Night sweats

Some embarrassing things have happened recently. Things that make you ransack your brain, just quickly, to double-check whether a way of winding back the last 15 minutes has recently been invented.

You know, like when you were at school and you realise you have just called the teacher ‘mummy’ in front of the whole class.

1)      I put my phone in the washing machine. This is more of an annoyance, and inconvenience. And STUPID.

I heard a faint ringing sound whilst standing in the kitchen, as I rang it from the landline. I thought it must be in another room. I noted that the washing machine was on and ruled it out. In a things-aren’t-quite-that-bad way that 15 years ago I would sometimes rule out someone quite spotty in a nightclub, only to be found wearily snogging them several hours later.

2)      I drafted a blog trying to pin the blame for this on Jon, then deleted it because it contained too many embarrassing details.

Okay, I didn’t delete it all, here’s an edited bit. I was washing the sheets when I put the phone in the machine because Jon’s night sweats have got worse. Generally, they are due to his reflux. But lately they have become drenching.

Hopefully this is due to an infection he picked up in Scotland on a work thing last week (the infection was a Prince Philip thing, and it really was a work thing, not a Prince Harry thing). Or the fact that he forgot to take his omeprazole. And not any of the scary things that feature night sweats as a symptom on the internet.

(That wasn’t too embarrassing was it? I mean, I didn’t mention the bit about the GP having to ask him if he’d had any new sexual partners recently.)

3)      Logie’s new word is ‘murder’. Said with a rolling Scottish accent, for some reason.

Two of our teenage neighbours took him to the park yesterday. (Oh how I love them. He adores them and all the attention, they think he is amusing and cute, and take pictures of him pulling funny faces on their phones. I go to bed for an hour.)

On the way back he apparently yelled “Murder! Murder!” and then started making a choking noise. Which I imagine was fairly embarrassing.

4)      As I came out of the osteo yesterday, Jon and Logie were waiting in reception. The osteo said to Logie, who was crab-clawing me to pick him up, “Daddy has taped up Mummy’s back to make it better, so she can’t pick you up”.

He swiftly correctly himself, and made a sort of joke out of it. I think I went pretty red.

Then I made the clearly insane decision to point it out to Jon once we were in the car, because I wasn’t sure whether he’d heard. He hadn’t. We both laughed, didn’t feel embarrassed at all, and then didn’t spend a few minutes in silence thinking about it.

5)      This hardly counts, as it didn’t happen to my family, and it’s more funny and feel-good than embarrassing. Newsreaders Charlotte Green and Harriet Cass are leaving Radio 4, and on the Today programme this morning they played some clips of Charlotte corpsing. I had to stay in the car to listen to the end, because they are just so irresistible.

 It is physically impossible not to laugh when you hear them. I defy you. Try them here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19486182. They are the best medicine.

Speaking of which, I am feeling a bit better on the anxiety front. Or least not any worse. Which is A Very Good Thing. And laughing helps a lot.

As does listening to a song called Celestine by a band called Spector very loudly in the car, whilst driving quite fast and singing aggressively. I recommend you try that too. But on your own, so you won’t be embarrassed.