… is the answer to the question, “How was your holiday?”

Last week, we spent five days at a cottage, on a farm, about two miles away from the road, and about 4 miles from Coniston. The fact that it rained almost constantly wasn’t a problem. We’re not silly people – we more or less expected rain in the lakes in late November. We have adequate waterproof stuff, and we’re much more wander-around-the-town types than trek-across-the-fells.

The problem was that we were twenty miles from the nearest A and E when Daisy came down with croup, and the GPs in the local area are a bunch of doddering quacks.

We arrived on the Monday, and settled into the cottage. It was lovely – small, but not too small, directly overlooking the main sheep-fold, with interesting views of sheep being herded around for various mysterious purposes. Daisy was delighted that her bedroom had a window at more or less floor-level, and the double room was plenty big enough for Henry’s hammock as well. It was very nice, and I’d go again.

On Tuesday, we went to Keswick, to wander around the town, since I’ve never been. It’s a nice little town, only slightly marred by the whingey awkwardness of my daughter (whose zenith that day was to knock over a display in a shop, and then shout and cry at the generously philosophical assistant for picking it up again, because she wanted Daddy to do it…). I wondered then if she was coming down with something, but she could have just been tired.

Anyway, in the early hours of the next morning, she woke up with a raging temperature, a classically croupy cough, and the harsh wheeze which is the difference between croup you worry about and croup you don’t. We weren’t in a wild hurry to take her twenty miles to Barrow/Kendal, so we went for some old-fashioned nursing remedies – we filled the bathroom with steam, gave her paracetamol for the temperature, and tried to get her calm enough to be able to breathe properly.

It only kind of worked, but she calmed down a bit, and we decided to put her back to bed, with one of us sharing the twin room with her. Kevin drew the short straw, which turned out to be shorter than he realised, since the excitement of having Daddy in her room make her refuse more or less point blank to go to sleep.

One of the things with croup, is it’s worse when they cry, so the medical types advise keeping her calm. Poor Kevin didn’t want to have the stand-off with her, but as a result, she didn’t get back to sleep until 6am, and at one point I believe they were downstairs watching Shrek at 4am.

The next morning, we took her to the local GP, and told him what had happened. She was still coughing, and still wheezing a little, though going out in the car helped a little. The GP, unfortunately, was an idiot. We made a point of telling him that she’s had it before, and that it was treated at Alder Hey with oral steroids. He said, “Hmmm… yes, steroids is a common treatment,” but then prescribed antibiotics. A bit bizarre – croup stems from a virus, not a bacteria, so antibiotics are a waste of time. Daisy’s first ever set, too. He also prescribed linctus, which is tantamount to spending NHS money on Lockets.

We duly administered the prescribed treatments all day, whilst sitting around the cottage recovering from the bad night, but by tea-time, it was becoming apparent that, not only wasn’t it working, but she was starting to deteriorate with the approach of night time, so we whisked her back – or at least, whisked her to the guy who covers for the first guy on Wednesday afternoons, when he’s off.

He seemed more willing to admit that steroids were the appropriate treatment, but didn’t prescribe them on the grounds that he didn’t stock them in his dispensary (bizarre country doctor thing, dispensing you own medicine). “It sounds worse than it is,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”

Hmm.

On the second night, I shared her room (since I am proven to be a much less exciting person), and was woken up about every hour and a half, either because she was coughing and needed a drink, or because the extra fluids had caused her to wet the bed (with the natural effect that I spent most of the night in a wet bed – just as it was drying out, she wet the other one, and we swapped back. Who’d be a mum?).

So on Thursday morning, we took her back to the first GP again, and came back with a Ventolin inhaler, which also had no noticeable effect.

We gave up on the local health services at that point, and said that if we didn’t have a significantly better night, we would bring her home in time to see our own GP on Friday afternoon. That night was a little better, but not much, and in any case, it was pouring with rain the next morning, and we decided that appeal of trudging around Ambleside in the rain wasn’t sufficiently great, when set against the option to get Daisy to a competent doctor. So we paid the lady, packed the car, and came home.

It was a huge relief to sit on my own doctor’s office, and have her instantly start behaving as if not being able to breathe properly does, in fact, matter.? She heard the wheeze as soon as we walked through the door, and actually thought it was Henry, the very idea of which nearly gave her apoplexy. Discovering that it was actually the three-year-old calmed her down a little, and she started to prescribe the steroids that I’d been trying to get hold of all week, but then decided that she wanted her on a nebuliser, for which we had to go to Alder Hey.? So she made a call, wrote a referring letter, and send us away.

The paeditrician at A&E reckoned that ventolin – in the form of inhaler, or nebuliser – doesn’t help with croup, and just gave her the steroids anyway, so all that achieved was to postpone the treatment for another two hours, but if it meant that the GP could sleep over the weekend, I don’t really hold that against her. Though if I end up in the situation again, I shall argue with her.? I think the fact that it was Friday night went into her decision making, though – if she could have said, “Bring her back in the morning,” I think she might have done that instead.

So, two hours at the GP, followed by three at Alder Hey, made for two very tired children, and two equally tired parents.? And no, not the greatest holiday we’ve ever had.? Still, at least the wheeze has gone, now.

I’ve always reckoned that Daisy and I didn’t need a toddler group every day of the week. Some people seem to need that. In the last few months, I’ve become aware that Daisy needed something new to do – Musical Minis by itself wasn’t really enough, any more, and so we’ve recently started going to Sticky Fingers, for variety. However, with one thing and another, we seem to have had a frantically busy week, and today it’s been a relief to spend an entire afternoon at home.

It’s not all been Organised Activity. We’ve been to the dentist, and a birthday party, amongst other things. However, with the implementation of my new No Telly Between 10am and 5pm rule, and Henry deciding to sleep for a solid three hours this afternoon, Daisy and I were left to have a very lovely time. No background noise, no distractions, just rather a lot of glue and glitter.

Turning the telly off is starting to look like a really significant decision. I have as many good intentions as the next person, but we’d slipped and slipped until it was on all day every day, again. This week, she’s been playing properly again – by herself, as well as with me – and having to think of things to do, which is much better for her. And today, we’ve both really benefitted from winding down a little, and being able to relax.

Next week, we’re going to the Lakes, so there’s been a bit of a party atmosphere around here, since Kevin came home. I do hope it’s nice. Going away with the kids can go either way, really – either it’s great to spend some time together, or it’s not much of a holiday, because you’re doing all the same things as you have to do at home. I’ll let you know which way it goes…

Scrabble – a game I prefer to play,
because I’m better at it

Part of our holiday was, for me, a journey of self-discovery (as opposed to the journey of sheep-discovery that was required to get to the house we stayed in) (I’m not calling it a holiday cottage, since it was a house by anyone’s standards, and one that you could have fitted two of mine inside). Self-discovery, in my experience, is not much fun, so to be avoided when you’re supposed to be on holiday. Of course, it is also true that on holiday, you get the chance to depart from the norms enough to discover yourself in the first place, but I digress.I am fiercely competative. I didn’t know. Did you already know that? Because I didn’t. I naturally assumed that since I’m not remotely ambitious, I wasn’t competative either, but it’s not true.

Example 1: we played several games on holiday, and I was rubbish at them. I was rubbish at the dictionary game, in which someone picks an obscure word from the dictionary, we all make up a definition, then vote for the most plausible one. You get a point if the majority of people vote for your definition, and you get a point for voting for the correct definition. Everyone else was giving their vote to the funny ones, in order to bestow a point to the originator as a demonstration of their appreciation. I was voting for the most plausible, because I wanted to win.

Example 2: we also played a game called Take Two. It’s a variation on Scrabble, using the pieces but not the board, and it works best with between two and four players. You each take 7 pieces, and attempt to arrange them onto one interlocking grid, using only valid words. As soon as one person had done so, they call, “Take Two”, and everyone takes two more pieces, which can be a lifesaver, or can throw you into complete disarray. The winner is the first to form a complete grid once all the spare pieces have gone. The thing is, skills-wise, it’s completely different to Scrabble. You succeed with being able to arrange your pieces into small words, quickly. I’m rubbish at doing things quickly (and with the meandering pace of life that Daisy and I lead these days, I’m getting worse), and I never use a small word if three large ones will execute the task with an acceptable degree of adequacy. I was dismal at Take Two, and the humiliation was it’s a word game. I have two degrees in English, Kevin should not be able to beat me with ANYTHING that uses Scrabble letters.

Take Two, logically enough, I much preferred when it was one-on-one – the pace of the game was slowed, so I had a little more time to use all my pieces in a 12 letter word. I’m a linguistic show-off who hates to lose.

Risk, when we played it, I enjoyed much more because whilst I didn’t win, playing with Mission Cards means that the winner usually does so suddenly, and I felt like I was doing well right up to the end.

Now I’ve come face to face with this rather unattractive personality trait, I can quite see that it’s always been there. My sister hated me when we were children, because I derived immense satisfaction from beating her into the ground at any competative game we played, and when that didn’t work, I would hit her over the head with my superior vocabulary (the ultimate fall-back of many an older sibling). At school, I developed an intense dislike for a friendly, personable, and fairly attractive boy called Jonathan Thorpe, because he was always, always, always two points ahead of me in class, making him top, and me second. I didn’t want to be second. I wanted all to bow down to the mighty intellect of Ruth, and for as long as he kept doing ever so slightly better than me, nobody would.

I suppose it’s a variation on perfectionism – the idea that if you can’t guarantee to win a game, there’s really no fun in playing it, though where that leaves the poor souls who are supposed to play against me, for the sheer statisfaction of being thrashed, I don’t know. Quite what I’m supposed to do about this alarmingly self-absorbed competative streak… well, I don’t know that either.