Summer cold

I am so thrilled to see the sun.

Honestly. The true benefits of fresh air and running around become more apparent to me every day – I now realise they’re not just for the old-fashioned, or skint. But crucial for the mothers of small boys who just want to be outside, transferring stones from a watering can to a flowerpot and back again.

Or jumping in a muddy puddle, if not trying to drink it, or at least sit in it.

Water is endlessly fascinating to Logie. But we can generate that ourselves – we don’t need any more from the sky just now thanks.

Nextdoor’s fishpond has the greatest, magical pull. At a jubilee barbeque he threw our neighbours’ fish slice in it. Splosh. Where it has remained ever since, despite valiant efforts to rescue it, one of which included a magnet borrowed from school and a homemade weighting system.

So I can’t wait to start enjoying the sunshine. Unfortunately we couldn't do so yesterday, as Logie and I have very boring heavy summer colds. He also has a cough. As he had a temp, he couldn’t go to nursery (of course, naturally, quite right, much better for him, and the other children, not a problem at all). So we spent the whole day cowering inside, like gremlins who’d melt in daylight.

Also: napping fitfully, watching lots of Peppa Pig and Britain’s Next Top Model, whinging quite a lot, thinking we wanted things to eat then deciding we didn’t when they were in front of us, looking beseechingly at eachother (‘You’re normally the person who makes me feel better – why are you punishing me?’) and practically weeping with relief when Jon came home specially early at 6:15.

The highlight of our day was a visit from the Sky man – who deleted all the programmes from our Sky+. I didn’t even have the strength to get up my usual head of steam. I just muttered "That's a shame" darkly, and slightly louder a second time, but the significance was completely lost on him. Logie then handed him my flip-flop as a thank-you present.

The only really bright thing to come out of this episode is an experiment with a new cream, to prevent that sore patch developing under a runny nose. Which Logie got so badly last time I’m surprised there weren’t flies buzzing round it. Anyway, we’ve been trying something called Siopel, and it seems to be working. You can get it over the counter, but it’s pretty outdated and unpopular because it has peanut oil in it.

Speaking of old-fashioned, I’ve also been reading an historical novel. It’s not very good, but I like it. It’s a comfort book. I can’t bear it when people slag books off – usually ones they deem too lowbrow to be worthy of them – “Wasn’t it awful? Soooo badly written!”. Because, newsflash, you could just stop reading it! Life is too short to spend your precious leisure time on something you don’t enjoy. That’s the great thing about eyes – you can switch them off.

Anyway, this book is about very posh people in the 1930s, who spend most of their time drinking fearfully expensive champagne and thinking about the placement at their next dinner party. One character goes down to her (2nd? 3rd? 4th?) home in Devon with her two little girls and leaves the baby boy in London with Nanny. Then she has to rush back because the baby develops measles, so she asks the Devon housekeeper if she’d mind hanging on the girls for a few days and the chauffeur will come back to collect them.

I don’t quite know why I mention this. I don’t know why I wrote it down. I just can’t process it.

But back to the present, in Action (the i is optional). Even though we’re feeling marginally better today, and have another gaping day to fill, we don’t much feel like going outside. It’s too bright, and sort of questioning, and undeniable. And we are fuzzy, and fractious, and unpleasable.

But I won’t hear a word against the sun. It’s lovely to have it, at last, and I am poised to give a very stern, old-fashioned, outdated look to anyone who dares complain about the heat.