Soldiering on, part 2

So here I am, bravely blogging while recovering from whatever hideous mutated virus the Other Half kindly passed on to me over the weekend. I felt slightly rubbish on Friday but put that down to a reaction to the jabs I had on Friday morning (have I mentioned we're off to Mexico?). By Saturday evening I felt more than slightly rough, and spent most of Saturday night feeling very sorry for myself indeed. My tonsils were like giant poisonous golfballs, and swallowing felt like ingesting razor wire. Yuck. My general self-pity was excacerbated by the knowledge that we were due to be up bright and early Sunday morning for Small Person's birthday trip to Legoland. The Other Half had been due to visit Dover on Saturday for work but couldn't go as he felt so horrid, so he stayed at mine on Saturday night, hoping for a good night's sleep and a smooth start to our big day out. This of course was where it all started to unravel. Having spent the night listening to me weeping piteously and pathetically about how awful I felt, and concentrating hard on not putting me out of my misery with a strategically and firmly placed pillow, I'm sure the prospect of a day in a kid's theme park with me, Small Person and my mother wasn't sparkling in his imagination like a kebab at the end of a five-hour bender. Personally I felt so dreadful that I would have sold my grandmother to medical science if they'd promised I could stay in bed for another hour, but since she died more than ten years ago they weren't interested so with wobbly bottom lip and brave face, I selflessly agreed to go. Of course, this was only because the prospect of letting Small Person down having spent three weeks relentlessly trailing Legoland was less attractive than actually going to the damned place, but I think I get good-mother points for it anyway. Having decided to hit the nearest McDonalds for soothing medicinal milkshakes, the Other Half swept unswervingly past the one on the way out of town and I tried very hard not to cry. We loaded up on shakes at the next one (fifty miles down the road!!), and picked my mother up just after 9am. 9am!!! On a Sunday!! For the poor Other Half who had had about ten minutes uninterrupted sleep between my bouts of wailing, and who is not used to early weekend starts having spent his life until about six months ago resolutely child-free, it was an unsettling experience. Not least because my mother is so completely weird. But more of that later.

Legoland itself is, if you're nearly five, a fabulous place. If you're thirty-two-and-a-quarter with a very sore throat and the shivers it's an outer circle of hell. I moped, whined and dragged my feet for the first couple of hours while my mother talked about herself, Small Person shouted "Look, Lego!!" every twenty seconds and the Other Half feverishly scanned the horizon for an escape route. It all really started to go wrong when me and him went on the Jungle Coaster, which was for big people only. Unbeknownst to us, the queue was incredibly long and slow, and my mother was standing with her back to a wailing Small Person by the time we got back to them. She's not big on sympathy, my mother, and once Small Person had told her that she wanted Mummy not Nanny, her ego took over and she just plain ignored her. Lovely. After the most expensive lunch in the world, I was even boring myself with the poorly routine so I stuffed an ice cream down my throat and took Small Person on the carousel (which the Other Half spectacularly failed to get a photo of despite about forty attempts). My mother, for reasons known only to herself, decided that this was the perfect moment to bring the Other Half up to speed with the last thirty-odd years of my family history, including her own failings as a mother, and her regrets at "leaving" my dad (she sort of had no option as he'd run off with the Avon Lady). Thanks Mum. She has developed a habit of loudly announcing her own shortcomings (when I went over the other weekend she suddenly informed me that she'd had a difficult childhood), which I can only assume is an effort to garner sympathy as I really don't believe she's genuinely sorry for anything she's done - she just feels bad that people think badly of her. So, family revelations over (for now - god only knows what she's going to come out with next - mind you it's been a while since she told anyone about me getting arrested at sixteen for being drunk in the High Street on a Tuesday afternoon...) we were about ready to head home. The best part of any day out with mother is saying goodbye, and we then hurtled back to mine where the Other Half dispensed tea, sympathy and hugs with the carefree air of a man who knows he doesn't have to spend the day with his girlfriend's increasingly batty mother for ages, and possibly never again if he can come up with a good anough excuse. Bless him.

So, I didn't make it to work yesterday, and felt rubbish again today so have bunked off and done all the good stuff like sleeping, reading and taking incredibly long baths. I ought to struggle in tomorrow though - after Friday we're not back in the office for nearly three weeks and I ought to remind them what I look like before we go.

And I've wrapped all Small Person's presents, and will be waking her early in the morning so she can have them before school. Motherhood one, guilt nil. Makes a change.