Innit tho'

It's rapidly becoming like an episode of Men Behaving Badly round here. Pickle has developed a habit for asking those searching questions you'd often see Gary and Tony contemplating over beers on the sofa. Luckily he's not yet asked,

'Which do you prefer, bottoms or breasts?'

but he's certainly gaining in imagination.

On Saturday he asked his Dad,

'If you could go into the television and be part of what's showing on the programme, would you go in there?'

As it happens Dad had a ready answer since we were watching England's opening game of the World Cup so he said, 'Definitely, and the first thing I'd do is go and shake that goal keeper till his teeth rattled.'

Yes, we are also gripped with World Cup fever. The wall chart sits in pride of place on the kitchen door and the boys are diligently filling in all the scores as we go along. I've memorised the teams in our group so I can join in the banter because its all everyone's talking about at the moment. When the new headmaster of the school came up to me on Monday asking if my new favourite player was Green I was sufficiently clued in to be able to tell him to bugger off.

Schools out tomorrow. Holy shit that means I have ten weeks to occupy my little darlings without going totally stir crazy. There is some light in the middle of the tunnel with our trip to Turkey - we're going all-inclusive this year, somewhere with hot and cold running childcare as well as buffets, so we both get a proper rest. Also the kids and I are off to Paris for a week, my folks are coming here for a week, then Poppet has her first trip to camp.

Meanwhile everyone with a birthday during the holidays has been trying to squeeze in a party before everone sods off to sunny climes. This weekend there were three parties, mercifully both children were invited to all of them so Nobby and me did get some free babysitting so we could wander the shops without all the 'Are we going home yet? I'm hungry! I need a wee!' following us around. But still we ask ourselves, why is it our kids have better social lives than us? Having said that, now all parties have dried up for ten weeks, as I was saying, WTF do we do all day long?!

You'll be interested to know Poppet asked me, in one of her whimsical, nostalgic moods ealier as we were leaving school for the penultimate time.

'Mummy, will you teach me during the holidays? I'm going to miss having lessons.'

Yeah, I'll let you know how that one pans out.

One thing to avoid is any stress. Doctor's orders. I have tried several times to write a post to describe what happened to me a few weeks ago (and led to this huge blogging gap), but I wasn't able to get my tongue in my cheek yet to make light of it. But now I'll have a go.

One Sunday at the end of May I found myself flat on my back at the bottom of the garden with a young man tearing off my t-shirt and bra and manhandling my chest. No, Nobby and I were not engaging in some al fresco friskiness, more's the pity. The young man was a paramedic and the clothes tearing to get the ECG electrodes stuck on me. Believe me there was nothing romantic about having to have my post-children boobs moved to the side to make way for the wires.

They say you can measure the pertness of your rack by trying to hold a pencil underneath them. Trust me, I could probably manage a small branch of WHSmiths these days.

Anyway, it was one way to survey the Hungarian emergency services and in my husband's humble opinion they are crap. I collapsed in a heap at the end of the garden after a spot of lawn mowing and weed strimming; my windpipe was closing up so I thought I was in some sort of anaphylactic reaction to the plants I'd been chopping down. Nobby and the neighbours were trying to keep me awake and calm the children down - well, trying to calm Poppet down who was in hysterics, Pickle was more fascinated about what could have caused it and how to treat me. He's got a bright, analytical future ahead of him that one.

Apparently it took a good ten minutes to get through to an ambulance then another thirty for one to show up, though this one was only a car containing paramedics to assess me, who seriously enraged a panic-stricken Nobby by strolling through the garden as if they were attending a picnic not a prostrate and barely conscious woman. Still, they called for back-up pretty sharpish when they couldn't get a reading on my blood pressure and I was whisked away with a blues-and-twos escort all the way to the hospital. And NOT the one that butchered Pickle's head I am pleased to say.

Especially because I wasn't allowed to leave for three days. Yup, apparently, although there was no single cause for my turn, it was sufficiently impressive to keep me under observation for twenty-four hours followed by bucket loads of tests. Probably nothing to do with the fact that Monday was a bank holiday and all the doctors must have been at the lake, considering I was left in my admittedly posh but still desperately boring private VIP suite for eight hours straight the next day. Not sure what they observed through the closed door. (Do you get the feeling I was climbing the walls in there? Because I was. The TV was all in German, the nurses didn't speak a word of English and I couldn't even get a coffee because I'd been bussed in wearing my gardening clothes carrying no money.) Nobby was a saint. He brought me books and mags and even my laptop and a few DVDs. The best thing was definitely the flask of PG Tips, which was extra special considering the water was off at our house that day and he used everything he could cobble together for a cuppa for me. Now that's love.

So from Tuesday I saw a cardiologist, an audiologist, a neurologist, a gynaecologist and several generalists - it was like a Maureen Lipman BT advert 'You've got an ology?' I was poked and probed and xrayed and scanned. I even had to wear a heart monitor for 24 hours to check the ol' ticker.

But thankfully there is nothing seriously wrong with me, some anaemia, some exhaustion, possibly some release of anxiety from handing in my final assignment AND being offered a full time job the previous week (!! more about that next time).

Also my potassium was low so I was prescribed bananas - I'm on at least three a day now and hope to be swinging through the forest canopy pretty soon. If I can just stop searching the children's hair for nits long enough.