We had no plans for today and they went awry from the very beginning. From the kitchen B called upstairs to me to say that there were pained shouts for help from next door’s garden. We flung on trousers over our nightclothes and went outside. P had been pruning, had fallen off a ladder and was lying on the grass. His wife called us over the fence to come and help and we ran. Our job was to look after the two- and the six-year-old while she wondered whether a probably-broken arm was emergency enough to call an ambulance. I told her it definitely was (who knew what else he might have damaged?) and took the two-year old indoors so he wouldn’t hear his dad in pain.

We watched out of the window so that he didn’t have to imagine what he wasn’t seeing and I could do a running commentary fit for a two-year-old: the kind people giving daddy an injection to stop it hurting and taking things out of their special bags to make him better. (An air splint! That’s amazing! (Though I think P thought the morphine was better.))

The children were desperate to see inside an ambulance and as we did a thorough inspection of the outside I just managed to stop myself saying that they couldn’t go in because only people who’d broken their arm could go in an ambulance. But for some reason there were two ambulances and as they were loading up one, the crew let us go inside the other.

As B finished the pruning with our long-reach loppers (no ladder required) we tried to stop the two-year-old from eating all the green strawberries and tolerated him repeatedly filling the watering can and watering the garden, his trousers and his socks.

And the wonders of new technology. The six-year-old used my phone to send his dad a text and was able to read the reply about what was happening in hospital. So reassuring.

We made get well cards and had lunch and granny arrived and slowly things returned to normal.

Then I noticed that the one thing I had in my diary for today was to tidy my desk. Ah well. Instead I replaced a broken ceiling light-bulb holder and a malfunctioning light switch. One job has needed doing for seven years and the other for several months. Very satisfying.