The enormous hamster wheel

but where is the hamster? And wouldn't it be scary to see a rodent  as a big as, say, a small dog?  I once saw a Muntjac deer dash up the High street and off to these no-so-vast meadows below the police station.

I did my stint of childminding today, and the usual amount of walking, but finally went to see the pharmacist as my right foot has been aching for a couple of weeks. We reckon I've overextended the flexor tendons. That's a pain, literally. He gave me some ibuprofen gel but it doesn't touch the pain. I shall have to make myself an aromatherapy anti-inflammatory cream and take it easy. The latter doesn't come naturally to me.

When the older child was brought home from school by mum and asked to say thank you to me for his birthday present, he mumbled, 'it was only a stupid notebook'. His mum was suitably embarrassed and mentioned the really cool pen. I'd llike to transport the boy to, say, The Gambia, where children of six have no A4 notebooks nor sketchbooks, let alone cool pens. Where black children run through the dustt after white people, begging for ballpoint pens and sweets (apparently the first tourists to The Gambia were Swedes, and that's what they brought. At least it wasn't weapons, or disease). I'm a supporter of Mary's Meals https://www.marysmeals.org.uk/, because as a child  I went to church with the brothers who started this charity, and I think it's a fantastic idea to give children at least one meal a day and to combine that with school, so that education doesn't get missed out of the equation.

As a child growing up in Ireland and Scotland  in the 1960s and 70s, I was constantly being reminded that 'there's always someone worse off than you'. There was always someone collecting strange things like bags of iced caramels for the missions (honestly, they did!) I think that message was hammered in strongly, because it was on the tip of my tongue today to ask the boy if I could have the 'stupid notebook' back to send to a child in Sub-Saharan Africa! I think the nuns would have been proud of me, had I done so.

On the other hand, the two younger brothers were very nice to me, and cuddled up to me on the sofa when I said that I was scared of the Coca-Cola and Mentos volcano experiments on YouTube!