and appointments and no definite date yet but we may have made a little progress. The GP wrote two letters....one for the school which does the job but it is pretty annoying - perhaps its some patient confidentiality thing but it is so obtuse I would say as to be unhelpful. Fortunately we have established good communication with the school and will be able to supplement it with useful information. The second letter is either helpful or frustrating or depressing depending on how you read it....the referral please take this patient bit is fine but then attached is a record of all our appointments with various ailments and symptoms over the 15 months and what they said to us. Including the appointment last February when J had insomnia and the doc told us it couldn't be related to the concussion as the only time sleep is affected by concussion is straight afterwards and then people sleep too much not too little. This particular appointment is seared into my brain as in all my Britishness and not wanting to embarrass J I just left and didn't point out the many flaws in the nonsense she was spouting with confidence.

Still, it's an interesting catalogue and makes for entertaining reading if you can keep your breathing calm. I've always thought it would be quite a laugh to read through my labour notes from Jackson's birth. Especially after they tried to persuade us to put a screw in his yet to be born head to get an ECG reading they admitted would only give more information and not impact on treatment choice as by arguing that they had no evidence that it hurt the baby.

We may not have the best track record as patients...

Lesley x


*Evelyn, Vivien and Isabella should we all need to remember that in the distant future.